We have now patiently considered the "Acts of the Apostles," and although it has in no way been our design exhaustively to examine its contents, we have more than sufficiently done so to enable the reader to understand the true character of the document. The author is unknown, and it is no longer possible to identify him. If he were actually the Luke whom the Church indicates, our results would not be materially affected; but the mere fact that the writer is unknown is obviously fatal to the Acts as a guarantee of miracles. A cycle of supernatural occurrences could scarcely, in the estimation of any rational mind, be established by the statement of an anonymous author, and more especially one who not only does not pretend to have been an eye-witness of most of the miracles, but whose narrative is either uncorroborated by other testimony or inconsistent with itself, and contradicted on many points by contemporary documents. The phenomena presented by the Acts of the Apostles become perfectly intelligible when we recognize that it is the work of a writer living long after the occurrences related, whose pious imagination furnished the apostolic age with an elaborate system of supernatural agency, far beyond the conception of any other New Testament writer, by which, according to his view, the proceedings of the Apostles were furthered and directed, and the infant Church miraculously fostered. On examining other portions of his narrative, we find that they present the features which the miraculous elements rendered antecedently probable. The speeches attributed to {320} different speakers are all cast in the same mould, and betray the composition of one and the same writer. The sentiments expressed are inconsistent with what we know of the various speakers. And when we test the circumstances related by previous or subsequent incidents and by trustworthy documents, it becomes apparent that the narrative is not an impartial statement of facts, but a reproduction of legends or a development of tradition, shaped and coloured according to the purpose or the pious views of the writer. The Acts of the Apostles, therefore, is not only an anonymous work, but upon due examination its claims to be considered sober and veracious history must be emphatically rejected. It cannot strengthen the foundations of supernatural Religion, but, on the contrary, by its profuse and indiscriminate use of the miraculous it discredits miracles, and affords a clearer insight into their origin and fictitious character. PART V. THE DIRECT EVIDENCE FOR MIRACLES CHAPTER I. THE EPISTLES AND THE APOCALYPSE