[199] IN beginning to appreciate the great historical value and trustworthiness of the Acts, I was at first guided in. some degree by old-fashioned ideas about sources and authorities employed by the author of the book, drawing on my former experiences in. respect of Aristotle and my studies in. Old Testament history (as described on pp. 16 f. and 18). Being very careful not to go beyond the evidence, I did not in. my first book venture to argue for more than "that the narrative in. Acts of Paul's journeys is founded on, or actually incorporates, an account written under the immediate influence of Paul himself."1

The conviction became steadily stronger in. my mind that the book was a unity, and that one part could not be separated from the rest as true, while the remainder of the book stood on a lower level of trustworthiness. The author is very emphatic about the excellence of his authorities (Luke 1.1-3), and allows no exceptions: he is trustworthy as a whole, or not at all. The quality of his work is as uniform as the style. Those parts in. which the historian speaks as an eye-witness, the "We-passages," are not more or less Lukan in. character, not more free from marvellous accompaniments, than the rest. This is fully acknowledged [200] by? Dr. Harnack, 2 who concludes that Luke had a constitutional tendency towards the marvellous) and could not avoid seeing events in that light. This judgment is a matter of personal quality) and is quite in the critical style of the nineteenth century, whereas Harnack writes often from the point of view of the twentieth century. The present writer's experience leads him to feel more and more convinced, as the years pass, that the world around is full of the marvellous and the incomprehensible, if one has eyes to see rightly.

There is among many modern people a strong inclination to doubt such general statements as those in Acts V. 12, "by the hands of the Apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people," or VIII. 7, "from many of those which had unclean spirits they came out; and many that were palsied and that were lame were healed ". Along with this doubt follows a general tendency to rate low the credibility of the book in which such statements occur, and the intelligence of the author who admits them. But we should take into consideration the character of an Oriental population, where physicians and medical attendance are almost unknown and magicians abound, where ignorance and a low standard of living and of thought are prevalent, and where that peculiar class of trouble or disease called in the New Testament "possession by devils " is rife. I feel convinced that those who can appreciate from experience the actual situation and conditions of such a state of society, will be the slowest to doubt the credibility of statements like those which have just been quoted. Now imagine that amid this Oriental population, keenly suscept- [201] ible to religious emotions and strongly influenced already by many superstitious ideas and customs, a great religious idea is introduced and propagated widely through the degraded masses by one extraordinary personality and by a devoted enthusiastic group of followers, all themselves men and women of eminent power and magnetic influence. Take into consideration the strange and yet indubitable facts of faith-healing, and similar phenomena. No one who weighs the conditions of this question can regard these general statements in the Acts as improbable in themselves, or as detracting from the credibility of the book as a whole. The present writer can only assert his own conviction that those statements express just what would be likely to occur. Some slight account of the situation where belief in demonic influence grows strong is given above in chapter IX.

At the same time it must be frankly acknowledged that the general prevalence of such conditions must always lead to the too ready acceptance without investigation of particular instances; and that many of the individual cases would not stand rigorous examination. Not every mendicant who pretends to be ill is really so. Imposture and trading on pretended diseases would be detected in many cases.

Yet none the less do even these examples of common delusion attest the reality of the curative influence. The public mind and body have as a whole been diseased, and they undergo a health-giving renovation. The impostor who deludes the world with his pretended disease of body is really diseased in soul; and it is no small thing that his mind should be cured and his life transformed into a healthy one. But most of the so-called impostors are physically diseased to some extent as well as morally diseased in their whole nature. Exceptions indeed occur, in which the pre- [202] tended sufferer from incurable disease or loss of eyesight or so on, is perfectly sound; but generally there is nervous or other malady of some kind as well as moral disease.

Cures effected in these cases furnish real proofs of the power which the new religious idea exerts on those whom it seizes. The medical expert would not label the disease and the cure exactly as the popular opinion does; but there is in each case a disease, and a cure is effected.

Luke, however, claims to be a good authority, because he has his narrative from the authority of eye-witnesses; and in most cases we can determine who were the witnesses. Yet the strictly scientific inquirer will not be satisfied with the evidence even of eye-witnesses in the case of every cure, or of raising from the dead. Was the witness competent to distinguish death from mere suspended animation? Did the witness really test the case? I have myself seen a man brought in from the harvest-field, washed and prepared for burial, mourned in the vehement Oriental style, carried to his grave and buried; but I should be a bad witness to his death, because the suspicion has always haunted me that the man was perhaps not dead. Of those scores of witnesses, probably only my wife and myself had any doubt as to the man's death; and in the hurry of events -- for little more than two hours elapsed between the man's collapse in the field and his deposition in the tomb -- everything was so convincing that it was only after all was over that we began to ask each other, "was that man really dead ? "3

That the circumstances in all those incidents occurred as Luke relates there is not the smallest reason to doubt. The [203] inference from the facts may, however, be doubtful. That the lame man at Lystra was really lame, and not an arrant impostor, must be taken as certain: he was known from childhood as lame: he had been a beggar 4 familiar to every one in the small city of Lystra, and all believed in the reality of his lameness and the extraordinary nature of the cure. Yet, when the medical expert comes to examine the case, he will ask whether the theory of unconscious imposture might not be admissible. The physician can give many examples of mental disease simulating such bodily conditions as lameness. The case was not critically examined at the time. We have started from the assumption that mental and nervous diseases of an obscure kind must have been numerous in the state of society which existed at that time in western Asia.

Even supposing, however, that the lame mart might have been an unconscious impostor, who thought he was lame and had never walked, the inciderit remains just as marvellous as if he were really lame. 5 His mind was cured, and he saw his real self. Such apparent lameness might be due to nervous causes; but none the less it is lameness.

There is little to be gained for our purpose by investigating each case. That is a subject for the medical expert. The question in such an investigation would be how the facts should be labelled. What scientific name shall we apply? The facts stand recorded in their external as- [204] pect, as they would appear to unscientific witnesses. They are sufficient evidence that the individual was abnormal and diseased in some way, and that he was restored to normal existence and to happiness.

Such incidents) too, attest sufficiently the remarkable spiritual power over the minds and bodies exerted by the Apostles in the way of bringing men to a reasonable, natural and healthy condition; but this in itself does not prove that, because a person who believes is cured, therefore his belief is truth. Belief in a delusion may sometimes produce a curative effect, though only in exceptional cases. That this was not a case of delusion has to be proved by other reasons, of which there is abundance.

A strong and general popular belief is a great power. The new idea as preached by the Apostles had this great power supporting it and pushing it forward. And there was no pretence on the side of the Apostles and of the Church. They felt and knew what a revolution they were making in the world. They saw with their own eyes that the souls and bodies of men were growing healthier around them; and they knew that the cause was simply and solely belief in the Jesus whom they were preaching. Their own faith was made stronger by those cures, as well as the faith and character of the people that were cured.

We need not enter on the question whether the Apostles were possessed of any personal healing power, which acted independently of any faith or belief felt by the patient. For our purposes that is immaterial 6 but the remarkable article by Dr. Schofield in the "Contemporary Review," March, 1909, on "Spiritual Healing," may be quoted as evidence that modern medical science accepts the view that [205] some people possess such personal power. 7 Still even on his showing the fact is clear that the faith of the patient is an enormously potent influence and by far the most common. Cure by the simple power of the healer must be always rare and exceptional; and the record of a cure seems more credible when it lays stress on the faith of the person cured. That was the case with the lame man at Lystra. Paul, fixing his gaze on him, saw that he had the faith which gave him the capability of being saved.

It is, however, needless, irrational, and unfair to require that Luke's narrative should be like the report of a nerve-specialist. He tells us what seemed to the spectators to happen, just as he had heard it from them, or as in various cases he had himself seen it. He is very careful in many cases to define, with accuracy unusual in an ancient writer, exactly how much was vouched for to him and how much he was prepared to guarantee. 8

The best and probably the most scientific way is to read the Acts simply, gather from it the opinions of those who were eye-witnesses, and give this its full value, but always to remember that they were not medical experts. The general opinion and impression will prove quite good enough for a fair judgment.

It is matter for a special book to study the authorities whom Luke used for the first part of his history. The present writer's view is that Luke was careful to indicate his authorities, not indeed by formal quotation as a modern writer would, but indirectly. A good deal rests on the authority of Philip the Deacon, with whom Luke was long [206] in intimate relation, first when Paul and his company landed in Caesarea, and afterwards during Paul's imprisonment there. Those parts which describe Philip's own action are marked by great modesty: he keeps himself secondary, and speaks of Peter and John as standing on a higher rank, and wielding more authority than himself.

The episode of the Ethiopian is an exception: this figure, in short, finds a place in Luke's pages mainly for the purpose of bringing into relief the character and power and influence of Philip, and not as indicating an important direction in the growth of the new Faith towards the south. Such a story was not gathered from Philip himself, but from a warm admirer of Philip. Yet admiration does not affect the representation of the facts. The same limitation to Philip's power is observable here as at Samaria. Philip can only baptize; his influence does not carry with it the gift of the Spirit.

Our view, therefore, is that the Ethiopian episode was included by Luke rather with a view to showing the character of Philip than with the intention of describing a step in the growth of the Church. Luke appreciated the great men who had made the early Church, and was resolved that his readers should appreciate them also. He knew that no impressive view of history can be given or acquired, unless the dominating figures are set in their true light. He was writing for the congregations of the Graeco-Roman world; and one of his main objects was to move them, and to affect their life. To do this it was above all things necessary to put before them in their true colours the great figures Peter, Stephen, Philip, and Paul. Luke had at the same time the Greek sense of historic truth and of proportion: he shows those figures to us in action, and never merely describes them.

[207] For example, the scene of the voyage and shipwreck in chapter XXVII. is not directly important in itself for the development of the Church; but it is highly important as illuminating the character of Paul and showing how, even as a prisoner and a landsman at sea, he became the dominating personage in a great ship's company as soon as danger threatened; and it also draws the reader's attention to the central and critical importance of the scene towards which it leads up, viz. the trial of Paul in Rome.

So, also, the Ethiopian episode places Philip before the reader in a new light. Henceforth we realize his character and his action in a very different way; Philip now rises from the level of a second-rate figure almost to the higher plane on which Peter and Paul move. Even the Samarian episode assumes a different character, when it is read in the light of the Ethiopian incident.

Such seems to be the intention of Luke, when he gives the story of the Ethiopian eunuch a place in his history. He heard it, not from Philip himself, but from the prophetesses his daughters, one or all. It was the prophetesses who imparted the spirit of the Old Testament to the story, regarding their father after the fashion of an old Hebrew prophet, who went forth into the wilderness, to whom the messenger of the Lord spoke, who was caught away by the Spirit when he had done what he was ordered to do. The narrative impressed the imagination of Luke, and has been recorded by him in the same tone in which he heard it. It is markedly different in certain ways from the Samarian narrative.

It shows us how Philip impressed those among whom he lived; and we recognize in him the person who was fitted to write the Epistle to the Hebrews. 9 He was a great ad- [208] mirer of Peter, and yet he had the freedom of mind that fitted him to appreciate Paul. The self-suppression that characterizes the part of the Acts where he was Luke's authority is also evident in the Epistle, where the writer never mentions himself, and where the first person singular appears only as a literary form. 10 The personality of this great leader of the early Church will yet be recovered in far more complete fashion by a careful study of the Epistle to the Hebrews in its relation to the portions of the Acts which depend on the testimony of Philip.

Luke had known John Mark, and he had certainly seen and entered the house of Mary his mother. The way in which he uses evidence gathered there is studied as regards one incident in the following chapter XVII.

FOOTNOTES

1 "Cburch in. the Roman Empire before 170," p.6.

2 Harnack, "Lukas der Artzt Verfasser des III. Evang. und d. Apostelgesch," p. 60, points out that the "We-passages" are thoroughly Lukan in style: see "Luke the Physician and other Studies," pp.4, 34, 38.

3 Nothing is more difficult than to be quite certain that death has occurred, even for a physician. I know well a man who, after long illness, was pronounced dead by the excellent doctors and nurses in Paris who had been attending him, yet he recovered.

4 The man is not stated to have been a beggar; but what is said about him leaves no doubt in the mind of anyone acquainted with the habits of the Mediterranean peoples, that he was sitting (perhaps at a gate as a good beggar's station) a mendicant (Acts xiv. 7).

5 The state of his ankles and feet, after many years spent without walking, would have been exactly as described in Acts. The account states as the climax, that "he never walked". That was the outcome of the evidence a' known to an eye-witness.

6 They always claimed to act and to have power only in the name of Jesus.

7 The fact that some people are, so to say, walking stores of typhoid infection, without themselves developing fully the disease, is not exactly parallel, for degeneration is more catching than health.

8 In "St. Paul the Traveller" this feature is pointed out in several cases. At Lystra the disciples "supposed that Paul was dead".

9 The writer's view on this subject is stated in a paper in "Luke the Physician," pp.301-28.

10 See "Luke the Physician," p.324.