No document extant to-day which relates to the Apostolic age is entitled to more, if as much confidence and credit, as the epistle which bears his name. For some reason, it bears less evidence on its face of fraudulent manipulation than any other writing of that time, and it is this evidence of its purity which excludes it from the list of canonical Gospels this day. It has been referred to by a long list of fathers, commencing with Origen, and coming down to writers of our day, as the genuine production of the companion of the great Apostle. No one, not even the Apostles themselves, had more faith in Christ than he, and it seems to be the burden of his epistle to prove that he was the Saviour who had been foretold by the prophets, and whom the Jews were anxiously expecting. Had Christ, in his ministry among men, done or performed any act out of the course of nature which proved him superior to other men in his power over the laws of nature--anything like command over diseases, sickness, to say nothing of death--Barnabas would not have failed to dwell upon everything of the kind with energy and zeal, because such powers would establish what he aimed to prove: that is, that Christ was the one spoken of by the prophets. But, while he makes the most labored application of the prophecies to Christ, he makes no allusion to any wonderful work he performed while he was on the earth. He has not one word to say on the subject of the miracles ascribed to Christ in the Gospels. Much may be inferred from the silence of Apollos on the subject of miracles. The intercourse between the Jews at Alexandria and Judea was constant. Nothing of importance could occur in Jerusalem without its being known in a short time on the banks of the Nile. The history of John the Baptist, the works he did at the Jordan, and the manner of his death, were all known to Apollos from some source, before Josephus wrote his history of the Jews; but it seems he had never heard of Christ or any of his wonderful works. (_Acts_ xviii.) After his conversion he taught that Christ was the one expected by the Jews, and he undertook to prove it by the prophecies in the Old Testament. It would have been far easier to establish this by the mention of the one-half the miracles ascribed to Christ in the Gospels than by arguments drawn from prophecy, which were vague, obscure, and doubtful. But he had never heard of the resurrection of Lazarus, nor of the miracles of the loaves and fishes, nor of the wonderful things that happened to the swine in the country of the Gadarenes.