St. Thomas Didymus.--Origen, quoted by Eusebius, says that he went and preached to the Medes, the Persians, the Caramanians, the Baskerians, and the magi--as if the magi had been a people. It is added that he baptized one of the magi, who had come to Bethlehem. The Manichæans assert that a man who had stricken Thomas was devoured by a lion. Some Portuguese writers assure us that he suffered martyrdom at Meliapour, in the peninsula of India. The Greek Church believes that he preached in India, and that from thence his body was carried to Edessa. Some monks are further induced to believe that he went to India, by the circumstance that, about the end of the fifteenth century, there were found, near the coast of Ormuz, some families of Nestorians, who had been established there by a merchant of Moussoul, named Thomas. The legend sets forth that he built a magnificent palace for an Indian king named Gondaser: but all these stories are rejected by the learned. St. Matthias.--No particulars are known of him. His life was not found until the twelfth century by a monk of the abbey of St. Matthias of Treves. He said he had it from a Jew, who translated it for him from Hebrew into Latin. St. Matthew.--According to Rufinus, Socrates, and Abdias, he preached and died in Ethiopia. Heracleon makes him live a long time and die a natural death. But Abdias says that Hyrtacus, king of Ethiopia, brother to Eglypus, wishing to marry his niece Iphigenia, and finding that he could not obtain St. Matthew's permission, had his head struck off and set fire to Iphigenia's house. He to whom we owe the most circumstantial gospel that we possess deserved a better historian than Abdias. St. Simon the Canaanite, whose feast is commonly joined with that of St. Jude.--Of his life nothing is known. The modern Greeks say that he went to preach in Libya, and thence into England. Others make him suffer martyrdom in Persia. St. Thaddæus or Lebbæus.--The same as St. Jude, whom the Jews in St. Matthew call brother to Jesus Christ, and who, according to Eusebius, was his first cousin. All these relations, for the most part vague and uncertain, throw no light on the lives of the apostles. But if there is little to gratify our curiosity, there is much from which we may derive instruction. Two of the four gospels, chosen from among the fifty-four composed by the first Christians, were not written by apostles. St. Paul was not one of the twelve apostles, yet he contributed more than any other to the establishment of Christianity. He was the only man of letters among them. He had studied under Gamaliel. Festus himself, the governor of Judæa, reproaches him with being too learned; and, unable to comprehend the sublimities of his doctrine, he says to him, _"Insanis, Paule, multæ te litteræ ad insaniam convertunt"_. "Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad."