Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Antioch were steeped in iniquity, while
the emperors who wielded the sceptre of the Roman empire were hastening
the ruin of the existing civilization. It was in such an age and amid
such surroundings that the Gospels and the Epistles came forth as the
lotus springs, pure and radiant from the foul and fetid quagmire. What
could have produced them? The widely accepted rule that religions are
the products of their environments is surely at fault here. Neither in
the natural impulses of a dozen Judean fishermen and peasants, nor in
the bigoted breast of Saul of Tarsus, could these unique and sublime
conceptions have found their genesis. They are manifestly divine. How
exalted is the portraiture of the Christ! What human skill could have
depicted a character which no ideal of our best modern culture can
equal?

In all the New Testament there are none but the highest and purest
ethical teachings, and even the most poetical descriptions of heaven are
free from any faintest tinge of human folly. The Apocalypse is full of
images which appeal to the senses, but there is nothing which does not
minister to the most rigid purity; while the representations which Paul
makes of eternal felicity are strictly and conspicuously spiritual and
elevating. Everywhere, from Matthew to Revelations, it is the pure in
heart who shall see God, and the inducement held out is to be pure
because He is pure. And although the gift of eternal life is a free
gift, yet it affords no excuse for laxity. The sixth chapter of the
Epistle to the Romans is a remonstrance against all presumption in those
that are "under grace." "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto
sin, but alive unto God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let not sin
therefore rule in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts
thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the
dead."[230] The religion of the New Testament is a spiritual religion,
the resurrection body is a spiritual body; heaven is not an Indian
hunting-ground, nor a Vikings Valhalla of shield-clad warriors, nor a
Moslem harem. It is a spiritual abode, and its companionships are with
God and the Lamb, with the church of the first-born and of saints made
perfect. Now, all that we can say of these lofty and pure conceptions is
that flesh and blood never revealed them. They are divine. They are o