done, during a course of years and in many great cities, did the first written collection of some of the words and acts of Christ begin to be made public; while the last of this fourfold collection was not communicated to the general body of disciples until more than sixty years after the termination of our Lord's earthly life. Before that time the structure of the Church in those points of her external government which we have touched above had been entirely completed; the sound of the Apostles had gone out into all the world; a multitude of teachers had been commissioned by the Apostles; a multitude of people had been taught by them; martyrs had borne witness to the faith thus planted everywhere. In this first era, which lasted certainly during the lifetime of the Apostles in general, probably to the death of the last Apostle, John, the tradition of the Christian faith was oral. By all this period the kingdom of Christ preceded the book in which we read at the distance of so many centuries the account of its origin. The book did not make the kingdom, but the kingdom made itself, and in making gave us the book, as a part of itself, a permanent though not a complete record of our Lord's words and acts, and a portion of that oral teaching which had been the instrument of its first propagation. This oral teaching comprehended three classes of facts: first, the things taught by our Lord to His Apostles, whether they were afterwards written or whether they were not written; and as to such a distinction nothing can be more express than St. John's repeated testimony that only a small portion of the things which He did and the signs which He wrought were written—a testimony the more important as it comes from him whose writings close the canon of Scripture. Secondly, it comprehended those things which the Apostles learnt by illumination from the Holy Spirit, according to the promise recorded for us by St. John, "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; but when He the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you by the hand into all truth,"[137] and which under His guidance they taught to the first disciples; and these two classes of things make up together the divine tradition. Thirdly, it comprehended those things which the Apostles in propagating the Church enjoined upon the pastors whom they appointed for the regulation of discipline, for the administration of sacraments, and for the worship of God, which were not written; and these things make up the apostolic tradition.