question in consequence of the Pauline mission to the Gentiles. Even at the Apostolic Council, when it was conceded to Paul that the Gentile converts might be exempted from the claims of the Law, the Jewish Christians were still far from thinking that for them there was to be any alteration in the existing obligation to full observance of the Law. And when the circumstances in Antioch led to the limits of Jewish liberality, as contemplated in the Apostolic compact, being exceeded, the only consequence of this was that henceforward the Jewish churches stiffened in their zeal for the Law, and also began to work actively in the Gentile churches against the Apostolic compact. All those long and fierce struggles which Paul was subsequently obliged to wage with the Jewish Christians over the question of the Law, would become unintelligible if we had to assume that the primitive community took from the first the same view of the freedom of Christians from the Law as was taken by Paul. They form therefore an irrefutable proof that the primitive community held itself to be permanently bound by the obligations of the Jewish Law.

From what has been said it follows self-evidently that the first Christians cannot have intended to constitute themselves as a new and peculiar community, separate from Judaism. They desired to be nothing else than the faithful "remnant" of the People spoken of by the prophets, and they expected the fulfilment of the promises in the speedy establishment of the Messianic Kingdom through the Second Coming of Jesus; how then could they contemplate setting up special organisations and usages for this

short period? Even Baptism and the Lord's Supper were as yet not, in the same sense as they became at a later period, acts of public worship and marks distinguishing the Christian religious fellowship from the Jewish. Baptism was originally a symbolic act of purification and dedication,' and was already in use in the Essene community and among the disciples of John, who nevertheless remained "good Jews"; it therefore did not necessarily involve a breach with Judaism, or the foundation of a separate community. It was the same in the case of the Supper, which at the first had, even less than Baptism, the character of an act of worship; this is only acquired later in the Pauline churches and through the Pauline theology. Among the earliest Christians it consisted at first simply of a meal partaken of in common, in which the loving union of the brethren received practical expression. Private religious assemblies of this kind, with common meals, were already usual among the Essenes and Pharisees; their relation to public worship was similar to that of the prayerunions of the present day to the public services of the Church. What, however, gave to the Christian fellowship-meals their higher sacredness and special religious significance, was the intimate union of the brethren through the focussing of their thought upon Jesus as Messiah. As they prayed and studied the Scriptures and gave themselves to absorbing meditation upon the life and death of Christ, recalling His

1 Baptism, like the Lord's Supper, first acquired its specifically Christian sacramental significance—as a means of mystical union with Christ in His dying and rising again-from the Pauline theology. Cp. Rom. vi. 2 ff.

promises with full assurance of faith, their hope of His return in the near future rose to a pitch of enthusiasm which enabled them to overcome the world by deeds of faith and love, and to make the Kingdom of God not only a hope but a present reality.

As an outcome of their faith in Christ and as a practical preparation for the new social order of the Kingdom of Christ, the regular relief of the poor out of the common funds was of great significance. A formal and complete community of goods such as the writer of Acts, idealising a little, represents, was, no doubt, not actually established. Had it been, the poor, for the care of whom it was necessary to appoint deacons, would no longer have existed; it could no longer have been singled out as a praiseworthy act when an individual sold his land for the benefit of the common funds; and it would not have been possible for any one hospitably to place a private house at the disposal of the church for its meetings, as is recorded of Mary, the mother of Mark, in Acts xii. But even if we reduce the exaggerated legend of community of goods among the first Christians to its historical substratum-to the constant relief of all poor persons by means of a common fund, and especially by means of the meals partaken of in common--this still remains a fact of remarkable importance. Imaginative hopes were here transformed into practical acts, the dream of the apocalyptic Kingdom of the Messiah here became the reality of a brotherhood of the children of God. It was the grandest and at the same time the boldest and the purest scheme for the regeneration of the

world which was here entered on by a narrow circle of quiet and simple people, not in the spirit of selfseeking and aggrandisement, but in that of serviceable and patient love, which found in Jesus, the friend of the poor and heavy-laden, its pattern and the pledge of final victory. Not in the dogmas, and not in the legends, which now began gradually to arise, but in these wonders of love, lay the mystic power by means of which, from the first, Christianity overcame the world-in the first place, it is true, the world of the poor and humble, of the simple and weak, of the ill-used and oppressed, of the hungry and the sad, of the helpless and the lost. To all these the Brotherhood of Jesus opened a place of refuge where they found, in the comforting and helpful sympathy of the brethren, a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, where God "shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

THE APOSTLE PAUL

CHAPTER II

PERSONALITY

Just as, in mountainous country, the true height of the loftiest peaks is not recognisable from the immediate neighbourhood, but only from a more distant standpoint, so in human history it is a common phenomenon that the full significance of the loftiest personalities is much less clearly recognised by those immediately about them than by those standing at a distance. Only for the latter does the picture of such personalities stand out in its characteristic completeness; while for those near at hand the comprehensive general impression is often obscured by the multitude of more limited impressions drawn from daily intercourse. This was precisely what happened in the case of the relation to Jesus of the original Apostles and of Paul. Paradoxical as it may seem that Paul, who never saw Jesus in the flesh or listened to His words, nevertheless grasped the innermost spirit of Jesus more purely and more deeply than the first disciples, yet it is by no means unintelligible. Precisely that which seemed to constitute the advantage of the latter, and in certain respects really was so, the fact,