other questions; and do, in your turn, put questions, and thus call forth instruction, not for yourselves alone, but for others as well. We hope you will also be led by this means to a greater interest in behalf of the Jews.

SAUL OF TARSUS.

(Continued from page 103.).

BUT yet another reason existed (and this is ably brought out by Schrader and Neander), why the great Apostle of Christianity should be a Pharisee. Of all the opposition offered to Jesus of Nazareth, that of the Pharisees was the most consistent and entire. They saw in his teaching the abrogation of hierarchical Judaism. If he were a teacher from God, the ceremonial law had passed away-the barrier between Jew and Gentile was broken down-and Judaism became an

empty husk henceforward. None thoroughly understood this but the bigoted Pharisee. The lapse of years, and the warning of heavenly visions, had not kept the greatest of the chosen Twelve from vacillating on this vital point; and there is every reason to believe that the Church at Jerusalem remained to the end practically prejudiced against the free admission of the union of mankind in Christ. Amidst all the difficulties and inconsistencies on this matter, he only would be sure never to go wrong, who having, during his life of Pharisaic zeal, keenly stigmatized as an abomination the anti-exclusive spirit of the religion of Jesus, had thus gained the clearest view of its universality, and in his conversation adopted this view as his own to the full.

But Jew and Pharisee as he must be, other elements must be mingled in him, which few who were Jews and Pharisees united in themselves. A Jew born in Palestine, and receiving a purely Jewish education, would have been a missionary, for the most part, to pure Jews only. It is plainly necessary that he be, though not a Hellenist himself, yet from youth accustomed to the use of the Hellenistic version of the Scriptures, together with the Hebrew original; nay more, from youth accustomed to the habits of thought and expression of the more cultivated Greeks, no stranger to the literature and rhetorical usage of that language which had been prepared for the work which Christianity had to do. The advantage of a boyhood spent in the haunts of Greek literary culture would be great, even if he himself did not frequent the schools for instruction. A certain pride in the place of his birth would lead a youth of genius to some acquaintance, at least, with the Greek writers who had sprung from it, or were connected with the studies there pursued; and the first remembrances of his early days would be bound up with his taste, however brief, of the sweets of profane literature. All this would eminently fit him to address a Grecian audience; to know the peculiar stumbling-blocks which the hearer must be taught cautiously to approach, and gently to step over; and skilfully to avoid incurring those charges which might exaggerate, in the Greek mind, the repulsiveness of himself and his message. At the same time, no extraneous culture could educate a Pharisee. In the Holy City alone, and in the schools of the Jerusalem rabbies, was the fountain-head of Judaism to be drawn from.

Thus we have arrived at the complicated, and we may conceive not often united, requirements of pure Judaic extraction, with birth and early education among Hellenists and Grecians, and subsequent training in the rabbinical schools of Jerusalem. If, however, we rested here, one important advantage would be wanting. The great Apostle is sure to incur the deadliest hatred of the Pharisaic party, which he has deserted to pass over to Christianity. That hatred will be unrelenting, and will pursue him wherever his message is delivered. No calumny will be spared, no attempt withheld, to make him odious to the local magistracies. Should he be found in Judea itself, the jealousy of the Roman procurators, ever ready to awake against turbulence and sedition, will be aroused to effect his ruin. One safeguard, and one only, humanly speaking, would obviate the danger of his career being cut short by conspiracy on the part of his enemies, or the tyranny of an unprincipled governor. If he possessed the privileges of a Roman citizen, his person would be safe from punishment at the hands of the officers of Rome; and an escape would be always open to him from conspiracy or apprehended injustice, in an appeal to the supreme power in the great metropolis.

We have said nothing of personal characteristics. That the Apostle of the world should be full of earnestness and self-forgetting zeal, is too obvious to be insisted on. That a great persuader should, besides convincing men's minds, be able to win and keep their hearts that he who wishes others to weep must weep himself— has long ago passed into an axiom. But we prefer filling in this part of the sketch from the facts themselves.

That the person so required was found that so many and unusual attributes were combined in one individual-is known to us all. But it seems to have been reserved for our own age of biography and minute research, fully to trace all the qualifications of Saul of Tarsus for his great mission, and to point their examples in his extraordinary career.*

LEILA ADA.

(Continued from page 110.)

Of the means used by Leila to make known to her father the great change which she had experienced, she writes in her diary :

"I have this night laid a letter upon my father's dressing table; in it I have detailed the change which has taken place in my soul; in it I have avowed my belief in Jesus of Nazareth, and the joy and peace which I experience in believing. O, that it may do him the good I ardently pray for, that it may lead him to embrace the Gospel of Christ. I have committed it to God; I leave it in Thy hands, O my Father; bless it, I beseech Thee, This whole night do I intend to devote to special wrestling with Thee, for the salvation of my dear father.

"And now, I beseech Thee, be Thou my helper. Choose Thou for me my future portion; be my inheritance, calm my agitated spirit; have I not committed the event to Thee? O, be with me on the morrow, when I shall be questioned respecting the hope that is in me; do Thou be Edinburgh Review."

very present with me, and enable me to speak as becomes a temple of the living God, May I be saved from bringing any disgrace or disrepute upon the religion of Jesus, that Divine cause which now possesses my heart. May my feet be firmly fixed upon the rock, Christ Jesus! and then, whatever shall occur, whether I live or die, I shall be happy, for I shall be the Lord's."

The following is part of the letter to which Leila refers:—

66

My very, very dear Father,-Do you love me? O how plainly I hear you say, how can my dear daughter ask me this question; has not she had proofs of my affection again and again? Does she not know that she is dearer to me than all the world beside? But, my very dear father, do you love me? do you love me? Yes, I know that you love me, dearly love me; and, my dear father, I love you most tenderly; most deeply; so as no language I could think upon could describe to you; and I know that you believe that I do. Well then, my father, will you not rejoice whilst your daughter tells you of the goodness of God as manifested towards her, a poor, sinful, guilty creature. O, I do so fear you will distrust His delightful work, and yet not from wilful unkindness neither, but from what you will believe to be a proper sense of duty. But, my dear father, with tears of joy coursing down her cheeks, your Leila tells you that she knows, she feels that all her sins are forgiven through the blood-shedding of Jesus of Nazareth. O, be mild while I speak further, and yet I am faint, and my hand trembles so that I can scarce go forward.. . . . . .