rejoicing in its glorious liberty as he shook the chains that bound him,-St. Paul, thus demonstrating freedom in servitude, and power in weakness, must have spoken thrilling words to many who paused to hear him on the Via Lata.

It

It is comforting as we walk up and down the Corso, by the spot where Paul preached, to remember that the free Kingdom of God was then here in the midst of the servitudes of Pagan Rome. will be well if the thought shall increase our own rejoicing liberty in Christ, in the midst of the Christian bondage which has taken the place of the Pagan, and has been wrought out of the very freedom which Paul preached and enjoyed in the midst of his imprisonment and bonds.

Paul enjoyed and gave freedom in the midst of servitude. The Church of Rome has taken the instruments by which Paul broke the bonds of Pagan servitude, and out of them has forged new chains of so-called Christian bondage.

IV. St. Paul was not only occupied in "preaching the Kingdom of God," but also in "teaching those things that concern the Lord Jesus." They are different functions-preaching and teaching-of the same office. His great and primary work was to "preach the Kingdom." This was his more public, formal, official heralding of salvation through Christ, and his invitation to accept it and to be enrolled in the Kingdom of God. It is to be followed up by teaching those things that concern the Lord Jesus. While each function is to be discharged both to the world and the church, yet the preaching had more reference to the former and the teaching to the latter. After salvation and the Kingdom of God

are announced as facts, present, saving, and available to all, there remain many things to be taught concerning the Lord Jesus, the founder and the head of this glorious kingdom. After St. Paul had stood up and preached the Gospel, inviting sinners to accept it, and unfolding to saints its privileges and duties, we can imagine a group remaining when the crowd had dispersed, to whose questions concerning the Lord Jesus he would answer at length; we can see the children of the saints come in and sit at his feet while he unfolds the histories and types and prophecies which refer to Him, and tells the story of the Saviour's life, and his miracles of love and power. How much there would be to teach concerning the Lord Jesus to both Jew and Gentile! The teaching would make the preaching more precious to the heart, and the preaching would animate it with holy curiosity and thirst for fuller teaching. Only they who, like Paul, teach concerning Jesus, can like him successfully preach the kingdom.

We are assembled, it is probable, very near the place where St. Paul preached the Kingdom of God and taught concerning Jesus. Now, alas! there is little other preaching in Rome than that of the kingdom, temporal and spiritual, of the Pope, and the things that concern Mary! The name and the work of the Saviour are becoming here an appendage, and an appendage increasingly insignificant, to that of Mary. The dogmatic theology of Rome, which always follows and systematizes and elevates into articles of faith the superstitions of the people and the exaggerations of the clergy, not long ago decreed, through the Pope, the Immaculate Concep

tion of the Virgin. This has given a prodigious popular impulse to an enlargement of her power and glory; and soon the church must come forward and express in dogma what priests and people now so freely express in devotion, viz., the proper deification of the Virgin, and her supreme and exclusive administration of the Kingdom of God on earth. Another divine person is practically added to the Trinity, and to her is practically consigned the government of the Kingdom of God. I quote a few words of a little work commemorating a miraculous picture of the Virgin at Spolato, purchased close by the place where Paul preached the Kingdom of God and taught concerning Jesus.

"Who is there that does not need the mediation deservedly omnipotent of the celestial Mother of God and of men? He only who has no need of anything in time or in eternity. Every one without distinction, sovereign or subject, wise or ignorant, rich or poor, good or bad, sick or well, in life or in death, in need whether of body or of mind, all must have the maternal, pitiful, and most efficacious protection of the Virgin Mother of God and of us her children. This is because Mary has been made by the thrice Holy Trinity the dispenser of all graces, temporal and spiritual, and has decreed that the children of Eve the sinner, should obtain them through the mediation of the first-born, immaculate, and ever-virgin Mother and ever-holy Spouse of God. It [i.e. the Trinity] has decreed that we should receive all things through Mary."

It is impossible for language to be used which shall more absolutely take away all the attributes and powers, and all the works of Christ, and consign them to the Virgin.

It is very sad, after 1800 years, to find this other Gospel and other Kingdom and other Saviour and other God preached where Paul preached Jesus and his Kingdom. It makes us long for the coming of the day when our poor sinful hearts and darkened minds shall no longer corrupt the truth as it is in Jesus, and when that millennium Kingdom of God shall be established over all the earth, which shall never again lapse backward into error, but shall go forward and at length be merged into the perfect kingdom into which nothing that defileth or deceiveth shall ever enter.

LECTURE VI.

CÆSAR'S HOUSEHOLD, AND THE SAINTS.

All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Cæsar's household.-PHIL. iv. 22.

THESE words not only show that there were saints in Cæsar's household, but they seem to imply, in the word chiefly, a peculiar predominance of these saints over others in Rome, or a peculiarly close relation of St. Paul with them, or of them with the Christians of Philippi.

No contrast could be greater than that which is presented by the first Christianity of Rome, and its then prevailing Paganism. It is suggested by the text, which points out on the one hand, the house and household of Cæsar, and on the other, the saints that were there, and the other saints of Rome.

When Paul lived in his own hired house, the Golden House of Nero was not yet built. Yet Cæsar's house when Paul wrote-as the ruins of the Palatine hill abundantly testify-must have been exceedingly magnificent.

I. The labors of the learned, and especially of Canina, enable us to obtain an impressive conception of Cæsar's house at the time when Paul wrote. If they cannot be sure of all the details which they