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It made an immediate bond: from that hour we seemed to be welded into a family-party; and I had little difficulty in persuading her to join us and to preside over our tea-table. Surely there was never so ill-matched a trio as Rowley, Mrs. McRankine, and the Viscount Anne! But I am of the Apostle's way, with a difference: all things to all women! When I cannot please a woman, hang me in my cravat!

How distinctly, and with what unfaltering conviction, the Pope of 494, then locally a subject of Theodorick the Arian, set forth to the emperor at Constantinople the universal authority of the Holy See, grounded on what he calls the Apostle's glorious confession, on which followed the Divine Word creating his office, is apparent through the whole of this magnificent letter.

John's ashes before, in another church. We could not bring ourselves to think St. John had two sets of ashes. They also showed us a portrait of the Madonna which was painted by St. Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures by Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle's modesty in never once mentioning in his writings that he could paint.

According to the right rendering the last clause is, as I have already said, 'in which stand fast. The translation in the Authorised Version, 'in which ye stand, gives a true thought, though not the Apostle's intention here. For, as a matter of fact, men cannot stand upright and firm unless their feet are planted on the rock of that true grace of God.

From the universality of these precepts many readers might be apt to infer, that I am in my own person the bold and unsparing preacher of truth, resolutely giving to every man his due, and, agreeably to the apostle's direction, "instant in season, and out of season."

Following the R.V. we read 'made me free, not 'hath made me. The reference is obviously, as the Greek more clearly shows, to a single historical event, which some would take to be the Apostle's baptism, but which is more properly supposed to be his conversion. His strong bold language here does not mean that he claims to be sinless. The emancipation is effected, although it is but begun.

In such unexpected fashion did God fulfil the Apostle's desire to 'preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also. To preach the word with all boldness is the duty of us Christians who have entered into the heritage of fuller freedom than Paul's, and of whom it is truer than of him that we can do it, 'no man forbidding' us.

No longer did the apostle's style seem barbarous, as it did to Cardinal Bembo, it was a fountain of life. He was taught two things he had not read in the books of the Platonists, the lost state of man, and the need of divine grace. The Incarnation appeared in a new light. Jesus Christ was revealed to him as the restorer of fallen humanity. He was now "rationally convinced."

'I beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. Now, that thought recurs in other places in the Apostle's writings, somewhat modified in expression.

"Write ... the things which shall be hereafter." It is also to be noticed that the fourth and fifth chapters are properly of the nature of an introduction to what follows, presenting to view, as it were, a grand theatre on which are to be exhibited the dramatic characters and events which constitute the outline of history in the church and the world from the apostle's time till the consummation of all things.