for, as it has been well said, " nature and reality painted at the time, and on the spot, a nobler cartoon of St. Paul's preaching at Athens than the immortal Raffaelle afterwards has done."

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For a similar reason maps have been added, exhibiting, with as much accuracy as can at present be attained, the physical features of the countries visited, and some of the ancient routes through them; together with plans of the most important cities, and maritime charts of the coasts where they were required.

'While thus endeavouring to represent faithfully the natural objects and architectural remains connected with the narrative, it has likewise been attempted to give such illustrations as were needful of the minor productions of human art as they existed in the first century. For this purpose engravings of coins have been given in all cases where they seemed to throw light on the circumstances mentioned in the history; and recourse has been had to the stores of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as to the collection of the Vatican and the columns of Trajan and Antoninus.

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• But after all this is done-after we have endeavoured, with every help we can command, to reproduce the picture of St. Paul's deeds and times-how small would our knowledge of himself remain, if we had no other record of him left us but the story of his adventures. If his letters had never come down to us, we should have known indeed what he did and suffered, but we should have had very little idea of what he was. Even if we could perfectly succeed in restoring the image of the scenes and circumstances in which he moved-even if we could, as in a magic mirror, behold him speaking in the school of Tyrannus, with his Ephesian hearers in their national costume around him-we should still see very little of Paul of Tarsus. We must listen to his words, if we would learn to know him. If fancy did her utmost, she could give us only his outward not his inward life. "His bodily presence, his enemies declared, was "weak and contemptible;" but "his letters," even they allowed, were weighty and powerful." Moreover, an effort of imagination and memory is needed to recall the past, but in his Epistles St. Paul is present with us. "His words are not dead words; they are living creatures with hands and feet," touching, in a thousand hearts at this very hour, the same chord of feeling which vibrated to their first utterance. We, the Christians of the nineteenth century, can bear witness now, as fully as could a Byzantine audience fourteen hundred years ago, to the saying of Chrysostom, that "Paul by his letters still lives in the mouths of men throughout the whole world; by them, not only his own converts, but all the faithful even unto this day, yea and all the saints who are yet to be born, until Christ's coming again, both have been and shall be blessed." His Epistles are to his inward life what the mountains and rivers of Asia and Greece and Italy are to his outward life-the imperishable part which still remains to us, when all that time can ruin has passed away.'—Introduction, vol. i. pp. iii.-ix. .

In conformity with this purpose a minute narrative of the Apostle's life is presented, extracted from his letters and the Acts

of the Apostles. All his journeys are traced; the geography and history of the places he visited or touched at copiously exhibited; the seas he sailed, the roads he travelled, the scenery he moved among, the customs and usages alluded to in his epistles or life described; and besides, a paraphrastic translation of all that he said or wrote, which has come down to us, is carefully set forth. The range of subjects embraced is wide and far-reaching. A wealth of illustrative matter, from almost every available source, is poured forth, so that it becomes difficult to give the reader who has not examined the work for himself, a true idea of its contents. No greater affluence of knowledge than is applied here to produce a vivid portraiture of the Apostle in all his works of faith and labours of love has ever been brought together. We shall first endeavour to make our readers acquainted with the leading modes of illustration employed by the writers, and afterwards discuss their character and value.

Here is the description of Galatia :

"We come now to a political division of Asia Minor, which demands a more careful attention. Its sacred interest is greater than that of all the others, and its history is more peculiar. The Christians of Galatia were they who received the Apostle "as if he had been an angel," who, "if it had been possible, would have plucked out their eyes and given them to him," and then were "so soon removed" by new teachers "from him that called them to another gospel;" who began to "run well," and then were hindered; who were "bewitched" by that zeal which compassed sea and land to make one proselyte, and were as ready, in the fervour of their party spirit, to "bite and devour one another" as they were willing to change their teachers and their gospels. It is no mere fancy which discovers in these expressions of St. Paul's Epistle indications of the character of that remarkable race of mankind, which all writers, from Cæsar to Thierry, have described as susceptible of quick impressions and sudden changes, with a fickleness equal to their courage and enthusiasm, and a constant liability to that disunion which is the fruit of excessive vanity-that race, which has not only produced one of the greatest nations of modern times, but which, long before the Christian era, wandering forth from their early European seats, burnt Rome and pillaged Delphi, founded an empire in Northern Italy more than co-extensive with Austrian Lombardy, and another in Asia Minor equal in importance to one of the largest pachalicks.

"For the "Galatia" of the New Testament was really the "Gaul" of the East. The "Epistle to the Galatians" would more literally and more correctly be called the "Epistle to the Gauls." When Livy, in his account of the Roman campaigns in Galatia, speaks of its inhabitants, he always calls them "Gauls." When the Greek historians speak of the inhabitants of ancient France, the word they use is "Galatians." The two terms are merely the Greek and Latin forms of the same "barbarian" appellation.

"That emigration of the Gauls, which ended in the settlement in Asia Minor, is less famous than those which led to the disasters in Italy and Greece; but it is, in fact, identical with the latter of these two emigrations, and its results were more permanent. The warriors who roamed over the Cevennes, or by the banks of the Garonne, reappear on the Halys and at the base of Mount Dindymus. They exchange the superstitions of Druidism for the ceremonies of the worship of Cybele. The very name of the chief Galatian tribe is one with which we are familiar in the earliest history of France; and Jerome says that, in his own day, the language spoken at Ancyra was almost identical with that of Trêves. The Galatians were a stream from that torrent of barbarians which poured into Greece in the third century before our era, and which recoiled in confusion from the cliffs of Delphi. Some tribes had previously separated from the main army, and penetrated into Thrace; here they were joined by certain of the fugitives, and together they appeared on the coasts, which are separated by a narrow arm of the sea from the rich plains and valleys of Bithynia. The wars with which that kingdom was harassed made their presence acceptable. Nicomedes was the Vortigern of Asia Minor; and the two Gaulish chieftains, Leonor and Lutar, may be fitly compared to the two legendary heroes of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Some difficulties occurred in the passage of the Bosphorus, which curiously contrast with the easy voyages of our piratic ancestors. But, once established in Asia Minor, the Gauls lost no time in spreading over the whole peninsula with their arms and devastation. In their first crossing over we have compared them to the Saxons. In their first occupation they may be more fitly compared to the Danes; for they were a moveable army rather than a nation, encamping, marching, and plundering at will. They stationed themselves on the site of ancient Troy, and drove their chariots in the plain of the Cayster. They divided nearly the whole peninsula among their three tribes. They levied tribute on cities, and even on kings. The wars of the East found them various occupations. They hired themselves out as mercenary soldiers. They were the royal guards of the Kings of Syria, and the Mamelukes of the Ptolemies in Egypt.

"The surrounding monarchs gradually curtailed their power, and repressed them within narrower limits. First Antiochus Soter drove the Tectosages, and then Eumenes drove the Trocmi and Tolistoboii into the central district which afterwards became Galatia. Their territory was definitely marked out and surrounded by the other states of Asia Minor, and they retained a geographical position similar to that of Hungary in the midst of its Sclavonic neighbours. By degrees they coalesced into a number of small confederate states, and ultimately into one united kingdom. Successive circumstances brought them into contact with the Romans in various ways: first, by a religious embassy sent from Rome to obtain peaceful possession of the sacred image of Cybele; secondly, by the campaign of Manlius, who reduced their power and left them a nominal independence; and then through the period of hazardous alliance with the rival combatants in the civil wars. The first Deiotarus was made king by Pompey, fled before Cæsar at the

battle of Pharsalia, and was defended before the conqueror by Cicero, in a speech which still remains to us. The second Deiotarus, like his father, was Cicero's friend, and took charge of his son and nephew during the Cilician campaign. Amyntas, who succeeded him, owed his power to Antony, but prudently went over to Augustus in the battle of Actium. At the death of Amyntas, Augustus made some modifications in the extent of Galatia, and placed it under a governor. It was now a province, reaching from the borders of Asia and Bithynia to the neighbourhood of Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe, “cities of Lyaconia."

'Henceforward, like the Western Gaul, this territory was a part of the Roman empire, though retaining the traces of its history in the character and language of its principal inhabitants. There was this difference, however, between the Eastern and the Western Gaul, that the latter was more rapidly and more completely assimilated to Italy. It passed from its barbarian to its Roman state, without being subjected to any intermediate civilization. The Gauls of the East, on the other hand, had long been familiar with the Greek language and the Greek culture. St. Paul's Epistle was written in Greek. The contemporary inscriptions of the province are usually in the same language. The Galatians themselves are frequently called Gallo-Græcians; and many of the inhabitants of the province must have been of pure Grecian origin. Another section of the population, the early Phrygians, were probably numerous, but in a lower and more degraded position. The presence of great numbers of Jews in the province implies that it was in some respects favourable for traffic; and it is evident that the district must have been constantly intersected by the course of caravans from Armenia, the Hellespont, and the South. The Roman itineraries inform us of the lines of communication between the great towns near the Halys and the other parts of Asia Minor. These circumstances are closely connected with the spread of the Gospel, and we shall return to them again when we describe St. Paul's first reception in Galatia.’– vol. i. pp. 261-266.

The following description of the mode of teaching among the Jews, and the places where instruction was communicated, is introduced after a notice of Gamaliel :

'Until the formation of the later Rabbinical colleges, which flourished after the Jews were driven from Jerusalem, the instruction in the divinity schools seems to have been chiefly oral.

There was a

prejudice against the use of any book except the Sacred Writings. The system was one of Scriptural exegesis. Josephus remarks, at the close of his Antiquities, that the one thing most prized by his countrymen was power in the exposition of Scripture. "They give to that man," he says, "the testimony of being a wise man, who is fully acquainted with our laws, and is able to interpret their meaning." So far as we are able to learn from our sources of information, the method of instruction was something of this kind. At the meetings of learned men, some passage of the Old Testament was taken as a text, or some

topic for discussion propounded in Hebrew, translated into the vernacular tongue by means of a Chaldee paraphrase, and made the subject of commentary; various interpretations were given, aphorisms were propounded, allegories suggested, and the opinions of ancient doctors quoted and discussed. At these discussions the younger students were present, to listen or to inquire, or, in the sacred words of St. Luke, both hearing them and asking them questions;" for it was a peculiarity of the Jewish schools, that the pupil was encouraged to catechise the teacher. Contradictory opinions were expressed with the utmost freedom. This is evident from a cursory examination of the Talmud, which gives us the best notions of the scholastie disputes of the Jews. This remarkable body of Rabbinical jurisprudence has been compared to the Roman body of civil law; but in one respect it might suggest a better comparison with our own English common law, in that it is a vast accumulation of various and often inconsistent precedents; the arguments and opinions which it contains show very plainly that the Jewish doctors must often have been occupied with the most frivolous questions—that "the mint, anise, and cummin" were eagerly discussed, while "the weightier matters of the law" were neglected; but we should not be justified in passing a hasty judgment on ancient volumes, which are full of acknowledged difficulties. What we read of the system of the Cabbala has often the appearance of an unintelligible jargon; but in all ages it has been true that "the words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies." If we could look back upon the assemblies of the Rabbis of Jerusalem, with Gamaliel in the midst, and Saul among the younger speakers, it is possible that the scene would be as strange and as different from a place of modern education as the schools now seen by travellers in the East differ from contemporary schools in England. But the same might be said of the walks of Plato in the Academy, or the lectures of Aristotle in the Lyceum. It is certain that these free and public discussions of the Jews tended to create a high degree of general intelligence among the people; that the students were trained there in a system of excellent dialectics; that they learnt to express themselves in a rapid and sententious style, often with much poetical feeling; and acquired an admirable acquaintance with the words of the ancient Scriptures.

"These "Assemblies of the Wise" were possibly a continuation of the "Schools of the Prophets," which are mentioned in the historical books of the Old Testament. Wherever the earlier meetings were held, whether at the gate of the city or in some more secluded place, we read of no buildings for purposes of worship or instruction before the Captivity. During that melancholy period, when they mourned over their separation from the temple, the necessity of assemblies must have been deeply felt, for united prayer and mutual exhortation, for the singing of the "songs of Zion," and for remembering the "Word of the Lord." When they returned, the public reading of the law became a practice of universal interest, and from this period we must date the erection of synagogues in the different towns of Palestine. So that St. James could say, in the council at Jerusalem, "Moses of old time