Judaism: the rite of circumcision was still retained; the temple hours of prayer were attended, though the sacrifices at the altar were no longer regarded in the same light by the evangelized as they were by their unconverted fellow-citizens; and the minor observances of vows and purifications continued to be devoutly recognised.[1] Thus there was not a sudden disruption of the old religious habitudes of the converts to the gospel, but, as we may believe, a gradual alienation from their ancestral ceremonies, according to the increase of their Christian knowledge, and the clearness of their perception of the designs of Providence. The accessions made so rapidly to the numbers of the church soon rendered it necessary to distribute it into smaller congregations or bands, each assembling "on the first day of the week" in its own appointed house,—κατ' οικον,—(Acts ii. 46; v. 42,) for instruction, worship, and communion. (Acts ii. 42.)
It was at this early period that the apostle Matthew wrote, primarily for the use of the Hebrew-Christian church, his invaluable Gospel. This holy document embodied the apostolical testimony to the life, doctrine, miracles, atoning death, and resurrection of the Divine Redeemer: these had been the great subjects of St. Matthew's preaching in Palestine itself, which, on the eve of his departure from that land, he delivered in this written form, in their own language, to his believing countrymen.[2] The other apostles made much use of this Gospel; and St. James is said to have used it as -the text-book of his public preaching at Jerusalem.
St. James closed his career by martyrdom, under the high-priesthood of the ferocious Ananus, during the interval which elapsed between the death of Festus the Roman governor, and the arrival of Albinus his successor. The high veneration in which "the brother of the Lord"
- ↑ Acts iii. 1; xxi. 21, &c.
- ↑ See Horæ Aramaicæ, p. 92.
