some system of doctrines which should represent all men
as spiritually subjected to the will of a single God, just as they were
subjected to the temporal authority of the Emperor. And similarly the
only system of ethics which could have a chance of prevailing must be
some system which should clearly prescribe the mutual duties of all men
without distinction of race or locality. Thus the spiritual morality of
Jesus, and his conception of God as a father and of all men as brothers,
appeared at once to meet the ethical and speculative demands of the
time.

Yet whatever effect these teachings might have produced, if unaided
by further doctrinal elaboration, was enhanced myriadfold by the
elaboration which they received at the hands of Paul. Philosophic Stoics
and Epicureans had arrived at the conception of the brotherhood of men,
and the Greek hymn of Kleanthes had exhibited a deep spiritual sense of
the fatherhood of God. The originality of Christianity lay not so
much in its enunciation of new ethical precepts as in the fact that it
furnished a new ethical sanction,--a commanding incentive to holiness
of living. That it might accomplish this result, it was absolutely
necessary that it should begin by discarding both the ritualism and the
narrow theories of Judaism. The mere desire for a monotheistic creed
had led many pagans, in Paul's time, to embrace Judaism, in spite of
its requirements, which to Romans and Greeks were meaningless, and often
disgusting; but such conversions could never have been numerous. Judaism
could never have conquered the Roman world; nor is it likely that the
Judaical Christianity of Peter, James, and John would have been any more
successful. The doctrine of the resurrection, in particular, was not
likely to prove attractive when accompanied by the picture of the
Messiah treading the Gentiles in the wine-press of his righteous
indignation. But here Paul showed his profound originality The
condemnation of Jewish formalism which Jesus had pronounced, Paul
turned against the older apostles, who insisted upon circumcision. With
marvellous flexibility of mind, Paul placed circumcision and the Mosaic
injunctions about meats upon a level with the ritual observances of
pagan nations, allowing each feeble brother to perform such works as
might tickle his fancy, but bidding all take heed that salvation was not
to be obtained after any such mechanical method, but only by devoting
the whole soul to righteous