Acts 2:42

42. Steadfastly Though the conversion was sudden, the perseverance was steadfast.

Apostles’ doctrine The apostles’ instruction. As yet no Gospels were written for them to read, and they listened to and studied the oral teachings of the apostles as their living Gospels. See our vol. ii, pp. 5, 6. Theirs was that pregnant faith in the unknown whole of the apostolic Christianity from which ready belief in its details of truth was produced. Believe, in order that you may understand, and soon you will believe because you understand, and understand because you believe. Under their inspired teachers they studied the life of Christ and its relation to prophecy; the death of Christ, its relation to their salvation; the example of Christ, its power over their lives; and the love of Christ, its spirit within their own hearts. And such being their tuition under the Pentecostal refreshing, we see what manner of Christianity appeared in them. A brief millennium brightened, in one blessed spot, upon the world!

Fellowship What is called in the Apostles’ Creed “the communion of saints.”

Breaking of bread Repeated in Acts 2:46. The time of large church edifices had not yet come, and so the religious exercises were conducted in various private homes, when not using the Pentecostal house and not at the temple. Nor were the different sorts of religious exercise classified and separated. Hence, melted into one large, loving family, the new Church variously assembled in as large a number as allowable, every day took a repast, called the agape, or love-feast, preceded or followed by the Lord’s Supper.

So the Lord himself had united a meal with his first eucharist.

The Agape, or Love-Feast, was an institute of the earliest apostolic times, and was continued for centuries, though often abused, and finally disused. Besides this place, they are alluded to in Jude 1:12 as feasts of charity, and, perhaps, in 2 Peter 2:13. St. Ignatius: “Not without the bishop is it lawful either to baptize or hold a love-feast.” St. Chrysostom calls the love-feast “a custom most beautiful and most useful; for it was the supporter of love, a solace of poverty, a moderator of wealth, and a discipline of humility.” Abuses of the institution are rebuked in 1 Corinthians xi, consisting in making them a luxurious and riotous meal. In later centuries they are recognized as existing in various places. They were revived in modern times by the Moravians, and adopted by Mr. Wesley as one of the institutes of Methodism.