In St. Paul’s writings we are in the presence of documents which are in the highest degree historical. Even those who endeavour to prove that the Gospels and the Acts were not written until the second century, are obliged to allow that at least four of the most important of his letters were written within 30 years after the Crucifixion, and that the evidence that four of the remainder are his, vastly preponderates. Here then we are in the presence of historical documents of the highest order, compared with which such a writing as the book of Enoch is worthless, and the Talmud and the Fathers are modern compositions. What light then do these letters throw on the opinions of St. Paul and the Pauline Churches? Much every way: they let us into the secret of their inner life. They tell us that these Christians thought they possessed certain supernatural gifts; that St. Paul asserted that he wrought miracles; that demons by an invisible agency tempted men to sin, and opposed the progress of the Gospel; but beyond this there is scarcely a trace of angelology or demonology in them. With these epistles in our hands, is it credible that their writer, or those to whom he wrote, held a multitude of monstrous and phantastic beliefs on this subject? Are not these writings characterized by supreme good sense? Do they not in this point of view marvellously contrast even with those of the earliest Fathers? The writer undoubtedly believed that unseen spiritual agencies were capable of acting on the mind of man, and that they were active agents in the production of moral evil; but where is the evidence that he considered that external nature was under their control, or that they made themselves visible to the mortal eye? Although he affirms that he possessed a supernatural illumination on religious subjects, only on two occasions does he refer to visions as actually seen by him; and he directly affirms that he had the power of distinguishing the ecstatic from the ordinary condition of his mind. Even with the aid of the Acts of the Apostles, we can only add a few more to the number. Surely this is not the mental condition of a man who was a prey to unbounded superstition. Contrast the amount of good sense in the epistles of St. Paul with an equal number of consecutive pages from the Fathers and the Talmud, and the difference is enormous. Where are the ineffable puerilities found in these writings even hinted at in those of St. Paul?