to the
wisdom and originality of St. Paul. At any rate, there is nothing
improbable in this conjecture, nor need it draw us into any sympathy
with the recent attempts to use it as a means for discrediting those
Epistles in the New Testament which bear the names of other authors.
It is possible that the earliest Epistle is that of St. James, and we
have no means of telling whether St. Paul did or did not anticipate him
in writing Epistles. In any case, if St. Paul is not the pioneer, he
is the captain of epistle-writers. St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, St.
Bernard, and in modern times Archbishop Fenelon and Dr. Pusey, have
illustrated the power of making a letter the vehicle of momentous
truths. But on the greatest of them there has fallen only a portion of
the mantle of St. Paul.

We possess thirteen Epistles written by St. Paul. There is no real
reason for doubting the genuineness of any of them, and a remarkable
change has lately taken place in the manner in which the opponents of
orthodox Christianity have treated them. When the ingenious attempt
was made, sixty years ago, to prove that St. Paul invented a type of
Christianity which was not taught by Christ, it was held that only
Galatians, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians were genuine. The other
Epistles attributed to St. Paul were said to be forgeries written after
St. Paul's death, and intended to act as certificates for the Catholic
faith of the 2nd century. Since then criticism has grown wiser. The
genuineness of Philippians and 1 Thessalonians was first conceded.
Then it became necessary to {118} admit the genuineness of Colossians
and Philemon; and 2 Thessalonians and Ephesians are now being placed in
the same list even by some extreme critics. In fact, the use made of
St. Paul's Epistles in the 2nd century, and the impossibility of
finding any one who had the genius to personate the great apostle, are
two things which have disabled fancy-criticism. The Epistles to
Timothy and Titus are still confidently rejected by some authors, but
this confidence is being undermined. Some special attention is given
to the question of their genuineness in this book.

The writings of St. Paul fall into four groups, each group being shaped
by something which is unmistakably novel and by something which it has
in common with the other groups.

I. A.D. 51. 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

II. A.D. 55-56. 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans.

III. A.D. 59-61. Colossians,