Spirit in them. They looked at each other and said,

"Men and brethren, what shall we do?"

Peter encouraged them to repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus
Christ, telling them that the promise was to them and to their
children, and to all that were afar off.

It was a wonderful day for the Church of Jesus Christ, and for His
Kingdom on the earth, for there were about three thousand who that day
received baptism, and joined the little despised company of the
followers of Jesus of Nazareth. And all that believed were drawn
together by the love of the Lord Jesus, and no longer lived for
themselves, but for each other. That there might be no rich and no
poor among them, they sold their possessions and parted them to all, as
every one had need. In the Temple, in each other's houses breaking
bread together, wherever they were they were happy and strong in their
new faith and in favor with all the people. Though great trials and
persecutions came after awhile, they bore them as seeing their
invisible Lord, and they joyfully met the loss of all things--even that
of life itself with a smile, remembering the Father's House with its
many mansions, and their spiritual Elder Brother who had gone to
prepare a place for them.

AN AFTERWORD.

_Dear Child_:--God's Book is a Book of Ages, a Book of Races, and a
Book of Nations; but it is far more, it is a Book through which God
Himself speaks to the soul of man. We begin to read it thinking that
He is speaking to the mind; afterward, when our conscience wakes, we
believe He speaks to the heart, but at last we find that He speaks to
the inmost spirit--the immortal soul. Then all that had seemed to be
history, poetry, biography, philosophy, begins to be to us the voice of
God in the inmost of the soul, speaking of the life of the spirit.

We, find at last, too, that One has walked beside us all the way,
teaching us by His Spirit as He taught the people on the hill-side, or
by the lake-side in Galilee: the One who said, "Before Abraham was, I
am"--the Child of Bethlehem, whose name was called "Wonderful,
Counsellor, The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, The Prince of
Peace." That you, dear child, may find Him walking close beside your
way, be in the habit of walking daily with Him in the paths of His
Word, and He will reveal Himself to you there.

End of Project Gutenberg's Child's Story of the Bible, by Mary A. Lathbury

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