we may add, how he should so absolutely alter the whole character of his visit. In the Acts, he is an ambassador charged with a most important mission; in the Epistle, he is Paul the Apostle, moved solely by his own reasons again to visit Jerusalem. The author of the Acts, however, who is supposed to record only the external circumstances, when tested is found to do so very imperfectly, for he omits all mention of Titus, who is conjectured to be tacitly included in the "certain others of them," who were appointed by the Church to accompany Paul, and he is altogether silent regarding the strenuous effort to enforce the rite of circumcision in his case, upon which the Apostle lays so much stress. The Apostle, who throughout maintains his simply independent attitude, mentions his taking Titus with him as a purely voluntary act, and certainly conveys no impression that he also was delegated by the Church. We shall presently see how significant the suppression of Titus is in connection with the author's transformation of the circumstances of the visit. In affirming that he went up "according to revelation," Paul proceeds in the very spirit in which he began to write this epistle. He continues simply to assert his independence, and equality with the elder Apostles. In speaking of his first journey he has this object in view, and he states precisely the duration of his visit and whom he saw. If he had suppressed the official character of this second visit and the fact that he submitted for the decision of the Apostles and elders the question of the immunity of the Gentile converts from circumcision, and thus curtly ascribed his going to a revelation, he would have compromised himself in a very serious manner, and exposed himself to a charge of disingenuousness of which his enemies would not have {230} failed to take advantage. But, whether we consider the evidence of the Apostle himself in speaking of this visit, the absence of all external allusion to the supposed proceedings when reference to them would have been not only most appropriate but was almost necessary, the practical contradiction of the whole narrative implied in the subsequent conduct of Peter at Antioch, or the inconsistency of the conduct attributed in it to Paul himself, we are forced back to the natural conclusion that the Apostle does not suppress anything, and does not give so absurdly partial an account of his visit as would be the case if the narrative in the Acts be historical, but that, in a few rapid powerful lines, he completes a suggestive sketch of its chief characteristics. This becomes more apparent at every step we take in our comparison of the two narratives.