the Jewish Christians, and the Ebionites said all Christians, must conform to the Mosiac ceremonial law. The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all Ebionites, or Nazarenes. The descendants of those converted by Jesus were enemies of Paul.

In the first three gospels a clear distinction is made between the twelve apostles and the disciples generally; but the evangel of John confounds the two classes, as if the former had no official title. After reaching the middle of his first chapter, the author of Acts does not recognize any clear authority in the apostolic office. According to him, the apostles had no distinct organization, no president, no records, no separate meetings, no creed, no disciplinary rules. The place of Judas Iscariot was filled, not in a meeting of the apostles, not by vote, not by appointment, but by lot, in a meeting of one hundred and twenty disciples. Acts conveys the impression that all the twelve made their home in Jerusalem during the remainder of their lives. It mentions events that occurred as late as 60 A. D. without suggesting that any one of the apostles (it does not apply that title to Paul) had a residence or a regular sphere of apostolic labor outside of the capital of Judea. The apostles did not divide the world, or Palestine, or part of it, into separate apostolic districts; nor did they make a division of labor among themselves. They had no bureaus of doctrine, discipline, ecclesiastical education and charity, such as are found in modern churches. After the first chapter of Acts, no mention is made in the New Testament of Matthew, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, James the son of Alpheus, Simon Zelotes, or Matthias. In a period of more than thirty years not one of them did anything considered worthy of notice. The name of Jude appears

once; that of James, son of Zebedee, twice; that of John, fourteen times; that of Peter, sixty-four times; and that of Paul, one hundred and sixty-two times; more than twice as often as those of all the twelve together. Except in the New Testament, we have no trustworthy information about the apostles. The traditions of the fathers, whether they relate to the apostles, the evangelists, or any other subject, do not deserve the least credence unless they are corroborated by other testimony.

The statement in Acts that the disciples in Jerusalem dwelt together and "had all things in common, and sold their possessions, and parted them to all men as every man had need”1 agrees with the communistic sentiments of the same author in the gospel of Luke, but does not harmonize with the conduct of Christians in Jerusalem several years later, or elsewhere in subsequent centuries, and has no corroboration in the epistles of Paul.

We are told that the disciples worshiped "daily with one accord in the temple," and that the new church "had favor with all the people"" in Jerusalem; but how, upon the basis of adherence to the law, the apostles could make converts to a Christian church is incomprehensible. It seems probable that the disciples were an insignificant Jewish sect until Paul began to preach his gospel in the cities of the Gentiles. His assertion that the twelve apostles did not understand the main principles of the religion of their master was a bold proceeding, but it was crowned with success.

Soon after the time when Paul attained prominence, the twelve sank into relative insignificance. He tried in vain to obtain their approval for his gospel; they attempted to control him, and failed. Mutual denunciations followed. They sent messages to his churches that he falsified the

faith of Jesus; he retorted that they were the slaves of an abrogated law, and that they had no right to meddle with his converts.

Their influence was obstructed by their residence in Judea and their adherence to the Mosaic forms. Paul had great advantages over them in his superior education, his adoption of a universal and form-free religion, and his extensive missionary labors. He visited cities of Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. He established churches in many of their leading cities, including Antioch, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, and Rome. Nearly all the Christian churches outside of Judea fell under his influence, directly or indirectly. The Christianity which has played a part in the history of the world was the religion taught by him. All the Christian churches of medieval and modern times sprang from the seed which he planted.

Paul is the true hero of the New Testament. He is the founder of Christianity. He is the first man who saw that faith in Jesus might become the basis of a universal religion. He laid that basis. He preached a Christ unknown to the apostles in Jerusalem. From his churches all the doctrines and discipline, the converts and sacerdotal ordination of modern Christianity have descended. He is the only Christian of apostolic times whose writings have been preserved to us without falsification.

The body of doctrine which became the nucleus of the new religion had its origin in his preaching, and the men who carried it throughout all the provinces of the Roman empire, save Judea, were his converts and their followers. He taught a new gospel, he emancipated faith in Jesus from Moses, he explained the relation of the crucifixion to the sin of Adam, he gave a logical consistency to the

scheme of redemption, he took no notice of the ascetic doctrines prominent in the synoptical gospels, and he laid the foundation of a new ecclesiastical discipline.

The fundamental doctrines of Christianity original with it and distinctive of it are, first, the eternal future punishment of all who die in mortal sin inherited from Adam; second, the eternal future reward of all who are redeemed by faith in Jesus from that hereditary sin; and third, the exclusive authority of the visible church as the agent in redemption. Of these three doctrines not one is clearly laid down in the words attributed to Jesus by the evangelists, and all are either distinctly stated or plainly implied in the epistles of Paul.

The discipline of Christianity, one of its most meritorious and most original features, and one of the chief causes of its success, must be credited mainly to Paul. But for the abrogation of the Mosaic ceremonial law, it would have been impossible to build up a powerful system of ecclesiastical government in the new church. With the abrogation of that law, opportunity was made for the observance of Sunday and of such annual Christian festivals as Christmas and Easter. After the doctrine had taken shape, and the priesthood had been organized, rules were adopted for the admission of children and adults into the church, for requiring them to tell their sins periodically to the priest, and for giving the church control at weddings and funerals.

SEC. 536. Post-Apostolic Period.—In writing of the early Christian church it has been found convenient to make three periods between the crucifixion and 150 A. D. The Apostolic period, in which the epistles of Paul were written, extends from 35 till 70 A. D. The second of these periods, that of the Apostolic Fathers who were

taught by the apostles, reaches from 70 to 1IO A. D.; and the third, that of the Post-Apostolic Fathers, closes with 150 A. D. We have no trustworthy account of any important event that occurred in the Christian church in the period of the Apostolic Fathers. Some epistles purporting to have been written then by Clement and Ignatius, most of them unquestionably forgeries, have been handed down to us; but so far as they are presumably genuine, they have little historical value.

The most noted Christian of the period of the PostApostolic Fathers is Justin Martyr. In two hundred passages of his Apology, he mentioned various books of the Old Testament; in a dozen passages he referred to the Memoirs of the Apostles without indicating clearly whether by that title he meant one book or several distinct books; and he made numerous quotations of the sayings of Jesus from those Memoirs; but these sayings, though similar to many in our gospels, are still not quoted with literal correctness from any one of them. Justin never mentioned Matthew, Mark, or Luke; he wrote of John, but only as the author of the Apocalypse; he never referred to the "four gospels;" and he did not mention any book of the New Testament as divine revelation, or suggest that the Christians of his time had any sacred writings except the Hebrew Scriptures. He cited the Memoirs of the Apostles as if they were uninspired; and he recognized the Acts of Peter and the Acts of Pilate as equal in authority to the Memoirs.

It was probably in this period that the four gospels were written. The three synoptical evangels were compiled from traditions and other materials, with considerable additions and variations. The ascetic speeches and the parables may have been copied from the Scriptures of