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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

OF THE

APOSTLES, EVANGELISTS,

AND OTHER SAINTS.

ST. ANDREW.

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. JOHN vi. 8.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ST. ANDREW.

"THE glorious company of the Apostles," whom the Church commemorates by a succession of annual festivals, is led at the commencement of the ecclesiastical year by him, whom the Scripture describes to us by his connexion with our blessed Lord, and at the same time by his name and his relation to another great Apostle, as "one of Jesus's disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother." His festival may have been fixed for celebration at this period, by reason of the date of his death, which is recorded to have taken place on the 30th of November: or probably it may have been so fixed with reference to the commencement of the ecclesiastical year, by way of an introduction to the season of Advent, and to

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announce, as it were, the Advent or Coming of our Lord; because, as Bishop Sparrow has observed, "it was he who first came to Christ, and followed him, before any of the other Apostles; it was he who brought his brother Simon to Christ; it was he who said, We have found the Messiah"."

St. Andrew was a native of Bethsaida, a city of Galilee, situated at the north-eastern extremity of that large body of water, formed by an expansion of the river Jordan, and known in the New Testament by the name of the sea of Galilee or of Tiberias, or the lake of Gennesareth. He was the son of a fisherman named Jona, whose trade he followed, and the brother of Simon Peter; but whether the elder or the younger brother, is not certainly agreed, though the testimony of antiquity, with but slight exception, represents him as the younger. But whether he were the elder or the younger, to him certainly belongs the distinction, of having been himself the first follower, and of having introduced Peter to a knowledge, of our Lord.

From the first chapter of St. John's Gospel we learn, that Andrew had been trained under

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Bishop Sparrow's Rationale on the Common Prayer. Dr. Cave's Lives of the Apostles. Life of St. Peter, s. i. 4.

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