quiet time at Jerusalem, during which Paul and Barnabas came back to ask the opinion of the Apostles as to how far the Gentile converts were bound to observe the ceremonial part of the Jewish law. The council was held under the presidency of the surviving James, to whom the chief seat in the Church at Jerusalem had been given. The decision was that the Gentiles were in no wise bound to those rites of the law of Moses, which had, in fact, been partly typical and partly intended to draw so sharp a line as to prevent the Jews from becoming insensibly corrupted by heathen intercourse. All, therefore, that was required was the observance of the eternal moral law, and the abstaining from practices in the slaying of animals for food which would have been abhorrent to a Jew.

The first twelve years had passed, and the Apostles had come to the full comprehension of their commission to teach all nations that the ransom of the world was paid, and that all that remained was to accept that redemption.

The Jewish Church had been like a kernel with a seed within; the first sprout had shot forth to Antioch, and now the roots and branches were to spread far and wide into a great tree overshadowing the earth.

After that first council on the treatment of the Gentile Christians, it was agreed that Paul and Barnabas should devote themselves to the Greeks, and John, James, and Peter to the Jews. This we know from St. Paul's own words to the Galatians, and there was a belief in the Church that all the other

E

eight Apostles set out on their several journeys at the same time together, agreeing before they parted on the symbol or watchword to be taught to every convert, namely, what we call the Apostles' Creed; and fancy has further added that each of the Twelve composed one of its twelve clauses or articles. There is, however, no real certainty that our Apostles' Creed was the same in form and arrangement, as we have it now, till a century later, though a symbol the same in substance there certainly was.

Matthew is also thought to have written the record of the life of our Lord in Hebrew and in Greek, so that the Apostles might have copies of this to leave with their converts. The Apostles acted as missionaries, going from place to place; but, wherever they found believers, they placed in authority men whom they termed elders, after the old Israelite, or indeed universally Eastern, term of elder for a man in authority. The Greek word was Presbyteros, which has been cut down into our word "priest." The elders were made to receive the special gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the Apostles' hands, and thenceforth conducted the Christian worship, and celebrated the Supper of the Lord in remembrance of Him, and under them were the deacons or ministers in whose special charge the poor were placed.

Most of the eleven who then parted, after fifteen years of the closest brotherhood, never met again, probably never heard of each other again. Some died by popular fury, some were executed, three shared their Saviour's cross; but in a few short years

all were together again, tasting the full measure of that glory and triumph which went so far beyond the impatient dreams of earthly greatness that they had feasted on in early days. John was apparently detained at the holy city by his sacred charge of the mother of our Lord, whom he tended with reverent care until her death, fifteen years after the Ascension.

By this time neither Jerusalem nor Galilee were places where the calm precepts of the Gospel could be listened to with consideration and reverence. The Roman yoke was being welded tighter and more heavily on the land, and the Jews, having let the true Messiah do His work among them without knowing Him, were fast becoming crazed with their vain expectation of false Christs. All who would listen to the truth were already gathered into the fold; the rest raged against it, and were barely restrained by the stern Roman power from savage cruelty to those Christians who consorted with Gentiles. Tumults broke out at Jerusalem, and, at the Passover of A.D. 54, twenty thousand persons are said to have been trampled to death. Galilee, once the happy home of John, his brother, and his friends, had become the abode of desperate robbers, who nestled like vultures in its crags, and the peaceful Christians were no more in number than could well be presided over by James, so that John, now about forty years of age, might now set forth on his journey.

Parthians, Medes, and Elamites had been among the first to hear their own languages spoken by the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost. These words

mean Israelites residing in those lands, and speaking their language instead of that of Palestine; for great numbers of the members of the ten tribes who had been placed by the Assyrian kings on the Median rivers continued to dwell there, though looking to Jerusalem as their home. The Parthians were a gallant people, in whom had revived again the best of the old spirit of the Persians, and to them the Jews were beginning to look as allies in their earnest desire of breaking away from the Roman power. It was to the Parthians then that John directed his steps, towards the banks of the Euphrates, where Abram had heard his first call. St. Peter and St. Thomas likewise preached there, and they succeeded in laying the first foundations of a Church which flourished mightily till it was nearly extinguished by a fresh outbreak of fire-worshipping zeal among the Persians.

John did not, however, there continue, but made his way gradually into Asia Minor, and came to Ephesus about the year 65. It was at this very time that the Emperor Claudius had acquitted Paul after his long imprisonment, and, instead of seeing his face no more, the Ephesians hailed their beloved teacher with joy, when, after a journey into the further west, he arrived among them. On the other hand there were tidings from Jerusalem that James "the Just" had been led by the furious Jews to the top of a part of the Temple overhanging a precipice, and thence, when he refused to deny his Master, hurled down, and slain at the bottom with fullers' clubs

What other Apostles still survived besides Peter is uncertain, but it was plain that it was time to make provision for the Church when the first generation of her founders should have passed away. There is every reason to believe that John and Paul, and perhaps Peter, here took counsel for the future with any other Apostle who remained, and with that goodly band of disciples who had grown up under their care. Luke too was there, the learned Greek friend of Paul, who seems to have used the time of Paul's long detention at Cæsarea to collect materials for a record of "all that JESUS began to do and to teach." There too were the half-Jew Timotheus, and the Greek Titus, and the Ephesians, Trophimus and Tychicus, who had likewise long been companions of Paul; and we may suppose that from Colossæ would come Onesimus, once the runaway slave of Philemon, but converted by Paul in his prison at Rome, and sent home to "be not a servant but a brother beloved," and Archippus, almost certainly the son of the good Philemon, and accepted for his sake as a Christian teacher, though already some slackness on his part had called for an exhortation from Paul.

One was at Ephesus about this time, whose example might show Archippus that those bred in a holy home among saints are not free from temptation to weakness, yet that they may recover themselves— namely John, surnamed Mark, the nephew of Barnabas. Companion of his uncle and of Paul in onc journey, he had left them in the stress of toil and danger, and, when Paul refused to take him again,