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(with Acts 1:1, 2): — So begins and so ends this book. I connect the commencement and the close, because I think that the juxtaposition throws great light upon the purpose of the writer, and suggests some very important lessons. The reference to "the former treatise" (which is, of course, the Gospel according to Luke) implies that this book is to be regarded as its sequel, and the terms of the reference show the writer's own conception of what he was going to do in his second volume. "The former treatise have I made...of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up." Is not the natural inference that the latter treatise will tell us what Jesus continued "to do and teach" after He was taken up? So, then, the name "the Acts of the Apostles," which is not coeval with the book itself, is somewhat of a misnomer. Most of the apostles are never heard of in it. There are, at the most, only three or four of them concerning whom anything in the book is recorded. But our first text supplies a deeper reason for regarding that title as inadequate, and even misleading. For, if the theme of the story be what Christ did, then the book is, not the "Acts of the Apostles," but the acts of Jesus Christ through His servants. That conception of the purpose of the book seems to me to have light cast upon it by, and to explain, the singular abruptness of the conclusion which must strike every reader. The historian lays down his pen, possibly because he had brought his narrative up to date. But a word of conclusion explaining that it was so would have been very natural, and its absence must have had some reason. It is also possible that the arrival of the apostle in the imperial city, and his unhindered liberty of preaching there, in the very centre of power, the focus of intellectual life, and the hot bed of corruption for the known world, may have seemed to the writer an epoch which rounded off his story. But I think that the reason for the abruptness of the record's close is to be found in the continuity of the work of which it tells a part. It is the unfinished record of an incomplete work. The theme is the work of Christ through the ages, of which each successive depository of His energies can do but a small portion, and must leave that portion unfinished, the book does not so much end as stop. It is a fragment because the work of which it tells of is not yet a whole.

I. First, then, we have here the suggestion of WHAT CHRIST BEGAN TO DO AND TEACH ON EARTH. Now, at first sight, the words of our text seem to be in strange and startling contradiction to the solemn cry which rang out of the darkness upon Calvary. Jesus said, "It is finished! and gave up the ghost." Luke says He "began to do and teach." Is there any contradiction between the two? Certainly not. It is one thing to lay a foundation; it is another thing to build a house. And the work of laying the foundation must be finished before the work of building the structure upon it can be begun. The former is the work of Christ which was finished on earth; the latter is the work which is continuous throughout the ages. "He began to do and teach," not in the sense that any should come after Him and do — as the disciples of most great discoverers and thinkers have had to do: systematise, rectify, and complete the first glimpses of truth which the Master had given. "He began to do and teach," not in the sense that after He had passed into the heavens any new truth or force can for evermore be imparted to humanity in regard of the subjects which He taught and the energies which He brought. But whilst thus His work is complete His earthly work is also initial. And we must remember that whatever distinction my text may mean to draw between the work of Christ in the past and that in the present and the future, it does not mean to imply that when He ascended up on high He had not completed the task for which He came, or that the world had to wait for anything more, either from Him or from others, to eke out the imperfections of His doctrine or the insufficiencies of His work.

II. But then, secondly, we have to notice WHAT CHRIST CONTINUES TO DO AND TO TEACH AFTER HIS ASCENSION. I have already suggested that the phraseology of the first of my texts naturally leads to the conclusion that the theme of this book of the Acts is the continuous work of the ascended Saviour, and that the language is not forced by being thus interpreted is very obvious to anyone who will glance even cursorily over the contents of the book itself. For there is nothing in it more obvious and remarkable than the way in which, at every turn in the narrative, all is referred to Jesus Christ Himself. He only is the Actor; men are His implements and instruments. The same point of view is suggested by another of the characteristics of this book, which it shares in common with all Scripture narratives, and that is the stolid indifference with which it picks up and drops men, according to the degree in which, for the moment, they are the instruments of Christ's power. As long as God uses a man the man is of interest to the writer of the Scripture. When God uses another one, they drop the first, and have no more care about him, because their theme is not men and their doings, but God's doings through men. On us, and in us, and by us, and for us, if we are His servants, Jesus Christ is working all through the ages. He is the Lord of providence, He is the King of history, in His hand is the book with the seven seals; He sends His Spirit, and where His Spirit is He is; and what His Spirit does He does. And thus He continues to teach and to work from His throne in the heavens. Now these truths of our Lord's continuous activity in teaching and working from heaven may yield us some not unimportant lessons. What a depth and warmth and reality the thoughts give to the Christian's relation to Jesus Christ! What a sweetness and sacredness such thoughts impart to all external events, which we may regard as being the operation of His love, and moved by the hands that were nailed to the Cross for us, and now hold the sceptre of the universe for the blessing of mankind. What a fountain of hope they open in estimating future probabilities of victory for truth and goodness!

III. Lastly, we note THE INCOMPLETENESS OF EACH MAN'S SHARE IN THE GREAT WORK. As I said, the book which is to tell the story of Christ's continuous work from heaven must stop abruptly. There is no help for it. If it was a history of Paul it would need to be wound up to an end and a selvage put to it, but as it is the history of Christ's working, the web is not half finished, and the shuttle stops in the middle of a cast. The book must be incomplete because the work of which it is the record does not end until He shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all in all. So the work of each man is but a fragment of that great work. Every man inherits unfinished tasks from his predecessors, and leaves unfinished tasks to his successors. It is, as it used to be in the middle ages, when the men that dug the foundations, or laid the first courses of some great cathedral, were dead long generations before the gilded cross was set on the apex of the needle spire, and the glowing glass filled in to the painted windows. Enough for us if we lay a stone, though it be but one stone in one of the courses of the great building.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him,

WEB: Paul stayed two whole years in his own rented house, and received all who were coming to him,