Apostles' doctrine' consisted of such fully developed truths as we
find later on in Paul's writings. If you will look at the first
sermons that Peter is recorded as having delivered, in the early
chapters of the Acts, you will find that he by no means enunciates a
definite theology such as he unfolds in his later Epistle. There is
no word about the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; His designation
is 'Thy holy child Jesus.' There is no word about the atoning nature
of Christ's sacrifice; His death is simply the great crime of the
Jewish people, and His Resurrection the great divine fact witnessing
to the truth of His Messiahship. All that which we now regard, and
rightly regard, as the very centre and living focus of divine truth
was but beginning to shine out on the Apostles' minds, or rather to
gather itself into form, and to shape itself by slow degrees into
propositions. 'The Apostles' teaching'--for 'doctrine' does not
convey to modern ears what Luke meant by the word--must have been
very largely, if not exclusively, of the same kind as is preserved to
us in the four Gospels, and especially in the first three of them.
The recital to these listeners, to whom it was all so fresh and
strange and transcendent, of the story that has become worn and
commonplace to us by its familiarity, of Christ in His birth, Christ
in His gentleness, Christ in His deeds, Christ in the deep words that
the Apostles were only beginning to understand; Christ in His Death,
Resurrection, and Ascension--these were the themes on the narration
of which this company of three thousand waited with such eagerness.

But, of course, there was necessarily involved in the story a certain
amount of what we now call doctrine--that is, theological teaching--
because one cannot tell the story of Jesus Christ, as it is told in
the four Gospels, without impressing upon the hearers the conviction
that His nature was divine and that His death was a sacrifice. Beyond