Although the Christian cannot regard the Epistles contained in the New Testament as having quite the same importance as the Gospels which record the life and sayings of his Divine Master, he must regard them as having a profound significance. They deal with the creed and the conduct of the Church with an inspired insight which gives them an undying value, and they are marked by a personal affection which gives them an undying charm. They lend, too, a most powerful support to the historical evidence of the truth of Christianity. We have already noticed that the earliest Gospel was probably not written before A.D. 62, while St. John's Gospel is probably as late as A.D. 85. But several of the twenty-one Epistles in the New Testament are certainly earlier than A.D. 62, and out of the whole number only the three by St. John can be confidently placed at a later date than St. John's Gospel. Now, these twenty-one Epistles assume the truth of the story contained in the Gospels. They do more than this. For they prove that during the lifetime of men who had personally known Jesus Christ, there were large numbers of earnest men and women who were at home with the same ideas as those which Christians have cherished until modern times. Some of these ideas explain what we find in the Gospels. For instance, the doctrine of the Atonement is more plainly expounded in the Epistles than in the Gospels. This doctrine, together with those which concern the Person of Jesus Christ, the Holy {117} Trinity, the sacraments, the Church, and the ministry, could be shown to have existed about A.D. 60, even if the Gospels had perished or were proved to be forgeries. The indirect evidence which the Epistles give to the life and teaching of our Lord is therefore of immense importance. If the infidel says that these doctrines are mere theories, we can ask him how these theories arose, and challenge him to produce a cause which so adequately accounts for them as the incarnation of the Son of God. The origin of "spiritual letters" or "epistles" was perhaps due to the wisdom and originality of St. Paul. At any rate, there is nothing improbable in this conjecture, nor need it draw us into any sympathy with the recent attempts to use it as a means for discrediting those Epistles in the New Testament which bear the names of other authors. It is possible that the earliest Epistle is that of St. James, and we have no means of telling whether St. Paul did or did not anticipate him in writing Epistles. In any case, if St. Paul is not the pioneer, he is the captain of epistle-writers. St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St. Bernard, and in modern times Archbishop Fenelon and Dr. Pusey, have illustrated the power of making a letter the vehicle of momentous truths. But on the greatest of them there has fallen only a portion of the mantle of St. Paul.