months, not without difficulties and impediments. The
Jews, unable to vent their wrath upon him as fully as they wished in a
city under the Roman government, appealed to the governor of the
province of which Corinth was the capital. This governor is best known
to us as Gallio,--a man of fine intellect, and a friend of scholars.

When Sosthenes, chief of the synagogue, led Paul before Gallio's
tribunal, accusing him of preaching a religion against the law, the
proconsul interrupted him with this admirable reply: "If it were a
matter of wrong, or moral outrage, it would be reasonable in me to hear
you; but if it be a question of words and names and of your Law, look ye
to it, for I will be no judge of such matters." He thus summarily and
contemptuously dismissed the complaint, without however taking any
notice of Paul. The mistake of Gallio was that he did not comprehend
that Christianity was a subject infinitely greater than a mere Jewish
sect, with which, in common with educated Romans, he confounded it. In
his indifference however he was not unlike other Roman governors, of
whom he was one of the justest and most enlightened. In reference to the
whole scene, Canon Farrar forcibly remarks that this distinguished and
cultivated Gallio "flung away the greatest opportunity of his life, when
he closed the lips of the haggard Jewish prisoner whom his decision had
rescued from the clutches of his countrymen;" for Paul was prepared with
a speech which would have been more valued, and would have been more
memorable, than all the acts of Gallio's whole government.

While Paul was pursuing his humble labors with the poor converts of
Corinth, about the year 53 A.D., a memorable event took place in his
career, which has had an immeasurable influence on the Christian world.
Being unable personally to visit, as he desired, the churches he had
founded, Paul began to write to them letters to instruct and confirm
them in the faith.

The apostle's first epistle was to his beloved brethren, in
Thessalonica,--the first of that remarkable series of theological essays
which in all subsequent ages have held their position as fundamentally
important in the establishment of Christian doctrine. They are luminous,
profound, original, remarkable alike for vigor of style and depth of
spiritual significance. They are not moral essays like those of
Confucius, nor mystic and obscure speculations like those of Buddha, but
grand treatises on revealed