The MATERIALS of this work should be found in all that has been written on the subject of New Testament history, since the scriptural canon was completed. But “who is sufficient for these things?” A long life might find abundant employment in searching a thousand libraries, and compiling from a hundred thousand volumes, the facts and illustrations of this immense and noble subject; and then the best energies of another long life would be needed to bring the mighty masses into form, and give them in a narrative for the mind of the unlearned. What, then, is here attempted, as a substitute for this immensity? To give a clear distinct narrative of each apostle’s life, with such illustrations of the character of the era, and the scene in which the incidents occurred, and such explanations of the terms in which they are recorded, as may, consistently with the limits of this work, be drawn from the labors of the learned of ancient and modern times, which are within the writer’s reach. Various and numerous are the books that swell the list of faithful and honest references; many and weighty the volumes that have been turned over, in the long course of research; ancient and venerable the dust, which has been shaken into suffocating clouds about the searcher’s head, and have obscured his vision, as he dragged many a forgotten folio from the slumber of ages, to array the modern plunderer in the shreds and patches of antique lore. Histories, travels, geographies, maps, commentaries, criticisms, introductions, and lexicons, have been “daily and nightly turned in the hand;” and of this labor some fruit is offered on every page. But the unstained source of sacred history! the pure well-spring, at which the wearied searcher always refreshed himself, after unrequited toils, through dry masses of erudition, was the simple story of the Apostles and Evangelists, told by themselves. In this same simple story, indeed, were found the points on which the longest labor was required; yet these, at best only illustrated, not improved, by all the labors of the learned of various ages, were the _materials_ of the work. These are the preparations of months and years; the execution must decide on their real value,――and that is yet to come. A list of the various works which have furnished the materials for this book might be proper here; but in order to insure its completeness and accuracy, it is deferred to the end of the volume.