we see untiring activity and patient endurance in the Master’s service, such as make the primitive church a bright illustration of the promise:  “Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.  And they that be of thee shall build the old waste places.”  Isa. 58:11,12.  On the side of the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, on the contrary, we behold, as ever since, a series of unsuccessful efforts to hinder the work of God; the very ringleader of the persecutors being called, in the midst of his heat and fury against Christianity, to be the “ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.”  Such an authentic record of apostolic times is of immense value to the church in all ages.  It gives the true standard of enlightened Christian zeal and activity, and the true exhibition of what constitutes the real strength and prosperity of the Christian church.

The Acts of the Apostles give also a cursory view of the inauguration of the Christian church, by the descent of the Holy Spirit in his plenary influences (chap. 2), by the appointment of deacons (chap. 6), and the ordination of elders, though these last are only mentioned incidentally (chaps. 14:23; 20:17), the office being understood of itself from the usages of the Jewish Synagogue.  The scantiness of the information which we have on this matter of church organization is a part of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, and is full of instruction to the church in all ages.

Once more, the Acts of the Apostles give a most interesting and instructive account of the way in which “the middle wall of partition” between Jews and Gentiles was gradually broken down.  The full import of the Saviour’s last command:  “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” seems to have been at first but dimly apprehended by the apostles.  For some time their labors were restricted to their own countrymen.  But when, upon the dispersion of the disciples in the persecution that arose in connection with Stephen’s martyrdom, the gospel had been preached to the Samaritans, the apostles Peter and John were sent to them, and they in common with the Jews received the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Chap. 8:5-25.  This was an intermediate step.  Afterwards Peter was sent among the Gentiles proper, and they also received the Holy Spirit, to the astonishment of the Jewish brethren who had accompanied Peter.  Chap. 10.  The same thing happened also at Antioch (chap. 11:20), where the true reading is Hellenas, Greeks, that is, Gentiles, not Hellenistas, Hellenists.  But the work was not yet finished.  It remained that the believing Gentiles should be, by the solemn and formal judgment of the assembled apostles and elders, released from the yoke of the Jewish law.  Of this we have an account in the fifteenth chapter.  Thus was the demolition of the middle wall of partition completed.  Of the greatness of this work and the formidable difficulties by which it was beset—­difficulties having their ground in the exclusive spirit of Judaism in connection with the false idea that the Mosaic law was to remain in force under the Messiah’s reign—­we who live so many centuries after its accomplishment can form but a feeble conception.