Anyone who has browsed through a gift shop sooner or later has come to a polite but insistent sign, "Please Do Not Touch." It was refreshing, therefore, to come recently upon a sign of different tone. In the gift shop at O’Hare Airport the word above some African wood carvings said, "Please touch. You can’t appreciate these until you do."

There are many evidences that this in fact was the mood in which the New Testament writings first came into being. Those writers were sure they had come upon something which everyone ought to touch. To them it felt like new life.

That purpose seems to have given form to the letter to the Romans. For a long time, Paul, a Roman citizen himself, had wanted to visit the Christians who were in Rome. But again and again the way failed to open. When at last it…