prevalent, and in luxuriance. The plain is bestridden with the arches of aqueducts, which have for their centre a fair group of buildings, whose columns are marked out by the fierce Eastern sun into lines of bright and dark alternating. That is the Acropolis-the temple fortress-the abode of the tutelar deities, whose images may be seen glittering in the sun, as we see to this day the saints on St. John Lateran glittering miles off over the Campagna at Rome. We are in a heathen land.

But let me enter the city: let me deliver my Christian note of introduction. The scene is very strange to me. Amidst a crowd of loungers, halfclad slaves, and children wholly naked, moves the heathen procession, with its ox adorned with garlands, and its sacrificing priest, girt at the waist, and his axe on his shoulder. It is plain who is in possession. But where is the little seed out of which shall grow the great tree, whose roots shall thrust out the plant that now fills the land? I deliver my letter: I enter into converse. What do

I find?

A few months before, a holy man has taken his departure. He had been with them some weeks

golden weeks- weeks of blessedness to their furthest memory. It had been an angel's visit. They take me up the Acropolis; there he stood and prayed: there he told them this or that Christian truth: the very cornices of the temple, the very coincident points in the look-out over land and distant sea, are full of the good tidings which he brought. They walk with me under the bright green of the caroubas, and the heavy shade of the ilexes, by which the paved road, enters their city : there he walked up and down, and strengthened and comforted them: there first two or three of them who had visited Judæa, and seen that Countenance which none could forget, and heard Him speak like whom none else ever spoke, went forth on that memorable day to meet him-and here, under this Spina Christi, first fell his 'Salaam,' or 'Eirené,' or 'Pax vobiscum' on their ears. And by that other road, across whose long line of cypresses the mountain now casts its purple shadow, went he forth but the other day-all the gathered band with him: there, where we see the road rise bright over the knoll, he knelt and prayed there they clasped their arms round him, and mingled their tears with his there they stood

and watched his little company lessen and vanish in the distance: and thence they returned home, sad indeed for a moment, but with a glorious hope full of immortality and joy.

But I re-enter the city with them, and in the shade of evening, and again under the moist dawn, I resort to their humble room of worship. Here is the centre and focus of the light which has been poured upon them. Here, from day to day, the holy man poured out his treasury of golden words -doubly precious now that the tone of his voice has departed. All that they know of the Son of God sounded from that spot, where he has stood far into the night, telling his wondrous story. There, too, he broke the bread, having told how the Lord did the same: thence he gave the Body broken, and dispensed the Blood shed, to the eye and the taste of Faith. All this remains vividly depicted on the memory. Joy and affection will not let them forget it. Nay, the Apostle, before he went, on a solemn day of the weekly festival of the Lord's Resurrection, laid his hands, and the hands of them that were with him, with prayer and fasting, on the heads of some among themselves; and they keep up now that which he had

begun, and repeat that which he had delivered to them.

So far, all is well. But, as I said, some months have gone by. Man cannot live wholly on the past. Unless there be knit up a link between the past and the present, unless in some form we can look on the past as present, the past will fade, and fade, and fade: and the importunate present will by degrees take its place. And this, in spite of all helps of other kinds than the one mentioned. The living voice is not enough, if it have only the past to speak of. That which meets the ear, has no permanent record. There is no simultaneity in sounds; as one enters, another departs. In course of time it may become even a question, what the first teacher delivered: some may report him one way, some another. The great oral tradition of the Gospel narrative, in its various forms, needed at length to be written down in order to gain permanence: how much more the teachings and inferences of any single messenger of the good tidings. But who could be trusted to do this? From the first, two great parties prevailed in almost every infant Christian community. The one, mainly composed of those believers who had been

Jews, would be likely to put into the recorded words more than they would fairly bear of the Judaistic spirit. With them, every saying which asserted the justice and holiness of the law would be taken as enforcing its observance on Christians. The other, the Gentile party, would be liable to report wrongly in the other direction, that of setting aside all the previous dispensation with its types and preparations for Christ, and perhaps also with some of those its moral sanctions and prohibitions, which are of eternal obligation, not because there enacted, but because they form portions of God's revelation of His eternal truth and justice. To these two parties might sometimes be added a third, that of the learned or philosophers, who were for effecting. a compromise between Jewish cabalism and Gentile philosophy, and making the words reported to subserve such a purpose.

In the face of these difficulties, the apostolic teachers were directed to the expedient of writing letters to the churches which they had founded, or which owed their existence to emissaries sent from themselves. And surely no plan could have been more effectual, whether for the present emergency, or for future profit to the church. The questions