4. _Their Author:_ "Paul, originally called Saul, was born in Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, of parents who were Jews, apparently of a strict type, but he had the rights of Roman citizenship. He was sent when young to Jerusalem, where he studied at the feet of a great Jewish doctor, Gamaliel, and wrought at the trade of a tent-maker. Here he became zealous for the law, and distinguished himself by his enmity against those Jews who had apostatized from the faith of their fathers. He went about persecuting the Christians everywhere, and dragging them before the Sanhedrim, that they might be put to death, till, on the road near Damascus, whither he was bound, under commission from the Sanhedrim, in the work of persecution, he was arrested in his course, and suddenly converted, by an apparition of the glorified Christ himself, into a disciple and preacher of the faith he had been seeking to crush." (Bagster Bible Helps, p. 69.) 5. _The General Purport of the Epistles:_ The general purport of these epistles is to teach that salvation is not possible by the works of the law, but is the free gift of God by and in Jesus Christ; and that every man, Jew as well as Gentile, is equally in need, as he is equally capable of this salvation, which is represented as experienced by faith in Christ crucified leading to death with Christ, rising again with Christ, and living with Christ in the inner life. This is the burden of the epistles as it is the sum of Paul's gospel, and it is the exact opposite of the Pharisaic creed in which he had been brought up; his antagonism to that creed now not only enabled him to define better the character of the new faith, but to become the apostle of it to all nations as a religion deriving its inspiration direct from Christ, and alone adequate to the exigency of Jew and Gentile alike, seeing 'all had sinned and come short of the glory of God.'" (Bagster Bible Helps, p. 69.) 6. _The Style of the Epistles:_ The style of these letters shows a man of an eager and impetuous temper, who, on that account, as well as through the fulness of his matter, is impatient of dialectic restraint. The theme is a pressing one, and the writer is to intent to gain his end to study his steps. In his hurry to carry his thought forward he sometimes forgets what he has been saying, and passes on to another point, more urgent perhaps, leaving the original sentence unfinished; while in his eagerness to express himself he is often careless of the coherence of his thought. [May it not be that the defect here pointed out can be accounted for by some of the passages being lost?] He has no time to adjust himself to any formulae: he must make his way at any expense. All forms are alike to him, and he will use any or use none, if only he can thereby gain his point." (Bagster Bible Helps, p. 69.)