in His hands, He alone being the mover of the pawns on the board.

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 its
conclusion, which must strike every reader. No doubt it is quite
possible that the reason why the book ends in such a singular
fashion, planting Paul in Rome, and leaving him there, may be that
the date of its composition was that imprisonment of Paul in the
Imperial City, in a part of which, at all events, we know that Luke
was his companion. But, whilst that consideration may explain the
point at which the book stops, it does not explain the way in which
it stops. 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 is not yet a whole.

If, then, we put these two things--the beginning and the ending of
the Acts--together, I think we get some thoughts about what Christ
began to do and teach on earth; what He continues to do and teach in