" to the mature and supremely calm and simple experience which is
reflected in the Gospel and Epistles. It is easy to trace the
development of the impulsive, zealous Pharisee that Paul of Tarsus was,
through all the stages of spiritual growth that are reflected in his
Letters, till he is Paul the aged waiting to depart and be with Christ
"which is far better." You can study it in the confessions of S.
Augustine in its first stage and follow it through its later stages in
his letters and other writings, and in many another saint beside. If you
have any spiritual experience at all you can trace it in your own case:
you have grown, not through dealing with sin, but through the pursuit of
ideal perfection, that perfection which is set before you by the
Christian Religion. You may not feel that you have gone very far: that
is not the point at present; you know that you have found a method by
which you may go on indefinitely; that there is no need that you should
stop anywhere short of the Beatific Vision. You do know that your
religion is not the deadening repetition of dogmas which the unbeliever
conceives it to be, but is the never ceasing attempt to master the
inexhaustible truth that is contained in your relation to our Lord. You
do know that however far you have gone you feel that you are still but
on the threshold and that the path before your feet runs out into
infinity. Let us go back again to our examination of the experience of
the Apostles. When we examine their training we find there, I think, two
quite distinct elements both of which must have had a formative
influence upon their ministry. In the first place there was the element
of dogmatic teaching. There is a class of persons who are accustomed to
tell us that there is no dogma in the New Testament, by which they
appear to mean that the particular dogmatic affirmations of the Creed
are not formulated in the pages of the New Testament, but are of later
production. That, no doubt, is true; but nevertheless it would be
difficult to find a more dogmatic book than the New Testament, or a
more dogmatic teacher than was our Lord. And our Lord taught the
Apostles in a most definite way the expected acceptance of His teaching
because He taught it. "He taught as one having authority, and not as the
scribes," it was noted. The point about the teaching of the scribes was
that it was traditional, wholly an interpretation of the meaning of the
Old Testament. It made no claim