The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-09 00:00:00

who peruse the chapters following this introduction
will see cause to congratulate Mr. Biber on the happy
manner in which he has succeeded in his difficult and
admirable endeavour. The life of St. Paul has been
selected as the subject of the first volume because,
" not only is he the one among all the
Saints of the first age of the Church for whose
biography the largest amount of authentic materials
is extant, but of all others his life is best calculated
to exhibit the connexion of the Christian Church
with the Church of the Old Covenant and the relation
in which the two great branches of the primitive
Church, the Jewish and the Gentile, stood to each ,
other. At the same time it affords a lively picture of
the difficulties attending the first dissemination of the
Gospel, and of the internal condition of the Early
Christian communities." As a specimen of the
manner in which the subject has been treated
by Mr. Biber, and has an example of the
exceeding simplicity of his style, notwithstanding
the amount of intormation condensed into a few
sentences, we cannot do better than give the opening
of the first chapter of the "History of St. Paul :"
" Of the Great Doctor Gamaliel, and of his two Disciples,
Joses acid Saul.
"In the days of Tiberius Caesar, the Roman Emperor,
there was set over the high school, in the city of Jeru-
salem, a famous Rabbi, whose name was Gamaliel. He
WAS the son of that holy old man, Simeon, to whom it
had been revealed by the Holy Ghost, that he should
not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ; who
also, when the child Jesus was brought into the temple,
took him up in his arms, and bltsed God, and said,
Lord, now !attest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,
for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou bast
prepared beture the face of all people ; a light to lighten
the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.'
" This Simeon himselt also had been over the high
school that then was at Jerusalem, from which the most
learned among the scribes and lawyers and doctors of
the Jews came forth. And the school itself was called
Beth-Hillel, which signifies the house of Hillel,' after
the name of Hillel, the father of Simeon, who founded
this school about sixty years before the Lord Jesus
Christ was born into the world. And in his days, one
Shammai, one of his disciples, who was also a man of
great learning, set up another school, in which he taught
some things concerning the Holy Scriptures and the tra-
dition of the elders, different from what Hillel taught in
his school. The cons( (pence of was, that many
divisions arose; and the disciples of Hillel and the dis-
ciples of Shammai often had great disputings ; and some•
times, through the zeal which they had for their masters,
and the fierceness of their spirit, they grew so violent
that they smote each other, even to the loss of many
lives. And of these two schools, that of Hillel was the
more zealous for the traditions of the elders; for which
reason those who were of the sect of the Pharisees, the
strictest sect of the Jewish religion, sent all their youths
to be taught in Beth-Hillel; which caused it to become so
exceedingly famous and grout, that out of it thousands
went forth, both into Jerusalem and Judees, and into
other parts of the world also, spreading everywhere the
doctrine of the Pharisees, and the strict rules of the tra.
dition of the elders. And Hillel himself, having thus
grown a man of great reputation, and many of the chief
men of Jerusalem having been taught by him, was after-
wards made the chief doctor of the Sanhedrin, or council
of elders and doctors, among whom, beside him, there
was none greater, except the High Priest.
" This Hillel, among the thousands of disciples whom
he taught during the many years which he continued in
Jerusalem, had eighty disciples more clever and more
learned than the rest, who became noted doctors of the
Law, and caused the name of Hillel to be still more
highly exalted among the people. And among these
eighty was Hillel's own son Simeon, who so distinguished
himself by the excellency of his understanding, and the
greatness of his knowledge, that, when his father Hillel
came to die, they made him, who was then himself also
growing old, master of Beth-Hillel and chief doctor o
the Sanhedrin in his father's place.

" And after he was departed, the council of the Jews
being gathered together, chose his son Gamaliel to suc-
ceed him in his office; who thus became, like his father
and his grandfather before him, master of Beth-Hillel,
and chief Rabbi in the Sanhedrin.

"But Gamaliel, though he was a man of great under-
standing, and learned in the Holy Scriptures and in the
tradition of the elders, more than any man of his time,
was a man of very different spirit from what his father
had been before him. For his heart was not humbled
before God as was that of his father Simeon ; and,
therefore, although he knew all the prophecies which had
gone before concerning the coming of Christ, and dili-
gently studied them, and taught them in the school of
Hillel, yet had he not a right understanding of them;
expecting to see a mighty king arise in all the glory and
majesty of royal power, who should smite all the ene-
mies of the Jews with the sword, and make them the
mightiest of all the nations of the world, and Jerusalem
the chief city on the face of the whole earth. And this
he taught diligently to all that came to study the Law
and the Prophets in Beth-Hillel; whereby it came to
pass, that, when the everlasting King, the King of
Israel, came in the form of a servant to preach
repentance and faith in that great sacrifice
which he made of himself for the sins of
the whole world, and to gather together all the
nations of mankind into the fold of Israel, and into the
fellowship of the covenant of grace, the fleshly minds of
Galmaliel and his disciples could not receive His heavenly
doctrine, but rejected the counsel of God against them-.
selves. And as the accounts were brought to the council
from time to time, of all the wonderful works which
Jesus did, and of all the words which he spake as one
having authority, there wero many questions and disputes
among the disciples of Gamaliel, what they should think
of liim, whether He were the Christ or no. And often-
times, having been taught by Gamaliel what they should
say, they went out to ask Him qlcstious and to tempt
Him, and to ace if they could entangle Him in His talk.
But the more they did so, the more they were per-
plexed; because they saw the great wisdom with which
he answered them, turning aside all their subtleties, and '
putting them to silence with all their cavils, so thut

they knew not how they should reply against Him.
" Now there were among the disciples of Gamaliel two
young men, distinguished above their fellows by the
greatness of their zeal and the excellency of their know.
ledge. They were both strangers in Jerusalem and
Judaea, though born of Hebrew parents; as were many
other of Gamaliel's disciples, who were of the Jews of
the dispersion, scattered abroad in all the countries of
the Gentiles; and who, having heard of the great fame
of Gamaliel, had come to Jerusalem to be instructed by
him in the anowlcdge of the Law and the Prophets, and
in the traditions of their fathers. And the name of one
was Joses, of the tribe of Levi, who had come from the
island of Cyprus, where he was born, to become a pupil
of Beth Hillel; but the name of the other was Saul, of
Benjamin, a native of the city of Tarsus, in
theC ilictiraib. ofe
H eal
also had been drawn to Jerusalem by the
farce of Beth-Hillel and of its learned master Gamaliel ;
for Tarsus itself was at that time a city as far famed for
the learning of its schools as it was for the pleasantness
of its situation, in a rich plain between a range of hills
and the sea, on the banks of the cool and pleasant river
Cydnus. In this famous and flourishing city Saul was
born and educated; his father being one of the Jewish
settlers there, who, though an Hebrew by birth, bad
obtain( d tho rights of a Roman citizen, and living among
the Gentiles, desired that his son should become ac-
quainted with all the learning of the Grecians. Where-
fore he sent him to the schools which were at Tarsus,
and which were esteemed more than equal to the most
celebrated schools of the ancient world, those of
Athens in Greece, and of Alexandria in Egypt;
and there sung Saul, being a youth of quick
understanding, made very great progress in all
the learning of the Grecians,
fled especially in a
knowledge of their poets and philosophers. Now it was
the fashion among the young men wbo studied in the
schools of Tarsus, that, when they had completed their
studies, they went abroad, in order that, travelling from
place to place, and visiting the schools of other cities,
they might increase their knowledge; and, therefore,
when Saul's time at the schools of Tarsus was accom
plished, he went to Jerusalem, to the school of Gamaliel,
deeming it to be the most fitting school for one to visit
who was an Ilebrevv of the Hebrews, and, moreover, a
follower of the sect of the Pharisees."
The readers of the Scripture need not be told that the
history of St. Paul is replete with interesting and
wonderful adventures : the martyrdom of St. Stephen
—the conversion of St. Paul—the preaching of the
Apostle at Athens and Corinth—his journeyings by
sea and land—his imprisonment—his perils and his
miraculous escapes—the half-conversion of King
Agrippa—Paul's sojourn at Rome, and, finally, his
martyrdom,—all these and many other events are
here narrated in simple and earnest language,
following as closely as possible the sub-
lime simplicity of Holy Writ. To the young
especially this little volume will be eminently useful,
and to young and old its perusal cannot but afford
delight. We sincerely wish Mr. Biber success in the
prosecution of his valuable work. We boast of the
appellation of Christians, and if we feel what we say
we cannot think without interest on the pioneers of
our faith, the men who in life and not in name only
merited that appellation The love of a St. John,
and the self-sacrificing faith of a St. Paul, are no
longer to be found, yet the contemplation of such
characters cannot do otherwise than inspire in all a
wish, an ambition to go and do likewise—as each in-
dividual may in his appointed sphere. Homilies are
excellent in their way, but to our thinking no lessons
are like those of example, and these volumes of Mr.
Biber are likely to do more good than sermons.

SUICIDE yaws 13LACKFRIAH8 BRIDGE. Last
evening (Tuesday), about six o'clock, a respectably
dressed woman, apparently about 19 or 20 years of age,
was observed walking across the bridge, when on reach-
ing the third recess on the lower side nearest the Surrey
shore, she mounted the seat and deliberately threw her•
self into the water. A cry for assistance having been
raised, Neery, the watchman on Blackfriars-pier, toge-
ther with Mr. Ware, the piar-master, put off in a boat
wi'h the Royal Bun Jane Society's drags, but although
the river was dragged for upwards of an hour, they were
unable to find the body. The tide, at the time she threw
herself over the bridge, was very low, so that there is
no doubt she was killed instantaneously by her head
striking against the bed of the river. A black mantle,
worn by the deceased, was picked up in the water, and
is lying at the police-station in Fleet street, which may
probably lead to the identification of the body when
found.

At the Custom-house of this port on Thursday
Messrs. Boldemann, Borries, and Co., reported the
Swedish Teasel Dube, Captain M. Lundahl, from R;ga,
with a cargo of timber. This is the first vessel arrived
in the Tyne which comes tinder the regulations of the
new Journal,NevigationAvt.—.A7Gwcastle.