The earliest writings of the New Testament, the genuine letters of Paul, written not far from the year 60, thirty years more or less after the received date of the crucifixion of Jesus, take up and continue the line of Jewish tradition. No traces exist of literature produced between the opening of the century and the epistolary activity of the apostle of the Gentiles. The times were unfavorable to the production and the preservation of literary work. The earliest gospels, even granting their genuineness and authenticity, cannot be assigned to so early a period, cannot be crowded back beyond the year 70, and must probably be placed later by ten, fifteen, twenty years. They bear evidently on their pages the impress of ideas which Paul made current. Their authors, when not disciples of his school, respected it and had regard to its claim. The gospel of Luke betrays, in its whole structure the shaping hand of a Pauline adherent. Its catholicity, its anti-Judaic spirit, its frequent and approving mention of Samaritans, its doctrine of demons and powers of the infernal world, its constant recognition in precept and parable of the claims of the heathen on the salvation of the Christ, are a few of the plain marks of a genius foreign to that of Palestine. The gospel of Mark is similarly though not so eminently or so minutely characterized. Even the gospel of Matthew contains deposits from this formation. The language of one verse in the eleventh chapter,--"All things are delivered unto me of My Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him," confesses in every word, its Pauline origin. The passage lies like a boulder on a common.