Christians, who naturally wanted to keep within the old religion,
and who would have made a reformed Judaism, and the Gentile Christians who
as naturally objected to being herded within Judaism, and who wanted to
make a new and universal society. The first party rallied under the name
of Peter, and the second used the name of Paul. There was imminent danger
that the new society would break apart, with fatal consequences to
posterity. Real and deep as were the differences between Peter and Paul,
they did not, in all probability, sunder these great natures as widely as
their followers imagined. There must have been meeting points between such
souls, in love with the one Master. To find these convergences and
construct out of them a peace-platform on which both wings of the new
society might stand, was the aim of The Acts. It embodied genuine journals
of a traveling companion of St. Paul, notes of his addresses in various
cities, traditions lost to us outside of this book, of Peter's
conciliatory attitude and utterances; and groups these historic fragments
into a sketch, in which the two apostles are shown as dividing equally the
labors of founding the Christian Church, as preaching the same views, and
acting in cordial harmony. This book is a sign of the disposition to draw
together which was gaining ground among the primitive churches, a
disposition fostered largely by this writing; out of which process of
comprehension and conciliation arose the Catholic Church, naming its great
cathedrals after St. Peter and St. Paul.

IV.

_The books which are of a composite character should be read in their
several parts, and traced to their proper places in history._

Thus, for example, in reading Isaiah uncritically we pass from the
fragment of history that forms our thirty-ninth chapter, to the
magnificent strain of impassioned imagination which opens with the
fortieth chapter, as though there were no hiatus; and we proceed straight
through this latter section of the book, taking it all as written in the
reign of Hezekiah, that is, in the latter part of the eighth century
before Christ. We thus view this second section of Isaiah from a wrong
standpoint. The panorama of its visions becomes blurred. We cannot focus
the glass upon the objects in its field. The real significance and beauty
of this noblest reach of prophetic imagination evanishes from our vision.

To see this second section of Isaiah aright, we must push it