The life and work of St. Paul

22$ -THE LTFS AND WOHE OF ST. PAUL.
and the ordinary Gentile were perplexed. On these points the words of Jesus
had been hat a beam in tha darkness, certain indeed to grow, but as yet only
shining aniid deep midnight. They did not yet understand that Christ's fulfilment
of the Law was its abrogation, and that to maintain the type in tho
presence of the antitype was to hold up superfluous candles to tho sun. From
this imminent peril 01 absorption in exclusive ritual one man saved the Church,
and that man was Paul. With all the force of his argument, with all the
weight of his authority, he affirmed and insisted that the Gentile converts
should remain in the free conditions tinder which they had first accepted the
faith of Christ. 1
When there appeared likely to be no end to the dispute, 2 it became
necessary to refer it to the decision of the Church at Jerusalem, and especially
of those Apostles who had lived with the living Jesus. It is far from im-
probable that this plan was urged nay, demanded by the Judaisera them-
selves, 8 who must have been well aware that the majority of that Church
looked with alarm and suspicion on what they regarded as anti-Judaic innova-
tions. There may even have been a certain insolence (which accounts for the
almost irritable language of St. Paul long afterwards) in their manner of
parading their immensely superior authority of living witnesses of the life of
Jesus like James and Kephas. They doubtless represented the deputation to
Jerusalem as a necessary act of submission, a going up of Paul and Barnabas
to be judged by the Jerusalem synod. 4 At this period Paul would not openly
repudiate the paraded superiority of the Twelve Apostles. When he says to
the Galatians that "he consulted them about the Gospel he was preaching, lest
he might be, or had been, running to no purpose," he shows that at this period
he had not arrived at the quite unshaken conviction, which made him subse-
quently say that " whether he or an angel from heaven preached any other
gospel, let him be anathema." 6 In point of fact it was at this interview that
'
Comp. MS. D, i\eysv yap o HavAos fievtiv QVTUS icd.9as liri'orevcw 8t~