discourse in the Acts would not have taken more than six or seven minutes to deliver,(1) and it is impossible to suppose that what is there given can have been the whole speech delivered on many of the occasions described. For instance, is it probable that King Agrippa who desires to hear Paul, and who comes "with great pomp" with Berenice to do so, should only have heard a speech lasting some five minutes. The Author himself tells us that Paul was not always so brief in his addresses as any one might suppose from the specimens here presented.(2) It is remarkable, however, that not the slightest intimation is given that the speeches are either merely substantially reported or are abridged, and their form and character are evidently designed to convey the impression of complete discourses. If the reader examine any of these discourses, it will be clear that they are concise compositions, betraying no marks of abridgment, and having no fragmentary looseness, but, on the contrary, that they are highly artificial and finished productions, with a continuous argument. They certainly are singularly inadequate, many of them, to produce the impressions described; but at least it is not possible to discover that material omissions have been made, or that their periods were originally expanded by large, or even any, amplification. If these speeches be regarded as complete, and with little or no condensation, another strong element is added to the suspicion as to their authenticity, for such extreme baldness and brevity in the declaration of a new religion, {77} requiring both explanation and argument, cannot be conceived, and in the case of Paul, with whose system of teaching and doctrine we are well acquainted through his Epistles, it is impossible to accept such meagre and onesided addresses, as representations of his manner. The statement that the discourses are abridged, and a mere _resume_ of those originally delivered, however, rests upon no authority, is a mere conjecture to account for an existing difficulty, and is in contradiction to the actual form of the speeches in Acts. Regarded as complete, their incongruity is intensified, but considered as abridged, they have lost in the process all representative character and historical fitness.