his lodging in great number; to whom he expounded the matter, testifying the kingdom of God, and persuading them concerning Jesus, both from the law of Moses and from the prophets, from morning till evening. And some believed the things which were spoken, and some disbelieved. And when they agreed not among themselves, they departed, after that Paul had spoken one word: Well spake the Holy Ghost by Isaiah the prophet unto your fathers, saying: Go thou unto this people, and say, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall in no wise understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall in no wise perceive: for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should turn again, and I should heal them. Be it known therefore unto you, that this salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles: they will also hear.

And he abode two whole years in his own hired dwelling, and received all that went in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness, none forbidding him.

INTRODUCTION TO

THE EPISTLES AND REVELATION

In the New Testament, after the departure of Jesus from the earth, the leadership of Christianity is in the hands of the Apostles. The lucid narrative of the Book of Acts records the doings of these apostles. But history includes, not only men's actions, but also their thoughts. We might have expected that such literature as the New Testament would have presented Christian thought in the form of discourses or philosophic treatises. In fact, it is given us in a succession of epistles, such as bring it home to every mind. A very small fraction of us can claim to be orators or philosophers. But every reader of the New Testament is an author in the sense of being a writer of letters.

The basis upon which the New Testament epistles rest is that of the personal letter. There may, of course, be superficial differences between the letter of ancient and of modern times. A modern letter commences with the name of the person addressed; the writer's signature comes at the end. In the New Testament the writer and the party addressed stand together at the beginning. But the difference does not matter. "Unto Gaius the beloved" is our "Dear Gaius." Sometimes in the New Testament the writer's signature appears also at the close of the epistle. We gather that spurious letters had been circulated in the name of Paul, and he announces his intention of adding an autograph signature as a guarantee of genuineness. This we often find; and one case of it is curious. "See," adds Paul at the end of the Epistle to the Galatians, "with how large letters I have written to you with mine own hand." The passage has interest in reference to a view held by some that Paul's infirmity - what he styles his "thorn in the flesh"- took the form of severe eye trouble, such as would make his caligraphy abnormal. The epistles are thus dictated to an amanuensis; and in one case the amanuensis joins in the salutations of the epistle: "I, Tertius, who write the epistle, salute you in the Lord." These salutations which

close many of the epistles correspond to greetings at the end of a modern letter. "Salute Prisca and Aquila" is like our "Give my love to So-and-so;" "Erastus the treasurer of the city saluteth you," "All the brethren salute you," suggest our "The mayor sends his compliments," or, "All of the family who are at home join in kind regards." It would appear that there was more chance of such salutations becoming effective than is the case with our modern letter; for the New Testament epistle was to be read aloud to the church, and in one case it is added, "Salute ye one another with a holy kiss." And three of the epistles are in the full sense personal letters; especially the charming letter of Paul to his friend Philemon and his family, in which he sends back to him a runaway slave who has been converted under Paul's ministry; Paul is confident that this slave will be received as a "brother in the Lord."

From the basis of the familiar letter the New Testament epistle rises to the status of great literature by virtue of the dignity of the author and the subject. We have already seen the origin of these missionary epistles. At one point in the narrative of the Acts it might have seemed that the missionary journey was to be the sole machinery for the propagation of Christianity. But Paul's labors in the great cities of Europe limit the frequency of these missionary journeys, and he has to bring in literature to supplement personal visits. Such epistles are often called forth by special circumstances of a particular church. The apostle deals with these emergencies; but in discussing them he rises from time to time to matters of permanent import. Thus it is in these epistles we find developed the fundamental ideas of Christian life. It is here we see enunciated the sublime thought of Christian liberty: the freedom from the letter of the law for those with whom the whole law has become an inspiration. Here again we trace the rise of the conception of the church as the "body of Christ." Through epistle after epistle we see how the death and resurrection of Jesus are to the Christian not mere historical facts of the past; they are apprehended by the faithful as a death to sin and a rise to the life of righteousness. And it is an epistle which unfolds the climax, beyond all spiritual gifts, of the spiritual graces of faith, hope, LOVE.

But not only does the New Testament epistle rise to be a vehicle of the highest thought, it also grows to be a literary medium for circulation of thought through the churches. We have traces of the circular letter, intended for distribution to several churches, with possibility of variations in particular cases. We hear how a letter to one church is to be read to another, and there is exchange of epistles among the different cities. It is no doubt the initiation of Paul that mainly brings about this widening range of epistolary intercourse. And an interesting testimony to this is found where, in an epistle of Peter, the writer says:

Even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; wherein are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unstedfast wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

The degree to which this circulating medium for Christian truth has extended is indicated by the fact that some of the epistles are addressed to "the brethren of the Dispersion": which word "Dispersion" is regularly applied to the whole Jewish people scattered by the captivity through all parts of the eastern world. Modern journalism is not more truly a medium of exchanging thought for those who are not authors of books than the epistles of the New Testament are the medium for the circulation of Christian ideas and sentiment.

As this epistolary literature becomes more and more widely extended, it is natural that other kinds of literature, not essentially epistles, should have epistolary form given to them in order to adapt them to this medium of circulation. Of this nature is the great "Epistle to Hebrews," one of the most elaborate and eloquent of religious discourses. It is not addressed to any church, but to members of all churches who are of Hebrew origin; and the unknown author writes as a specialist in Hebrew ritual and law. A still more striking case is the Wisdom epistles. The Hebrew philosophy of life naturally expresses itself in collections of essays and shorter sayings. Two of these collections of Christian wisdom stand amongst the epistles. In that of St. James, a modicum of epistolary form is given by an inscription to the "Twelve Tribes

which are of the Dispersion." The traditional "First Epistle of St. John" is really the "Wisdom of St. John." Nothing whatever of opening inscription or concluding salutations is here found; but, on the contrary, there is a formal prologue and epilogue, which bring into a unity the separate writings, or 'Thoughts,' making up the rest of the book.

Thus it appears that the Epistles, besides constituting a literature of Christian thought, also serve to carry on the course of history of the primitive church, contemporaneous with and beyond the narrative of the Book of Acts. New Testament epistles do not, like modern letters, contain indications of exact dates; the chronology has to be discovered by inference. Without going into disputed questions, it may be said that the order in which the epistles appear in the present work is an approximation to the chronological order, except that, in such cases as the Wisdom epistles, there is little material for determining when these came into the train of circulation. We have first the epistles of Paul's missionary activity. These reach a climax in the great Epistle to the Romans, where Paul, delayed in his projected visit to Rome, sends on an epistle before him; addressing the metropolis of the world he here presents Christianity as a whole, with appeal to the two sides of the intellectual world, Hebrew and Greek. Then we have four epistles written during the apostle's long imprisonment in Rome. It is natural that these letters do not deal so fully as the preceding letters with particular circumstances of the churches, with which as a prisoner Paul would be imperfectly in touch, but are for the most part rapturous celebrations of Christian truth. The last epistles of Paul are the pastoral epistles to his colleagues Timothy and Titus. The bulk of these deals with matters of administration; but it is in the latest of them that we get the last word of the apostle when he is expecting his final trial and martyrdom.

I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved his appearing.