There can be no doubt that it exercised a greater influence upon the
early Christian Church than any other writing of the Old Testament.[37]
That influence, owing to this misconception, is chiefly to be traced in
the growth of an apocalyptic literature, and in the fantastical and
material expectations of the Messianic Kingdom which they encouraged. It
has continued down to our own day turning heads as wise as Sir Isaac
Newton's, setting religion at conjuring with visions of monstrous beasts
and juggling with mystic figures until the name of Prophecy has become a
by-word.
This book appears to take its proper place, at least in its present form,
about a century and a half before Christ. That was a period of deep
depression for Israel. Under Antiochus Epiphanes the nation had been
sorely oppressed, its temple denied, and its religion well nigh crushed
out. Men's hearts were failing them for fear, and for looking for those
things that were coming to pass upon the earth. Pious souls turned back to
the ancient time of bitter humiliation, when Israel had been scattered in
a strange land, and recalled the bold word of faith spoken by Jeremiah,
which had stayed the spirits of their forefathers. The great prophet
promised that after seventy years the nation should be restored to its
native land, and should renew its prosperity gloriously. It had won back
its home, but in the old homestead it had grown poorer and feebler,
generation after generation. Had the ancient promise of prophecy failed?
Good men could not think so. To some devout soul came the suggestion that
the seventy years had meant seventy Sabbatical years, each of which
consisted of seven years; that is, four hundred and ninety years. One can
still feel the thrill that must have gone through him, as he saw that this
computation would place the defiling of the temple--that sign of God's
having forsaken his people--in the middle of the last week of years. It
was then only about three years to the destined end of the weary period
that Jeremiah had included in the term of Israel's humbling, after which
would come Jehovah's help. Fired with this thought, he set himself to
inspire his people with fresh hope and courage.
Around a traditional Daniel, famed for his wisdom and piety, and possibly
upon an earlier document containing some tales of this sage and saint, he
wove a story which should interpret Jeremiah's prophecy and Jehovah's
purpose. With charming grace he tells the tale of Daniel's constancy and
trust under the sorest trials, and of the divine deliverance that always
came to him. Into his mouth he placed predictions of what had already come
to pass in history, that thus his reputation as a prophet might be
established. Then he caused him to present a striking series of symbolical
visions, the clue to which was furnished for the writer's contemporaries
by certain clear allusions. These visions foretold deliverance as about to
come at the approaching end of the four hundred and ninety years of
Jeremiah. Other visions sketched the ushering in of the Messiah-Kingdom,
in glowing pictures of lofty religious tone.
In that dark night over Israel this book was as the morning star. It was
truly, as Dean Stanley called it, "the Gospel of the age." Its story
spread, and with it spread renewed patience and hope. It doubtless fed the
forces of that glorious revolt that shortly thereafter burst forth under
the heroic Maccabees. Thus it kept alive the vital spark in the nation,
through a crucial hour, that else might have gone out before it had given
birth to Christianity. Noble as the book of Daniel is in many ways,
especially as the real father of "the philosophy of history," it has a
still deeper interest to us Christians for its timely service to the
sinking nation through which came at last our Blessed Master.
The Acts of the Apostles, when studied in the light of the tendencies
known to have been working in the apostolic church, becomes of similar
importance in New Testament history to Deuteronomy in Old Testament
history.
The primitive Church was, as we well know, agitated by contending
factions. Two leading parties dominated all minor schools of thought; the
Jewish Christians, who naturally wanted to keep within the old religion,
and who would have made a reformed Judaism, and the Gentile Christians who
as naturally objected to being herded within Judaism, and who wanted to
make a new and universal society. The first party rallied under the name
of Peter, and the second used the name of Paul. There was imminent danger
that the new society would break apart, with fatal consequences to
posterity. Real and deep as were the differences between Peter and Paul,
they did not, in all probability, sunder these great natures as widely as
their followers imagined. There must have been meeting points between such
souls, in love with the one Master. To find these convergences and
construct out of them a peace-platform on which both wings of the new
society might stand, was the aim of The Acts. It embodied genuine journals
of a traveling companion of St. Paul, notes of his addresses in various
cities, traditions lost to us outside of this book, of Peter's
conciliatory attitude and utterances; and groups these historic fragments
into a sketch, in which the two apostles are shown as dividing equally the
labors of founding the Christian Church, as preaching the same views, and
acting in cordial harmony. This book is a sign of the disposition to draw
together which was gaining ground among the primitive churches, a
disposition fostered largely by this writing; out of which process of
comprehension and conciliation arose the Catholic Church, naming its great
cathedrals after St. Peter and St. Paul.