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it could be made by the most mournful and impassioned declamation.

There has recently been found beneath the Church of San Clemente, a larger and nobler edifice, upon which the present edifice, much less homogeneous and complete than the former, has been erected. That original church, itself founded on the ruins of pagan structures, was filled up with rubbish, and so completely hidden from view, that its existence was unknown for ages. The descriptions of the original edifice have been misappropriated to the second and meaner structure. It is now in the process of excavation, and as one pillar after another of precious and polished marble is disclosed, its superiority has become more and more apparent. And so under the present Church of Rome, there lies buried and filled with superstitious rubbish and forgotten for (ages, a nobler and purer church, the church of St. Paul and of Clement. But instead of uncovering to the light its walls, which are salvation, and its gates, which are praise, instead of disclosing its pure altars and its polished pillars, Rome piles new rubbish on, and packs it down, and does not permit her children even to know of its existence.

But these blessed truths, repudiated by the false Church of Rome, are still the heritage of the churches; and because she, to whom was committed the precious deposit, was faithless to her trust, it becomes them to cling with warmer loyalty and love to that which, while it is Gospel, is to fallen man the most effective law. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." "Faith worketh by love."

In these scenes and with these memories we will cling to them and love them as we have never done

before. We pass over the intervening ages. We gather with the disciples who are assembled to hear St. Paul's Epistle. Its precious truths sink into our hearts; and, oh! how we need its divine conclusion, in the midst of this groaning and travailing creation, in the midst of the tumults of the world and the sorrows of the churches! "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God."

REESE LIBRARY
(UNIVERSITY

CALIFORNIA

LECTURE II.

THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH PRECEDED ST. PAUL'S

JOURNEY TO ROME.

And the night following, the Lord stood by him, and said: Be of good cheer, Paul, for as thou hast testified of me at Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome. -Acrs, xxiii. 11.

WHEN the devout Christian visits Rome, his first thought is not of Romulus, Cæsar, or Augustus, of Gregory, or of Leo, but of Paul. Here he was brought in bonds. Here he lived two years. Here he conferred with Jews and Gentiles. Here he wrote some of his most precious epistles. Here devoted Christian brethren and friends gathered about him; and in his hired house, (near where we now worship,) what luminous expositions of the truth as it is in Jesus; what fitting in of fact with prophecy; what demonstrated correspondence between the type and the reality; what earnest prayer; what joyful praise; what loving intercession; what affectionate fellowship; what peaceable wisdom; what heroic zeal!

How the Church of Rome originated does not appear. The Apostolic history does not designate its founder. Had it been an Apostle, we can scarcely doubt that the fact would have been recorded. It probably originated with some of the disciples scattered abroad, after the martyrdom of St. Stephen. "They went everywhere preaching the word." (Acts, vii. 4.) Though originating with Jewish converts,

it had already acquired a preponderance of the Gentile element when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans. He claims the right to address them on the ground that he was the Apostle of the Gentiles. The names of the Christian friends and brethren whom St. Paul salutes at the end of his Epistle are largely Greek and Roman.

St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans was written at Corinth, and sent by Phæbe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchrea, adjoining that city. In it he assures them that after he shall have gone up to Jerusalem, to distribute to the poor saints there the contributions of their wealthier brethren in Macedonia and Achaia, he would visit the disciples at Rome. Anxious as he was to see the brethren at Rome, and confer with, and properly to constitute and regulate a church, whose influence at the political center of the world would be immense, he must yet first see his poor disciples at Jerusalem; he must himself present to them the gifts of their brethren, and increase their grateful joy; he must tell them how fully and freely Christian love poured forth those gifts; he must be a partaker of their holy joy; he must endeavor to correct their growing errors of doctrine and misapprehension concerning his own character, purposes, and views.

We have spoken of St. Paul's purposed journey to Rome. He went at length, not as a free apostle, but as a chained captive. The story, as recorded in << the latter chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, is one 1 of exceeding interest.

The church in Jerusalem was in a transition state. The Jewish rites and ceremonies were continued at the Temple at the same time that the church,

which was to supersede them, was established by its side. Christ had declared that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfill. The true meaning of this declaration many of the Jewish Christians failed to apprehend. They did not see that in fulfilling, Christianity superseded Judaism; that it completed it by merging it into itself; that it was the plant which of necessity absorbed the seed from which it sprung. They supposed that Judaism was to remain entire, and that as Moses inaugurated it, and David strengthened it, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and all the prophets illustrated and explained it, and foretold its glories, so Christ was to complete it, and place it on immovable foundations, and fill out the types of Moses, and the glowing delineations of the prophets. Consolidated and completed Judaism, seated upon a throne, and crowned with power by a conquering Messiah,-that was their faith and hope. Slowly and reluctantly were their minds drawn from these carnal views. Many of them still clung to Jewish customs. They would retain circumcision, and many of the ceremonies of the law.

Now St. Paul, in his large and loving wisdom, dealt gently with these half emancipated minds. While he proclaimed the utter freedom of the disciples of Christ, and the necessity of reliance only on his work for pardon, grace, and life, he would yet not rudely tear away the tendrils of affection and association from the Jewish institutes, but would wait until, of their own spiritual affinity, they should all be untwined and disengaged, and gently swayed toward the cross. Yet St. Paul was disliked by the less advanced of the Jewish converts, because he only tolerated for the present, and did not enjoin per