to show the truth of it. Nothing can prove more conspicuously the strength of this influence in the personal life of St. Paul than his great Epistle to the Romans. Everywhere Christ is present with him as an energising power, which is vastly more than a mere memory of the past, and is a vital and potent agency still in operation. He did indeed die unto sin once, but evermore He liveth unto God.[126] The gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.[127] But what is not the least remarkable feature about the Epistle to the Romans is the fact that it was written to a Church of which St. Paul was personally ignorant. He had never been at Rome. It is evident, however, that there were many Christians there. These Christians were not his converts. He says he had had a great desire for many years to come unto them.[128] Then there had been Christians at Rome for many years. The many can be scarcely less than ten or a dozen; but if so, this brings us again to little more than fifteen years after the death of Christ. We find, however, these Christians professing identically the same belief in the same person and the same facts as St. Paul himself. They also believed in a Jesus Christ who had been crucified, and who had been raised from the dead. How they came to believe in Him we cannot tell. It is plain they did believe in Him. It is also probable in the highest degree, nay, it is impossible but that many of them from whom they received their faith, had either been eye-witnesses, or companions of eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus Christ. At any rate, it is obvious that the substantial framework of belief was identical with that which was current among the Churches of Galatia, and in the Church at Corinth. A man who had been crucified and risen again, was the centre of their hope, their affection, their joy, their confidence. In Him they all felt they were supernaturally united in a supernatural life; and as their knowledge of Christ was altogether independent of St. Paul's preaching, it possesses the value of independent testimony, and presents an additional amount of difficulty in the face of any attempt to account for the belief in Christ's resurrection on the hypothesis of some error or deception. However unreasonable it was to attempt to account for it in that way at Corinth, the difficulty becomes greater when the case of Rome is added to that of Corinth. Here the personal influence of the enthusiastic Paul is removed, and yet the results produced are manifestly undistinguishable. Their faith had been spoken of throughout the whole world,[129] and it was faith in a crucified and risen Jesus; a faith which they as Gentiles were not ashamed to profess in the Jew Christ Jesus, and to be confirmed in by the Jew Saul of Tarsus. There is something very remarkable in these results. How many