Introduction to the New Testament

The new testament.

Most fittingly does the word "testament" apply to the body of inspired writings which contain the record of His death and last will, who is the great " Father of the world to come." From the lamb, the firstling of his flock, offered up in sacrifice by the martyred Abel in the first age of human history, and whose blood was mixed with the life-blood of the holy priest himself, all the victims offered to God by the patriarchs before Moses and by the sons of Aaron after him, only pointed to the one infinite and all-atoning Victim, Christ Jesus, " the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." He came as our true brother, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, to teach us how to sanctify the present life by labor and suffering and God-like charity, in order thereby to make ourselves worthy of the eternal life to come and the everlasting Kingdom that He reconquered for His own redeemed. From His blood sprang up an immortal and world-wide society, the Church, which He made the heir to His Kingdom, the unfailing depositary of His power, the infallible interpreter of His last Will and Testament for the sanctification and salvation of the nations.

So, then, as the Old Testament was the Will of God solemnly and repeatedly expressed to send us a Saviour and sanctifier, even so is the New Testament this same Will carried out in the death of the Saviour and in the ordinances by which the fruit of His redemption, the means of salvation and sanctification, are secured to the entire race of man in all coming ages. The Second Adam, the Father of the new life, has left us a Mother upon earth to hold His place, to love us, to teach us, to train us to walk in the royal road of generosity and holiness marked out for us by the precepts and examples of God made Man.

"The Old Testament," says Cardinal Erra, "shows God creating the universe by a word ; the New, on the contrary, shows God repairing the world by His death. The former, by repeating the promises relating to a future Redeemer, kept alive, without satisfy ing them, the ardent hopes of mankind, while shadowing forth dimly the design of Redemption. But no sooner has Christ come into the world, and the new covenant taken the place of the old, than the former obscurities disappear in the light of His coming, and all the ancient figures, all the predictions of the Prophets are verified in His Person. The covenant made on Mount Sinai was only in favor of the single house of Israel ; the covenant signed on Calvary regards all mankind. The one was sealed with the blood of goats and oxen, the other with the blood of God's own Son, The spirit of the Old Law was one of fear and bondage ; the glory of the New is the Spirit of Love and adoption. The one was thu covenant of a brief period of time ; the other is to be everlasting.. Christ's Gospel promises rewards that are to be perpetual, infinite., spiritual, and heavenly; the law of Moses only held out a perish' able, limited, visible, and earthly recompense. The Jews did, in deed, hope for the life to come ; but they could only attain to its unspeakable felicity through faith in Christ." (Historia utriusque testamenti, lib. xi., chap, i.)

The New Testament writings contain twenty-seven books, divided by biblical scholars as follows :

Five Historical Books; namely, the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Fourteen Epistles of St. Paul. Seven Catholic or General Epistles The Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John.

The gospel according to st. Matthew.

Independent of all the curious learning which fill the books published in our day about the distinctive characters of each of the four Gospels, is the exquisite pleasure which the devout Christian mind never fails to find in reading and meditating the history of our dear Lord's life and death. The naked text of St. Matthew, or of any one of his brother Evangelists — take it up wherever you will — affords to the soul athirst for Him who is the Life of our life so much of sweet instruction, so much of consolation and strength, that one arises from the study of the chosen page with a great desire to return to it again. To all who sincerely and humbly seek to know Christ more and more, and to become more and more like to Him in thought and word and deed, God never fails to open, in every page of the Gospels, and sometimes in every verse, springs of thought so abundant, so un failing, so refreshing, that one can scarcely tear one's lips away from these living waters. St. Ignatius Loyola was but a young and half-educated soldier, when he shut " -"" himself up behind the bushes and brambles of the Cavern of Manresa to study the mysteries of eternal life with only two books, the New Testament and the " Imitation of Christ." While there, as he afterward was impelled to declare for our edification, he learned more in a single hour spent alone with God in meditating on the life of our Lord, than years spent in listening to the most learned theologians could have taught him. And ever since his day, all who take up the Mysteries of Christ's life, passion, and resurrection, as laid down in the Saint's book of Spiritual Exercises, and meditate them reverently and humbly as he did, will learn more of Christ and of heavenly things than a lifetime of study could impart. "Was not our heart burning within us, whilst He spoke in the way, and opened to us the Scriptures?" said the two disciples of Emmaus to each other, when Christ had disappeared from their sight. To you, dear Reader, remembering our own sweet and frequent experience, we can only say : " Oh, taste and see that the Lord is sweet : blessed is the man that hopeth in Him ! "

Let a modern writer, one — we would venture to affirm — who has drawn from this same source his deep knowledge of the Gospel and of its divine doctrines, instruct us on what distinguishes St. Matthew in particular. His Gospel, Father Coleridge says, "is penetrated from beginning to end with the thought that in our Lord were fulfilled all the types, all the anticipations, all the prophecies of the older dispensation. This and other features lie on the surface of St. Matthew's Gospel. It is not so obvious, but it seems equally true, to say that it is penned with a carefulness of design which makes it almost as much a treatise as a narrative : with a distinct purpose of embodying our Lord's general teaching to an extent and with a completeness which can be asserted of no other of the Gospels. It alone contains the Sermon on the Mount, and it gives us a far greater number of the parables and of the teachings of our Lord as to the counsels of perfection than any other. To these purposes St. Matthew has frequently, as might be expected in the writer of such a treatise, made the order of time subservient. . . . The plan of this Gospel is very simple and very obvious, and explains in a manner quite sufficiently satisfactory that apparent neglect of order which is, in truth, the faithful adherence to an order of a higher kind than that of mere historical sequence."

The sections into which St. Matthew's Gospel may be naturally divided are as follows: I. The birth, infancy, private life of Christ at Nazareth; the mission and preaching of the Precursor; the baptism of our Lord, with His fasting and temptation; chaps, i.-iv. n. Ii. The first mission of our Lord in Galilee, together with the pregnant summary of His doctrine, known as the Sermon on the Mount ; chaps, iv. n-vii. Iii. The seal of our Lord's divine mission in the various displays of His miraculous power; chaps, viii., ix. Iv. The mission of the Apostles and the instructions delivered to them by the Master and destined for all future apostolic laborers ; chap. x. V. St. John Baptist sends his disciples to Christ, and Christ's formal recognition of the Precursor's holiness, as well as the responsibility incurred by rejecting both the Precursor and the Messiah ; chap. xi. Vi. The doubts and opposition which neutralized the effects of Christ's miracles and preaching; chap. xii. Vii. Christ's teaching by parables; chap. xiii. Viii. The missionary work in Galilee described, as well as the miracles with which it was accompanied, and the opposition of Christ's enemies; chaps, xiv., xv., xvi. 12. Ix. The confession of Peter in Northern Galilee, and the solemn announcement of the Passion; xvi. 13. X. The Transfiguration and the preaching of the mystery of the Cross ; xvii.-xx. Xi. Christ enters Jerusalem on the Day of Palms, and His teaching in that city till the beginning of His Passion ; xx. 17; xxv. Xii. The Passion; chaps, xxvi., xxvii. Xiii. The Resurrection; chap, xxviii.

The gospel according to st. Mark.

It is thought that Mark the Evangelist is the same person as "John who was surnamed Mark" (Acts xii. 12). In this case his mother, Mary, is one of the most illustrious and blessed women of the early Church. For, beside being the sister of St. Barnabas, her son would thus have the twofold privilege of being an Evangelist and the associate of St. Paul in his apostolic labors. It is, moreover, a most venerable tradition, dating from the infancy of the Church, that St. Mark the Evangelist was even more closely bound to St. Peter by constant companionship ; and that the Gospel which bears his name was written in Rome under the direction of the Prince of the Apostles, and at the request of the Roman Christians. Hence it is that St. Irenseus calls St. Mark "the interpreter and disciple of Peter," interpres et sectator Petri. St. Mark was, therefore, the son of the heroic and generous woman whose home in Jerusalem was not only that of Peter and his fellow-laborers, the asylum of the faithful in the first persecution, but the house which was the very first temple of the Christian religion in the City of David- It is no wonder that the son of such a mother should have been the loved and trusted companion of the two great Apostles.

The Gospel itself, as compared with that of St. Matthew, is more simple and elementary in its character. Some scholars have even considered it to be only an abridgment of the latter. Nevertheless, although St. Mark omits much of our Lord's teaching, whether discourses or parables, he dwells at greater length upon His miracles, as being more fitted to strike the pagan mind. " He drops the incidents and sayings which require special knowledge of the Jewish system or customs . . . The departures from the chronological order, which St. Matthew has made . . . are usually corrected by St. Mark" (Father Coleridge).

He begins with the missionary labors of John the Baptist, and his baptism of our Lord, the Temptation, and the first preaching in Galilee. At the close of the second chapter we have, in the controversy about the Sabbath, a key to the opposition which the Pharisees are getting up against the Master and His teaching. In the third chapter Christ's labors and miracles are at once introduced ; then the selection of the Apostles. The multitude drawn by Iih^Pmwip the new Teacher and His wondrous cures is such, and the labor of the little band of work-men is so unceasing and overwhelming, "that they could not so much as eat bread" The Scribes from Jerusalem declare the miracles to be the effect of Satanic power. There is a mighty fermentation of opinion and a passionate contention among the masses. There is such danger, too, in the bold speeches of Jesus, that "when His friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on Him. For they said, He is become mad." Presently His mother and His near relatives or " brethren " appear on the scene, anxious about His safety. But He, who knows that His time of suffering has not yet come, and who is solely anxious to impress upon His hearers the divine value of His own message to them, and the renovating virtue of the supernatural truth and grace He brings to His nation, only answers : " Who is My Mother and My brethren? . . . Whosoever shall do the will of God, he is My brother, and My sister, and Mother." With the fourth chapter begins the teaching by parables, which, however, is but briefly dwelt on, the Evangelist insisting chiefly in the four following chapters on Christ's labors and miracles in Galilee. The tenth chapter describes the Divine Master's work in Peraea or " Judaea beyond the Jordan." The remainder of the book, from the eleventh chapter inclusively, recounts our Lord's teaching, trials, and sufferings in Jerusalem down to His death, resurrection, and ascension.

The gospel according to st. Luke.

St. Luke wrote his Gospel at a time when the faith had spread, and several attempts had been made to compose a satisfactory history of its Author, its origin, and its progress. He had been the companion of St. Paul, as he relates himself in the Acts of the Apostles, which he also wrote. It has been the constant tradition, both of the eastern and the western churches, that St. Luke was by profession a physician. Another but less accepted tradition attributes to him some skill as a painter. He remained the associate of St. Paul till after this apostle's first imprisonment in Rome ; and obtained himself the crown of martyrdom like his beloved master. St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Eusebius bear witness to the general and early belief that he wrote his Gospel under the direction of St. Paul, as St. Mark had written his under that of St. Peter.

Being a native of Antioch, Luke was familiar with the Greek language and culture. Hence the superior purity of his diction. "His work," says Father Coleridge, "is more like a regular history than that of the other Evangelists. He covers the whole ground from the Annunciation to the Ascension, and there is no prominent or important feature in the whole series of the mysteries and actions of our Lord's Life which he has left untouched. At the same time, his Gospel is to a great extent new — new either in the events which it relates or in the fresh incidents which it adds to the history of what has been already related, and he seems to make it his rule to supply omissions, and to illustrate the method and principles of our Lord's conduct by anecdotes or discourses, which resemble very much those which others have inserted, but which are not the same ... If we consider St. Matthew as addressing himself primarily to the Hebrew Christians, or rather to their teachers, and St. Mark as turning upon the direct converts from heathenism, we may look upon St. Luke as the Evangelist of the Churches in which the Jewish element had been more or less absorbed by the larger influx of Gentiles . . . He dwells with particular care upon the sacerdotal character of our Lord, upon the healing and compassionate aspect of His life, upon His love for penitents and sinners, and the like. . . ."

The first section, chaps, i., ii., supplies the omissions of the other Gospels, giving the history of the conception and birth of our Lord and John Baptist, together with His presentation in the Temple, His hidden life at Nazareth, and His appearing among the Doctors in Jerusalem at the age of twelve. The incidents of this early portion of Christ's career mentioned by the two preceding Evangelists are passed over by St. Luke. The second section comprises chaps, iii., iv. and v., bringing the narrative down to the first preaching in Galilee. Chaps, vi.-ix. 20 give the entire second period of our Lord's life down to the Confession of St. Peter. From chap. ix. 21 to chap, xviii. 30 St. Luke relates what regards the doctrine of the Cross, the Transfiguration and our Lord's labors in Judaea, a portion of his life — the last year — not mentioned in the other Gospels. From chap, xviii. 31 to chap. xix. 27 are detailed the occurrences and sayings that took place between Christ's leaving Peraea and His arrival in Jerusalem. The remaining chapters are the history Of His labors and sufferings in Jerusalem, of His resurrection, His manifestation to His disciples, and His ascension.

The gospel according to st. John.

John, as well as James the Elder or Greater, was by his mother, Mary-Salome, the first cousin of our Lord ; James the Less or Younger and Jude or Thadseus being the sons of another sister — all four, on account of their near relationship, being designated in Jewish phrase as the brothers of our Lord. John was especially dear to Him ; and this special affection has ever been attributed in the Church to John's virginal purity of heart. Of the life of this Evangelist we shall speak more fully when we treat of his Epistles. At present it is very important that the reader should have a clear notion of what is distinctive in his Gospel.

St. Irenseus states that John published his Gospel while he was residing in Ephesus. St. Jerome says that he wrote it at the request of the Asiatic bishops, who besought him to treat in a special manner of the divinity of Christ. It is thought that this Gospel, although completed and published in Ephesus, was chiefly, if not wholly, written in the isle of Patmos, and, not improbably, after the destruction of Jerusalem.

In its contents and scope it is evidently supplementary to the three other Gospels. "In truth, St. John's Gospel touches the others only at one single point before he comes to the last few days of our Lord's Life, and even as to those, nine-tenths of what he relates are altogether supplementary. St. John is distinguished for the great length at which he relates the words of our Lord, and the large space which he spends upon single incidents or occasions. Thus no Gospel is so easily broken up into its component parts as this ; its arrangement becomes perfectly simple as soon as its supplementary character is recognized. " Such is the judgment of Father Coleridge.

The book may be divided into two very distinct parts ; the first part embracing eleven chapters ending with the recalling Lazarus to life ; and the second, ten chapters, the incidents and discourses pertaining to the Last Supper, the Passion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The first part comprises two sections : I. Chaps, i.-iv. describe incidents and events of which nothing is said by the other Evangelists. The time they cover extends from Christ's baptism to the beginning of his first missionary tour through Galilee. The occurrences take place alternately in Judaea — on the banks of the Jordan, in Jerusalem or the adjacent territory — and in Galilee. Il The scene of the next six chapters, v.-x., is mostly in Jerusalem. Chapter v. recounts the healing on the Sabbath of the man sick for thirty-eight years, and the assertion by Christ of His own divinity during the public discussion occasioned by this miracle. Chapter vi. describes the multiplication of the loaves and fishes in Galilee, just before the second Pasch of Christ's public ministry, together with the discussion relating to the Manna and the Bread of Life figured by the Manna. The next four chapters, vii.-x., relate our Lord's sayings and doings during the last year of His Life, at the Feast of Tabernacles in the beginning of October, and at the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple in the December following. Iii. This section, comprising the eleventh chapter, gives an account of the miracle performed in favor of Lazarus. The Second Part of this Gospel gives, chapter after chapter, the Evangelist's additions to what had been already recorded in the other Gospels.

To the attentive and devout student of the New Testament, St. John's Gospel will give much light to understand the Life of our Lord as a whole, and much food for pious contemplation. The Beloved Disciple has been called " the Theologian " by the early Church Fathers, because he alone affirms again and again the divinity of our Lord. He knew him to be true man, born of his own near kinswoman, reared in his own country among his own kinsfolk, and, during the last period of the life ended so tragically, admitted into the closest companionship and loving intimacy with Him who was the true Son of God as well as the true Son of the Virgin Mary. It is the Divine Sonship of the Master that John proclaims in the very preface to his Gospel, lifting our souls up to these eternal splendors amid which the Word dwells evermore in the bosom of the Father.

The acts of the apostles.

This book, which is also the work of the Evangelist St. Luke, is the only inspired history — even though a very partial one — of the infancy of the Christian Church. The events which it records cover a space of about thirty years. As the very title, "Acts," indicates, it is the record of an eye-witness. Still it is not, and does not purport to be, a full and complete history of the acts or labors of all the Apostles during that period. It relates, in the first part, principally the labors cf St. Peter, and those of St. Paul in the second. Around these two great figures, indeed, are grouped subordinate laborers ; these two, nevertheless, stand out in the narration as the central personages.

We see, in the very first chapter, the promise of Christ about the coming of the Holy Spirit fulfilled, and the timid Galilaean fishermen transformed into the dauntless and eloquent apostles of their crucified Master. Peter and John, the first in authority and the foremost in love, are also the boldest in confessing Him before the very people who had put Him to death. " Immediately after the Ascension," writes the Protestant Henry Alford, "St. Peter, the first of the Twelve, designated by our Lord as the Rock on which the Church was to be built, the holder of the Keys of the Kingdom, becomes the prime actor under God in the founding of the Church. He is the centre of the first group of sayings and doings. The opening of the door to the Jews (chap, ii.) and Gentiles (chap, x.) is his office, and by him, in good time, is accomplished." Let us listen to the great Bossuet as he resumes the belief of the Church on this point. " Peter appears as the first (among the apostles) in every way: the first to confess the faith (St. Matt, xvi. 16); the first in the obligation of exercising brotherly love (St. John xxi. 15 and following); the first of all the apostles who saw Christ risen from the dead (1 Cor. xv. 5), as he was to be the first to bear witness to the Resurrection in presence of the whole people (Acts ii. 14); the first to move in filling up the vacant place among the apostles (Acts i. 15); the first to confirm the faith by a miracle (lb. iii. 6, 7); the first to convert the Jews (lb. ii. 14) ; the first to admit the Gentiles {lb. x.); the first in everything." Hear him again tracing out the design of Providence in the career of the two great Apostles. "Christ doth not speak in vain. Peter shall bear with him, whithersoever he goeth, in this open confession of the faith (St. Matt. xvi. 16), the foundation on which stand all the churches. And here is the road the Apostle has to follow. Through Jerusalem, the holy city in which Christ manifested Himself; in which the Church was to "begin" (St. Luke xxiv. 47), before continuing the succession of God's people ; 111 which consequently Peter was to be for a long time the foremost in teaching and in directing ; whence he was wont to go round about visiting the persecuted churches (Acts ix. 32), and confirming them in the faith ; in which it was needful for the great Paul — Paul come back from the third heaven — to go " to see Peter" (Galat. i. 18), not James, though he, so great an apostle, the " brother of the Lord," the Bishop of Jerusalem, surnamed the Just, and equally revered by both Jews and Christians, was also there. But it was not James that Paul was bound to come "to see." He came to see Peter, and to see him, as the original text suggests, as a thing full of wonders and worthy of being sought after. He came to contemplate and study Peter, as St. John Chrysostom hath it (in Epist. ad Gal., c. i., n. 1 1) : to see him as some one greater and older than himself: to see Peter, nevertheless, not to be instructed by him, for Christ instructed Paul by a special revelation ; but in order to leave a model to future ages, and to establish, once for all, that no matter how learned a man might be, no matter how holy-- were he even another Paul — he must go to see Peter. . : . Through this holy city, then, and through Antioch, the metropolitan city of the East, ... far more than that, the most illustrious church on earth, since in it the Christian name arose ; . . . through these two glorious cities, so dear to the Church, and distinguished by such opposite features, Peter had to come to Rome — Rome still more illustrious, the head of Paganism and of the Empire, and which to seal the triumph of Christ over the world, is predestined to be the capital of religion, the head of the Church, Peter's own city Thither was he per force to come by Jerusalem and Antioch, But why do we see St. Paul in it? The mysterious design would take long to explain. Only bear in mind the great division of the world between Peter and Paul., in which Peter, though given the whole world in charge in consequence of his primacy, and charged by an express command (Acts x.) to have a care of the Gentiles whom he admitted in the person of Cornelius the Centurion, did, nevertheless, take on himself the special care of the Jews even as Paul took a special care of the Gentiles (Galat. ii. 7, 8, 9). As a division was necessary, it was fitting that the first of the apostles should have the first-born among the peoples (the Jews) ; that he who was the head, and to whom all the rest must be united, should have the nation on which the others must be grafted, and that the Vicar of Christ should have Christ's own share. That, however, is not enough: Rome itself must fall to Peter's share. For, although, as the capital of Paganism, Rome belonged in a special manner to Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, nevertheless, it was in Rome that Peter, the head of Christendom, was bound to found the Church. Nor is this all : the extraordinary commission of St. Paul must die there with him, and thus returning to the supreme Chair of Peter, to which it was subordinated, the power of Paul must raise the Roman church to the highest point of authority and splendor" (Sermon on the Unity of the Church).

The fourteen epistles of st. Paul.

In the Acts of the Apostles St. Luke describes the first growth of the Church in Jerusalem and throughout Palestine, and, outside of Palestine, in various countries of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. A society arises and rapidly increases aroqnd the teaching and ruling body of Apostles so carefully chosen, trained, and instructed by our Lord Himself. They and their successors after them to the end of time were to teach the nations of earth " to observe all things whatsoever" the Master had revealed as the law of life for mankind (St. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). This immortal society thus springing into existence beneath the shadow of the Cross of Calvary, was not only to teach with the fulness of Christ's own authority, but to baptize and administer to the faithful ail Christ's saving and sanctifying ordinances; and on the human race who hear this preaching and this call to taptism and newness of life is imposed the necessity of complying under pain of eternal loss. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved : but he that believeth not, shall be condemned " (St. Markxvi. 16). Baptism is but the door by which one enters into this Society: it is the indispensable initiatory rite and new birth in which the children of the fallen Adam are born again of the blood of the Second — the blood of a God. Other divine ordinances, sacraments of heavenly origin, and pregnant with divine virtue, are administered in due course, and according to the soul's needs, to maintain, renew, increase, and perfect the supernatural life bestowed in the new birth of Baptism.

And so this Society divinely commissioned to teach, to regenerate, and govern the race of man in all things pertaining to eternal salvation, stands forth in the full consciousness of its power, and speaks to Jerusalem and to the world by the mouth of Peter, its visible chief, on the day of the first Christian Pentecost. Three thousand men baptized and admitted forthwith into fellowship with the preacher and his associates, attest the might of the Spirit who moves both the speaker and his hearers. Thenceforward the mighty movement is propagated far and wide. They teach — these fathers of the new moral world which Christ came down to create — they baptize, they govern their flocks, with unquestioned authority, both the rulers and the subjects in the infant Church appreciating sensibly and to the full the last utterance of Christ: "Behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world " (St. Matt, xxviii. 20).

In every one of the following epistles or letters addressed by St. Paul to the churches which he had founded or visited, or to the bishops he had set over them, the consciousness of this divinelygiven authority is evident in the writer, and evidently supposed in the persons to whom they are written. He is in prison at Rome, and from there writes four of these touching letters, to Philemon, to the Colossians, the Philippians, and to the Ephesians. Just listen to some of the divine lessons of the imprisoned Apostle. To the noble Philemon whose forgiveness and brotherly charity he bespeaks for the fugitive slave Onesimus : " Though I have much confidence in Christ Jesus, to command thee that which is to the purpose, for charity sake I rather beseech, whereas thou art such an one, as Paul an old man, and now a prisoner also of Jesus Christ : I beseech thee for my son, whom I have begotten in my bands, Onesimus . . . Trusting in thy obedience, I have written to thee, knowing that thou wilt also do more than I say." Thus does apostolic charity address itself to the work of abolishing the inveterate evil of slavery along with the manifold corruptions of the Pagan world. — To the Colossians: "We (Timothy and Paul) . . . cease not to pray for you and to beg that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding ... If so ye continue in the faith, grounded, and settled, and immovable from the hope of the Gospel vhich ye have heard, which is preached in all the creation that is under heaven, whereof I Paul am made a minister. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh for His body, which is the Church ... If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God . . . Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth . . . uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness . . . Stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of Him that created him." This God-like virtue was the new wine which could not be held in old vessels: all had to be divine in the Christian man. — To the

Philippians, who were especially dear to Paul : " My dearly beloved, my joy, and my crown : so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved ! . . . Let your modesty be known to all men . . . Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame — if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline — think on these things. The things which you have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, these do ye ! and the God of peace shall be with you!" — Finally, to the Ephesians: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with spiritual blessings ... in Christ. As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in His sight in charity ... I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . that He would grant you, . . . to be strengthened by His Spirit with might unto the inward man. That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth. To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God."

"Any one, in reading the Epistles of St. Paul," says Bergier. "must see that they were written on the spur of some particular occurrence, to clear up some question put to the writer, to correct some dangerous abuse, to inculcate some special duties ; that his purpose, in no one of these letters, was to draw up for the faithful a profession of faith, or an exposition of all the doctrines of Christian belief, or of all its moral duties ; that, while writing to one Church, he never prescribes that his letter shall be communicated to all the others. It is, therefore, perverse obstinacy in Protestants to maintain that whenever St. Paul preached or taught by word of mouth, he confined himself to repeating the instructions contained in some one of his letters ; and that no truth which is not laid down in writing can belong to the Christian doctrine." On the contrary, it is evident from a cursory glance at the Epistles themselves, that St. Paul refers to a previous body of truths delivered by oral teaching, and to the acknowledged fact that the members of each church had been thoroughly grounded by such teaching in the great truths of the new Revelation.

The epistle to the romans.

This was, most probably, written from Corinth, in the 58th year after the birth of Christ, two years before St. Paul went to Rome, and twenty-four years after his conversion. During this quarter of a century the Christian faith had grown wonderfully in the capital of the Roman Empire. The church there, as in most other cities of the empire, was composed of Jewish and Gentile converts, among whom a discussion arose as to their relative claims to the esteem of the great body of believers throughout the world. The Jews prided themselves on their being the descendants of Abraham, on their ancestors having lived under a theocracy governed by a system of law and religion solemnly revealed to their own nation, while the rest of the human race remained in the darkness and horrid corruptions of idolatry. The converted Gentiles, on the other hand, nursed the belief that they had obtained the grace of conversion as a reward of their fidelity to the law of nature, and pointed out the many great and pure names of their philosophers, -warriors, and statesmen. Thus the Jewish Christians seemed to think that their faithful observance of the Mosaic law had deserved the grace of the divine adoption and justification in Christ, while their Gentile brethren attributed their possessing a like privilege to their having followed the guidance of the natural light of reason. St. Paul, who had been specially chosen to teach the Gentile world, wrote this Epistle to convince both these classes of converts of their serious error, by showing that the supernatural grace of our adoption as children of God, and the whole subsequent train of graces which lead the soul to believe and to be justified, are bestowed on us gratuitously, as the effect of God's pure mercy, without any previous merit of our own. To stop the vain boasting of both Jew and Gentile, St. Paul shows how both were the slaves of sin, and, therefore, unable to merit the gift of justification by their own good deeds. The condition of the people of God • was, indeed, attended with many singular spiritual advantages and privileges, as compared with that of the pagan world. Nevertheless, neither Jew nor Pagan could by their own merits lift themselves up to the supernatural rank and regenerated condition of the Christian people. In order to convey a conviction' of this truth to the minds of the faithful at Rome, St. Paul begins by exposing the horrible crimes committed among Pagans even by the most enlightened philosophers — chap. i. In chap, ii. he enumerates the transgressions of the Jews; and concludes, in chap, iii., that in as much as both were thus subject to sin, so the justification vouchsafed them in Christ must be absolutely gratuitous, the effect of grace and not of legal justice or natural virtue, and therefore to be attributed to supernatural faith, which is a gift of God. This position is confirmed and illustrated by the example of Abraham's heroic faith and justification, chap. iv. In chap. v. is set forth the excellence of this grace of Christ; in chap. vi. the Christian soul is urged to preserve, cherish, and increase this priceless gift. In chap. vii. he teaches that even in the Christian, after baptism and justification, the evil forces of nature still remain with the low animal appetites (concupiscence) that drag the soul down toward sensual gratification : this concupiscence is a force which rebels against the restraints of the Mosaic law or the law of nature, without being put down by them, the victory over it being reserved to the grace received through Christ. St. Paul then proceeds to enumerate the fruits of faith, chap viii. ; shows in chaps, ix., x., xi-, that the grace of justification was bestowed on the Gentiles in preference to the Jews, because the former readily submitted to the preaching of the Gospel, while the latter rejected Christ; that, whereas the supernatural gift of faith was a thing not due to either Jews or Gentiles, the promises made to Abraham and his posterity do not therefore fail, nor can the divine justice be impugned. In chaps, xii.-xvi., the Apostle inculcates the cardinal precepts of morality so necessary to all who believe in the Gospel (see Picquigny's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans).

Vainly have those who reject the infallible authority of the Catholic Church endeavored to build on the words of St. Paul a system of blind and fatal predestination, alike injurious to the divine goodness and destructive of man's free will under the action of divine grace. From the passage, chap. ix. 13, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated," we must not conclude that our good God, without any regard to the merits of men and independently of His foreknowledge of their good and evil deeds, predestines some to be the objects of His hate and others to be the objects of His love. On the contrary, we are to believe that this predestination in its twofold aspect is based on the foreknowledge God must needs have of the good or evil deeds of every human being. Even so the words, " I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,'' etc. (Ibid. 15), are not to be construed into an absolute election of a certain class of persons destined to everlasting happiness, independently of all prevision of their good or evil deeds. They simply imply that the almighty goodness is ever free to grant the grace of faith and justification to whomsoever it pleases. It is a supernatural gift, one not due to nature or natural merits. Hence St. Paul says (Ibid. 16) : " So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. . . . Therefore He hath mercy on whom He will; and, whom He will, He hardeneth; " that is, He allows the hard and rebellious heart to persist in its rejection of His graces, as He did in the case of Pharaoh and in that of the apostate Judas. So "to harden " is not to predestine to eternal damnation, anymore than "to show mercy " or " to have mercy" is to predestine to eternal bliss. .

Let us Catholics rest sweetly in the assurance that we have in the living voice of the Church an infallible interpreter of the dead letter of Scripture, whether it be the writings of St. Paul or any other book of the Old or New Testament.

I. And ii. To the corinthians.

Corinth, situated on a narrow neck of land that separated the yEgean from the Mediterranean Sea, .was thus the central point on the very highway of commerce between Italy and Asia. The city was rich and beautiful, and the climate lovely. When it first fell beneath the arms of the Roman Republic, the seduction of its evil arts on that hitherto austere commonwealth was such, that from that time dates the decline of Roman virtue and liberty. The city had been visited by St. Peter before St. Paul came there, and the Christian faith had made such rapid conquests, and operated so extraordinary a change in the manners of the local Christian society, that it was the wonder of all Greece. Still, both because of the great mental activity which prevailed among Corinthians of all classes, and because of the concourse of strangers from the East and the West who met here like two adverse tides, there was a great diversity of opinion and sentiment among the faithful. St. Peter had left there as elsewhere the impress of his authority and the memory of his virtues. After him St. Paul had come, and the eloquence of the Apostle of the Gentiles had, not improbably, cast into the shade the preaching of the poor fisherman of Galilee; then had come from Alexandria Apollos, more eloquent even than Paul, and one who had the secret of all the philosophies of Egypt, Asia, and Greece. And so, as was the wont in the East, these cultured Christians would discuss the respective merits of their teachers, as the university students in Athens and Alexandria criticised the eloquence and doctrines of their rhetoricians and philosophers. This was one source of contention. Another came from their very imperfect acquaintance with the moral law of the Gospel— the Jewish converts, probably, contending for the maintenance of Jewish customs, while the Gentile proselytes refused to be governed by the prescriptions of the Mosaic law. The Corinthians themselves had, besides, written to St. Paul, begging to be instructed on several matters of doctrine and discipline. This letter is an answer to this prayer, as well as a general admonition to the church of Corinth to discountenance unwise and uncharitable discussions, and to cherish, above all things, unici of souls by firm faith and inviolable charity. " Every one of you saith : I indeed am of Paul ; and I am of Apollo ; and I of Cephas ; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul then crucified for you? or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" Such are the words of weighty remonstrance with which the Apostle begins his instruction, and they let us into the secret of these lamentable divisions. To the proud and vain Greeks, who sought and prized philosophical wisdom above all else, the Apostle declares that he knows but one wisdom : that by which God has redeemed and is converting the world through the mystery of the Cross, and the humiliations of the Crucified — a means of all the most inadequate according to the judgment of the worldly-wise. "But we have the mind of Christ," he declares, as the sole rule and measure of our judgments in things spiritual.

Wherefore, as the merits of their teachers did not bring about the change of heart wrought in the converts, but the hidden virtue of the Cross and the grace of the Crucified, so the labors of Apostolic men had been barren of all heavenly fruit without that same grace. " Let no man therefore glory in men. For all things are yours . . . And you are Christ's: and Christ is God's." It is worse than folly, then, to dispute about the personal qualities or merits of the Apostle through whom one has received the word of salvation, seeing that the Church and the whole body of the divine ordinances are God's gift to man in Christ, and that one ought to look to the Almighty Giver and the priceless gift rather than to the earthly channel through which it is communicated. Nevertheless, as the Apostles are the workmen and servants of the Master, to Him alone are they amenable in judgment. Hence, chap, iv., the severe reproof given to all who permit themselves to arraign the conduct of God's ministers.

To humble these vain-glorious and self-sufficient Corinthians, the Apostle, in chap, v., touches on the festering sore both of Pagan and Christian society in the beautiful city — unbridled licentiousness. A Christian man had forgotten himself so far as to marry his own stepmother. Him the Apostle excommunicates, and then comes the solemn admonition to the young Church of the place: "Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump ? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste . . . Put away the Evil One from among yourselves ! "

Then follow authoritative admonitions against the unbrotherly practice of bringing their wrongs for judgment before the Pagan tribunals, and against those sins of impurity that are so opposed to the ideal of Christian holiness, chap. vi. ; lessons on marriage, virginity, and celibacy, chap. vii. ; on abstinence from meats offered to idols, chap. viii. ; on his own voluntary poverty, his working at a trade, and his bodily austerities, chap. ix. ; on the abstinence from certain meats to be observed by the faithful, x. ; on the dress and functions of women in the church-services, and the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, xi. ; on the divine economy in the distribution of extraordinary gifts and g:aces, xii. ; on the incomparable excellence of charity as the great central virtue to be sought and practiced by all, xiii. ; on the preference to be given to the gift or talent of prophesying ; that is, of understanding and expounding divine things, xiv. In the xvth chapter he answers the last question put to him by the Corinthians on the final resurrection, concluding, in the last chapter, with directions about collecting alms for the needy churches, and various farewell words of admonition and blessing.

The Second Epistle, written a few months after the First, was penned by the Apostle to relieve the excommunicated Corinthian of his heavy censure, and to encourage the prompt good-will of all those who had profited by the reproofs and teachings detailed above. St. Paul once more reasserts his apostolic independence of all earthly praise and commendation. The Judaizing faction, instead of yielding to Paul's appeal in favor of union and charity, still persisted in accusing him of undue leaning to the Gentiles and of defaming Moses and the law. They evidently went so far as to deny him the rank and quality of a true Apostle, thereby belittling his ministry and destroying his influence with a great number of people. These factious intrigues had, perhaps, induced the Corinthians to draw up letters commendatory of Paul and his labors. At any rate, he declines any such commendation, affirms the independence of the ministers of the New Testament, exalts the mission entrusted to himself and his associates (chap, iv.); urges them to be liberal in their charity toward the needy sister churches; and exhorts them to make a good use of God's liberality toward themselves. From chapter x. to the end he nobly defends himself and his labors against the detractors who had been so busy among the Corinthians.

Epistle to the galatians.

This Epistle was written from Ephesus, according to the opinion of the best biblical scholars. The Galatians were the Gauls or Celts of Western Asia ; they had been instructed in the faith by St. Paul, but, in his absence, had been, like the Corinthians, sadly disturbed by Judaizing mischief-makers, who persuaded them of the necessity of conforming to the law of circumcision and to other Jewish observances, depreciating at the same time the apostolic rank and services of Paul. He therefore writes to undo what these false teachers and pernicious zealots had been doing among the fervent, hot-headed, and impu sive Galatians. He establishes his own claim to the Apostolate by relating the fact of his miraculous conversion and his special mission to the Gentiles, a mission received immediately from Christ, and expressly approved by the body of the Apostles and by Peter in particular. He shows, moreover, that Peter as well as his colleagues had sanctioned the stand that he (Paul) had taken on the questions arising about the Mosaic Law, and the free and sinless intercourse of converted Jews with their Gentile brethren and others. He solemnly rejects the obligation which Judaizing Christians sought to impose on the Church of submitting to the prescriptions of the ceremonial law of Moses ; and asserts the freedom from that law of servitude as the spiritual birthright of Christians. He, therefore, exhorts them to free themselves from the bondage of sensual superstitions to which both the modern Jews and the Gentiles were slaves, and to serve Christ in that lofty freedom of soul into which the apostolic teaching and the infallible guidance of the Church were sure to lead them. " Stand fast, and be not held again under the yoke of bondage. Behold, I Paul tell you, that if you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing . . . You are made void of Christ, you who are justified in the law : you are fallen from grace . . . You did run well : who hath hindered you, that you should not obey the truth ? This persuasion is not from Him that calleth you."

The epistle to the ephesians.

The city of Ephesus has many claims on our veneration. It became, after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the chief residence of the Apostle St. John, and the residence as well to the end of her life of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There, also, as tradition hath it, her blessed body was. buried during the brief interval between her death and her assumption into heaven. Ephesus, moreover, was at that time not only the great stronghold of Pagan superstition — containing the incomparable Temple of Diana — but the great intellectual centre of Western Asia. Its schools rivaled in influence those of Alexandria and Athens, while its philosophers boasted of possessing all the secrets of the most ancient philosophies of the East. During the first seven centuries of Christianity Ephesus held a commanding place among the Asiatic churches, and was the scene of events and discussions famous in ecclesiastical history. Even when it fell into the hands of the Mohammedans, its traditions and monuments secured to the remnants of its Catholic population unusual protection and privileges.

As St. Paul had repeatedly visited Ephesus and labored there with extraordinary zeal and success, he could not but feel a most fatherly interest in the prosperity of a church holding such a position, and destined to wield such a powerful influence on the sisterchurches of Asia Minor. There is a most touching passage in Acts xx. 15-38, describing Paul's interview at Miletus with the clergy of the Church of Ephesus. The beautiful farewell discourse which the Apostle addresses to them ought to be read in conjunction with this Epistle, written during Paul's first imprisonment at Rome, in the year 62.

The Epistle itself is one of the most sublime productions of the Apostle of the Gentiles. To the infant and persecuted Church of Ephesus, surrounded by schools in which were taught all the systems of Grecian and Asiatic philosophy, all the seductive theories of Persian Gnosticism, St. Paul exposes in this letter the whole scheme of God's supernatural providence in the Incarnation, the Redemption, and the establishment of the Church, the great instrument by which the human race, through all succeeding generations, might become incorporated into one undying Society under Christ as Head, and thus be made sharers of all the temporal and eternal benefits of His redemption. The Christian family are thus "the adopted children of God," i. 5, under Christ, the God-Man, elevated in Heaven above all created beings, and being made " Head over all the Church, which is His body, and the fulness of Him, who is filled all in all," i. 20-23. In Him, in this blessed society which is His mystic Body, all the social barriers established by oriental castes and prejudices are broken down ; there is neither Greek nor Barbarian, nor slave nor free, nor Jew nor Gentile : " the Gentiles " are " fellow-heirs and copartners of His promise in Christ Jesus by the Gospel," iii. 6 ; Paul hath been sent to preach " the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to enlighten all men," without distinction, on the merciful design of the eternal God, iii. 8-21. The remainder of the epistle is a most eloquent exhortation to the God-like virtues becoming such a divine rank.

The epistle to the philippians.

Of this sufficient mention was made in the section on the " Fourteen Epistles of St. Paul." It is the sweet and affectionate expression of the Apostle's gratitude and fatherly tenderness toward a church which sent him in his dire need substantial proofs of love, and which gave, amid continual persecutions, evidence of heroic constancy and piety.

The epistle to the colossians.

Colossse was a beautiful and flourishing city, situated inland from Ephesus, on the head-waters of the Maeander and near the high-road from Ephesus to the Euphrates. Colossae was thus exposed to the same dangerous influences against which St. Paul wished to guard the Ephesians in the Epistle addressed to them, There is a striking resemblance both in the doctrinal lessons he gives to the Colossians and in the practical virtues which he recommends to them, and the substance of his great Epistle to the Ephesians. The letter to the Church of Colossse Avas also written by the Apostle from his prison in Rome, and sent by Tychicus, Epaphras, and Onesimus, the two latter being themselves Colossians by birth, and Epaphras having been, moreover, the first to preach the Oospcl in his native city. In the first, or doctrinal portion, St. Paul clearly warns the Colossians against the Gnostic theories, as well as the narrow exclusiveness of the Judaizing preachers. We have been "translated (by God the Father) into the Kingdom of the Son of His love, . . . who is the first-born of every creature: for in Him were all things created in Heaven and on earth, visible and invisible," i. 13-16.

The whole "mystery" of the Christian dispensation, the whole purpose of Christ's work and government, is to present the Christian man " holy and unspotted and blameless before Him," i. 22. It is to attain this end that Paul labors and suffers: " We preach admonishing every man, and teachin every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus," i. 28. They are to glory in Christ as being th infinite God and the infinite Wisdom. "As therefore you have received (been taught) Jesus Christ, walk ye in Him," ii. 6. They an not to go back to the imperfect and now empty forms and observances of Judaism, ii. 16-23. They are to shine forth in supernatural newness of life, iii., iv.

The first epistle to the thessalonians.

St. Paul had a special and well-merited affection for the churches of Thessalonica and Philippi. In both these cities the Gospel had been received willingly, and its professors there had shown themselves worthy followers of Paul and of his Master, Christ. There, however — throughout all Greece, indeed, as well as in Asia Minor — the Jews had shown themselves the bitter and unscrupulous opponents of the Apostles, and the unrelenting persecutors of all who embracec the Christian faith. Through their misrepresentations Paul had to fly from Philippi, and had been assailed in Thessalonica with still greater violence. Nevertheless, a flourishing church had sprung up there, composed principally of converts from Paganism. After St. Paul's departure, the Jewish Synagogue in Thessalonica — powerful even then, and comprising at present fully one-third of the entire population — employed its whole influence in shaking the fidelity of the new Christians, and in persecuting all those whose constancj remained proof against persecution. St. Timothy, Paul's indefatigable companion, had been sent to comfort the Thessalonians in their distress and to inquire carefully into their spiritual progress. On h's return, he reported most favorably to his master. Thereupon St. Paul wrote to Thessalonica. It is the letter of a true fatherly, apostolic heart, written, most probably, from Corinth in the last months • ^ the year 52. After expressing his devout gratitude for their progress and perseverance in virtue and piety, he replies to the personal uouse heaped on him by the Jews by recalling to the minds of his converts with what heroic zeal and disinterestedness he had laborec among them, supporting himself the while by the work of his own hands. They have not, therefore, -any cause to blush for their spiritual father. In the impossibility of returning to their city, he beseeches them to increase their fidelity and fervor; praises their extraordinary charity ; urges them to attend, in all peacefulness and quietness, to their respective avocations, and to those steady habits of industry which secure independence. They are not" to mourn hopelessly for their dead. They are destined to share in Christ's glorious resurrection. Being certain that this Great Day of awakening shall come for all, " Let us not sleep as others do ; but Ht us watch and be sober . . . And we beseech you. brethren, rebuke the unquiet, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient towards all men."

The second epistle to the thessalonians.

This was also written from Corinth very soon after the First, and for a like purpose. He particularly instructs them not to be alarmed by the predictions of some false teachers who went about announcing that the end of the world was near at hand. " Therefore, brethren, stand fast ! and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle. ' '

The first and second epistle to timothy.—

This faithful companion and fellow-laborer of St. Paul was a native of Derbe or Lystra in Lycaonia, the son of a Greek father, and of a Jewish mother, Eunice, to whose careful training as well as to that of his grandmother, Lois, he owed not only his knowledge of the Old Testament writings, but his conversion to Christianity. From his first meeting with Paul at Lystra, the Apostle's soul was drawn to the heroic youth in whom he discovered all the great qualities that go to make the apostolic missionary and ruler of God's church. This was during St. Paul's firct missionary tour, when Timothy was only a stripling. Seven years afterward, during Paul's second tour, Timothy was set apart and ordained for the apostolic ministry. Thenceforward he became Paul's right hand in his gigantic labors, going whithersoever the latter would, to confirm and console the faithful of Europe or Asia, following his master to Rome and sharing, it is thought, his first imprisonment there. After their liberation, Paul and his companion revisited Asia together, Timothy being placed in charge of the Church of Ephesus, while St. Paul went over to Macedonia.

The First Epistle, written at some uncertain date after the separation, is, manifestly, an instruction on the duties of the pastoral office, every line of which has been for eighteen centuries the delightful spiritual food of bishops and priests all over the world. The Second Epistle was written from St. Paul's prison in Rome, ind most probably a very short time before his death. " I have a remembrance of thee in my prayers, night and day, desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy ; calling to mind that faith which is in thee unfeigned, which also dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and in thy mother Eunice, and I am certain that in thee also" (i. 3-5). Thus does the fatherly heart of the aged Apostle go out to the young bishop, touching and moving powerfully every heroic fibre in it, before he lays before him the details of the high and holy duties which are incumbent on him. It is like the eagle encouraging its young to try the loftiest flights.

"Only Luke is with me," the imprisoned Apostle says in concluding; "take Mark and bring him with thee . . . The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, especially the parchments." Such is the poverty of this glorious apostle of Jesus of Nazareth ! Would you see a further resemblance of Paul with his Master, listen to what the apostle says of his first appearance before the Roman magistrates, probably of his first trial by torture : "At my first answer no man stood with me, but all forsook me : may it not be laid to their charge ! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me," 2 Tim. iv. 16, 17.

The epistle to titus.

Titus was the son of Greek parents, by birth a Gentile, consequently. He was a fellow-laborer of St. Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, and assisted with them at the Council of Jerusalem, in which it was decided that the Gentile converts should not be compelled to receive circumcision. He was employed by St. Paul on various missions to the churches, such as were intrusted to Timothy, and, like the latter, was appointed by the Apostle to discharge the episcopal functions. In the interval between St. Paul's first and second imprisonment at Rome, he visited Crete in company with Titus, and left the latter in the island after him to govern the church there. The Epistle addressed to Titus from Nicopolis (in Epirus, probably, where St. Paul was afterward arrested and carried a prisoner to Rome), after enumerating the chief virtues that should adorn a bishop, points out those which Titus is to insist on among the people he has to govern.

The epistle to philemon.

This is a touching plea for a fugitive slave, Onesimus, whom St. Paul had converted in Rome, whom he found a useful auxiliary in his ministrations, and whom he sends back to his native city, Colossae, where he expects Philemon to receive him as a brother.

The epistle to the hebrews.

The constant belief of the Catholic Church ascribes the authorship of this most beautiful epistle to St. Paul. The doubts which modern critics have endeavored to cast on its authenticity are of too evanescent a nature to cloud the faith of the true Christian scholar. It was probably written from Rome, and in the year 63. It was addressed, not so much to the Hebrew race in general, as to the Hebrew Christians of Palestine, and, particularly, those of Jerusalem. For many years before this Jerusalem had been held in terror by an organized band of assassins (the Sicarii), and in the year 62 the new High Priest Annas, or Ananus Ii., a rigid Sadducee, began a formidable persecution against the Christians, and summoned before the Sanhedrim St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, and other leading Christians. The other James had, several years before, been put to death by order of Herod Agrippa, and since then, as if in atonement of this innocent blood, the Sicarii, with the connivance of Felix, 4 he Roman Governor, had killed the High Priest Jonathan at the aitar and in the very act of sacrificing. Everything in Judaea portended the near accomplishment of our Lord's prediction — the utter destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and the final dispersion of the Jewish nation. It was thus a period of terrible and manifold trial for the Christian Hebrews of Palestine. What was to compensate them for the loss of their nationality, the destruction of the Holy City, the blotting out of the national sanctuary, and the cessation o** the iVOiship of their forefathers ?

No one better than St. Paul could lift up the soul of these suffering Christians, confirm their faith by showing how the ancient promises were all fulfilled in Christ, how the trials of the Hebrews of old should animate their descendants to heroic constancy, and sustain their hopes by laying before them in the glorious spectacle of Christ's universal Kingdom and everlasting priesthood — the consummation of their most patriotic aspirations? To understand, therefore, both the purpose and the scope of this epistle, we must recall to mind the objections which non-believing Jews were continually making against the Christian religion and its Founder. Christ, they said, the author of this new faith, was a man put to the most shameful death by a solemn sentence of the magistrates and the people, whereas the Jewish religion could boast of a Law delivered to their nation by Angels acting in God's name, and promulgated by Moses, the holiest and most illustrious of men. Moreover, the Christians, instead of the glorious Temple of Jerusalem, the splendid sacrificial ritual ordained by Moses, the uninterrupted succession of priests and Levites descended from Aaron, and the sacred and solemn yearly festivals which assembled the Hebrew people around the altars of the living God, had only obscure and mysterious rites celebrated in holes and corners, without any hereditary priesthood or recognized public temple. Where could the Hebrew people go, as of old, in their manifold needs, in their consciousness of sin, to find the Mercy Seat on which Jehovah dwelt, or the altar of holocausts on which to offer the atoning victims of their guilt?

St. Paul purposes to show that the Christian Religion is incomparably above the Jewish, in this, that its Author and Lawgiver is Christ, the Son of God and very God Himself, as superior to the angels and to Moses as the Creator is to His creatures. Moses, who stood as mediator between God and His people, was but a mortal man, whereas in our Mediator Christ, we have an infinite Person. The same transcendent excellence prevails in the rites and sacrifice of the New Law, and in the spiritual and eternal goods it bestows on its subjects.

In order to follow without confusion the course of St. Paul's demonstration, you have only to examine the natural divisions of this Epistle. I. From chap, i. to chap, iv., the Apostle shows the superiority of Christ's mediatorship above that intrusted either to the Angels or to Moses. He teaches (chap. i. 1-14) that Christ is above the Angels, although He has only spoken to us after the Prophets. For He is the Son of God, while they are only His messengers and ministers. Nor (ii. 6-8) does the fact of His being man argue His inferiority to the Angels, since even as Man, Christ hath been placed over all things. Besides, it was a necessary part of the divine plan of our redemption, that the Son should stoop to assume our human nature. "Because the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner hath been partaker of the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the Devil."

Again (chaps, iii., iv.), Moses did not build the house in which he was a minister, whereas our Great High Priest is the builder and the master of God's House and Kingdom here below — a house and kingdom indeed which are only the figure of the heavenly and eternal. Moses, though faithful and true in his ministry, offended, and so did the people he guided, and they entered not into the rest of the Promised Land. Hence we Christians should take warning, and yearn for the eternal repose into which our Divine Leader hath already entered. "We have not a High Priest who cannot have compassion on our infirmities; but one tempted in all things, like as we are, without sin. Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace : that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid " (iv. 15, 16). In these two last chapters the Apostle, with the art of a true orator, presses upon his afflicted and wavering brethren the danger and fearful consequences of apostasy or falling away from the faith. Those who followed Moses out of Egypt, who heard the word of the Lord in the wilderness and beheld His wonderful ways, wavered and failed in their faith ; therefore did they not enter into the promised rest. How many perished in the desert ! Even under Josue (Jesus iv. 8) they did not, in the land of Chanaan, obtain that divine and everlasting repose, which it belongs to the true Jesus, the only Saviour, to bestow. But firm faith in Him is already the beginning of possession, the anticipated enjoyment of that rest which gives God to the soul and the soul to God. Let us then give to Him through that living faith our whole heart and soul. " Having therefore a great High Priest that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession."

Ii. St. Paul now proceeds to discuss the dignity and prerogatives of Christ's priesthood and the infinite virtue of His sacrifice, as the One Victim and oblation prefigured by the sacrificial offerings of the Old Law. In chap. v. 1-11, St. Paul proves that Christ performed the functions of the priestly office by offering up " gifts and sacrifices for sins." Moreover, He closed His earthly career by fulfilling in His own person and by His last acts the prophecy which likened Him to Melchisedech. "And being consummated, He became, to all that obey Him, the cause of eternal salvation, called by God a High Priest according to the order of Melchisedech."

As if the Reality prefigured in the sacrifice of Melchisedech, and consummated in the Bread and Wine offered up by Christ, recalled some formidable practical difficulties, the Apostle here turns aside (v. 11 ; vi. 20) to solve them for his readers. "Of whom (Melchisedech) we have much to say, and hard to be intelligibly uttered, because you are become weak to bear. . . . Strong meat is for the perfect, for them who by custom have their senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil." The Apostle is unwilling to rehearse for these vaccilating Christians the elementary truths delivered to catechumens. And then comes the terrible warning to those who allow their first fervor to cool during a time of persecution and their faith to waver, who have abused the most precious graces, and by this abuse placed themselves on the road to apostasy. "It is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly Gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, have, moreover, tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, and are fallen away, to be renewed again to penance!" . . . Woe to "the earth that drinketh in the rain which cometh often upon it . . . but . . . bringeth forth thorns and briars!" . . . "It is reprobate and very near to a curse ..." Then come words of generous praise for their former noble deeds of piety and charity, and a most beautiful exhortation to constant and increasing carefulness under present trials. Theirs must be the invincible patience and living faith of Abraham, who was rewarded after so much suffering and waiting. Even so must they anchor their faith and hope in Heaven, " Where the forerunner Jesus is entered for us."

Taking up the thread of his argument where he had left it at the mention of Christ's priesthood in connection with that of Melchisedech, the Apostle proceeds to show that even as the typical Melchisedech, the King-priest of Salem, was superior in dignity to Abraham, and to Levi descended from Abraham with his sacerdotal progeny, so and far more so He who is "a Priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech," transcends both the priest-King of Salem and the Levitical priesthood. " By so much is Jesus made a surety of a better testament," vii. 22. " We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of majesty in the Heavens, a minister of the Holies and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and not man," viii. 1, 2. This High Priest, this Priesthood, this Tabernacle, this sacrificial worship, are that most perfect and divine exemplar which all preceding types and systems copied and foreshadowed.

The blood which flowed in the manifold Mosaic sacrifices was figurative of the blood of the One Infinite Victim ; the sacrifices were many and daily renewed because of themselves inefficacious toward atonement or sanctification, ix. 1-10. "But Christ being come an High Priest of the good things to come, ... by His own blood entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption," ix. 11, 12.

The national Jewish religion with its gorgeous worship was thus only "a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things," x. 1 — could "never make the comers thereunto perfect." Now we have in the Lamb of God the victim of infinite price and merit; and, therefore, " we are sanctified by the oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once," x. 10. So, "this [great High Priest] offering one sacrifice for sins, for ever sitteth at the right hand of God ... By one oblation He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified," x. 12, 14. Thus by the application to us of the infinite atoning merits of this one bloody sacrifice of Calvary is the guilt of all sin remitted, and through that Blood applied to our souls in every sacrament and every individual grace, are we enabled to go on from degree to degree of spiritual perfection and holiness. O Jews, wherefore, then, do ye weep over the prospect of the near destruction of your Temple and the coming ruin of your Sion ? Wherefore refuse to be comforted because with the Temple shall cease forever the sacrificial worship of your forefathers? Look up to Jesus promised by Moses and the Prophets, prefigured by Melchisedech and his oblation. He, the Great High Priest of the perfect and everlasting Covenant, hath fulfilled both the unbloody oblation of the King-Priest of Salem and the bloody expiation foreshown by the Levitic sacrifices. Our Divine Melchisedech sits forever at the right hand of the Father, offering evermore for all succeeding generations His Body and Blood as the price of their ransom and the source of all saving and sanctifying praces. And on earth, even when your Temple disappears, and liot one drop of blood shall redden the spot where it now stands.

There shall continue all over the earth from the rising to the setting sun the Everlasting Commemoration of Christ's bloody sacrifice, the unbloody offering of Melchisedech. Thus heaven and earth shall ever unite in the divine and perfect offering of Him who is a Priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech.

Having thus established the superiority of the New Covenant over the Old, St. Paul once more appeals to his Hebrew coreligionists to continue steadfast in the faith, x. 19-30. "Let us consider one another to provoke unto charity and good works." The Christian Church may not punish with death apostates and transgressors, as was the wont of the Jewish (x. 28); but the spiritual and unseen punishment reserved to the apostate from Christianity is not the less terrible or uncertain, because unseen. " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ! " The bitter trials which the Church has to endure will soon be ended. Meanwhile her sons must arm themselves with faith and the heroic patience faith begets.

Iii. The three remaining chapters are taken up with a description of that living faith— the mightiest of moral forces — and its wonderful effects, as exemplified in their own illustrious ancestors (chap, xi.); with a stirring exhortation to his Christian brethren to emulate such glorious examples (chap, xii.), and to devote themselves to the practice of brotherly charity and its kindred active virtues — the most efficacious preservative against human respect and loss of fervor (chap, xiii.)

Iii. The seven catholic eptstles.

The epistle of st. James.

Although some writers have attributed the authorship of this Epistle to St. James the Elder, the brother of St. John, the great majority of biblical scholars ascribe it to St. James the Less or the Younger, Bishop of Jerusalem, and brother of St. Jude. The former was put to death by Herod Agrippa in the year 44, and the latter suffered martyrdom about 62 or 63 by order of the High Priest Annas or Ananus Ii. It is thought that he wrote this Epistle in the year 59, some three years before his death. This glorious relative of our Lord was one of those to whom He deigned to show Himself in a special manner after the resurrection (1 Cor. xv. 7). He had his residence in Jerusalem, where he was looked upon as a pillar of the Church, and where he was visited by St. Paul soon after the conversion of the latter (Galat. i. 18); and where also he assisted at the council held by the Apostles, and pronounced a discourse to which the others assented. From his coreligionists, fellow-citizens, and contemporaries he received the surname of " the Just," and was, besides, popularly designated as " Oblias " or "the bulwark of the people," on account of his extraordinary devotion to prayer and his influence with the Divine Majesty. St. Epiphanius says that he was appointed by our Lord Himself to govern the Church of Jerusalem.

In his Epistle, which he addressed to all the Christian Churches, St. James insists on the necessity of good works as the proper fruits of a soul filled with a living and active faith. He insisted on this in order to confute the erroneous interpretation given in many places to the doctrine of St. Paul, on the inadequacy of works performed in fulfillment either of the Law of Moses or the Law of Nature to merit or effect justification : this was to be the effect of divine grace alone. The false interpreters of St. Paul affirmed that the works performed by charity were not necessary to salvation ; that faith alone sufficed. Hence the declaration of the Apostle : " Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving youi own selves " (i. 22). " If then you fulfill the royal law, according to the Scriptures, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, you do well" (ii. 8). "What shall it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works ? Shall faith be able to save him?" (ii. 14). " For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead" (ii. 26). Both St. Paul and t. James taught that in the Christian soul supernatural faith and charity should go hand in hand working out man's salvation under the guidance of the Spirit of God, and producing deeds worthy of an adopted child of God. Both the one and the other taught that supernatural faith and charity, and all the divine forces that lift the soul of the sinner or the natural man to the state of grace or justification, are the free gift of God through Jesus Christ. Man's part in the vital acts which enter into the process of justification consists in yielding a free assent to the light vouchsafed him and obeying the impulse of the Spirit who moves his heart.

In this Epistle St. James, as is the common opinion, promulgated the doctrine relating to Extreme Unction, which had been instituted by our Lord, and which He taught His disciples to practice as is hinted in St. Mark vi. 13.

The first and second epistles of st. Peter.

These are also termed " Catholic," because addressed to the faithful at large. The First Epistle is dated from "Babylon;" that is, Rome, according to the common interpretation of Catholics. Its substance, form, and tone remind one forcibly of the doctrinal encyclicals of the Roman Pontiffs, Peter's successors. Its purpose evidently is to instruct the Hebrew converts of Asia Minor, while edifying also those of other nationalities. He bids them adorn their Christian profession by holiness of life. Like St. Paul, Peter lifts the souls of his readers to the contemplation of the unchangeable Kingdom which is to be their inheritance in heaven, as the adopted children of the Father in Christ. This, however, is only the prize to be won by long-suffering patience here. This glorious and fruitful trial of their faith, as well as its unspeakable reward, has been the subject of the Prophecies so familiar to the Jews and now not unknown to their Gentile fellow-believers; for this trial they have been also prepared by the ministers of the Gospel (i. 1-12). Purchased from sin by an infinite price, " the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb unspotted and undefiled," let them be holy even as He is holy (13-25). In chap. ii. the Apostle continues to describe in fuller detail the means by which Christian humanity, regenerated or born anew of the blood of a God, may form a society of God-like brothers. Laying aside all the passions that are born of pride and selfishness, they are to be "as new-born babes" desiring earnestly the milk of this heavenly truth which feeds and elevates their rational nature, that thereby they may "grow unto salvation." Nay, more than that, the members of this society are likened to "living stones built up, a spiritual house" (ii. 5), the " chief corner-stone" of which is Christ. Anxious to see this glorious edifice brought to perfection and filling the earth, Peter, who is, under Christ, the Rock and foundation on which the whole structure reposes, addresses the faithful on the virtues that are most conducive to edification. " Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul, having your conversation (manner of living) good among the Gentiles : that, whereas they speak against you as evil doers, they may, by the good works which they shall behold in you, glorify God in the day of visitation " (n, 12). And so, throughout the remainder of the Epistle, he continues to inculcate the practice of the private and public virtues that are ever sure to win Christians the love and reverence of mankind.

In the Second Epistle, written, most probably, from prison and shortly before his death, St. Peter insists on the divine rank to which regenerated man is lifted in Jesus Christ. This great and fundamental truth must be, for converted Jews and Gentiles, like a beacon-light placed on high above the road of life and guiding all the followers of Christ to the loftiest aims and the noblest deeds. "All things of His divine power, which appertain to life and godliness, are given us through the knowledge of Him who hath called us by His own proper glory and virtue. By whom He hath given us most great and precious promises ; that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature, flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world " (i. 3, 4).

The supernatural knowledge of Christ, and of the Christian's sublime destinies in Him, is not only light in the mind but fire in the heart, purging it from the dross of all earthly and impure affections. This sacred fire cannot be concealed within the soul, but must needs break forth in one's whole outward life, enlightening all who come within its reach, and communicating to them the ardor of that heavenly charity which is as inseparable from the words and deeds of the true Christian as the sun's radiance and warmth are from the sun itself. Ponder every line and word throughout these too short chapters, and see how the inspired admonitions of the first Roman Pontiff are fitted to the needs of our own nineteenth century, warning u; against the apostate Christians who put away Revealed Truth from them, because they, too, have "eyes full of adultery and of sin that ceaseth not " (ii. 14); ..." Speaking proud words of vanity, they allure by the desires of fleshly riotousness those who for a little while escape, such as converse in error: promising them liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption " (18, 19).

And how touching is the allusion to the Apostle's own death, so near at hand and so clearly revealed to himself! "I think it meet as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, being assured that the laying away of my tabernacle is at hand, according as our Lord Jesus Christ also hath signified to me" (ii. 13, 14). The truth which this man, who is already in chains for his faith, and who is about to crown his apostleship by martyrdom and thus to seal his witness by his own blood, has preached throughout the Roman Empire and planted in Rome itself, is neither fiction nor imposture. " For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ : but having been made eye-witness of His majesty . . . And we have the more firm prophetical word, whereunto you do well to attend, as to a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Day-Star arise in your hearts : understanding this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is made by private interpretation. For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time : but the holy mercy of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost. But there were also false prophets among the [Jewish] people, even as there shall be among you lying teachers, who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them . . . And many shall follow their riotousnesses, through whom the Way of Truth shall be evil spoken of" (ii. 16-21 ; iii. 1, 2).

The three epistles of st. John the apostle.

The first of these bore anciently the title of " Epistle to the Parthians," and was therefore supposed to have been addressed to such Jewish Christians as resided within the Parthian Empire. It is directed against the followers of Simon Magus, Cerinthus, and of Gnosticism. Simon maintained that Christ was not the Messiah, and claimed for himself the glory which he denied to Jesus, affirming that He only bore the semblance of our humanity, and that the body nailed to the Cross was not a substantial body. This was also, to a certain extent, the error of the Gnostics and the Docetae, who denied the reality of Christ's birth and death. Finally, Cerinthus taught that Jesus was nothing but an ordinary man, the real son of Joseph, on whom, at His baptism by John, the Holy Ghost or Christ descended in the form of a dove, forsaking Him during His death agony. Thus, all of these agreed in denying the divinity of Christ. Against them all, and in favor of the One true Messiah whom he knew to be both very God and very man, John wrote. " That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the word of lire ; for the life was manifested; and we have seen and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath appeared unto us" (i. i, 2). "Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God : and every spirit that dissolveth Jesus, is not of God" (iv. 2, 3). On the necessity of good work, especially of brotherly charity and its fruits, St. John insists with the other Apostles, Peter, Paul, and James, while inculcating a firm faith, invincible patience and spotless purity of life.

The authenticity of the Second and Third Epistles was denied by some scholars. They belong, however, to the canon received by the Church, and bear intrinsic evidence of St. John's authorship, besides the external weight of authority which ascribes these two letters to him.

The epistle of st. Jude the apostle.

Jude was the brother of St. James the Younger or the Just, Bishop of Jerusalem. He was, consequently, a son of Alpheus or Cleophas, and a near relative of our Lord. It is not known when and where this epistle was written. It warns the faithful against following certain false teachers and sharing their awful doom. The reader will perceive, on an attentive perusal, how closely it resembles the Second Epistle of St. Peter.

The apocalypse of st. John the apostle.

The Greek word Apocalypsis means "an unveiling;" hence the Protestant translators have called it The Revelation of St. John. It is thought to have been written about the year of our Lord 95 or 97, and, most likely, in the Island of Patmos. It is the only prophetic book among the New Testament Scriptures, and its inherent obscurity has exercised, during more than eighteen hundred years, the ingenuity of the most eminent biblical scholars and theologians.

It may suffice, however, to take up the text of the Apocalypse, and to find in the natural sequence of the chapters themselves the light which will enable one to understand more clearly the history of the Christian Church in the past, to appreciate her struggles in the present, and to look forward with the eye of exultant hope to her certain victories in the future, as well as to that Supreme Day of Judgment which will vindicate the whole mysterious order of God's providence.

We can divide the whole matter of this sublime book into two parts. In the first, embracing the first three chapters, St. John addresses himself in particular to the faithful of Proconsular Asia, who were his special charge, and reproves what he finds censurable in the seven dioceses or churches within the Proconsulate. This portion, therefore, is strictly ethical and historical. The second and prophetical portion embraces the remainder of- the book from chap. iv. to the end, and describes, under various allegorical and mystical forms, the stages through which the Church has to pass, especially the last period of her existence, the times of Antichrist. Such is the view presented by the learned and saintly Cornelius a Lapide. The purpose of the Apostle, according to this author, is to animate the faithful of the apostolic age and of all future times to invincible constancy in the faith, to the highest forms of holiness, and more particularly to strengthen the martyrs in the days of persecution to bear their witness with unflinching firmness. Let me add here to the learned Jesuit's thought, that St. John regarded in a special manner the condition and the needs of the numerous Jewish Christians at the close of the first century. St. Paul, in almost every one of his epistles, shows them in the magnificent realities promised in the Gospel a compensation for their loss of caste among their non-Christian countrymen, and a sublime consolation for the dispersion of their race, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the annihilation of their national worship. The spectacle disclosed to the Apostle of the Eternal Temple on high, the Throne with its ineffable splendors, the seventy Elders on their royal seats, the twelve times twelve thousand from the Tribes of Israel forming the glorious nucleus of the beatified multitude which no man could number, and the Altar with its Lamb ever sacrificed and ever immortal— ah that went home to the hearts of the poor down-trodden Jewish exiles ; all that was calculated to make them find in the daily Agapce or celebrations of the Eucharistic sacrifice a significance, a divine and blissful Reality that could well make them feel that Heaven was not far from earth, and that the earthly house of God, though but a corner in the Catacombs, had some of the intense and unspeakable enjoyments of the Eternal Home. And so the seed of Abraham continued to be, among the Gentiles, the fruitful seed of Christianity, thanks to the skilful and loving husbandry of Peter and Paul and John and James and Jude.

Besides, all throughout Asia Minor, during the age of St. John and long afterward, such heretics as Cerinthus and Ebion denied openly, and in Ephesus itself, the divinity of Christ, although they persisted in calling themselves His followers, as do to this day among ourselves Sects that we need not name. They also taught that Christ, even as the Son of God, had no existence before the Blessed Virgin Mary. As it was to prepare an antidote to this heretical poison that St. John wrote his Gospel, and proclaimed "In the beginning was the Word, etc., . ..." so in the Apocalypse he makes Christ Himself declare: "Iam Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, . . . who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty" (i. 8). Others, again, never ceased to say, amid the horrible and unceasing persecutions with which the young Christian Church was assailed, that she must of a necessity be crushed by the irresistible might of the hostile powers, and that there could be no reward for the Confessors and martyrs of Christ. John shows, on the contrary, that the tree of the Church waxes strong amid all the fury of the tempest, and that for those who struggle here for the good cause there is laid up an eternal reward. It is this triumph of the iust which he describes in chaps-