The "faith" of this church had been exhibited in such power, the writer declares, as to be "spoken of throughout the whole world"—that is far and wide. To whose ministry the planting of this church is due is not apparent. The writer makes it understood that he had not yet been to Rome, and was longing to go thither. We have Paul there in the Acts of the apostles, but at the end of his career, when he was cast into those bonds from which he never, as far as we know, was freed. We learn that he was met as he approached Rome by certain "brethren." These might have been merely Jews, for a few verses onwards we find Paul addressing “the chief of the Jews," whom he had called together, as "brethren." Such, in fact, is the designation given them by the followers of Jesus throughout the book of the Acts. But of the worldrenowned Christian community at Rome we can discover nothing. The Jews with whom Paul had foregathered are described as inquisitive on the subject of the movement, and say, We desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest; for, as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against." Had the church of Rome, contemplated in the epistle, been on the spot, could there have been this ignorance of what concerned Christianity? The issue is that a day is appointed when these inquiring Jews come to Paul, who formally addresses them as persons ignorant of the Christian scheme, and some believe, and some refuse to believe; on which Paul turns from them, and tells them that as their hearts had "waxed gross," and their ears were dull of hearing," they were to know "that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and they will hear it." One must gather from the scene that this was the first occasion when Christ was preached at the Roman capital. The evidence connected with Josephus is of vast consequence here. He is found at Rome as an author till A.D. 93, and quite unconscious of such objects as Christ or Christianity. The epistle therefore clearly is not of the era ascribed to the apostolic Paul; nor is it conceivable how a genuine epistle to the Romans should have been addressed to them in a foreign tongue. Some one

belonging to the Greek field of Christianity has schemed it in the name of Paul, and while allowing that he had never been at Rome, is able to crowd a chapter with greetings to persons

as of Rome, of whom he could personally have known nothing. Critics, it may be remarked, and prominently Baur, avoid the difficulty of judging the presumed Paul on this matter, by suggesting that the last two chapters of the epistle are by another hand, and are no part of the epistle as it stood originally. It is a question whether they are right or wrong in their surmise. To me the grounds stated for separating these chapters from the rest of the epistle are far from conclusive. The argument depends on the genuineness of the earlier chapters, which I altogether dispute.

There is a point on which historical evidence to identify Paul with the age asserted for him might have been maintained, had the circumstances represented been what in appearance they seem to profess to be. Paul, when on the point of being subjected to scourging, pleaded that he was a Roman citizen. On this the chief captain, Lysias, volunteers the information, "with a great sum obtained I this freedom;" whereupon Paul rejoins, "But I was free born." In the same chapter (the 22d of the Acts) Paul tells us that he was "born in Tarsus;" "I am a man," he had already said (Acts xxi. 39), "which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city." Naturally we should infer that he had received his privilege of Roman citizenship by birth in Tarsus, the fact of which is thus reiterated. But, unfortunately, Tarsus did not receive its "jus civitatis" till long after the time asserted for Paul (Grotius on Acts, xxii. 28; Smith, Classical and Biblical Dictionaries, Art. Tarsus), and it is suggested he must have had some other source for his title. How Lysias, a Roman chiliarch, could have had to purchase his, is of course a question. Nor was the title to be acquired openly by purchase. Supposing that through some indirect channel, (the building a ship of a certain burden to carry corn to Rome has been suggested to me), the title had been really obtained by outlay of money, would the chiliarch have confessed the fact, thus baldly, and to a Jew? Altogether, here, as elsewhere throughout the Christian scriptures, where we have a right to look for history, we come upon myth.

That the Paul of the epistles was not of the alleged apostolic era may be inferred from the late date at which the compositions appearing in his name became current. "The

writings of Paul were either not used, or little regarded by the prominent ecclesiastical writers of the first half of the second century. After A.D. 150 they began to be valued" (Davidson, Introduction to Study of N. Test., II. 521). That is, waving the precise periods spoken of, Dr. Davidson thinks there has been an interval of about a hundred years between the issue of the earliest of the Christian scriptures and the usage of the Pauline epistles. Clement of Rome is thought to cite Paul, though the fact is one to be disputed, but if there was no Church of Rome in the first century, there was no such bishop of the alleged apostolic age. The epistle of Polycarp is considered by some to quote Paul, but this is not the case. Polycarp is a very mythical personage, and this epistle, which is addressed to the Philippians, seems framed for the very purpose of parading citations from the Christian scriptures, and presents, therefore, very questionable testimony. The authenticity of the epistle is commonly disallowed. The character of the earliest Christian writings is the absence of such quotations, it not being till a late era that the Christian scriptures were accounted authoritative. Dr Davidson, according to his view of the dates of these writings, says that "before A.D. 170, no book of the New Testament was termed scripture, or believed to be divine and inspired (Introduction to Study of N. Test., II. 520); which means that for a hundred years after the issue of the first of them, they were taken to be mere human effusions, to be accepted for what they might appear worth. Papias, whenever he may have lived, is certainly described as preferring tradition. "I do not think," he is reported to have said, "that I derived so much benefit from books as from the living voice of those that are still surviving" (Euseb., Ec. Hist., iii. 39). Paul is also held to be cited in the epistles of Ignatius, but these are generally now understood to be spurious productions. On the other hand, the Pauline epistles are unmentioned by Hermas, Barnabas, Papias, Hegisippus, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, and Athenagoras; while at a later time they are frequently appealed to, as by Irenæus and Tertullian. Christianity as it is, depends for its foundations on these epistles, and upon every ground connected with the progressive growth of doctrine which they unfold, and the usage of the epistles in

the early ecclesiastical writings, it must be concluded that they were brought out at a late era.

There was a vast body of Christian writings, belonging to the earliest times, which, in point of literary titles and pretensions, stood in rivalry with the accepted scriptures. These, by universal consent, are now rejected as apocryphal. This collection, so far as now traceable, embraced thirty-four gospels, twenty-two books of acts, five apocalypses, and various epistles and miscellaneous pieces, the whole known of amounting to ninety-seven (Ante-nicene Christian Library; Man's Origin and Destiny, by M.A. of Balliol, 376-379). The Ante-nicene Christian Library gives us those extant, which number thirty-three. Some of these writings are referred to by those who stand first in the field of Christian literature in point of currently accepted antiquity, such as Papias, and Justin Martyr, who show no absolute knowledge of the now accepted scriptures; and they are made use of, more or less, by those apparently of later time, such as Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, in whose days, whenever they were, all the recognized scriptures appear to have been current. Thus, certain of the apocrypha, it may be judged, are of prior standing to the accepted scriptures, and these and others are found in use throughout the time when the accepted scriptures saw the light. The period of the recognized scriptures is thus thoroughly enveloped in the current of this now declared apocryphal literature.

The subjects introduced in all this body of writings, accepted and condemned, though the treatment thereof may differ, are of similar complexion; that is, there is the endeavour to build up the character of Jesus, as a super-human agent, with thaumaturgical displays. The resource is one already worked to death in the Jewish scriptures, and in all the Pagan mythologies. It is a species of evidence commending itself to the ignorant, and universally disallowed, outside of Biblical statements, by the well-instructed portion of mankind. The effort, even in the canonical scriptures, is liable to be carried out with the utmost puerility, as in the interview of Jesus with the devil, the stirring up the healing virtues of the pool of Bethesda by an angel, the curing with spittle and clay, the incident of the demon-possessed swine, that of the tribute

money discoverable in the fish's mouth, and the withering of the fig-tree. The apocryphal gospels teem with such like absurdities. The book of Revelation transcends the whole collection in its enormities.

And how do these writings hang together as the production of one controlling mind, the alleged divine author of the whole? The condition of the synoptic gospels reveals itself. They certainly give evidence of a species of unity, but it is that effected by writers who either lean upon one another for their facts, or are following some common document. Then they exhibit discordances of such a nature as to repel the idea that the writers have been influenced by any one directing mind. The fourth gospel, constructed upon a totally different scheme, introduces a fresh body of variation of historical statement. Then come the Acts, warring sometimes seriously with the gospels on the one side, and in its turn violently contradicted by the epistles on the other. The chief conflict raised by the epistles is on the score of doctrine, wherein they differ from one other; but they also quarrel with the facts of the gospels. In the Pauline epistles, the divine nativity and transfiguration are disallowed by the recognition of Jesus as the son of God being deferred to his resurrection; the miracles are never noticed; Jesus is described as "the first-fruits of them that slept," "the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence" (1 Cor. xv. 20; Col. i. 18), which excludes such events as the restoration to life of the widow's son, the ruler's daughter, and Lazarus; equally are Moses and Elias, who are said to have appeared to Jesus in glory, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, appealed to as existing in life with the living God, left destitute of true resurrection life. Nor is the physical resurrection of Jesus to be admitted. "Behold," he had said, "my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have;" in which body he was exhibited, "carried up into heaven," whence, angels assured his disciples, he "shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven;" whereas, according to the writer of the first epistle to the Corinthians, there is a "spiritual" body distinct from "that which is natural," and "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," nor