n at Issue.--The question at issue was whether the
Gentiles were required to become Jews before they could be true
Christians; or, in other words, whether they had to be circumcised in
order to be saved.

147. It had pleased God in the primitive times to choose the Jewish
race from among the nations and make it the repository of salvation;
and, till the advent of Christ, those from other nations who wished to
become partakers of the true religion had to seek entrance as
proselytes within the sacred enclosure of Israel. Having thus destined
this race to be the guardians of revelation, God had to separate them
very completely from all other nations and from all other aims which
might have distracted their attention from the sacred trust which had
been committed to them. For this purpose he regulated their whole life
with rules and arrangements intended to make them a peculiar people,
different from all other races of the earth. Every detail of their
life--their forms of worship, their social customs, their dress, their
food--was prescribed for them; and all these prescriptions were
embodied in that vast legal instrument which they called the Law. The
rigorous prescription of so many things which are naturally left to
free choice was a heavy yoke upon the chosen people; it was a severe
discipline to the conscience, and such it was felt to be by the more
earnest spirits of the nation.

But others saw in it a badge of pride; it made them feel that they were
the select of the earth and superior to all other people; and, instead
of groaning under the yoke, as they would have done if their
consciences had been very tender, they multiplied the distinctions of
the Jew, swelling the volume of the prescriptions of the law with
stereotyped customs of their own. To be a Jew appeared to them the
mark of belonging to the aristocracy of the nations; to be admitted to
the privileges of this position was in their eyes the greatest honor
which could be conferred on one who did not belong to the commonwealth
of Israel. Their thoughts were all pent within the circle of this
national conceit. Even their hopes about the Messiah were colored with
these prejudices; they expected Him to be the hero of their own nation,
and the extension of His kingdom they conceived as a crowding of the
other nations within the circle of their own through the gateway of
circumcision. They expected that all the converts of the Messiah would
undergo th