Testament. In due time the theories of Baur were largely demolished, the most of the assailed books of the New Testament emerging out of the smoke of the conflict clearly discerned as planted upon immovable historic foundations. Up to the beginning of the second half of our century there was no book in the English language which creditably depicted the great apostle's career. An epoch in Bible study was marked in 1851-52, when two great works almost simultaneously issued from the press in England, each bearing the title The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. One of these was from the pen of Thomas Lewin, a learned member of the London bar; and the other was the joint product of the labors of two accomplished scholars of the Church of England, the Rev. William J. Conybeare, M.A., Principal of the Liverpool Collegiate Institute, and Rev. Dr. John S. Howson, who also served as principal of that institutute, and later as dean of Chester. These works were written with such care, they embodied such painstaking research and such affluence of scriptural knowledge, they covered the ground so completely and accurately that they promise to stand as imperishable monuments of the devotion, erudition, and literary skill of their authors and as indispensable handbooks for all students of the English Bible. Substantially the two works cover the same ground, each aiming to reproduce the environment of the apostle, the influences which wrought upon him, and the scenes amid which his life was passed from his birth in Tarsus to his martyrdom at Rome. Yet each one of these works has its own peculiar charms and advantages, Mr. Lewin paying special attention to the archæological, chronological, and topographical elements of the story, and Conybeare and Howson displaying, in addition to their classical knowledge and felicitous style, a spiritual insight and an apprehension of the theological and evangelistic work of the apostle which give distinctiveness to their narrative. The abundant maps and profuse illustrations in the later editions of Lewin's production give it in this respect exceptional value. By the help of these two works the student is enabled to reproduce to himself the entire history of Saul of Tarsus, and to see him "in his habit as he lived"-at school, on his journeys, in prison, on

trial, and amid all the tragic scenes of his ministry-with the vividness of the events of yesterday.

Farrar's Life and Work of St. Paul, a more recent book, has qualities which differentiate it from those we have mentioned - brilliant rhetoric, dramatic word-pictures, fervent declamation, and lavish descriptions of the surroundings of the apostle at each successive stage of his lifework. Although it traverses the same field, yet as a later publication, and as embodying a more ornate style of writing, it has commanded a wide popularity. Other lives of St. Paul remain to be glanced at-Renan's, brilliant, fanciful, rationalistic; Stalker's, a brief, compact, suggestive outline sketch, admirably filled in; Professor James Iverach's, clear-visioned, in touch with modern thought, and stanch with sterling Scotch orthodoxy; Lyman Abbott's, an attempt to apply the evolutionary theory in a sturdy, independent study of the Pauline life and letters; Orello Cone's Paul: the Man, the Missionary, and the Teacher, a work of philosophic grasp, in which the chief supernatural elements in the records are minified or ignored; and the Student's Life of Paul, by Professor George H. Gilbert, a biography, pure and simple, which reviews with discern- . ment and ability the latest theories and discoveries bearing upon the apostle's career apart from his theological writings. This survey of the literature which English scholarship has put within our reach would, however, not be complete without the mention of a few monographs of value. Among these The Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul, by James Smith, published in London in 1848, stands supreme as covering one single phase in the apostle's life. Its exactness, its logical acumen, and its demonstration by surveys, soundings, charts, and other agencies of the navigator's art of the scrupulous truthfulness and absolute accuracy of St. Luke's narrative make it a volume to be desired by every student of the New Testament. Four small volumes, The Heathen World and St. Paul, each written by a master in his line, give apt descriptions of the apostle in his various locations and journeys. The Apostle Paul, by the eminent French scholar Professor A. Sabatier, of Paris, now available in an English translation, is a sketch of the development of the apostle's doctrine, an

application of modern scientific methods to the subject in hand, done with skill and penetration, its analysis of the epistles being of particular value. Akin to this work is one by the late Professor A. B. Bruce, St. Paul's Conception of Christianity, reflecting the strength and scholarship of that great teacher. The Spiritual Development of St. Paul, by Dr. George Matheson, of Edinburgh, is a book of strange quickening power, a portraiture, drawn from the epistles, of the growth of the apostle in grace and knowledge, from the opening of his epistolary work to its close. Professor W. M. Ramsay's works, The Church in the Roman Empire Before A. D. 170, and St. Paul, the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, are of notable value, as coming from an authority in all matters pertaining to Asia Minor, who, beginning his studies in the book of Acts, twenty years ago, a skeptic, has been brought by his literary, historical, and topographical researches to be one of the ablest and stanchest defenders of that book, miracles included. His discoveries in regard to the boundary of the Galatian region in Paul's time, while not fully accepted, have made an epochal impression on current New Testament discussions. McGiffert's recent book on The Apostolic Age is rich in learning, but vitiated by its suggested doubts with regard to the historic validity of Acts, as well as in some other points. A Harmony of the Life of St. Paul, by Rev. Frank J. Goodwin, is a well-prepared and worthy handbook, with maps, notes, and appendix, in which the story of the apostle's life in Acts is paralleled throughout by citations from the epistles. In this survey of current Pauline literature we have not attempted to suggest the material which is ready for use in the German language, nor have we deemed it worth while to indicate that the standard works on the history of the Christian Church in apostolic times give special attention to the labors of St. Paul. Looking at this array we have before us a field of Christian literature which is peculiar to our own age. No former century possessed the facilities and information requisite for a thorough apprehension of the character and achievements of the apostle to the Gentiles. Rich as some other ages were in the contributions which they made to biblical science, it was reserved for the nineteenth century

alone to furnish biographies of our Lord and lives of his chief apostle of such scope and value as to make them distinctive features of the times.

It would seem a little like "preaching" should we urge upon those who read this article the duty of mastering this affluent field of learning, and yet perhaps a word of exhortation may be allowed. These works are the noblest that have been written in our tongue in their peculiar province; they lead one into subsidiary regions of knowledge which are full of delight; they are fraught with revelations of various phases of human life, in the city and in the wilderness, on shipboard, in the palace and the prison; they present for study a great variety of characters; and they picture the life of a man unsurpassed in intellect, a great hero, missionary, and saint, in all the vicissitudes of his career. Throughout this whole range of biographical exploration the river of salvation runs, as we journey, watering the desert and making it blossom as the rose; and amid all the adventures and toils of the apostle, as in fancy we accompany him, we are made acquainted more and more with the tenderness, the mercy, the guiding hand, the mighty power, and the prescient wisdom of Him whom Paul proclaimed as "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: the head of the body, the Church: . . . the beginning, the firstborn from the dead." How, then, can we exaggerate the privileges and benefits which come to the diligent student who sets out to make himself possessor of the treasures which abound in this field at which we have taken a cursory glance, this field of current Pauline literature?

II. These data concerning Paul organized. One of the first things to be done by every student of St. Paul's life is to get a bird's-eye view of it, an outline glimpse which includes its chief features, leaving the details to be filled in with later studies. Our immediate aim is to afford such a view.

(1) Birth and training. One name of the apostle, "Saul of Tarsus," indicates his birthplace. The city of Tarsus, in Cilicia in Asia Minor, midway from the mountains to the sea, was the seat of a great Grecian university, one of the three in that ancient world; it was a center of commerce and trade to which soldiers, sailors, caravans, students, and tourists

in great numbers came. Here Saul was born-somewhere about the opening of the Christian era-and here his boyhood was passed. While he was trained in the rigor of Pharisaic routine and brought up in his home a strict Jew, yet a boy such as he was could hardly have lived in such a city and breathed its, atmosphere without being broadened and quickened by it. Without unduly emphasizing his Grecian environment in the plastic season of boyhood, we may profitably reflect upon the significant fact that the man who became God's greatest missionary was born, not in Jerusalem, a citizen of Palestine, but in a heathen city of culture and a citizen of the world-wide Roman empire. In his teens he was sent to Jerusalem to be trained. Here he used to advantage the opportunities which opened up before him as a student under one of the greatest of Jewish teachers, Gamaliel. After some years, when his course was ended, he seems to have returned to Tarsus to serve his apprenticeship in the trade by which he afterward at times made his living, that of a tentmaker. Returning then to Jerusalem, we find him, as indicated in Acts vii, 58-60, when he is first mentioned in the Scripture record, consenting to the murder of Stephen and numbered with the crowd that stoned the protomartyr to death. He was at this time perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three years of age, the strongest young leader of his people, a keen dialectician, an ardent partisan, a stringent Pharisee, a hater of Christians, the arch-persecutor of the disciples of our Lord. He believed Jesus of Nazareth to have been justly crucifieda heretic and fanatic who deserved to die on a cross. The embodiment of these views and convictions, he set out to rid the world of the very name of Jesus. With this glimpse into his attitude and spirit we are prepared to understand the significance and radical character of

(2) Saul's conversion, A. D. 36.* This event, which took place near Damascus, about seven years after Christ's ascension, arrested Saul's persecuting course, changed his views of Christ and his attitude to the disciples, and transformed him

The dates of the leading events in St. Paul's history are those which the best authorities have fixed as probable. It will be understood that they are tentative and not definite. Yet in most cases they do not vary much, we judge, from the exact dates.