The Acts of the Apostles

INTRODUCTION xxiii
Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, none forbidding
him."
But this victorious progress had a dark side which,
to the historian St. Luke, is scarcely less important
than the bright side : the Jewish nation, among
whom Jesus Christ had appeared and from whom the
whole movement had taken its origin, had not only
rejected their Messiah, but had more and more
hardened themselves against the preaching of the
Gospel, had everywhere attempted to throw the
greatest obstacles in the way of its progress among
the Gentiles, and with increasing energy of intrigue
had stirred up persecutions against the Christians.
Through the malicious machinations of this wretched
nation the history which St. Luke has to write be-
comes a drama, and thus it is that he presents it.
Moreover, not only must he describe these machina-
tions, but he must also show that, in spite of all
the ceaseless and sincere attempts of the Apostles
of St. Paul also— to bring the Jews to a better
mind, they nevertheless became only more and more
hostile.
But why.? Is it not a sign of the weakness of
the Gospel that it could not gain over the Jews,
and must therefore pass on to the Greeks and the
Barbarians ? No thought is more alien to St. Luke
than this which so easily suggests itself to us ! He
turns its point in the opposite direction, in that with
St. Paul he sees in the Jews' rejection of the Gospel
and their hostile attitude to the Mission the predestined
arrangement and the foreordained judgment
of God. The divine rejection of the Jews had indeed
—