for the seal of redemption to every creature, in all the nations to whom the gospel should be preached. Having thus formally enrolled the first Gentile converts, as the free and complete partakers of the blessings of the new covenant, he stayed among them several days, at their request, strengthening their faith, and enlarging their knowledge by his pastoral instruction; which he deemed a task of sufficient importance to detain him, for a while, from his circuit among the new converts, scattered about in other places throughout Palestine, and from any immediate return to his friends and converts at Joppa, where this call had found him. Meanwhile, this mighty innovation on the established order of sacred things could not be long unknown beyond the cities of Caesarea and Joppa, but was soon announced by the varied voice of rumor to the amazed apostles and brethren at Jerusalem. The impression made on them by this vague report of their great leader’s proceedings, was most decidedly unfavorable; and there seem to have been not a few who regarded this unprecedented act of Peter as a downright abuse of the dignity and authority with which the special commission of his Master had invested him. Doubtless, in that little religious community, as in every other association of men ever gathered, there were already many human jealousies springing up like roots of bitterness, which needed but such an occasion as this, to manifest themselves in decided censure of the man, whose remarkable exaltation over them might seem like a stigma on the capacities or merits of those to whom he was preferred. Those in whose hearts such feelings had been rankling, now found a great occasion for the display of their religious zeal, in this bold movement of their constituted leader, who herein seemed to have presumed on his distinction and priority, to act in a matter of the very highest importance, without the slightest reference to the feelings and opinions of those, who had been with him chosen for the great work of spreading the gospel to all nations. And so much of free opinion and expression was there among them, that this act of the chief apostle called forth complaints both deep and loud, from his brethren, against this open and unexplained violation of the holy ordinances of that ancient law, which was still to them and him the seal and sign of salvation. Peter, at length, after completing his apostolic circuit among the churches, of which no farther account is given to us, returned to Jerusalem to meet these murmurs with the bold and clear declaration of the truth. As soon as he arrived, the grumblers burst out on him with open complaints of his offensive violations of the strict religious exclusiveness of demeanor, which became a son of Israel professing the pure reformed faith of Jesus. The unhesitating boldness with which this charge of a breach of order was made against Peter by the sticklers for circumcision, is a valuable and interesting