you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him
go into heaven. 12. Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the
mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's
journey. 13. And when they were come in, they went up into an
upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and
Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the
son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of
James. 14. These all continued with one accord in prayer and
supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and
with His brethren.'--ACTS i. 1-14.

The Ascension is twice narrated by Luke. The life begun by the
supernatural birth ends with the supernatural Ascension, which sets
the seal of Heaven on Christ's claims and work. Therefore the Gospel
ends with it. But it is also the starting-point of the Christ's
heavenly activity, of which the growth of His Church, as recorded in
the Acts, is the issue. Therefore the Book of the Acts of the
Apostles begins with it.

The keynote of the 'treatise' lies in the first words, which describe
the Gospel as the record of what 'Jesus _began_ to do and teach,'
Luke would have gone on to say that this second book of his contained
the story of what Jesus went on to do and teach after He was 'taken
up,' if he had been strictly accurate, or had carried out his first
intention, as shown by the mould of his introductory sentence; but he
is swept on into the full stream of his narrative, and we have to
infer the contrast between his two volumes from his statement of the
contents of his first.

The book, then, is misnamed Acts of the Apostles, both because the