The adaptation of the primitive apostles to their respective missions is worthy of especial attention. Peter was the rock of the church, representing its firmness to endure rather than its aggressive force. He was the teacher of order, as John was the disciple of love, and Paul the great champion of spiritual freedom and doctrinal faith. At Joppa was vouchsafed to Peter the vision that rebuked his Jewish prejudice, and which at Cæsarea prompted this key-holder of the heavenly kingdom before Cornelius the Italian, to unfold doors to an empire which soon threw Rome into the shade, and hung the fragrant amaranths of peace above the bloody trophies of war. It is probable that he was carried to the imperial city to suffer martyrdom; but that this apostle was teaching there when the Epistle to the Romans was written it is impossible to believe. To prove that fact, or even to admit that he was a teacher there after his brother apostle's writings were received, is to annihilate the assumption that Peter was the founder of the Roman church. He doubtless planted Christianity in oriental Babylon, but a mightier head and heart were employed to distribute the same inestimable treasure in the West. The spheres of the two great leaders were unlike, but in life and death their aims and rewards were one. The zealous Pharisee who so long and learnedly sat at the feet of Gamaliel, and whose soul, so like a sea of glass mingled with fire, was thoroughly imbued with heavenly power on the plains of Damascus, was the predestined hero of liberty and truth to the progressive races. Asiatic by birth, but European in mental structure, his faculties were the best on earth for the work to which they were made subservient, when at Philippi his hand kindled the torch of salvation on the eastern edge of Europe, which thenceforth was to burn through all tempests, and with constantly increasing brightness, westward round the globe. Like the great law-giver of the old dispensation, this pioneer of the new was master of all the learning of the Egyptians, and when the completed accomplishments of Greece were superadded under the transforming power of divine grace, the mighty aggregate was thrown upon the great deep, and commerce became a grand instrument of civilization. With the pagan signal of Castor and Pollux floating at mast-head, and the wealth of Africa stowed in the hold, this son of Asia bore a message to central Europe which would soon make every kernel of that seed-wheat to spring up over a renovated hemisphere, and to shake like Lebanon. His bonds never restrained his heroic zeal, but continued preaching the Gospel, and converted many of every rank, even some who were "saints of Cæsar's household." When set at liberty, he sailed to Syria, rapidly passed through Asia Minor, and returned through Macedonia and Corinth to Rome. Britain may have witnessed his devotion, and Spain caught the inspiration of his heavenly zeal. But his chief anxiety was centred in