But, to return to eating and drinking. Eating and drinking--he gives his men to understand--even he, holy as he is, should not have had any objection to, had it not been for this same resurrection of his, which he was telling them of: eating and drinking--a practice, to which, notwithstanding this resurrection of his, and so much as he had told them of it, he had the mortification to find them so much addicted. So much for his _Corinthians_. It was, as we see, _for want_ of their paying, to what he was thus telling them about the resurrection, that attention, to which it was so well entitled,--that _they_ still kept on in that bad habit. But his _Thessalonians_--they too, as we have seen, had got the same bad habit. Well: and what was it that gave it them? What but their paying too much attention to this same resurrection of his, dished up in the same or another manner, by the same inventive and experienced hand. In conclusion, on laying the two cases together, what seems evident enough is--that, in whatever manner served up to them, his resurrection, whatever it was, was considerably more effectual in making people eat and drink, than in weaning them from it. SECTION 6. GAMALIEL--HAD HE PART IN PAUL'S PLAN? Gamaliel--in the working of this conversion, may it not be that Gamaliel--a person whose reality seems little exposed to doubt--had rather a more considerable share, than the above-mentioned unknown and unknowable Ananias? Gamaliel was "a doctor of law" Acts 5:34--a person of sufficient note, to have been a member of the council, in which the chief priests, under the presidency of the High Priest, Acts 5:24, took cognizance of the offence with which Peter and his associates had a little before this been charged, on the occasion of their preaching Jesus. Under this Gamaliel, had Paul, he so at least is made to tell us, studied, Acts 22:3. Between Paul and this Gamaliel, here then is a connection: a connection--of that sort, which, in all places, at all times, has existence,--and of which the nature is everywhere and at all times so well understood--the connection between _protegé_ and protector. It was by authority from the governing body, that Paul was, at this time, lavishing his exertions in the persecution of the Apostles and their adherents:--who then so likely, as this same Gamaliel, to have been the patron, at whose recommendation the commission was obtained? Of the cognizance which this Gamaliel took, of the conduct and mode of life of the religionists in question,--the result was favourable. "Let them alone," were his words. Acts v. 38. The maintenance, derived by the _protegé_, on that same occasion, from the persecution of these innoxious men--this maintenance being at once odious, dangerous, and precarious,--while the maintenance, derivable from the taking a part in the direction of their affairs, presented to view a promise of being at once respectable, lucrative, and permanent;--what more natural then,