throw of Christian freedom. With an uncompromising boldness Paul vindicates the independent and original character of his own version of Christianity; and his renewed efforts to soften the hostility of the Jewish believers, and to conciliate the elder Apostles, is apparent in his letters. Equally apparent is the unremitting opposition with which those efforts were met in Corinth, in Antioch, and elsewhere. The persons who harassed him in Antioch were emissaries of James, the so-called Bishop of Jerusalem. The field of labour appropriated by St. Paul was different from that appropriated by the twelve Apostles, and the policy of conciliation ultimately adopted, while it permitted Paul and Barnabas to evangelise the Gentiles, limited the labours of the "seeming pillars," James, Cephas, and John, to their Jewish countrymen. The contention between Peter and Paul was not the result of occasional vacillation; it had a permanent and fundamental character. Paul's rejection of the Mosaic law was complete and final; in his view every man that submitted to circumcision pledged himself to the observance of the Mosaic law, and the assumption of this obligation rendered Christian profession absolutely nugatory. In the Acts (chap. xv.) the original antagonism is softened down, and the transaction there recorded entirely misrepresents the true state of the case. Paul and Barnabas are there described as in perfect agreement with the primitive Apostles, and are commissioned, with others, to bear to the Christians of Antioch a formal and authoritative decree of the

Apostles and elders, and the whole Church. This decree expressly rules that the Gentile converts in that city are exempt from the rite of circumcision. If such a decree had ever been transmitted to Antioch, can we suppose that in such a crisis as that described by St. Paul in Galatians, no appeal would have been made to its decisive authority. Paul has no remembrance of it; Peter has no remembrance of it; Barnabas has forgotten it; the emissaries of James, the entire Christian community-all alike have forgotten it.1

The historical existence of an early Judaic Christianity, as contradistinguished from the Catholic Christianity of Paul, which it is the merit of F. C. Baur to have established, throws a flood of light on the history of the religious movement which emanated from Jesus, and which, but for the energetic mind of Saul of Tarsus, would have been limited to the narrow circle of a Jewish sect, and gradually have perished from its contracted and exclusive genius. It explains the independent position assumed by St. Paul; it illustrates the numerous passages in which he asserts his apostolic authority; it shows the true significance of his resistance to Peter at Antioch; it enables us to understand his constant references to the Jewish opponents who dogged his steps; it interprets for us the differing views of doctrine which appear in the New Testament, and it harmonises with the doctrinal indications which are found in the writings of the post-apostolic period. Papias the Millenarian, "St Barnabas," "Hermas,"

1 Schwegler, Zeller, and Baur.

Hegisippus, who condemns an opinion of St. Paul; Justin Martyr, who never mentions his name; and the author of the Ignatian Letters, who deprecates the infusion of Judaism into Christianity, all testify to the existence in the second century of the Ebionite or primitive type. The most remarkable instance of the bitter animosity with which St. Paul was regarded by an ultra-Petrine party is to be found in the Clementine Homilies, a curious Christian romance, which appeared about A.D. 170. The whole purpose of the book, says Dr. Milman, is to assert a Petrine, a Judaising, an antiPauline Christianity. In it Peter is made the Apostle to the Gentiles, while Paul is attacked under the disguise of Simon the Magician. It is impossible, with the disproving evidence before us, to maintain that Christianity was a definite homogeneous system of doctrine, revealed by Christ, promulgated by his Apostles, accepted by St. Paul.

One doctrine there is indeed common to the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels, to the Paul of the Epistles, to the Peter and James of the Canon, to the author of the Apocalypse-the expectation of Christ's immediate return. It cannot be denied, says Bleek, that the first Christians generally, and the New Testament writers in particular, cherished the hope that the glorious appearing of the Lord would not be far distant. The late Rev. Frederick Robertson frankly avowed his belief that the Apostles lived in contemplation of the immediate end of the world, and boldly ascribed the unity of Christians, and the transformation of the Chris

tian religion from a philosophy into a life, to this preposterous delusion. On this point there was unanimity among the promulgators of Christianity, but this unanimity was a unanimity of error.

During the long and weary progress of my inquiries, I consulted numerous works by German as well as English authors, on both the orthodox and heterodox side of the question. The learning, the eloquence, and the sweet and noble spirit of the late F. D. Maurice are admirably fitted to attract unsettled minds, but I fail to see in his mystical refinements any real logical cogency. Hengstenberg, one of the vaunted champions of the older theology, impresses me mainly with a sense of his feebleness; and Ebrard, whose "Life of Christ" I was induced to read by a eulogistic notice in one of the most intellectual of our weekly journals, serves only to demonstrate the hopelessness of the task which he has undertaken. His avowed return, however, to his original admission, that the Synoptics and the fourth Gospel were at variance as to the time of the Last Supper, is very creditable to him.1

Of the old creed of my childhood little now remained. I still held, however, to the crowning miracle of the Resurrection of Jesus, while surrendering to a sceptical criticism the individual miracles of the Bible.

"But the arguments which were carried out with such dazzling brilliancy, by Wieseler especially, have been refuted with such thoroughness by Bleek (pp. 107, 156), that no false shame shall prevent me from confessing openly and honourably my return to my original admission of the actual difference in the two accounts."-English translation of Ebrard's Life of Jesus.

To me, at this time, the reality of the Resurrection was a necessary postulate, for I was unable to see how the early success of Christianity could be explained without assuming the miraculous fact. I had read Mr. C. C. Hennell's "Inquiry into the Origin of Christianity," but was not prepared to admit his ingenious historical hypothesis. His suggestion that Christ was raised in an invisible and spiritual manner might have guided me to a more reasonable explanation; but I dwelt rather on the external aspect of the problem, and the impression made on me by Paley's Argument was too strong to pass away till I had found an adequate solution of my difficulty. This last hold on supernatural religion was loosened ere long by the searching analysis of Strauss, who, in his first Leben Jesu, demonstrated the untrustworthy nature of the evidence. Ultimately I came to see that the diffusion of the Christian religion depended not on the fact of the Resurrection, but on the belief entertained by the Apostles and early converts in the Resurrection. To account for this belief no longer appears to me difficult. Jesus, in predicting his personal return after the violent death which he saw before him, did no more than announce his expectation of the inevitable sequel to the preliminary acts of the Messianic drama. As such an expectation was indispensable to the continuance of the faith of the disciples, so it was natural that the Master, convinced of the reality of his claims, should predict his return. If the continued existence of the pious dead in joyous