The Acts of the Apostles

THE TREATMENT OF PERSONS 131
with what delicate touches is the speech of St.
James, in chap, xv., distinguished from that of
St. Peter ! Are we to assign all this to St. Luke
the Hellenist without any source to guide him ?
And above all—how clearly the first two great
programmatic speeches of St. Paul (chaps, xiii. and
xvii.), the first addressed to the Jews, the second
to the Gentiles, are distinguished from the speeches
of St. Peter ! Compare only xiii. 38, 39 with
X. 43 (vide supra), and think whether in a short
report the likeness and the difference between the
teaching of the primitive apostles and that of St.
Paul could have been more concisely and delicately
expressed than in those words! As for the speech
at Athens, with its prelude in xiv. 15 ^., if only
critics will again learn to see clearly and to feel
rightly, none of them will fail to recognise that in
this attempt to give a short summary of the prob-
able nature of St. PauFs fundamental teaching in his
sermons to Gentiles, the genius shown in the selection
of ideas is just as great as the historical trustworthi-
ness of the report.
It is most strange that St. Luke gives us no less than
three great apostolic discourses of St. Paul in close
succession (chaps, xxii., xxiv., xxvi. ; compare, more-
over, the speech in Rome, chap, xxviii.). Unless
these separate discourses rested upon some tradi-
tional foundation that seemed to the author trust-
worthy and important, we can scarcely understand
why one speech did not suffice for him. Probably
he made use of several sources ; for in OTie source
these speeches would most probably have run together