When we consider how in the first century of the Christian era it was a frequent custom to clothe literature of all kinds in the letter form, and how popular amongst all classes and orders was this method--so to speak--of literary expression, when associated with it were, among a crowd of comparatively undistinguished authors, such personalities as Cicero, Seneca, and Pliny, whose letters as pieces of literature obtained at once an enormous popularity which has never really waned,[26] it becomes a grave and interesting question: Did this fashion, this method, this singularly popular form of writing, affect the great New Testament writers, and induce them to cast their sublime inspired thoughts in this special form, which certainly, when the apostles put out their writings, was a loved and admired literary method? The fact of so large a portion of the New Testament writings being cast in “letter form” is striking; it is quite different from anything that we find in the Old Testament Scriptures, where, save in one solitary instance (Jer. xxix.), nothing in the letter form appears in that wonderful compilation which embraces so many subjects, and which in the composition spread over many centuries; but we are so accustomed to the New Testament writings, that the fact of a very large portion of the collection of its inspired writings being in “letter” form does not at first appear strange or unusual. We may preface the few suggestions which follow with the remark, that whether or no the suggestion be entertained as a possible, even as a probable thought, the fact of “inspiration”--the fact of the New Testament writings referred to being “the word of God”--is not in the slightest degree affected. For it is the substance of the divine message, not the “colour” or “material” of the clothing of the message, which is of such paramount importance. The question of the “colour” and “material” of the message’s clothing, the consideration in what it is clothed, is deeply interesting; but, after all, is nothing more. The “message” which we believe to be from God remains the same--be it enclosed in a “pamphlet,” in a “treatise,” in a “study” (_étude_), or in a “letter” form. Nothing like an analysis of the New Testament Epistles, some of which will be briefly referred to in the course of this study, will be attempted. Such an analysis would not, of course, enter into the scheme of the present work. We would first indicate some at least of the New Testament Letters which certainly seem to be more than letters in the ordinary sense of the word--which, indeed, are “settings” to short theological treatises containing statements of the highest doctrinal import. These “Letters” were evidently intended for a far more extended circle of readers than the congregations immediately addressed.