year 65. The privilege of Roman citizenship exempted Paul from a lingering death by torture inflicted on his less fortunate brethren, and so died the third of the men of Judea, and like the other two a sacrifice to an ideal.

CONCLUSION

LTHOUGH St. Paul was the genius of Chris

tianity, he always remained a Jew at heart. To his credit be it said that he permitted no opportunity to pass without proclaiming his Jewish lineage. Thus in his epistles to the Romans he writes, "I say then, hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin" His hostile attitude toward the Abrahamic rite as recorded in Christian theology is also greatly exaggerated. He never advocated its abrogation among the Jews; on the contrary, he rather encouraged its enforcement among his people, having himself performed the rite on his friend Timotheus. "What advantage then hath the Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way; chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God."2

His object in preaching the doctrine of the Messiah was a desire to further the cause of Judaism, not to supplant it. He taught Jewish ethics and monotheism to the Gentiles by means of the Nazarene doctrine which appealed to their preconceived ideals of the manGod. That Paul did not consider the messianic dogma 1Romans, XI:1. 2Romans, III:1-2.

incompatible with membership in the Jewish church is proved by his visiting the Temple in Jerusalem after fifteen years of missionary work, to do penance, not for preaching Jesus, but for his laxity in the observance of the Mosaic law. Would Paul have entered the holy place to worship according to the customs of his fathers if he rejected the tenets of their religion?

Paul's only desire seemed to be to spread the knowledge of the One and only God of Israel among the benighted idolaters, and to do this he was willing to compromise on non-essentials if thereby he could gain converts to his cause. Had Peter and James accepted his proposition to admit the non-circumcised as members of the Temple, the Judean form of worship today would be the dominant religion. Neither Peter, James nor Barnabas, however, would acknowledge Paul's gospel as the true authorized version, and tried in many ways to undermine his authority and nullify his teachings. This hostile attitude of the Jerusalem authorities provoked Paul to use the memorable words, "Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached, let him be accursed."

Readers of the Bible must always bear in mind that the New Testament does not represent the simple lessons preached by Paul and the Judaeo-Christians as taught them by Jesus of Nazareth. It was many years after the death of the apostles before the first gospel, that of St. Mark, appeared, the others following some forty or sixty years later, so that the record of all of

Galatians, I:8.

them represents only hearsay evidence. The first account of the existence of the four gospels is in the Muraton fragments, which according to the best authorities was written by an Italian bishop between 180 and 200 A. D. Even the Epistles of St. Paul, which form the basis of the four gospels, have been so changed and interpolated with dogmas and rituals so entirely foreign to Paul's character and sentiments, that only by deductions and logical reasoning can we arrive at the proper viewpoint from which to judge the true from the false.

Confusion and chaos reigned supreme in the early period of the Christian Church. The Rev. Dr. Conybeare, a Protestant minister and authority on church history, writes: "It is painful to be compelled to acknowledge among Christians of the apostolic age the existence of many forms of error and sin. It was a pleasing dream which represents the primitive church as a society of angels, and it is not without a struggle that we open our eyes and behold the reality." Each community followed its own conception of the new cult independent of its affiliation with the others. The school acknowledging Arius as its leader accepted Jesus as the Messiah, but rejected the dogma of his divine birth, while the Ebionites, followers of John the Baptist, repudiated the entire apostolic creed. So that the church divided into hostile groups, each representing a different ritual, was threatened with dissolution. To check this tendency toward disruption and bring about a common liturgy binding upon all it was decided to 'Dr. I. M. Wise, Martyrdom of Jesus.

call an ecumenical council, the first of its kind, where delegates from all the various factions should meet and deliberate. The assembly met in the city of Nicaea in the year 325 A. D., and remained in session many months. All the floating legends and traditions pertaining to the apostolic period were tested and weighed and accepted or rejected as expediency dictated. The date of the birth of Jesus, which up to this time had not been established, was agreed upon as December 25, this being a Pagan holiday very popular for merrymaking. At this council the Jewish festivals, which up to this period were strictly observed by the Christians, were changed and new names given and fixed dates recorded in the calendar.

Delegates refusing to subscribe to the ruling of the majority were ejected from the council, and the vacillating brethren threatened with excommunication. In this manner the gospels were created and the canons and ritual of the church established. But many doctrines have since been added. The cross was not adopted as a Christian symbol until the sixth century, while the dogma of the immaculate conception was first officially declared a doctrine of the church by Pope Pius IX in 1854, and the bull by Pius IX making papal infallibility a dogma was issued in 1870.5 From these few stated additions to the canons of the Church it will be seen how decidedly a man-made religion is Christianity, and how far it has traveled from the fundamentals as taught by its founder, St. Paul. Paul's system was intended to cement the people into a harCatholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XII, p. 136.