the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, would establish his faithful Jewish disciples. While they believed this, love to Gentile converts made them long to embrace them as fully graduated Jews: and how could any of them throw off belief in that glorious later Isaiah? Nay, were they not now basing their belief in a Messiah who had to suffer before ruling in glorified Zion, mainly on the words of this very prophet?--We cannot therefor wonder,--we must almost take for granted--that a strong and powerful movement came forth from Jerusalem, urging in much love and seeking to persuade Gentile converts to adopt circumcision, the sabbath and all the peculiarities of Mosaism.

In fact, this was no question internal to Christianity. In the historian Josephus (Antiq. xx. 2 § 3--5) we hav a very interesting account concerning Izates, the young prince of Adiabêne and his mother Queen Helena. The prince, while residing abroad, was converted to Judaism by a Hebrew merchant called Ananias. At the same time his mother remaining at home was converted by another Jew. When, by the death of the king of Adiabêne, Izates was called home to take his father's place, mother and son were alike delighted to find their mutual zeal for the pure monotheistic faith. The young man was eager to become a complete Jew by circumcision. The mother dissuaded, and appeal was made to Ananias. He also dissuaded, saying that without circumcision Izates could do what was vastly better,-revere God; and with the mother he thought it unwise to stir up violent feeling in the nation by submitting to a foreign ceremony. But after this, came a third Jew, Eleazar from Galilee, whom the historian calls most exact as to Jewish customs. This man finding the young king to be reading the books of Moses, vehemently censured him, as "learning and not obeying." Izates was ambitious of

perfection, accepted circumcision and thereby encountered much calamity, temporarily losing his throne and strangely regaining it. These events were under the empire of Claudius Cæsar. The sons and brothers of Izates were brought before Titus Cæsar after Jerusalem was captured. Thus the chronology is fixed. The three Jewish proselyters gained access to royal persons contemporaneously with the career of Paul of Tarsus. Queen Helena went on pilgrimage to the temple of Jerusalem. She arrived in the midst of a great famine, bringing with her much treasure. She at once sent to Alexandria for wheat and to Cyprus for dry figs. Her son, on hearing the news, sent large funds to the leading men in Jerusalem for public relief, and later they continued their liberalities.--Since all this was after the death of Jesus, we ar not forced to say, that these three Jewish devotees and their royal proselytes were accounted by him to be "children of hell."

Not a word has come down to us that can justly imply any sacerdotal terrors to hav been wielded by those who ar contemptuously called Judaizers: they had no power but kind argumentativ suasion. To us, of course, the suasion is empty of force. We do not believe in any secular domination promised to the Jewish race, or to others who hav accepted the Jewish ceremonial. But it is on the one hand unjust to call these Christians narrow and bigoted for desiring to hav the Gentile converts as equals and partners; on the other hand it is futile to censure them for believing the evident and plain sense of their great and magnificent prophet. This controversy concerning the value of the Jewish law, and the advantage of the Jew over the Gentile was presently to be quickened by the energies and enthusiasm of one man into a furious and deplorable heat. Here it may be added that in the book of Acts (xv.) a solitary occasion is reported, on

which certain Christians from Jerusalem taught the Gentiles, that without circumcision "they could not be saved." But the immediate result of this was (if we accept that narrativ) that the Church in Jerusalem collectivly reproved such teaching. If by "salvation" acceptance with God was meant, the doctrin was narrower than that of the Pharisees, who admitted proselytes of the gate. When the mother church so promptly disowned it, we may infer, even from the book of Acts itself, that the error was an exceptional indiscretion, and cannot hav had any deep roots or permanent strength. Yet another possibility must not be forgotten. If the Judaizers only taught that without circumcision converts could not take equal rank with Jews in Messiah's kingdom, this might be unfairly represented in the oral tradition of the Church fifty years later,--after Jerusalem had perished,--as teaching that without circumcision they could not be saved.

CHAPTER X.

PAUL AND JAMES.

THE introduction of Gentiles into the Christian faith before long broke the Church in twain: but the actual process was not one of natural development. It could not hav been pre-imagined, and it needs special and detailed narrativ. Happily we ar here landed on solid historical ground. We hold Paul's own letters, the letters of that pupil of Gamaliel who played a leading part in the first persecution of Christians. We may rest on them with the same confidence as on those of our own

contemporaries. But he writes as an eager controversialist against Christians of the earliest school. We hav not their statements. To accept his bitter accusations of them as a complete and final account, is not the way to truth or justice. With such light as we hav, we must do our best to imagin their side of the case.

This is not easy. For from childhood we hav been trained into contempt and aversion for the "Judaizers," that is, for the primitiv Christians of Jerusalem. Paul, we ar told, was "an apostle;" therefor all that he wrote must be true. But Paul sharply opposed Peter. Peter was made an apostle by Jesus; Paul had no credentials but his own. His apostleship rests on his own assertion that he was "called to be an apostle" (by a private vision?) after the death of Jesus. In a difference between two apostles, apostolic infallibility cannot be ascribed to either.

Paul was at first called Saul in the book of Acts; no reason is assigned for his change of name. But since he was by birth a Roman citizen, and Paullus is a wellknown family name at Rome, we may conjecture that Saul was his personal Hebrew name and Paullus the name which as a Roman, he used and preferred.--In this second stage of Christianity, two names, Paul and James, represent the two contending schools. The collision between these two was not confined to the question of Justification as understood by Luther. It took a much wider sweep; namely, Did Christianity overthrow and annihilate the Mosaic law? James replied: "Certainly not; not one jot or tittle: we Jews ar bound "to the law, as well as to circumcision and the sabbath; "only Gentile Christians ar free." Paul replied: "Nay, "but all the ceremonies ar mere types and shadows: the "substance is in Christ; (Coloss. ii. 17) Jews ar free, "equally as Gentiles: Christ has made me free, though

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"I am a Jew."-It is natural, almost necessary, for us moderns to admire the breadth of Paul's view, just as we admire Pythagoras in Astronomy. But in the actual controversy we hav to consider by what arguments Paul vindicated his position, and what personal authority he assumed in pronouncing that he had a right to dictate. That the living Jesus never taught the doctrin of Paul, is so obvious that no words ar here needed. Paul professed to hav learnt it by a special revelation to himself: James continued reverently to obey his Master and Lord.

James son of Alphæus, (strangely entitled James the less) is supposed to hav been first cousin of Jesus, because both by Paul and by the historian Josephus he is called brother of Jesus. It is agreed that at least after the death of James son of Zebedee (of whom nothing is reported but that he was put to death by Herod Agrippa the first) this other James became President, or first Bishop, of the Church in Jerusalem. Paul was a far greater man than James, if greatness be measured by the magnitude and permanence of his doings; but if we ought to esteem men chiefly for modesty, for fairness and sobriety of mind, in these qualities James was apparently superior. We know Paul better by his numerous letters. This controversy is opened most sharply by himself in his Epistle to the Galatians, which splendidly reveals the man. Perhaps Martin Luther, who commented upon it at enormous length, judged it to be the most valuable of his epistles. To us it is certainly valuable as signally displaying all Paul's weakest points.

If he prided himself on anything, it was on his skill and sagacity in interpreting the Hebrew scriptures. It is worth while to examin his use of them in this epistle. (1) "Unto Abraham and his seed" (argues he, iii. 16) "were the promises made, He saith not unto seeds, as of