The life and work of St. Paul

THK CONSULTATION AT JERUSALEM. 22?
not good, and ordinances whereby they could not live," 1 was this yoke now
that it had boon abolished, now that it had become partly impossible and mostly
meaningless to be disastrously imposed on necks for which its only effect
would be to madden or to gall? 8 Was a Titus, young, and manly, and free,
and pure, with the love of Christ burning like a fire on the altar of his soul,
to be held at arm's length by some unregenerate Pharisee, who while he wore
broad tepMllin, and tsitsith with exactly the right number of threads and
knots, was yet an utter stranger to the love of Christ, and ignorant as a child
of His free salvation P Were Christians, who were all brethren, all a chosen
generation and a royal priesthood, to be treated by Jews, who had no merit
beyond the very dubious merit of being Jews, as though they were unclean
creatures with whom it was not even fit to eat P The Jews freely indulged in
language of contemptuous superiority towards the proselytes, but was such
language to be for one moment tolerated in the brotherhood of s
Christ ?
It is easy to understand in what a flame of fire Paul must often have stood
up to urge these questions during the passionate debates which immediately
arose.* It may be imagined with what eager interest the Gentile proselytes
would await the result of a controversy which was to decide whether it was
enough that they should bring forth the fruits of the Spirit love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance or whether
they must also stick up mezuzoth on their houses, and submit to a concision,
and abstain from the free purchases of the market, and not touch perfectly
harmless kinds of food, and petrify one day out of every seven with a rigidity
of small and conventionalised observances. To us it may seem amazing that
the utterances of the prophets were not sufficient to show that the essence of
religion is faith, not outward service and that so far from ;
requiring petty
accuracies of posture, and dress, and food, what the Lord requires of us is that
we should do justice, and love mercy, and wait humbly with our God.6 But
the Judaisers had tradition, authority, and the Pentateuch on their side, and
the paralysis of custom rendered many Jewish converts incapable of resisting
conclusions which yet they felt to be false. So far as they were true Christians
at all, they could not but feel that the end of the commandment was love out
of a good heart and a pure conscience, and faith unfeigned but when their
;
opponents flourished in their faces the Thorah-rolls, and asked them whether
they dared to despise the immemorial sanctities of Sinai, or diminish the
obligation of laws uttered by Moses amid its burning glow, the ordinary Jew
l Ezek. xx. 25.
3 "
Circumcidere genitalia instituere ut divcrsitate noscantur," says Tacitus (Hist. T4 5 ),and adds as an "
aggravation Transgressi in morem eorum idem usurpant."
s Here is a specimen of the language of Jewish Rabbis towards proselytes :
"
Proselytes
and those who sport with children [the meaning is dubious] delay the coming of the
Messiah. As for proselytes, it is explained by Rabh Chelbo's remark, that they are as
injurious to Israel as a scab (since in Isa. xiv. 1 it is said, '
strangers' vrill be joined to
them (inDDJi), and nnco means '
a scab ') ; because, says Rashi, they are not up to the
precepts, and cause calamities to Israel " (Niddah, f. 13, 2).
4 Acts xv. 2.
Mio. vi. 8 ; Deut. z. 12 ; HOB, vL 6 ; 1 Sam. XT. 22.