l dogmas of
their time and countrymen, with such modification as the peculiar
character, teachings, and life of Jesus enforced, they believed
that sin sent through the black gates of Sheol those who would
otherwise have gone through the glorious doors of heaven; that
Christ would return from heaven soon, raise the dead from the
under world, judge them, rebanish the reprobate, establish his
perfect kingdom on earth, and reascend to heaven with his elect.
That these distinctive notions came into the New Testament
through the mistakes and imperfect knowledge of the apostles,
how can any candid and competent scholar doubt?5 In the
first place, the process whereby these conceptions were
transmitted and assimilated from Zoroastrian Persia to Pharisaic
Judea is historically traceable. Secondly, the brevity and
vagueness of the apostolic references to eschatology, and their
perfect harmony with known Pharisaic beliefs, prove their mutual
consonance and the derivation of the later from the earlier. If
the supposed Christian views had been unheard of before, their
promulgators would have taken pains to define them carefully and
give detailed expositions of them. Thirdly, it was natural almost
inevitable that the apostles would retain at least some of their
original peculiarities of belief, and mix them with their new
ideas, unless they were prevented by an infallible inspiration. Of
the presence of any such infallibility there is not a shadow of
evidence; but, on the contrary, there is a demonstration of its
absence. For they differed among themselves, carried on violent
controversies on important points. Paul says of Peter, "I
withstood him to the face." The Gentile and Judaic dissensions
shook the very foundations of the Apostolic Church. Paul and
Barnabas "had a sharp controversy, insomuch that they parted
asunder." Almost every commentator and scholar worthy of notice
has been compelled to admit the error of the apostles in expecting
the visible return of Christ in their own day. And, if they erred
in that, they might in other matters. The progress of positive
science and the improvement of philosophical thought have rendered
the mechanical dogmas popularly associated with Christianity
incredible to enlightened minds. For this reason, as for many
others, it is the duty of the Christian teacher to show that those
dogmas are not an integral part of the gospel, but only an
adventitious element imported into it from an earlier