The Acts of the Apostles

APPENDIX III 43
excelling power he had thrown himself into the work
which had been already commenced.
And yet, after all, we may ask how the author
could have had the heart not to tell us of the
death of St. Paul (and of St. Peter). Even so
early as the second century this question was asked,
and the psychological problem herein presented is in
truth sufficiently difficult. The hypothesis that St.
Luke intended to write a rplrog \6y09 does not, in
my opinion, receive any firm support from Acts i. 1
it is a makeshift that has little to commend it, be-
cause in accepting it we are almost compelled, against
all likelihood, to suppose that St. Luke intended the
second part of his work to be a history of (St. Peter
and) St. Paul. What could St. Luke have purposed
to narrate in this supposed third part if not the
history of the last days of St. Peter and St. Paul ?
But coming after the history of our Lord and of the
hardening of the heart of the Jewish nation and of
the conversion of the Gentiles from Caesarea to Rome,
the story of the last days of the two apostles would
have formed a finale which could scarcely have made up
a complete book, and which in importance would not
have reached the level of the first two parts, indeed
would have been quite incongruous with them. We
must therefore be content to assume that St. Luke
could so concentrate himself upon the main subject of
his work that he could allow himself to break off the
thread of the story of St. Paul at the end of the two
years'* ministry in Rome, because the aim of the book
had been now attained. We cannot indeed imagine
his doing this if the two years' ministry had immedi-
;