The Acts of the Apostles

MIRACLES AND WORKS OF THE SPIRIT 141
of the Lord in a vision, the Tjrians foretelling
the future, Agabus foretelling the future, the
daughters of St. Philip who were prophetesses,
two instances in which St. Paul foretold the future
thus no less than fourteen instances of a " miracu-
lous " character recorded in so small a space ! In
correspondence with this abundance we find in the
first half of the book about seventy-seven similar in-
stances of a miraculous character. Any one who wishes
may ascertain by calculation that, taking into account
the length of the first fifteen chapters, the proportion
is much the same. Moreover, the categories of our
list again repeat themselves. We again find summary
accounts of cases of healing, accounts of separate
miracles of healing, persons mentioned who speak in
the Spirit, cases where the Spirit acts and speaks,
visions (the appearance of an angel), prophets. On
the other hand, the situation is quite different in the
second half of the book, omitting the we-sections.
Here in passages which picture St. Paul in Philippi
(at the close of his visit), in Thessalonica, in Bercea,
in Athens, in Ephesus, in Jerusalem, in Caesarea, and
in Rome, we find only ten instances of a miraculous
character, and even these suffer serious reduction when
we consider that the earthquake in Philippi was a
natural occurrence treated as a special instance of
Providential interference and so used in the narra-
tive ; that the two passages xx. 23 and 28 belong to
a speech of St. Paul which in all probability must be
assigned to the we-sections—seeing that it stands in
their midst and that St. Luke was present on the
occasion ; and that xxviii. 25 is the customary
—