ray that God would give the Spirit to
make us strong to overcome the feelings and the doubts of nature and
create belief in an eternal life through the experience of dying to
live. Where this faith obtained in this way exists, it has always been
supported by the conviction that the Man lives who brought life and
immortality to light. To hold fast this faith is the goal of life, for
only what we consciously strive for is in this matter our own. What we
think we possess is very soon lost.]

[Footnote 84: Weizsaecker (Apostolic Age, p. 73) says very justly: "The
rising of Judaism against believers put them on their own feet. They saw
themselves for the first time persecuted in the name of the law, and
therewith for the first time it must have become clear to them, that in
reality the law was no longer the same to them as to the others. Their
hope is the coming kingdom of heaven, in which it is not the law, but
their Master from whom they expect salvation. Everything connected with
salvation is in him. But we should not investigate the conditions of the
faith of that early period, as though the question had been laid before
the Apostles whether they could have part in the Kingdom of heaven
without circumcision, or whether it could be obtained by faith in Jesus,
with or without the observance of the law. Such questions had no
existence for them either practically or as questions of the school. But
though they were Jews, and the law which even their Master had not
abolished, was for them a matter of course, that did not exclude a
change of inner position towards it, through faith in their Master and
hope of the Kingdom. There is an inner freedom which can grow up
alongside of all the constraints of birth, custom, prejudice, and piety.
But this only comes into consciousness, when a demand is made on it
which wounds it, or when it is assailed on account of an inference drawn
not by its own consciousness, but only by its opponents."]

[Footnote 85: Only one of these four tendencies--the Pauline, with the
Epistle to the Hebrews and the Johannine writings which are related to
Paulinism--has seen in the Gospel the establishment of a new religion.
The rest identified it with Judaism made perfect, or with the Old
Testament religion rightly understood. But Paul, in connecting
Christianity with the promise given to Abraham, passing thus beyond the
law, that is, beyond the actual Old Testament religion, has not only
given it a historic