h was most impressive
to the imagination, that which seemed most sharply to distinguish
them from the unbelieving and unconforming world around, thrust
far into the background this universal and eternal test of
judgment set up by Jesus himself, and in place of it installed an
exclusive test fashioned after a more developed and aggravated
pattern of the very narrowest and worst elements in the
Phariasaism which he expressly came to supersede. The Pharisaic
condition of salvation was inheritance, by blood or adoption, in
the Jewish race and Abrahamic covenant, together with exactitude
of ceremonial observance. Everybody else was an unclean alien, an
uncircumcised dog, an uncovenanted leper. In place of this test,
the orthodox ecclesiastical party made their test dogmatic belief
in the supernatural Messiahship of Jesus Christ, formal profession
of allegiance to the official person of Jesus Christ. It is summed
up in the formula, "Whoso believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is
of God; whoso denieth this, is of the Devil."

Exactly here is where Paul, the noble apostle to the Gentiles,
broke with the Judaizing apostles, and taught a doctrine more
fully developed in its historic sequence, but substantially in
perfect unison with the free teachings and spirit of Jesus
himself. With Paul the test of Christian salvation was the
possession of the mind of Christ. "If any man have not the spirit
of Christ, he is none of his;" "but as many as are led by the
spirit of God are sons of God." "Neither circumcision availeth
anything, nor uncircumcision; but a new creature," begotten in the
image of Christ, availeth everything before God. "God rewardeth
every man, the Jew and the Gentile, according to his works." With
Paul, descent from Abraham was nothing, observance of the legal
code was nothing: a just and pure character, full of self
sacrificing love, evoked by faith in Christ, was the all in all.
Jesus Christ was the head of a new race, the second Adam; and all
disciples, who, through moral faith in him, were regenerated into
his likeness and unto newness of living, were thereby adopted as
sons of God and joint heirs with him. The Pauline formula of
salvation, freely open to all the world, was, spiritual
assimilation and reproduction of Christ in the disciple.

But the Judaizing party bore a heavy preponderance in the early
Church, and has succeeded unto this day in imposing on
ecclesiastical Christendom its own test: namely, a sou