were

more intensely Israelitish than before: the hope of Israel burnt more brightly than ever in their souls. They recognized the calling of Israel to be their calling, they were the seed of Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed; they were a chosen generation, a royal priesthood. If we could have asked them, they would have told us, that in believing in Christ they had forfeited no privilege, but had gained blessings unspeakable; they were more conscious than ever of the worth and dignity of the covenants and the promises of Israel.

And they were right. They, and not the unbelieving Jews, were the true Israel. The Twelve Apostles, and not the chief priests and scribes, were the true leaders of Israel. They, and not the unbelieving Jews, were the true children of Abraham. They were the wheat gathered into the barn of Christ's Church; the unbelieving Jews were the tares which were to be burnt, the rebellious citizens who would miserably perish in the fire which should burn up their city.

Christ had said that the Apostles would hardly have gone through the cities of Israel before His coming. But through their ministry during the forty years between the Ascension and the destruction of Jerusalem, all that was good and sound, and worth preserving in the Jewish nation, was gathered into the Church.

But we must go back to the early days of the Church in Jerusalem. As we have seen in former chapters, it increased with wonderful rapidity. By degrees little bodies of believers were gathered together in Judea and Galilee.

Then came the first persecution, of which the martyrdom of S. Stephen was the signal. The

Christians were scattered far and wide. Some wandered as far as Antioch. Here after a while the gospel was preached to the Gentiles, many of whom believed and were received by holy baptism into the One Flock under the One Shepherd.

But it was, you understand, to the already existent Church of Jewish believers that these Gentile converts were gathered. The question was there was no help for it, it must come-on what terms they should be received into the communion of the Church.

Now the rooted belief of all, or nearly all the members of the mother Church at Jerusalem, was that if Gentiles were to be admitted into their fellowship (which you will remember involved eating together), they must be circumcised and observe the law.

From their point of view this was the obvious and natural thing. It would seem like treason and heresy to doubt it.

We hardly realize in what an imposing light the religion of their childhood appeared to the Jewish believers in Christ.

Could they forget that their great ancestor had been called and chosen by God Himself, that their great law-giver received the law from God amidst the lightnings and thunders of Sinai? Were not their sacred scriptures the utterances of Jewish prophets and of Israel's singers?

Was not the Lord Jesus the Son of David? was He not the King of Israel? Had He not declared that He had come not to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfil them, that heaven and earth should pass before one jot or one title of the law should fail? Had not He observed their feasts, and worshipped continually in the Temple?

Was all this to go for nothing? were Gentiles to be admitted on such easy terms, not only to the special privileges of the followers of Christ, but to the hereditary honours and hopes of the covenant people? If the Gentiles indeed believed in a Jewish Messiah, must they not as a necessary preliminary be received by circumcision into the commonwealth of Israel?

The first element in the settlement of this question was the reception of the Gentile Cornelius.

You will remember how step by step, by God's providence, S. Peter was led to Joppa, and how he was divinely taught that he must no longer regard any man as common or unclean, but that in every nation, he that serveth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him. You will remember also how Cornelius, following the instruction of the angel who was sent to him, sent to Joppa for S. Peter.

Well, he came. While the Apostle was still speaking to Cornelius and his friends the Holy Ghost came down upon them in the same way, and accompanied by the same outward signs as those which had characterized His first descent at Pentecost.

None of the Jewish Christians who accompanied S. Peter could resist the Apostle's appeal-who can forbid the water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?

This, one would have thought, would have settled the question once for all; but it did not. It was probably regarded as an exceptional case; the angelic messenger, the thrice-repeated vision might all be held to mark it as an exception to the rule, not as an example of it.

Somewhere about this time certain men, emissaries from the extreme Judaistic party in the

Church at Jerusalem, came to Antioch, and threw the whole Christian community into alarm and doubt by saying, "Except ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses, ye cannot be saved."

To allay this strife it was arranged that Paul and Barnabas and others should lay the case before the apostles and elders, and brethren of the mother Church. This plan was carried out; the two Apostles of the Gentiles went up to Jerusalem, and after a private conference the general assembly of the Church was summoned. The assembly kept silence. That is, they did not actually interrupt, while Paul and Barnabas declared what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by their ministry.

They were followed by S. Peter, who gave his adhesion to the cause of Christian liberty, and protested against laying upon the Gentile believers a yoke which neither they nor their fathers had been able to bear.

Then S. James the Just, the President of the Church of Jerusalem and of the Council, "his long Nazarite locks flowing down over his white robe,' rose to deliver his judgment.

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It was a critical moment. Humanly speaking, the whole future of Christianity hung in the balance.

The judgment was decisive on the main point at issue. It was not necessary that Gentile converts should be circumcised, or should be obliged to observe the ceremonial law; though on their part the Gentiles were to abstain from such Gentile customs as would be abhorent to a Jew, and from the moral impurity which was only the too frequent accompaniment of idolatrous worship.

But even this deliberate judgment did not set the controversy at rest.

Again we find, some years after, these Judaizers, so far from being silenced, dogging S. Paul's steps from Church to Church.

They seem to have taught first of all that S. Paul was no real apostle, that he knew nothing of the tradition of the twelve, that his teaching, therefore, went for nothing: that even allowing that circumcision was not absolutely necessary to salvation, it was necessary to the attainment of the higher graces of the Christian life. Gentile converts might indeed be Christians without it, but not perfect Christians; baptism admitted them, as it were, only to the outer courts of the Temple, while circumcision admitted them to the inner sanctuary of Christian privilege.

It was to refute these errors that S. Paul, as we shall see presently, wrote the controversial series of his Epistles, the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, the Epistle to the Galatians, and the Epistle to the Romans.

It was not a question merely of one ordinance more or less, it was not a little matter affecting, as it were, the fringe of the Church's doctrine; but one which affected its very heart and life.

It really involved the question, "whether Christ was the Lord of man, or only the Lord of the Jews; whether He had redeemed and reconciled man, or only a certain class or men." In these Epistles S. Paul vindicated his apostolic authority; he proved that the law was only a temporary expedient, till the coming of Christ: and that by being circumcised, so far from advancing to perfection, they were brought back to the very bondage from which Christ had come to deliver them: he proved that both Jews and Gentiles had alike sinned, and must be alike saved by God's free grace.