'And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and
received all that came in unto him, 31. Preaching the kingdom
of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus
Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.'
--ACTS xxviii. 30, 31.

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? I think so.
And thus the writer sets forth at once, for those that have eyes to
see, what he means to do, and what he thinks his book is going to be
about.

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. He, and He
alone, is the Actor; and the men who appear in it are but instruments