Historical Value of his Correspondence.

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of which he expounded his teaching, defended his position, or exhorted his converts, must possess the very highest value as historical authorities. They are contemporary; they are incidental and impromptu; they passed as confidential instructions from teacher to taught; they give us access into the heart of the movement and of the chief mover in it.

To a large extent this value must attach to such a correspondence, no matter what the character of the writer may be. In the present case, the character of Paul, as recognised by every competent judge, is such as to enhance the confidence we repose in his letters. Few men have ever revealed themselves more fully to posterity; few letter-writers have been more autobiographical; few so eagerly frank and outspoken as he. I am very far from venturing on the attempt to delineate all the features in that strangely compacted and fascinating nature of his; with its ruggedness and volcanic passion covering exquisite tenderness, delicacy, and tact; its intense inwardness. of spiritual experience, proper to his Hebrew blood, joined to a keenness of dialectic which cannot be wholly due to his Greek training; its shifting moods and excessive sensibility connected probably with an irritable nervous temperament; all ennobled by moral courage of the rarest quality, and such a power to sway men's hearts as drew support out of his very infirmities. I fancy we all of us know St. Paul a good deal better than any of us can describe him. But one trait at least none can mistake. It is the trait which renders his epistles especially trustworthy as evidence. He was a lover of truth, with not the least bit of mendacity, guile, or unreality in his whole being; one who could not so much as speak without letting the deeper workings of his own translucent nature shine through his mere words. The days are gone by when it was possible even for the most blind or unfair of controversialists to ascribe to St. Paul any sort or measure of insincerity. In these four Epistles, especially the three to his beloved converts at Corinth and in Galatia, he has unbosomed himself with a freedom so unrestrained that it is never found exhibited, save by men who are both very real and somewhat impetuous. Such, then, being the character and value of our sources, let us turn to see what these indubitable four Epistles really tell us respecting primitive Christianity and its great Founder.

In the first place, they prove that between twenty and twenty-five years after the death of Jesus, communities of Christian disciples were already to be found scattered over a wide area, from Jerusalem on the east to Rome on the west. The evidence for this is copious and familiar to all. In Galatians (i. 22), the earliest of the four, Paul speaks of churches as having existed in Judea more than fourteen years at least before that Epistle was written. In the latest of the four, Romans (xv. 19), he claims to have himself preached the gospel from Jerusalem in a circuit which extended as far as Illyricum. Incidentally, we hear of his work at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11), and at Ephesus (1 Cor. xv. 32, xvi. 8; cf. 2 Cor. i. 8). There were churches in Asia Minor (1 Cor. xvi. 19), churches of Galatia (Gal. i. 2), and churches of Macedonia (2 Cor. viii. 1). There were "saints in all Achaia" (2 Cor. i. 1), including a church at Cenchrea (Rom. xvi. 1), as well as in the more important Corinth. The faith of the Roman church had already become spoken of (naturally amongst the Christians)" throughout the whole world" (Rom. i. 8). Nor is this the solitary occurrence of such a general phrase as this—a phrase which, after allowing for the rhetorical exaggeration natural to an ardent missionary, must infer a very wide-spread Christian community. The sound of the gospel when Paul wrote had gone out, he tells us, into all the world (Rom. x. 18). It was made known "to all nations" (Rom. xvi. 26). "In every

place" there were those who "invoked the name of Jesus as their Lord" (1 Cor. i. 2).

It is not necessary to assume that these young congregations, although dispersed over many provinces, counted anywhere a very large body of converts. In these letters, Paul takes occasion to name a considerable number of his collaborateurs. Besides the older apostles, Peter, James, and John, we find such names as Barnabas, Timothy, and Titus, Aquila with his wife, Tertius, Sosthenes, Apollos, Stephanas, and Silvanus. With a band of propagandists so numerous as is implied by the casual mention of thirteen or more in the course of only four letters, and with the constant traffic from one part of the Mediterranean coast to another which characterised the Jews in that age of the Empire, it is quite conceivable how one short quarter of a century should have seen obscure handfuls of disciples collected

Extent to which Christianity had spread.

in almost every chief city and seaport.

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At the same time, each

church may have been still small, as small as M. Renan is disposed to think. It was not the size of each church, it was their number and their diffusion over so many lands, with the variations in opinion, in tendency, and in sympathy, to which this diffusion gave rise, which makes their substantial agreement in the Christian faith so worthy of note.

Our four Epistles certainly show that already deep and serious divergences had appeared inside the apostolic Church. Three out of the four were expressly written to defend Paul's own position and teaching against assailants, and the severity or even bitterness of his language bears witness to the keenness of the strife. Immense advantage has been taken by modern. critics of this divergence between Palestinian and Pauline Christianity. Every effort has naturally been made to exaggerate its amount. The authority of the apostles as messengers of a Divine religion will suffer, it is presumed, if it should appear that they disagreed so far among themselves that the Christianity of Paul and the Gentile West was a different thing from the Christianity of the original Twelve and the Jerusalem church. Into the merits of this debate I am scarcely called by my design to enter. But it does not seem to have been sufficiently observed on either side that the divergence (so far as it was more than a personal question) was one of inference, and did not touch the main body of Christian fact and belief which was common to both the disputants. The two points on which St. Paul contended with the antagonistic party were these: 1st, Was his authority as an apostle equal or inferior to that of the original Twelve? and 2d, Was the Mosaic law to be regarded as still binding on the conscience of the Christian believer, or as abrogated by the gospel? It was the latter question, of course, which lent to the former one its chief interest. Undoubtedly, the relation of Christianity to Mosaism was a matter of cardinal consequence. According as it should be decided would Christianity either shrivel into a Hebrew sect or expand into a catholic and spiritual religion. To make the gospel of grace an appendix to the law was in effect to make it no gospel of grace at all. The memorable merit and service of St. Paul lay precisely in his grasping so firmly the gravity of the

principles which were at stake. Yet throughout the whole course of this first and greatest of Church controversies, it turned in no way whatever upon any new or disputed allegations on either side, but wholly on a correct understanding, in their religious bearing, of facts which both sides alike accepted. The controversy did not involve any difference as to the facts regarding the person, the mission, or the work of Jesus Christ. Hardly too great emphasis can be laid on this. The main argument by which St. Paul combated the Judaisers was, that on their theory the expiatory death of Jesus on the cross, and His resurrection from the dead, were emptied of their peculiar value: "If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Gal. ii. 21); "Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified. by the law; ye are fallen from grace" (Gal. v. 4). Manifestly this is an argument which had no point against men who either questioned the facts of Christ's death and resurrection or rejected the religious significance which Paul ascribed to these facts. It is certain that Paul's opponents did neither. There is not a single trace throughout the dispute that either historically or doctrinally the central Christian position respecting the person and work of Jesus Christ was so much as touched. On the contrary, appeal is constantly made, even in arguing with the extreme Judaisers, to those essential truths on which reposed the faith of a Christian, as to data which were perfectly well understood on all hands, and unimpeachable.

This was not the only difficulty, however, which troubled the infant community. In the church at Corinth differences had emerged on various points. Did these points affect the uniform acceptance by the Corinthians of evangelical fact or doctrine? By no means. A question had arisen, for example, regarding the relative value of the prophetical gift among other strange manifestations of spiritual power. To compose such rivalry, Paul could appeal to the unity of all believers in their one Head, Jesus Christ, and to the unity of the one Divine Spirit into whom they had been all baptized (1 Cor. xii. 4-13). Social complications and questions of conscience had also sprung up respecting mixed marriages and the free use of meat that had been slaughtered with heathen ceremonies. But Paul could found his advice to the Corinthian believers

Early Church Parties agreed on the Facts.

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on the common ground of Christ's authority, and reason from their common faith in one God, the Father, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, who died for all (see 1 Cor. vii. 10 and viii. 6, 11). Doubts had even arisen as to the possibility of a literal resurrection of the body. Yet so firmly was the fact of Jesus' resurrection accepted by all parties in that divided church, that Paul could adduce that fact as essential to Christian faith, and as carrying with it, by necessary consequence, the resurrection of the Christian dead (1 Cor. xv. 13-23). Even on mere secondary details, such as the order to be observed in public worship, Paul counted so far on the solidarité of sentiment which bound the scattered members of the Christian body, that he cut short the troublesome objector by the words, "If any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God" (1 Cor. xi. 16).

What, then, was the Church of Christ as it appears in these earliest of its extant documents, after a quarter of a century had passed away? A large group of probably small communities, spread over some of the chief provinces of the Empire, observing the two peculiar rites of Baptism and the Eucharist, and maintaining a most active and incessant intercourse with one another; yet founded by various teachers, composed of very discordant elements, distracted by serious. differences of opinion, entangled in practical and speculative difficulties, such as cannot but arise where novel truths are fermenting in eager minds and revolutionising the beliefs and social habits of man. Notwithstanding, all these varied communities already cohere on the same broad platform of accepted fact and teaching respecting the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

It follows that the testimony of the Pauline Epistles to Jesus Christ is not simply his individual testimony, but the testimony of the entire Church in his day; not of the Pauline churches alone, but of the Judean churches as well: of the Roman church, for example, which he had not yet seen; of the Jerusalem church, from which proceeded the men who assailed his authority and undermined his work, not less than of Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, or Corinth.

If, therefore, the actual facts respecting Jesus of Nazareth were distorted at all by His early followers; if legendary