derived either from converse with the dispersed of Israel, the possession of parts of their scriptures, or, which is not impossible, from revelations vouchsafed to themselves, and had entered into the Jewish expectation of the advent of the great Deliverer. We see in them at once the representatives of the antique faith of the patriarchs, the first-fruits of Gentile adorations at the feet of Christ, and the unconscious forerunners of those messengers of peace, who, half a century later, announced far and wide to the oriental nations the wonders of his name.[1]
2. Nor can it be imagined that the numerous proselytes who, on the day of Pentecost at Jerusalem, had been brought under the power of the truth, should have so received the grace of God in vain, as to neglect to become witnesses for the Saviour, and, to some extent, preachers of his gospel, on their return to their respective countries. Hence, within the first year from the Ascension, Christianity found a voice among "Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene," in Rome, and Crete, and Arabia.[2]
3. So, shortly after, "they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, travelled as far as Phenice and Cyprus and Antioch; preaching the word," though "to none but to the Jews only. And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which when they were come to Antioch spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus; and the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord."[3]
- ↑ Compare what Suetonius, in the Life of Vespasian, says on the expectation of a Saviour King, which had become almost universal in the East.
- ↑ Acts ii. 9—11.
- ↑ Acts xi. 19—24.
