m, hostility to marriage, depreciation of
some vital elements of man's nature.

Paul's conception of the church never was fully realized. He expected to
see the whole body of believers filled with a "holy spirit," a
divine-human inspiration, which should of itself guide them into all
truth and duty. Outward law or doctrine there needed none, beyond the
acceptance of Christ as God's son who had lived and died and risen.
Accept that, and the divine spirit would be given you. No need then of
circumcision or sacrifice, of Sabbath or fast, of written code or human
ruler. The saint is free from all law but that of love; the company of
saints needs no control or guidance but that.

The beautiful ideal shattered itself against a stubborn fact. Love of
Christ did not guide his followers into all truth, or into harmony with
each other. Paul's life was half spent in a bitter contest with men who
loved Christ as well as he did. His epistles are full of the struggle
with that great party of Christ's followers who called him a heretic and
sought to win away his converts. Suppose any one had asked him: "You say
the spirit of Christ will guide his followers into all truth,--why does
it not guide these Christian Jews and you into so much of truth as will
make you friends instead of foes?"

Paul was hoping too much. The new impulse in the world--sublime,
beautiful, full of power and promise--was by no means sufficient to lead
the world straight and sure to harmonious perfection. There was no such
gift of "the spirit" as to supersede all search, all struggle, all human
leadership and human groping. That hope was almost as exaggerated as the
expectation--with which in Paul's mind it mingled--of Christ's bodily
return. The road to be traveled by mankind was still long and arduous.

Any complete history of the early church must deal largely with the
stubborn and bitter contest between the Jewish and Pauline parties,--the
champions of the law and the champions of liberty. That contest gave its
stamp to the epistles of Paul, and was indeed their most frequent
occasion. At a later time the attempt to harmonize the two parties seems
to have given birth to the book of Acts, in which history mixes with
fiction. But we are here concerned only with such features of the
history as made the most vital and permanent contributions to religion,
and for this purpose we need only specify the Epistle to the Ephesians.

This epistle open