Acts 2:42-47

The Church of the First Days in Jerusalem, 42-47.

St. Luke gives us in these few verses a vivid and a beautiful picture of the beginnings of the faith. The believers were no mere handful of men and women now. A large proportion of the three thousand who had been baptized at Pentecost doubtless were dwellers in the city, and these now were constantly with the apostles, hearing from them what the Master had taught His own during His life on earth. Daily in the Temple observing carefully the old Jewish ritual, and then meeting together in the eventide, they would eat in common the evening meal, and would at its close repeat the solemn act of breaking bread He had instituted in memory of His death. And thus the fame of the new society spread abroad. Their simple, generous, God-fearing life; the wonders and signs worked by the apostles; the strange, touching revelations in the many languages at the Pentecost feast; and above all, the memories of that loving Teacher, so well known in Jerusalem, His mysterious powers, His death, His resurrection, which was the central point of the teaching of the apostles, worked on the minds of men, and daily fresh converts were added to the rapidly-growing church.