and Naber (Verisimilia, 1886, 21 f.) that a pre-Christian apocalypse (i. 5-10, ii. 1-12, iii. 1-6, 14, 15) has been worked up by the unknown Paul of the second century whom the Holland critics find so pro- lific and indispensable.
The second epistle is inferior, in depth and reach, to the first, whatever view be taken of its origin, but both are especially valu- able as indications of the personal tie between Paul and his churches, and as samples of the new literary form which the religious needs of early Christianity created in the epistle. Dryden has hit this off in his well-known lines upon the apostles and their communities :—
, As charity grew cold or faction hot, Or long neglect their lessons had forgot, For all their wants they wisely did provide, And preaching by epistles was supplied. So great physicians cannot all attend, But some they visit and to some they send. Yet all those letters were not sent to all, Nor first intended, but occasional— Their absent sermons.
The Thessalonian epistles were written to supply the lack of further personal intercourse and to supplement instruction already given. They were not treatises designed to convey the original teaching of the apostles ; they imply that, and they apply it along special lines, but they are not protocols of doctrine (cf. note on 1 Thess. iv. 4). At the same time, “occasional” must not be taken to mean casual or off-hand. Paul dictated with some care. His ideas are not im- promptu notions, nor are they thrown out off-hand ; they represent a prolonged period of thought and of experience. Even these, the least formal of his letters, though written for the moment’s need, reflect a background of wide range and fairly matured beliefs. Nevertheless, they are hardly “absent sermons”. « Letters mingle souls,’’ as Donne remarked, and 1 Thessalonians in particular is the unpremeditated outpouring of a strong man’s tender, firm, and wise affection for people whom he bore upon his very heart. It is the earliest of Paul’s extant letters, and it delivers the simpler truths of the Christian faith to us with all the dew and the bloom ofa personal experience which not only enjoined them but lived to impart them. Both epistles show, as Jowett puts it, how Paul was “ ever feeling, if haply he may find them, after the hearts of men”. “He is not a bishop administering a regular system, but a person dealing with other persons out of the fulness of his own mind and natures) If they live, he lives; time and distance never snap the cord of