FAITH.
[To THE EDITOR OP TES "SPECTATOR."] Snt,—In the interesting article on " Faith " in the Spectator of May 18th the writer says : "According to Dean Stanley, and, so far as we can find, his dictum has never been reversed, the two Epistles to the Corinthians are the earliest of the Christian Scriptures." But in the preface to "The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians, with Critical Notes and Dissertations," 1855, p. 7, Dean Stanley says of the First Epistle : "Written, with the exception of the two Epistles to Thessalcmica, first of any of St. Paul's Epistles—and, so far as we know, first of any of the writings of the New Testament." In the first part of the sentence the Dean surely meant to say (what I suppose is the fact) that St. Paul wrote the two Epistles to Thessa- lonica before he wrote the First Epistle to Corinth,—and these two Epistles to Thessalonica are, therefore, the earliest of the Christian Scriptures. The latter part of the Dean's sentence seems to contradict the first. Alford places the First Epistle to Thessalothea first of all the writings of St. Paul. The importance of the First Epistle to the Corinthians lies in this—that we can tell from it the oral teaching of St. Paul. When he commenced his ministry, say ten years after the Ascension, for example, he must have delivered to his first converts the words of institution of the Holy Communion contained in 1 Cor. xi. 23-27, and, therefore, from an undoubted source and quite independent of the Gospels, we know what Christ said and did in the night in which He was betrayed.—I am, Sir, &c., A READER OF THE "SPECTATOR" FOR FORTY YEARS.
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