theory as to the authority of these Epistles or the divine inspiration of their author. We see no cause to question either, and abundant reason for affirming both. We do not believe that St. Paul either Judaized or philosophized beyond the scope of genuine Christianity. We believe that he was the disciple of no human master, but literally "received from the Lord that which he delivered" to the churches. Our ground is none other than the entire reliableness and the plenary authority of the Christian canon. But the errors of faith and practice, that have been derived from these Epistles, have originated in one of two ways. First, from a misapprehension of their nature and uses. They have been regarded as primary and independent treatises on Christian theology, rather than as writings of specific purpose and limited application. The phraseology by which St. Paul characterized or refuted ephemeral crudities and follies, and which is closely circumscribed in meaning by the history of the times, has been generalized into universal propositions. His contemptuous estimate of the heartless routine of an effete ritual has been extended to the fundamental laws of personal and social duty; and Antinomians, of the foulest type, have justified their abominations and impurities by the very terms in which he inculcated a faith that makes men virtuous, in opposition to a ceremonial law which left them to unrebuked iniquity. Even the loving service of Christian commemoration has been hedged round for the timidly conscientious with his righteous rebukes and denunciations of the hardly half-converted Corinthians, who assimilated the Holy Supper to the orgies of Bacchus. In fine, his Epistles have been treated, not as the commentaries of a divinely inspired man on the original and complete revelation through Christ, but as a supplementary revelation of paramount magnitude and importance. Thus, instead of tracing principles in their authoritative applications, men have transmuted the applications into principles. Even where no grave falsity or error has been derived from this source, a false view of these writings has tended to render the terminology of religion harmfully technical and complex, and to obscure the simple beauty of the truth as it fell from the Saviour's lips, by incorporating with it words and phrases,

which derived their origin and their sole fitness from conditions of the Jewish and Pagan mind that have long since passed into oblivion.

Another mode in which these Epistles have led to much theological error, has been the habit of aphoristical interpretation, the treating of separate sentences, and fragments of sentences, as if they were complete in themselves, without admitting of modification from their context. This vicious habit is by many supposed to have grown from the subdivision of the Bible into infinitesimal paragraphs; but this statement reverses the order of historical sequence, nor can we conceive that so ridiculous a style of division and arrangement should ever have been projected, had not the way been prepared for it by corresponding modes of consultation and exegesis. Now, though the garbling of any book is an atrocious wrong to the author and his subject, the Gospels can probably bear this treatment better than any other book whatever that is continuous in its form. They consist chiefly of discourses addressed to the ignorant and prejudiced, generally in the open air, often before noisy and shifting multitudes; and these discourses, except when they assume the form of parable, are aphoristic in their character, as if the divine Teacher meant that he who heard but a simple sentence should carry away a definite idea or impression. Then, too, the Gospels contain, for the most part, statements of truth and duty, without reasonings. Consequently, the diversity of interpretation as to their teachings has been comparatively slight, and of the proof-texts that load the quiver of the saint militant, almost none are drawn from this compartment of the Christian armory. But with St. Paul the case is directly opposite. Of independent sentences, isolated sentiments, statements unmodified by what precedes or follows, there are almost none in his writings. A verse taken by itself is more likely to denote the opposite of what he means, than it is to present his meaning with anything like definiteness or adequacy. He often traces out his adversary's line of argument, or assumes his postulates, in order to demonstrate the falsity of his inferences from them. He sometimes holds an imaginary colloquy with an objector, and gives in ipsissimis verbis the very fallacy which it is his aim

to expose. Thus the quoter of single sentences is constantly liable, not only to misapprehend what the apostle writes in his own person, but to ascribe to him sentiments which he cites only to refute or condemn, an error like that of employing Satan's words as authority from holy writ.

But is not St. Paul desultory? We apprehend that such is his reputation in the Church at large, especially among those whose reading is confined to the vernacular version of his Epistles. No writer makes more profuse or discriminating use of the Greek particles than he does; and whether a reader shall trace the continuity of his discourse, or shall see only abrupt transitions and trackless involutions of thought, depends very much on his conversance with the Pauline use of illatives, connectives, and that whole delicately organized network of conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs, which confuses and bewilders where it does not guide. But the mere classical scholar is at fault as to these Epistles; for St. Paul often uses particles, (as well as other words,) in accordance not with Greek but with Hebrew idioms, in the acceptation in which they are employed by the writers of the Septuagint. To refer to a single instance, which may stand for a score; zal, in his Epistles, is far from being the simple connective which it is in a language as inexhaustibly rich as the Greek in the minute auxiliaries of speech; but it performs the numerous, diverse, and opposite offices which are imposed in the Hebrew on that servant of all works, the Protean prefix! Thus, the accurate Schleusner enumerates, in the New Testament, no less than thirty-four undoubted significations of zai, besides seven which are contended for, though doubtful, in single passages. Now, King James's translators, nobly and faithfully as they executed their work, in the main, lived before the age of critical scholarship, whether in the classical or the Hellenistic Greek. They paid very slight attention to particles, and, in their version, connectives and disjunctives often stand in each others places, while many delicate shades of meaning, indices of progress or transition that are expressed by these seemingly insignificant words, are left wholly untranslated.

But St. Paul demands close attention in every reader. His

His

He

style is involved from the very fulness of thought. sentences are absolutely loaded down with meaning. embraces in a single period exceptions, qualifications, subsidiary thoughts, related ideas, that would fill a long paragraph in an ordinary writer. His parentheses are frequent and protracted. He often leaves his main subject to follow out a collateral train of argument, to make a fervent appeal to the conscience, or to give utterance to devotional feeling; and these digressions are long, and sometimes branch out themselves in different directions. But he always resumes the thread of his discourse, and never finally drops a discussion till he has finished it. He always has a definite end in view, and advances steadily in pursuit of that end, with a vast profusion of argument and illustration indeed, but without ever losing sight of his purpose, so that all his material is brought to bear upon the subject in hand.

To all other causes of ambiguity, we must add the difficulty of fully entering into the circumstances under which these Epistles were written, and the condition of those to whom they were addressed. A letter, from its very nature, demands some good degree of acquaintance with both parties in order to be understood. The Epistle to the Romans is but dimly intelligible to one ignorant of the controversy about the obligation of the Jewish ritual between the Hebrew and the Gentile converts. Much, in the Epistles to the Corinthians, otherwise obscure, receives light from the character of that metropolis of sensuality, in which it is more strange that Christianity should have gained a foothold, than that it should have succumbed to surrounding corruption. Each of these letters was designed to meet some specific exigency. But the means of understanding them are within easy reach, and have been greatly multiplied in the lifetime of the present generation. They require, but they more than reward, the most diligent study; and, whether regarded as the productions of a mind second to none among mortals, as illustrative of the early history of the Church, or as prominent among the monuments of special divine inspiration, they claim at Christian hands the most reverent regard and the most faithful investigation.

Were we to define their most prominent characteristics, we should select the concurrent agency of mind and heart, of reason and emotion, in their composition. The Apostle is severely logical, and at the same time full of intense feeling. His closest arguments are pervaded by sublime devotion and fervent charity. The members of his logic are warm with religious life; and yet never for a moment relax themselves in the glow, or permit you to feel that reason has yielded her throne to piety or love. Thus his writings are equally devoid of cold reasoning and of feeble sentimentality. They will bear alike the test of rigid analysis, and of the higher criticism of the affections; and at the same time command the respect of the logician, and meet the aspirations of the saint. We feel, in reading St. Paul, that we are communing with the loftiest spirit of his race. His Epistles, apart from their sacred character, seem to us the master-works of human genius; but when we regard them as emanating from a mind overpowered and flooded by light from the Infinite Intelligence, our admiration of the choice and noble instrument of divine communication is merged in praise and gratitude to Him who kindled such a luminary in the spiritual firmament. The work named at the head of this article is a noble monument of the zeal, ability, and piety of its authors. It makes no pretension to critical acumen, and should, therefore, not be condemned for the lack of it. Its aim is, not to interpret the Epistles, but to relate the history of St. Paul. The Epistles have their chronological places assigned to them, always on good, and generally on satisfying grounds, and they are given in a carefully accurate and slightly paraphrastic translation, with a few brief illustrative notes. But the object had in view was to collect all possible materials for the illustration of the Apostle's life, from his birth to his martyrdom, to convey a vivid impression of his personality, with its forming and surrounding influences, and to present a detailed view of the successive scenes of his labors and sufferings. To this end, geography and archæology, numismatics and topography, literature and art, are laid under copious contribution. The work is enriched with maps and plans covering the entire field of St. Paul's journeys and voyages. It comprises also the complete material for a Pauline picture gallery. It con