unlnwful thing for a man that is " Jew to Law. Now, however, in Cornelius's house, join himself or to come unto one of another St. Peter does not allow his spirit to be 1mtion; and yet unto me hath God showed dominated by sentiments suoh as these. that I should not oa.11 any m1m common or God o.nd Christ his Mn.ster were ma.king unclean." It wo.s painful to him as an it manifest, a11 in other we.ye, so especio.lly Israelite and a Mosaist; but God's declared by the astonishing illnpae of the Holy will was leaving him no altematil·e. Now, Spirit into these believing heo.rers of the whence harl arisen those feelings of repul- gospel message, !hat they were no longer sion? Partly it was, no doubt, a kind of unclean, and therefore he cannot possibly caste sentiment.. It had been then more any longer treat them e.s uuclecm. He than two thousand years a traditional con- tarried with them certain days, and, accord- sciousness with the Hebrew race that their ing to the charge immedio.tely o.fter preferred circumcision lifted them to a higher level against him and not denied, ate with them. than the rest of mankind stood upon; and That he partook of the same food as they, the persuasion inspired them with a disdain whether of a kind forbidden by the Mose.io of uncircumcised nations, which with the Law or not, is not stated and is no necessary most bad little or no admixture of really inference drawn from the circumstances. He religious feeling, being felt by the idolatrous would not, we may well believe, scruple now Ephrairuitcs e.s well as by the less unfaith- to recline at the same table with them; but it ful children of Judah. With the more pious may be readily imagined tho.t for a guest so member;; of the nation, this repulsion from highly revered,of whose Jewish sensibilities Gentiles was partly the outcome of their respecting food they could not be une.wu.re, sense of the deep degradation, religious and even if be or the six Jewish brethren who more.I. in which heathen nations were accompanied him from Joppe. did not make a .11unk, steeped as they were in idolatry; but point of apprisingthem,the wee.I thy centurion their sense of this was greatly intensified by and his family would be only too anxious the more.I effect of the separation from other to provide such food as both he and hie nations enforced by the ceremonial law. fellow-visitors would find acceptable. Thus This was effected partly by the distinction St. Peter might ho.ve "eaten bread" with between clean and uncle.:i,n animals, which, the Gentiles, neither, on the one hand, him- recognized in an elementary degree as early self breaking the Levitical Law by pe.rto.k- as the time of Noah, was me.de in the ing of food which was forbidden to him as a Levitical legislation a matter of very child of the legal covenant, nor, on the other, minutely definite prescription (Lev. xi.); declining to recognize the full acceptable- and partly by the prohibition of eating ness before God and the equal brotherhood either certain kinds of fat (Lev. iii. 17) or in Christ of believers who were still in their blood : to partake either of the flesh of an uncircumcision. The caste feeling of proud unclean animal, or of suet or blood, was disdain of uncircumcised men a.e men of an emphatically declared by the Law, and by inferior grade, and the dread of ceremonial the long-inberited tradition of the nation defilement from contact with those who had grown to be instinctively felt to be, were levitica.lly unclean, de.red no longer "defilement" and "abomination." There assert themsel vee, could, indeed, no longer is no ground for supposing that St. Peter'e be permitted to lodge in hie bosom, in the shrinking back from Gentiles as common or face of the clear proof which had been unclean was caused by rabbiniem. Rabbin- afforded that the Almighty had in Christ ism, no doubt, added much to the bitterness adopted them as his own children equally of the repulsion with those who served the with himself. Thus it appears that when traditions; but even where there wa.e no at Antioch, at the time here referred to by bondage owned to the dicta of the elde;s, St. Paul, Cephas was seen partaking of repulsion from the contact of e. Gentile social meals in company with the Gentile was e. powerful eentiment, having its roots converts, he wa.e only acting in the so.me deep in the instinctive Bentiments of the way as he hatl uctrtl at Cresaree. ten years Hebrew race and in the feelings in•tilled by before. the peremptory enactments of ihe Divine
iIOMILETICS. Vere. 1-5.-7'1e batt'le of (Jhristian liberty fought over the case of Tttus. The apostle proceeds to show that, on bis subsequent journey to Jerusalem, be maintained bis independence, and was recognized by the other apostles as possessing equal authority with themselves. I. Hrs NEXT INTERVlEW WITH THE APOSTLES. " Then fourteen years after I went up en. 11. 1-21.] THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. 03