s the formula of baptism "in the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" [178:7] Mark
alone speaks of the great amazement of the people as they beheld the
face of Christ on His descent from the Mount of Transfiguration; [179:1]
Luke alone announces the appointment of the Seventy; [179:2] and John
alone records some of those sublime discourses in which our Lord treats
of the doctrine of His Sonship, of the mission of the Comforter, and of
the mysterious union between Himself and His people. [179:3] All the
evangelists direct our special attention to the scene of the
crucifixion. As they proceed to describe it, they obviously feel that
they are dealing with a transaction of awful import; and they
accordingly become more impressive and circumstantial. Their statements,
when combined, furnish a complete and consistent narrative of the sore
travail, the deep humiliation, and the dying utterances of the
illustrious sufferer.

If the appointment of the Seventy indicated our Lord's intention of
sending the glad tidings of salvation to the ends of the earth, there
was a peculiar propriety in the selection of an individual of their
number as the historian of the earliest missionary triumphs. Whilst Luke
records the wonderful success of Christianity amongst the Gentiles, he
takes care to point out the peculiar features of the new economy; and
thus it is that his narrative abounds with passages in which the
doctrine, polity, and worship of the primitive disciples are illustrated
or explained. It is well known that the titles of the several parts of
the New Testament were prefixed to them, not by their authors, but at a
subsequent period by parties who had no claim to inspiration; [179:4]
and it is obvious that the book called--"The Acts of the Apostles" has
not been very correctly designated. It is confined almost exclusively to
the acts of Peter and Paul, and it sketches only a portion of their
proceedings. As its narrative terminates at the end of Paul's second
year's imprisonment at Rome, it was probably written about that period.
Superficial readers may object to its information as curt and
fragmentary; but the careful investigator will discover that it marks
with great distinctness the most important stages in the early
development of the Church. [180:1] It shews how Christianity spread
rapidly among the Jews from the day of Pentecost to the martyrdom of
Stephen; it points out how it then took root among th