Acts 28

1. And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita. And 2 the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us 3 every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and 4 fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath 5 escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the 6 fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god. 7 In the same quarters were possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was 8 Publius; who received us, and lodged us three days courteously. And it came to pass, that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux: to whom Paul entered in, and 9 prayed, and laid his hands on him, and healed him. So when this was done, others also, 10 which had diseases in the island, came, and were healed: who also honoured us with many honours; and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary. 11 And after three months we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the 12 isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux. And landing at Syracuse, we tarried there three 13 days. And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium: and after one day 14 the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli: where we found brethren, and 15 were desired to tarry with them seven days: and so we went toward Rome. And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The three taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.

We all know one who was known to stand very high in Christ’s divine regards, and who for eighteen hundred years has stood very high in the regard, affection, admiration of the whole Christian world—and this is a description of his ordinary life: “In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” It was not every day that companies of friends came to meet him, so that he could “thank God and take courage.” But every day found him on the road; and although he was not always what you would call “happy,” yet keeping his uprightness, keeping his “good conscience toward God and man,” and his life-purpose unbroken, in the habit of a noble self-sacrifice, giving all his days and all his being to Christ, he certainly went along a path of light, that shone more and more unto his perfect day. If we read our lives in the light of his—to say nothing at present of the yet grander and purer life after which his was fashioned, and from which all its inspiration came—we shall see what a poor thing it is to be always hankering after happiness: and what a noble thing it is to keep the line of duty! And what a safe thing it is, by God’s grace, to settle the whole being in uprightness; for “unto the upright,” be they of high or low degree, “light ariseth in the darkness.” A. R.

1,2. The island.** That this island, here called Melita, was the modern Malta, can not well be doubted. The positive reasons for the common belief as to the place of the shipwreck are, that the traditional evidence sustains it; that Malta lies in the track of a vessel driven by a northeast wind; that the reputed locality of the wreck agrees with Luke’s account; that the Alexandrian ship in which they reembarked would very naturally winter there; and that the subsequent course of the voyage to Puteoli is that which a vessel would pursue in going from Malta. Hackett.

Independent calculations made by several experienced naval officers as to the rate at which a ship would drive before the wind in such a storm as that described above, agree almost exactly in the singular conclusion that the vessel, on the fifteenth morning after leaving Crete, must have been precisely where tradition has assigned the place of the apostle’s shipwreck. J. A. A.

The native islanders were of Phenician descent. Using neither the Greek nor Latin languages and customs, then dominant over the civilized world, they would be classed as barbarians. So Luke employs the term; and Paul also comprehends all mankind under the distinction of Greeks and barbarians. “And to this day the African coast over against this island is called Barbary.” But this “barbarous people” showed the higher refinement of a genuine courtesy and hospitality in their cordial reception and care of the shipwrecked passengers and crew.

3-6. The Double Misjudgment of the Islanders concerning Paul when bitten by the Viper.**—Paul was again illustrating the practical side of Christianity by taking his share in the necessary work of gathering materials for fire. In this he only exemplified Christ’s word about the greatness of serving. Soon after laying his armful of sticks upon the flame a poisonous viper thrust itself up, and, fastening its fangs upon Paul’s hand, swung its whole body clear of the heating wood. It was roused from a torpid state to sudden activity by the intense heat. The sharp-eyed natives saw the reptile hanging from the apostle’s hand. They knew that the poisoned fangs, by which only it could hang, were bedded in the hand; and they knew the virulence of the poison now in contact with the life-blood. Inferring nothing else but Paul’s instant death, with an instinctive feeling of natural retribution tion for crime, they count the viper a Nemesis, a revenger of blood. “This man is doubtless a murderer,” they say to each other, “whom justice still is tracking and hath found, even after his deliverance from the sea.” B.—This is the very basis of all natural religion; the idea of the connection between guilt and retribution. In some form or other it underlies all mythologies. The sleepless, never-dying avenger of wrong; the Nemesis who presides over retribution; the vengeance which suffereth not the murderer to live; the whips and scorpions of the Furies—it seems the first instinct of religion. F. W. R.—But they erred, as the ignorant and superstitious always err, in limiting the agency and sphere of retribution to this life, and in taking the actual experience of calamity as proof of guilt.

Luke’s narrative seems to imply that Paul had suffered the reptile to hang for a moment. Yet, while they were speaking about him, Paul quietly shook it off into the fire, “and suffered no harm.” Then for a long time the islanders continued to watch him closely, expecting to see the natural effects of such an envenomed bite, in sudden inflammation and death. But when the result disproved their previous notion, they went to another extreme of misjudgment. Now Paul was a serpent-charmer, and to these people of Oriental origin an object himself of worship as possessing the power of miracle. This conclusion, like the other, was not so much out of the way for men untaught in any principles of true religion. For there was a miracle enacted here; and none but a divine power could enact it. Paul was the only being that they knew to be concerned with the transaction. The poison had been injected into his veins, and he had been unharmed by it. He must possess divine power.

We remember that the Lystrans exactly reversed this process of judgment about Paul. They first counted him worthy of worship and then of death. The Maltese first judge him deserving of death, and afterward of worship. Both judgments are mistaken. Instead of being a murderer or a god, he is, as Bengel quaintly suggests, a man of God. As these islanders went no further than uttering their impression of Paul’s divinity, the apostle took no notice of their mere notion. He knew that their error would soon be corrected by the events. As always, however, he utilized the influence it gave him, by exemplifying still more the Godlike spirit of his Master as well as by transferring to Christ all claim and right to true Deity.

7-9. The Hospitality of Publius, and Paul’s Return of Kindness to all in a Large Ministry of Healing.—Publius is here called the first man or primate. The reference is neither to his birth, rank, nor wealth, since his father would be his superior. By inscriptions (in Greek and Latin) upon a stone pillar in Malta, discovered 1747, it seems to refer to an established official title. He was, probably, the legate of the praetor of Sicily, to which province Malta belonged.

The three days’ hospitality of Publius was well repaid by Paul in the miraculous healing of the father. Concerning the Greek term dysentery here used by Luke, Dr. Hackett has this note: “No other writer of the New Testament exhibits this sort of technical precision in speaking of diseases. The disorder with which the father of Publius was affected was dysentery combined with fever. It was formerly asserted that a dry climate, like that of Malta, would not produce such a disorder, but we have now the testimony of physicians resident in that island, that it is by no means uncommon there at the present day.”

Yet more effectually was Paul introduced and authenticated as God’s true messenger by this signal marvel of cure. In this and the previous incident of the viper, we find a remarkable verification of Christ’s promise (Mk. 16 : 18). And it would seem that the three months which followed were filled up with a double Christlike ministry of healing and preaching the gospel of the kingdom.

10. Grateful Returns from the Islanders attest the Success of his Ministry.—“They honored us, and they laded us!” Luke writes. Neither honors nor gifts were bestowed in any wise as remuneration for the healing or the ministry of Paul. Nor were they other than he might properly receive. The hearts of these barbarians had been intensely moved by the kind and unselfish ministries of these Christian missionaries. They naturally desired to reciprocate so great favors. The honors they rendered could be no more than simple attentions and tokens of respect and gratitude. The gifts were things necessary for their supply and comfort in the further voyage; some of which they had lost in the shipwreck. And the statement indicates that outward honors and benefits, if bestowed with a right spirit, may be accepted and enjoyed, if received with the same spirit. B.

In what a great variety of places and circumstances do we find Paul! Here we have him in an island, to which in all probability he had never come if he had not been thrown upon it by a storm; and yet it seems God has work for him to do here. Even stormy winds fulfill God’s counsel; and an ill wind indeed it is that blows nobody any good. His ill wind blew good to the island of Melita, for it gave them Paul’s company for three months, who was a blessing to every place he came to. Henry.

11-15. The Further Voyage and Journey to Rome.—After three months’ detention at Malta, early in February, A. D. 61, Julius and his prisoners sailed in another Alexandrian ship, “that had wintered in the isle.” Castor and Pollux, the name or sign of this vessel, were twin heroes, sons of Jupiter and favorite gods of the Greek and Roman sailors. Their images were either set as a figure-head, or painted or carved on each side of the prow.

Their first stopping-place was Syracuse, the chief city of the province of Sicily, eighty miles distant (east of north). Here they tarried three days for purposes of trade. Thence they “made a circuit,” or beat up (as Mr. J. Smith explains the term) to Rhegium, eighty miles farther. This seaport of Italy, now called Reggio, lies upon the promontory at the south entrance of the straits of Messina. After one day’s detention, a fair south wind carried them swiftly northward one hundred and eighty miles to Puteoli. B.—At the rate of seven knots an hour, the passage would be accomplished in about twenty-six hours, which agrees perfectly with the account of Luke, who says that, after leaving Rhegium, they came “the next day” to Puteoli. Before the close of the first day they would see on the left the volcanic cone and smoke of Stromboli, the nearest of the Liparian islands. In the course of the night they would have neared that projecting part of the mainland which forms the southern limit of the bay of Salerno. Sailing across the wide opening of this gulf, they would, in a few hours, enter that other bay, the bay of Naples, in the northern part of which Puteoli was situated. Its southeastern limit is the promontory of Minerva, with the island of Caprea opposite, which is so associated with the memory of Tiberius, that its cliffs still seem to rise from the blue waters as a monument of hideous vice in the midst of the fairest scenes of nature. The opposite boundary was the promontory of Misenum, where one of the imperial fleets lay at anchor under the shelter of the islands of Ischia and Procida. In the intermediate space the Campanian coast curves round in the loveliest forms, with Vesuvius as the prominent feature of the view. But here one difference must be marked between Paul’s day and our own. The angry neighbor of Naples was not then an unsleeping volcano, but a green and sunny background to the bay, with its westward slope covered with vines. And little did the apostle dream, when he looked from the vessel’s deck across the bay to the right, that a ruin, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, hung over the fair cities at the base of the mountain, and that the

Jewish princess, who had so lately conversed with him in his prison at Cesarea, would find her tomb in that ruin, with the child she had borne to Felix. In this wide and sunny expanse of blue waters, no part was calmer or more beautiful than the recess in the northern part of the bay, between Baize and Puteoli. Baize was a place of resort for the invalids and fashionable idlers of Rome. Puteoli, on the opposite side of this inner bay, was the Liverpool of Italy. Between them was that inclosed reach of water, called the Luerine Lake, which contained the

From Melita to Rome.

oyster beds for the luxurious tables of Rome. Still farther inland was that other calm basin, the Lacus Avernus, which an artificial passage connected with the former, and thus converted into a harbor. Not far beyond was Cumæ, once a flourishing Greek city, but when the apostle visited this coast, a decayed country town, famous only for the recollections of the Sibyl. H.

At Puteoli the voyage was completed, and here they found brethren, unnamed disciples, with whom

(the centurion consenting) they seem to have tarried seven days for rest and Christian converse. By this delay the news of Paul’s arrival was communicated to the Christians of Rome, so that they could send a double deputation to meet him on the journey thither. That journey lay for the most part over the Appian Way. This was the oldest and most noted of the Roman roads, the great line of communication (from the south) with the Eternal City. It was constructed three centuries before Christ by the censor Appius Claudius. Upon a foundation of concrete, large blocks of basaltic lava were so closely fitted and cemented as to resemble a natural rock formation. Besides the milestones marking the whole distance, post-stations for relays of horses and for the comfort of travelers were established every twenty miles. Five hundred years after Christ, “notwithstanding the traffic of so many ages, the stones were not displaced, nor had they lost their original smoothness.”

At two well-known stations on this road—Appii Forum, forty-three miles from Rome, and the Three Taverns, ten miles nearer the city—Paul and his company were met and warmly welcomed by deputations from the Roman Church. Of the origin and founding of this Church we have no information. Three years before Paul had written to its members his grand Epistle, expressing his strong desire to come among them. And now this fervent greeting, the first he had ever received in advance of his coming, deeply moved the apostle’s heart. Here was the proof of a great work that God had wrought in the world’s capital, and the earnest of a yet larger work, in which God would employ his ministry, and concerning which Christ had already given him an assurance of success. Therefore, with glad and hopeful spirit, this trusting, brave apostle, as he grasped these welcoming hands, thanked God, and took courage! B.

From the point of the present he looks backward and forward. All the past of his life he seems to count only a preparation; his work lies still before him. It is a beautiful character that is displayed here in two great hemispheres: for the past it is devout gratitude; for the future, filial confidence. For the future this true, bold man: took not comfort but courage. Arnot.—How can we help being touched by such incidents as this? They set this great hero and champion of the faith before us as a man of like passions with ourselves. He feels as we should have felt. He is dejected and inspirated by the very causes which tell on us. Like us he sees all things in “hues borrowed from the heart.” God is not nearer to him nor more truly with him now that he has reached Appii Forum, or the Three Taverns, than he was before; his chains are not removed; the soldiers still surround and

And through all the brief remaining journey, as he passed along the great Appian Way, retinued by this humble band of Christian disciples, and as at length a conqueror for Christ, though a prisoner, he passed through that memorable gateway of triumphal entrance by crowned victors, how must that word of Christ, spoken in the prison of Antonia, have cheered and strengthened his heroic soul: Thou must bear witness of me at Rome! B.—“And so we came to Rome.” In such a manner as this Paul had not thought to come to Rome; the goal was reached, but by what a different road from that which he proposed! For this end had the Roman chief captain torn him from the hands of the Jews; for this had an unscrupulous governor violated, in regard to him, that justice which he now must seek before a higher tribunal; for this, then, had all the hatred of his foes been constrained to coöperate for the fulfillment of his ardent desire.

And now at last his feet stand within the gates of pagan Rome; he comes accused as a malefactor, but yet one to whom the opportunity of freely declaring the gospel shall not at first be wanting. Perhaps he would himself have desired this crisis to have arrived earlier, but the Lord’s hour only struck now, and at the close we see that it was best thus. The Euroclydon had damaged his vessel, but had at last cast him ashore on the island of Malta; the poisonous serpent had twined round his arm without abating his courage; all God’s waves and billows had gone over his bowed-down head, but the end of it all is, that the intuition of his heart has deceived him as little as the promise of his Lord, and that he now with his own eyes beholds Rome in all her glory and in all her degradation. What a moment was this in the annals of the kingdom of God, when this plain inhabitant of Tarsus, unmarked and unencumbered, made his entry into the world’s capital, in which he shall at once win so many subjects for the spiritual kingdom of God, and lay the first foundations of the transformation of pagan into Christian Rome! Van O.

16. AND when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the 17 guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him. And it came to pass, that after three days Paul called the chief of the Jews together: and when they were come together, he said unto them, Men and brethren, though I have committed nothing against the people, or customs of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from 18 Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans. Who, when they had examined me, would have 19 let me go, because there was no cause of death in me. But when the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal unto Cæsar; not that I had ought to accuse my nation of. 20 For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because 21 that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain. And they said unto him, We neither received letters out of Judæa concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came 22 shewed or spake any harm of thee. But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that every where it is spoken against. 23 And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, 24 both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening. And 25 some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word, Well spake the 26 Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive: 27 for the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and 28 understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will 29 hear it. And when he had said these words, the Jews departed, and had great reasoning among themselves.

30. And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in 31 unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.

THE apostles uniformly appealed to those audiences who were most capable of examining the evidences of Christianity, and were at the same time prejudiced against its doctrines. Jerusalem, the seat of the doctors, the judges of religion, was the first place in which, by the command of their Lord, the disciples preached Christ crucified. They were, therefore, not afraid to have their cause tried by the most rigid test of Scripture, and in the very spot, too, where that Scripture was best understood. When the same apostles carried this gospel to heathen countries, they went to Cesarea, to Antioch, to Thessalonica, to Athens, to Corinth, to Ephesus, to Rome, to the very places where learning flourished most, where sciences were best cultivated, where imposture was most likely to be detected, and where the secular power existed in the most despotic manner, and could at once have crushed them, if they could have been proved to be impostors, or if they had not been under the immediate protection of Heaven. They preached Christ crucified, where it was the most solemn interest of the Jews to disprove their doctrine, that they might exculpate themselves from the murder of Jesus Christ. They preached the same Christ, and the vanity of idolatry, where idolatry existed in the plenitude of its power; and where all its interests required it to make the most desperate and formidable stand against those innovators. G. T.

16. Paul surrendered by Julius to the Custody of the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard.—The name of Christ borne by the chosen vessel has now been brought to Rome. It had passed from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria; and now it had reached those seven hills which, politically, were the loftiest pinnacle of the earth, and from which it might be carried by the natural channels to the whole circle of subject nations. Wonderful were the ways of God in reaching this result. The imperial legions must furnish an escort, and the imperial exchequer must pay the passage. Even to the stormy waves of the Mediterranean the word of the Lord had come in power: Destroy not this frail vessel, for it bears a blessing to the Western world. Arnot.

Ancient Rome was not, like modern Rome, impressive from its solitude, standing alone, with its one conspicuous cupola, in the midst of a desolate though beautiful waste. Within a circuit of little more than twelve miles more than two millions of inhabitants were crowded. It was a vast city, covering the Campagna, and almost continuously connected by its suburbs with the villas on the adjacent hill, and with the bright towns which clustered on the sides of the mountains. Over all the intermediate space were the houses and gardens, through which aqueducts and roads might be traced in converging lines toward the confused mass of edifices which formed the city of Rome. Here no conspicuous building, elevated above the rest, attracted the eye or the imagination. Ancient Rome had neither

Rome—the Forum.

[Three well-known Corinthian columns of the best period of art under the emperors remain near the base of the Palatine. They are popularly called the remains of the Temple of Jupiter Stator; perhaps they are part of the Temple of Castor and Pollex. H.] cupola nor campanile. Still less had it any of those spires which give life to all the landscapes of Northern Christendom. The Coliseum, the Basilica of Constantine, and the baths of other emperors, and many other buildings which are now regarded as the conspicuous features of ancient Rome, did not then

exist. The Pantheon still remains, as a monument of the reign of Augustus. The city was a widespread aggregate of buildings, which, though separated by narrow streets and open squares, appeared, when seen from near Aricia, blended into one indiscriminate mass: for distance concealed the contrasts which divided the crowded habitations of the poor and the dark haunts of filth and misery from the theatres and colonnades, the baths, the temples and palaces with gilded roofs, flashing back the sun.

Entering the city by the Porta Capena, or gate of the Appian Way, Julius and his prisoners moved on, with the Aventine on their left, close round the base of the Cœlian, and through the hollow ground which lay between this hill and the Palatine; thence over the low ridge called Velia, where afterward was built the arch of Titus, to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem; and then descending, by the Sacra Via, into that space which was the center of imperial power and imperial magnificence, and associated also with the most glorious recollections of the republic. The Forum was to Rome what the Acropolis was to Athens, the heart of all the characteristic interest of the place. Here was the Milliarium Aureum (the Golden Milestone), to which the roads of all the provinces converged. All around were the stately buildings, which were raised in the closing years of the republic, and by the earlier emperors. In front was the Capitoline Hill, illustrious long before the invasion of the Gauls. Close on the left, covering that hill, whose name is associated in every modern European language with the notion of imperial splendor, were the vast ranges of the palace—the “house of Cesar” (Phil. 4 : 22). Here were the household troops quartered in a praetorium attached to the palace. And here Julius gave up his prisoner to Burrus, the Praetorian Prefect, who was the official custodian of all accused persons who were to be tried before the emperor. H.—It was a Providential circumstance that prisoners, who were sent on appeal to Rome, were consigned to the custody of the Chief of the Imperial Guard. Thus Paul’s words became manifest in Christ (Phil. 1 : 12), and the gospel was brought home to the hearts of those of Cesar’s household. W.

The strongly favorable report of the centurion Julius concerning Paul, together with the absence of all criminal charge in the official statement of Festus, secured for the apostle at the outset the singular liberty of dwelling outside the prison precincts. At first he abode in a lodging, or guest-chamber of some devoted Christian friend (perhaps Aquila), and afterward in apartments permanently rented (his own hired house, verse 30); both dwellings being in the vicinity of the Praetorium, and not far from the Jewish quarter. But, though privileged in living thus privately, and perhaps having large liberty in going abroad through the city, a praetorian soldier was ever his guard. At home and abroad, by day and night, in his public and social conferences and his private worship, his arm was always linked by a chain to that of a sentinel attendant. As this companion guard was frequently relieved, it naturally occurred that Paul became intimately known to a great number of praetorian soldiers; and this, he intimates (Phil. 1 : 12, 13), happened “for the furtherance of the gospel.” Many touching allusions he elsewhere makes to this always binding chain, though never in tone of complaint. He counts himself the prisoner of the Lord, not of Nero.

17-22. Paul’s First Interview with the Jewish Leaders in Rome.—To the Jew first, had been the invariable rule of his Christian ministry; and this rule he maintains to the end. Though, like his Lord, so often rejected in his fervent endeavor to bless his own people, still, as he had written to the Roman disciples three years before, “his heart’s desire and prayer was that Israel might be saved.” And now prompt, as always, to do what his heart moved him to do, at once he summons the elders and rulers of the synagogue and others socially prominent among the Jews to a conference in his own dwelling. This he did because he could not go to them or properly appear in their synagogue.

By this early conference he would anticipate the coming of his accusers from Jerusalem. In his address, he answers to the prejudices that might have arisen against him from information previously transmitted concerning his missionary career. And he fairly states and answers the accusations that had actually been made against him. But his tone is frankly conciliating and generous throughout. He makes no accusation even against his accusers, save that involved in his appeal. No anger had he, much less malice against them, notwithstanding their murderous hate against him. And concerning the whole Jewish people—his nation, he touchingly calls them—he has nothing to say against them. At this interview he simply justifies himself with regard to the circumstances in which they find him, appealing to Cesar. Though (he said) he had offended against neither Jewish law nor custom, yet the violent opposition of the Jews had constrained him to this appeal. How mistaken this opposition was, that had made and kept him a prisoner, he intimates by the declaration that the highest, truest hope of the Jews found its fulfillment in the grand facts of Christianity. Upon these facts he afterward rests the justification of his strange career and seeming apostasy.

In reply, the leading Jews first refer to what Paul had said about his appeal. Neither by letter nor by messenger from Jerusalem had they heard of any accusation against him. They implied that they had heard of him, by their request to know what he thought concerning this new sect (of Christians). Not only had they heard of the rapid and wide extension of Christianity by report of Jews that opposed it, but for some years a congregation of Christian disciples had maintained a living and effective organization beside their synagogue in Rome. That they spoke so cautiously, and subsequently made no demonstration of hostility against Paul, is readily accounted for. The apostle was held in special favor by the chief officer of Nero’s household; and the Jews of the synagogue were themselves subject to persecution, so that they were powerless to persecute the disciples of Christ. Of Paul’s old accusers of the Sanhecrim we hear no more. They did not follow him to Rome because, with their trivial charges against the apostle, they could hope for no better success from the Emperor than from his Judean deputy.

23, 24. Paul’s All-day Exposition of the Kingdom of God, and Testimony to Christ as its King; and the Effects of his Preaching.—Many others accompanied the chief Jews on the day appointed. At an early hour they gathered in his apartment. As always, so now for the last time, Paul takes as his theme that doctrine of the kingdom of God which was the central truth of the Old Testament and of the New; that great disclosure of the prophets which was still, as it had been for centuries, the supreme thought and hope of the whole Jewish people. In their interpretations of the prophet’s meaning, in their understanding of the nature of the kingdom, in the person and character, the experiences and achievements of the King, lay the vital difference between the natural and spiritual Israelites, between the Jew and the Christian. Again Paul follows the very line of his risen Lord’s exposition to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. B.—Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he showed these hearers that the predicted kingdom is not limited to one nation, but coextensive with the world; that if it be limited for a time, it is limited like a seed, only until the set time come for its indefinite multiplication and expansion. He showed them that the King, though universal Lord, yet suffers and dies—gives his life a ransom; that his kingdom is not of this world; that he is King of thoughts, not of armies; that he wins by love—by enduring. He showed them that in Jesus of Nazareth all the conditions of the expected Messiah were fulfilled; he employed the law to shut them up unto the gospel. Arnot.

From his first reported speech at the Pisidian Antioch, which bases all upon the Scriptures, still he goes on with the Scriptures in his hand, till he stands and is judged, “believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets”; and finally parts from the Roman Jews after “persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the Law of Moses and out of the Prophets, from morning till evening.” This then is the position taken at the beginning and fought for to the end; and it is a striking sight to see how resolutely Paul insists that he and his doctrine are the true representatives of the Law and the Prophets, while he is being persecuted and cast out, as having betrayed and blasphemed them. T. D. B.—And as his theme and method were the same which had characterized his whole ministry among the Jews of Judea and Syria, of Asia Minor and Greece, so was the result. A few were won to faith in the Christ; but the many disbelieved the teachings of their own Scriptures, and rejected the suffering Messiah whom those Scriptures so plainly disclosed.

25-29. Paul’s Fearful Farewell Words of Warning.—With these solemn words of the Holy Ghost, spoken by Isaiah, Christ had opened his teaching by parables (Mat. 13 : 14, 15), and had finally closed his ministry among the Jews (John 12 : 40). And now Paul, as if himself commissioned by the Holy Ghost as a prophet of the New Testament, sadly redelivers the same message, enforced by the awful emphasis of the Master’s double utterance. Thus the apostle, under divine direction, formally and finally seals up the gospel offer to God’s disobedient and rejecting people. B.—This part of the original prediction has the form of an ironical commission or command, in which the prophet is required to stupefy and blind the people, which is only a strong and paradoxical mode of commanding him to do his duty or perform his office, with an accompanying intimation of its actual effect upon the people, through their own perversity and unbelief (compare the similar command of Christ in Mat. 23 : 32). In this fearful process there are three distinguishable agencies expressly or implicitly described—the ministerial agency of the prophet, the judicial agency of God, and the suicidal agency of the people themselves. J. A. A.—Spiritually blind and deaf under the brightest light of the gospel and its plainest proclamations, hardening the heart against the most gracious offers of healing and life, and arming themselves against their own salvation with weapons of eternal death, justly were they at last given over by God, and sealed up under incurable obstinacy! D.

And, we add, the warning is equally applicable to Gentiles who will not hear, and who similarly reject the salvation of God, sent now to them. They who make themselves blind and insensate by willfully closing their eyes against the light and hardening their hearts against the grace of God, shall assuredly experience the same exclusion from hope, and be for ever debarred from entrance into the fellowship and joy of God. B.

Close of the History.—Here, so far as the Scripture narrative is concerned, the curtain falls upon the contest of Jewish unbelief against the things that concerned their salvation. And this we incline to regard as the very reason why the history of the Acts breaks off. As the narrative which illustrates the command of Jesus to his apostles, to “preach the gospel to the whole world, beginning at Jerusalem,” it opens with the opening of that commission at the religious center of the world; it traces the successive offers to the Jews of Judea, Samaria, and the dispersion; to proselytes and Hellenists, in all the provinces that they frequented; and it shows how their general disbelief caused the Gentiles to be received step by step into their place of privilege; till the apostle, bringing back the offerings of those Gentile converts to bless his countrymen at Jerusalem, was finally rejected by them, and sent in chains to Rome. There, in the capital of the world, the unbelief of the last section of the Jewish family, to whom he revealed their Messiah, completed the first stage in the history of the diffusion of Christianity, at which the mass of the Jewish race are, for the time, cut off from the kingdom of God.

They are not, however, finally left in this fallen state. If the last recorded words of the apostle’s living voice proclaimed at Rome their present sentence, the enduring records of his pen, gathering up the substance of the ancient promises, had already embodied, in writing to the Church of Rome, that prophetic announcement of their restoration, the mystery of which remains to be fulfilled, and those three wonderful chapters of the Epistle to the Romans (9-11) may be regarded as a supplement to the Acts. The spread of the gospel over the purely heathen portion of the world belongs to the new chain of history which comes down to our own time; the end of which will be found linked with the fulfillment of the promises concerning the Jews. S.

30,31. Paul’s Unhindered Ministry of Two Years in Rome.**—Fully and boldly, to all that visited his humble abode, he proclaimed the establishment of that kingdom of God (foreannounced through the prophets) by the incarnation and the life, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of the Lord Jesus. And this prolonged, successful, and unfettered ministry of the “prisoner of the Lord” fitly completes this succinct and well-defined account of the great process by which Christianity was carried from its cradle at Jerusalem, not only to its secondary homes in Antioch, Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus, and other cities of inferior rank, but also to its throne in the Eternal City, the locality selected for its highest exaltation and its most profound abasement. J. A. A.

But this history of the planting of the Kingdom of Christ in the world stops short of the mighty convulsion which was shortly to pronounce that Kingdom established as the divine commonwealth for all men. The work of Paul belongs to the preparatory period. He was not to live through the time when the Son of man came in the destruction of the Holy City and Temple, and in the throes of the new age. The most significant part of his work was accomplished, when in the Imperial City he had declared his Gospel “to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.” But his career is not abruptly closed. Before he himself fades out of our sight in the twilight of ecclesiastical tradition, we have letters written by himself (the four Epistles to the COLOSSIANS, to PHILENOM, to the EPHESIANS, and to the PHILIPPIANS), which contribute some particulars to his external biography, and give us a far more precious insight into his convictions and sympathies. S.—

From these Epistles we learn that the apostle, though subjected to the restraining and ungenial presence of the Roman sentinel to whom he was chained, was also privileged with the congenial fellowship of long-attached disciples. Among these were Luke and Timothy and Mark; Aristarchus of Thessalonica, Epsphros of Colosse, and Tychicus of Asia; and that Demas who for some time “did run well,” but concerning whom at the very last Paul was constrained to write the sad words: Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. B.

So long as he lived, whether free to travel or shut up in prison, Paul would not resign the daily “care of all the churches.” One means he had of promoting their welfare daily and hourly, the constant and earnest prayer, which his Epistles prove to have been a chief occupation of his solitude. But he was not shut out from intercourse with the churches themselves. The four Epistles, which are perhaps but some among many that he wrote from Rome, are linked together by a striking resemblance of tone, thought, and argument, as well as by internal marks which place the time of their composition beyond reasonable doubt. They were all written toward the latter part of his imprisonment at Rome, for all refer to the expectation of his release. There is the best reason to believe the prevailing tradition that, after an imprisonment of two years, Paul’s case was heard by the Emperor and decided in his favor. The precision with which Luke specifies the duration of Paul’s imprisonment justifies the inference that it came to an end at the close of the “two years,” that is, in the spring of A. D. 63. S.

As Luke concludes his history with Paul’s abode at Rome, before his journey into Spain, we may infer that he wrote both his gospel and the Acts while the apostle was still living, of whose actions he was himself an eye-witness, and by whom it is very probable this book was revised, as the ancients also say his gospel was. D.

The apostolic period we regard as closing about A. D. 100; as the life of John, according to reliable tradition, reached over into the reign of Trajan, A. D. 98-117. This space of seventy years may be again divided into three subordinate periods: 1. The founding of the Christian Church among the Jews, or the labors of Peter. 2. The founding of the Christian Church among the Gentiles, or the labors of Paul, who took the lead in the work of missions during the years 50-64. Through his instrumentality Christianity becomes gradually more independent of Judaism; until, by the destruction of Jerusalem, the last cord that bound the Christian Church to the Mosaic economy is broken. 3. Then follows the final summing up and organic union of Jewish and Gentile Christianity in one fixed, independent whole. This is the work mainly of John, who outlived all his colleagues, and accompanied the Church through the threatening dangers and errors of the last thirty years of the first period to the threshold of the second, thus forming the connecting link between the two.

These three stages in the development of the apostolic church have their local centers in the cities of Jerusalem, the mother church of Jewish Christianity, Antioch, the starting-point of the heathen missions, and Ephesus, the later residence of John and the principal seat of the process of amalgamation, which he completed. At the same time Rome witnesses a similar amalgamation, and becomes a center for Christianity in the West. P. S.

Probable: Interval of Five Years between the First and Second Imprisonment of Paul.—It is now generally admitted, first, that the historical facts mentioned in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus can not be placed in any portion of Paul’s life before or during his first imprisonment in Rome; and, secondly, that the style in which these Epistles are written, and the condition of the Church described in them, forbid the supposition of such a date. C.

From these Epistles, without encroaching upon the domain of conjecture, we draw the following conclusions: 1. Paul, at some time after leaving Rome, must have visited Asia Minor and Greece, for he says to Timothy, “I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I was setting out for Macedonia.” On his way to Macedonia, it is reasonable to suppose that he made a circuit like those of former days—by Antioch and Asia Minor, staying at Colosse, where he had asked Philemon (22) to prepare him a lodging. After being once at Ephesus, he was purposing to go there again (Tit. 3 : 12), and he spent a considerable time at Ephesus. The First Epistle to Timothy proves the magnitude of his work in this city which had been so long the scene of his former labors. The Gentile churches, of which that of Ephesus may be regarded as a type, had begun to feel the want of a more perfect organization. Beginning this work himself, and carrying it out through the ministry of Timothy here, as of Titus in Crete, he had occasion to place on permanent record, in the Epistles written to direct their action, the great principles of ecclesiastical order. 2. He paid a visit to Crete, and left Titus to organize churches there. He was intending to spend a winter at one of the places named Nicopolis, probably the celebrated city in Epirus. 3. He traveled by Miletus, Troas (where he left a cloak or case and some books), and Corinth. 4. He is a prisoner at Rome, “suffering unto bonds as an evil-doer,” and expecting to be soon condemned to death. At this time he felt deserted and solitary, having only Luke, of his old associates, to keep him company; and he was very anxious that Timothy should come to him without delay from Ephesus, and bring Mark with him.

Accused no longer merely about questions of the law, but as a common malefactor (for so the Christians were regarded in the Neronian persecution), with no Julius to recommend and no Burrus to protect him, Paul’s state may be inferred from the words, feebly rendered in our version, “wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer” (or felon), “even unto bonds” (2 Tim. 2 : 9)—bonds more like those at Philippi than his former chain at Rome. But even now, as well as then, he could add, “but the word of God is not bound”; and the converts, whose names appear for the first time in this Epistle—Eubulus, Pudens, Linus, and Claudia—derive a special luster from their profession being made amid such dangers, and from its contrast to the falling away of older friends.

The interval, whether longer or shorter, exhibits the apostle to us in one of the most interesting aspects of his life, as “a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Christ to life everlasting.” An attentive reader of the Second Epistle to Timothy will observe how the glorious principles which sustained the apostle in the prospect of martyrdom are stated for the very purpose of fortifying the disdisciple. And how these principles sustained the apostle’s own mind, and put the climax to the moral grandeur and spiritual glory of his career, can be told in no words except his own. S.

The Martyrdom of Paul.—The privileges of Roman citizenship exempted Paul from the ignominious death of lingering torture, which had been lately inflicted on so many of his brethren. He was to die by decapitation; and he was led out to execution beyond the city walls, upon the road to Ostia, the port of Rome. Through the dust and tumult of a busy throng, the small troop of soldiers threaded their way silently, under the bright sky of an Italian midsummer. They were marching, though they knew it not, in a procession more truly triumphal than any they had ever followed, in the train of general or emperor, along the Sacred Way. Their prisoner, now at last and for ever delivered from his captivity, rejoiced to follow his Lord “without the gate.” The place of execution was not far distant, and there the sword of the headsman ended his long course of sufferings, and released that heroic soul from that feeble body. Weeping friends took up his corpse, and carried it for burial to those subterranean labyrinths where, through many ages of oppression, the persecuted Church found refuge for the living and sepulchres for the dead.

Thus died the Apostle, the Prophet, and the Martyr, bequeathing to the Church, in her government and her discipline, the legacy of his apostolic labors, leaving his prophetic words to be her living oracles, pouring forth his blood to be the seed of a thousand martyrdoms. Thenecforth, among the glorious company of the Apostles, among the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, among the noble army of Martyrs, his name has stood preëminent as the great teacher of a universal redemption—the herald of glad tidings to all mankind. C.

BETWEEN Gospels and Epistles there is need for a connection of a more internal kind. During the intervening time the doctrine was not only spreading, it was clearing and forming itself, or rather was being cleared and formed by the hand of its divine author. This was effected through a certain line of events and through the agency of particular persons. With these events and persons the Book of Acts is occupied. It begins at Jerusalem, it ends at Rome. Between these two points questions have been settled, principles carried out, and divinely implanted tendencies disclosed. Especially have the relations of the gospel to Jew and Gentile been fixed for ever. But the rejection of Jews and admission of Gentiles were not the only result of this long history. Another result has been involved in it: Christianity itself has been finely drawn out of Judaism, the delicate and intricate relations of the two systems being dealt with in such a way, that (so to speak) the texture of living fiber has been lifted unimpaired out of its former covering, leaving behind only a residuum of what was temporary, preparatory, and carnal. In fact, the doctrine of the gospel has been cleared and formed; cleared of the false element which the existing Judaism would have infused into it, and formed of the true elements which the old covenant had been intended to prepare for its use. T. D. B.

(Basis of Conybeare and Howson.)

| A. D. | Biography of Paul. | Contemporary Rulers in Rome and Judea. | | — | — | — | | 36 | (?) Paul’s conversion [supposing the three years of Gal. 1 : 18 Judaically reckoned]. | | | 37 | (?) At Damascus. | Death of Tiberius and accession of CALIGULA (Mar. 16) | | 38 | (?) Flight from Damascus to Jerusalem; thence to Tarsus. | | | 39 | (?) During these years Paul preaches in Syria and Cilicia, making TARSUS his headquarters, and probably undergoes most of the sufferings mentioned at 2 Cor. 11 : 24-26, viz., two of the Roman and the five Jewish scourgings, and three shipwrecks. | Death of Caligula and accession of CLAUDIUS (Jan. 25), Judea and Samaria given to Herod Agrippa I. | | 40 | (?) | | | 41 | (?) | | | 42 | (?) | | | 43 | (?) | | | 44 | He is brought from Tarsus to Antioch (Acts 11 : 26), and stays there a year before the famine. | Death of Herod Agrippa I. (Acts 12). Cuspius Fadus (as procurator) succeeds to the government of Judea. | | 45 | He visits Jerusalem with Barnabas to relieve the famine. | | | 46 | At ANTIOCH. | Tiberius Alexander made procurator of Judea (about this time). | | 47 | | | | 48 | His “First Missionary Journey” from Antioch to Cyprus, Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and back through the same places to ANTIOCH in Syria. | Agrippa II. (Acts 25) made king of Chalcis. Cumanus made procurator of Judea (about this time). | | 49 | | | | 50 | Paul and Barnabas attend the “Council of Jerusalem.” | | | 51 | His “Second Missionary Journey” from Antioch to Cilicia, Lycaonia, Galatia. | Claudius expels the Jews from Rome (Acts 18 : 2). | | 52 | Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and CORINTH—Writes 1 Thessalonians. | | | 53 | At CORINTH Writes 2 Thessalonians. | The tetrarchy of Trachonitis given to Agrippa II.; Felix made procurator of Judea. | | 54 | (Spring)—He leaves Corinth, and reaches (Summer)—Jerusalem at Pentecost, and thence goes to Antioch. (Autumn)—His “Third Missionary Journey.” He goes to Ephesus. | Death of Claudius and accession of NERO (Oct. 13). | | 55 | At EPHESUS. | | | 56 | | | | 57 | (Spring)—He writes 1 Corinthians. (Summer)—Leaves Ephesus for Macedonia, (Autumn)—Where he writes 2 Corinthians, and (Winter)—To CORINTH, where he writes Galatians. | | | 58 | (Spring)—He writes Romans, and leaves Corinth, going by Philippi and Miletus (Summer)—To Jerusalem (Pentecost), where he is arrested, and sent to Cesarea. | | | 59 | At CESAREA. | Nero murders Agrippina. | | 60 | (Autumn)—Sent to Rome by Festus (about August). (Winter)—Shipwrecked at Malta. | Felix is recalled and succeeded by Festus. | | 61 | (Spring)—He arrives at Rome. | Embassy from Jerusalem to Rome, to petition about the wall. | | 62 | At ROME. (Spring)—Writes Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians. (Autumn)—Writes Philippians. | Albinus succeeds Festus as procurator. | | 63 | (Spring)—He is acquitted, and goes to Macedonia (Phil. 2 : 24) and Asia Minor (Philem. 22). | | | 64 | (?) He goes to Spain. | Great fire at Rome (July 19), followed by persecution of Roman Christians. | | 65 | (?) In Spain. | Gessius Florus made procurator of Judea. | | 66 | (Summer)—From Spain (?) to Asia Minor (1 Tim. 1 : 3). | The Jewish war begins. | | 67 | (Summer)—Writes 1 Tim. from Macedonia. (Autumn)—Writes Titus from Ephesus. (Winter)—At Nicopolis. | | | 68 | (Spring)—In prison at Rome. Writes 2 Tim. (Summer)—Executed (May or June). | Death of Nero in the middle of June. | | 70 | Destruction of Jerusalem. | |

OBSERV the point at which we have arrived, by the time that we finish the book of Acts, and open the Epistle to the Romans. The facts of the manifestation of Christ have been completed, and have been testified in all fullness and certainty by the witnesses chosen of God. They have not only testified of the facts, they have summed them up; have announced their scope and purpose in the counsels of God, as effecting the redemption of the world, and have called men to partake in the fruits of that redemption by believing and being baptized. They have given this testimony, not as of themselves, but with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, whose witness is united with their own, and whose indwelling presence is given also to those who receive the testimony, in order to open its meaning and to seal its truth. Thus a holy Church is formed, which gradually proves itself catholic, and shows at once its power of expansion and its spirit of unity; and within its protecting framework there exists a communion of saints, a common participation in the same spiritual possessions by all whom a union with Christ has separated and sanctified to God; and thus men are joined to the Lord and united with each other, and rest in the consciousness that they have found the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. In its fundamental articles the creed is now complete.

To this point the book of Acts conducts us, and at this point it leaves us. The Father revealed, the Son incarnate, the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven—redemption wrought, salvation given, the resurrection of the body, the eternal judgment, the second death, the life eternal—new principles of thought, new standards of character, new grounds of duty, new motives, new powers, new bonds between man and man, new forms of human society, new language for human lips—all coming at once upon men’s minds, placed them, as it were, in a different world from that in which they had lived before. At the same time they carried into that world of thought all the tendencies, infirmities, and perversities of our nature, and revealed truth had to settle itself into lasting forms, to find its adequate expression, and to have its moral and social consequences deduced, under a variety of influences uncongenial to itself. So critical a period, on which the whole future of the gospel hung, would seem to cry aloud for a continued action of the living Word of God; such as might, with supreme authority, both judge and guide the thoughts of men, and translate the principles which they had received into life and practice.

The Lord recognized this necessity. He met it by the living voice of his apostles; and their Epistles remain as the permanent record of this part of their work. They are the voice of the Spirit speaking within the Church to those who are themselves within it, certifying to them the true interpretations and applications of the principles of thought and life which as believers in Jesus they have received. Christ has been received; Christian life has commenced; Christian communities have been formed; and men’s minds have been at work on the great principles which they have embraced. Some of these principles in one place, and others of them in another, have been imperfectly grasped, or positively perverted, or practically misapplied, so as to call for explanation or correction; or else they have been both apprehended and applied so worthily, that the teacher, filled with joy and praise, feels able to open out the mysteries of God, as one speaking wisdom among them that are perfect. These conditions of mind were not individual accidents. Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, supplied examples of different tendencies of the human mind in connection with the principles of the gospel—tendencies which would ever recur, and on which it was requisite for the future guidance of the Church that the Word of God should pronounce. It did pronounce in the most effectual way, by those letters which are addressed by the commissioners of Christ, not to possible but to actual cases, with that largeness of view which belongs to spectators at a certain distance from the scene, and with that closeness of application which personal acquaintance dictates and personal affection inspires. Thus the fuller expositions of truth contained in the Epistles are based on what the first principles of the gospel had already wrought in human hearts; and its doctrines are cleared and settled, developed and combined, in correspondence with the ascertained capacities and necessities of believers. T. D. B.

There is a most observable wisdom in that arrangement of the revelation of God to man, by which so large and important a portion of its contents is conveyed in the peculiar form of epistles; of epistles, which, being the exact medium between the familiar flow of ordinary discourse and the methodical precision of the essay, may be said to unite all the characteristic advantages and avoid the peculiar deficiencies of both. Christianity, eminently a practical institute, is taught by practical models; its blessed Founder’s precepts live and move embodied in his life; his apostles—like Himself—are not more the deliverers of doctrine than the earnest leaders of action. And just that we may for ever know them as such, we have them with us, not merely in the historical portrait of a contemporary, nor yet in elaborate treatises of their own, where the distinctive personality of the writer might be almost wholly absorbed in his subject—but in letters, that spring out of action and breathe its earnest spirit; in letters, where the soul spontaneously paints its own glowing picture; in letters, the vivid, unconscious transcripts of the inmost heart. W. A. B.

The Epistles resemble the Gospels in their combination of intrinsic unity with extrinsic diversity. As Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all set before us the same Jesus Christ, so do Paul, James, Peter, John, and Jude, all teach one salvation, one calling, one Comforter, one life, one Church, one hope of the Lord’s appearing, one fellowship in faith and love. But, as the evangelists diversify their narratives—each one writing according to his own bent of mind and his own special information, and with adaptation to the persons for or to whom in the first instance he wrote—so do the apostles write variously, in accordance with their intellectual individuality, and with due reference to the state of the churches, or the circumstances of the persons whom they address. The books of the apostles were letters, not decrees; and their directions and commands were accompanied by affectionate persuasions and appeals. They wrote not—“I command you, my people”—but “I beseech you, my beloved brethren.” With all his masculine vigor Paul had a wonderful persuasive tenderness. Peter wrote with a beautiful humility. John often used the address of kindness “Beloved,” and wrote as a father to his “little children.” It is this combination of authority with gentleness, after the manner of Christ himself, which charms us in the Epistles, and makes them so effectual for the inculcation of truth at once on the understanding and on the heart. D. F.

The doctrinal portion of the New Testament consists of thirteen Epistles of Paul, two of Peter, three of John, one Epistle of James, one of Jude, and the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, written according to one view by Paul himself, according to another conjecture, by one of his pupils and fellow-laborers, Luke, Barnabas, or Apollos. Most of Paul’s Epistles—the two to the Thessalonians, the one to the Galatians, the first to Timothy, the one to Titus, the two to the Corinthians, the one to the Romans—and the Epistle of James, were composed before the Gospels and the Acts, between the years 50 and 60. The Epistles to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, to Philemon, to the Philippians, the second to Timothy, as also the Epistle to the Hebrews and the two Epistles of Peter, and probably that of Jude, belong in the seventh decade, most of them between the years 62 and 64. John’s epistles with the fourth Gospel bear all the internal marks of having been written after the destruction of Jerusalem and toward the end of the first century.

The common subject of the doctrine of the apostles is the person of Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, the true God-man; and the divine life and salvation, which was manifested in Him, was secured to mankind by his self-revelation, death, and resurrection: shaped itself through the Holy Ghost into a church of the redeemed, a means and a fellowship of salvation; is communicated to the individual sinner through faith and the means of grace, the word, and sacraments; works his conversion, justification, sanctification, and eternal blessedness; and will fully develop itself in the glories of Christ’s second coming. These are the essential articles of faith, on the living appropriation of which salvation depends, and which the Apostles’ Creed (justly called apostolical as to its contests) so beautifully arranges under the three divisions of God the Father and the work of creation, God the Son and the work of redemption, and God the Holy Ghost and the work of sanctification, ending with life everlasting. And in all these points James, Peter, Paul, and John perfectly agree. We can not acknowledge the least inconsistency among the various books of the New Testament either in respect to faith or practice. They are all animated by the same spirit, aim at the same end, and form a truly wonderful harmony. All the apostles and evangelists teach that Jesus of Nazareth is the highest revelation of the only true God; that he perfectly fulfilled the Law and the Prophets; by his death and resurrection reconciled humanity with God and redeemed it from the curse of sin and death; by the outpouring of his Spirit has established an indestructible Church and furnished it with all the means for the regeneration and sanctification of the world; that out of him there is no salvation; that a man must repent and believe in him, and express this faith in his entire life, in order to enjoy the benefits of Christ’s mission; and that this life of faith develops itself in individuals and in the Church, under the continual direction of the Holy Ghost through much suffering and tribulation; triumphs at last over all its foes; and becomes gloriously complete at the second advent of the Lord. In short, there is in the apostolic church “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” P. S.

The surface criticism of Scripture may vary from age to age, but the main lines of interpretation, like the main verities of the faith, are far less likely to undergo change than is the sun to fall in the heavens or the everlasting hills to melt. The Gospel, as it was taught by the Apostles, was a final and perfect revelation. Statements of doctrine may vary in different ages; new statements may be necessary to meet new modes of thought, or fresh forms of evasion, or virtual denials of the original truth, but the number of Christian doctrines can not really be added to, nor can the area of any one Christian doctrine be in any degree enlarged. H. P. L.

We believe these writings to have been intended for what they have since proved, the doctrinal charter of the future Christian Church. Nothing could be less like a system than the teaching of our blessed Lord. In these Epistles, the true comments on that teaching, we may expect great steps to be taken toward systematizing it. The Lord’s moral precepts, the Lord’s mediatorial acts, are the seeds out of

which, under his own direction, by his informing Spirit, the teaching of the apostolic Epistles has grown. The earliest of the Epistles are ever moral and practical, the advanced ones more doctrinal and spiritual. It was not till it appeared that the bulwark of salvation by grace must be strengthened, that the building on the one foundation must be raised thus impregnable to the righteousness of works and the law, that the Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans were given through the great apostle, reaching to the full breadth and height of the great argument. Then followed the Epistles of the imprisonment, building up higher and higher the edifice there consolidated; and the Pastoral Epistles, suited to a more developed ecclesiastical condition, and aimed at the correction of abuses which sprung up later, or were the ripened fruit of former doctrinal errors.

is the controversy to which sin has given birth between God and man; the matter of the Revelation it contains is the announcement of absolute forgiveness through the mediation of Christ. And what is the complexion or character of this gospel remission? It is not the consequence of the abrogation of law; it is not a repeal of penalties; it is not a disparagement of supreme Wisdom; it is not a deduction from the supposed power of inflicting punishment; and especially, it is not such a mere act of grace as, in the nature of the case, must not stretch very far, lest the punishment of any should seem a captious severity, and pardon an unavoidable compromise. The pardon of the gospel is pardon for a reason: that is to say, it is pardon granted in compliance with a rule, higher, or more comprehensive, than the law which was broken. The pardon of the gospel, therefore, may be extended without reserve; because the reason whence it flows is greater than all other reasons. Even if it were to appear at the

last that the myriad has received pardon, and the thousand has been left to endure punishment, the principles of administration would not be sullied; because, while the demands of justice are definite, the provision of grace is unbounded. Grace encompasses justice. And yet, if in any manner we surrender the Divine dignity of the Mediator, the reason of pardon at once disappears, and the government of God is clouded; or the conscience of man receives no lasting peace. Conscience may indeed remain in its native slumber, or it may embrace flatteries; but when once it is quickened, when once the purity of law, and the impartiality and vigor of the divine government have been admitted, and the thought of standing at the tribunal of God has firmly lodged itself in the mind, the well-founded fear of condemnation is in no way to be allayed, until the substitute of the sinner is known to be the very party whom the sinner has insulted! I. T.