and dead level. The science of New Testament theology, if it is a science, has defined the various types of primitive teaching by contrast to one another; it has taught us to distinguish Peter and Paul, James and John, instead of losing them in the vague conception of 'apostolic.' Even the reader who is not a professional student is aware of the distinctions, though he has no temptation to press them. He is conscious that the dialectical discussions of Galatians and Romans are profoundly unlike the intuitive and contemplative epistles of John. When he reads the first verses of Hebrews or of the Fourth Gospel he becomes aware that he has entered a new intellectual atmosphere; this is not the air which he breathes in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. That new method of study, known to Germans as the 'religionsgeschichtliche Methode,' which regards the Christianity of the New Testament as a supreme example of religious syncretism, and by the help of the science of comparative religion traces all the elements of it to their independent sources, of course still further emphasises the differences. To it, Christianity is a stream which has its proximate source in Jesus; but as the stream flows out into the world tributaries pour into it from every side, swelling, colouring, sometimes poisoning its waters. This process

does not begin, as we have perhaps been taught to believe, when the New Testament closes, so that we have the New Testament as a standard for the perpetual restoration of the true faith: it begins at the very beginning. The New Testament itself is the earliest witness to it, and it is the New Testament itself which we must purge if we would get Christianity pure and undefiled.

All the sacramentarianism, for example, which we find in Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians; all the nascent catholicism of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles; all the religious materialism which in one form or another connects itself with the Church and its ministry, has to be explained and discounted on these lines. It cannot be traced to Christ, and therefore it is not Christian; it can be traced to other sources, and when we know what these are we understand it, and can rate it at its true value. It is not necessary to discuss this method of study here. Its right is unquestioned, and though like all new things it is apt to go to some heads with intoxicating power, it has brought light to a few dark places in the New Testament, and has doubtless more to bring. The point at present is that it emphasises certain differences which exist in the New Testament, differences which (it asserts) may amount to a direct contradiction of essential Christian truth.

No one, it will be admitted, can deny that the New Testament has variety as well as unity. It is the variety which gives interest to the unity. The reality and power of the unity are in exact proportion to the variety; we feel how potent the unity must be which can hold all this variety together in the energies of a common life. The question raised by every demonstration of the undeniable differences which characterise the New Testament is, What is the vital force which triumphs over them all? What is it in which these people, differing as widely as they do, are vitally and fundamentally at one, so that through all their differences they form a brotherhood, and are conscious of an indissoluble spiritual bond? There

can be no doubt that that which unites them is a common relation to Christ-a common faith in Him involving common religious convictions about Him. Such at any

rate is the opinion of the writer, and it is the purpose of the following pages to give the proof of it in detail. Everywhere in the New Testament, it will be shown, we are in contact with a religious life which is determined throughout by Christ. Be the difference between the various witnesses what they will, there is no difference on this point. In the relations of God and man, everything turns upon Christ and upon faith in Him. There is no Christianity known to the New Testament except that in which He has a place all His own, a place of absolute significance, to which there is no analogy elsewhere. We do not raise here the question whether this is right or wrong, whether it agrees or does not agree with the mind or intention of Christ Himself-this is reserved for subsequent treatment: all we are at present concerned with is the fact. It is not assumed, but it will appear as the unquestionable result of the detailed examination, that Christianity never existed in the world as a religion in which men shared the faith of Jesus, but was from the very beginning, and amid all undeniable diversities, a religion in which Jesus was the object of faith. To all believers Jesus belonged to the divine as truly as to the human sphere. In the practical sense of believing in Him they all confessed His Godhead. This is the fact which we now proceed to prove and illustrate.

I

CHRIST IN PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN PREACHING

Our investigation of the evidence naturally begins with the accounts of the primitive Christian preaching in Acts. Fortunately for our purpose we have no critical questions to encounter here. Even those who hold with Renan that the early pages of Acts are the most unhistorical in the New Testament make an exception in favour of the passages with which we are concerned. 'Almost the only element,' says Schmiedel,' 'that is historically important (in the early chapters of Acts) is the Christology of the speeches of Peter. This, however, is important in the highest degree. . It is hardly possible not to believe that this Christology of the speeches of Peter must have come from a primitive source.' Perhaps what it is most important to notice is that from the very beginning there really is a Christology. The question which Jesus put to His disciples while He was with them, Whom say ye that I am? was one which they could not help putting to themselves. If we hold that the Son, properly speaking, has no place in the gospel, but only the Father, then the question is a misleading one; it sets the mind off spiritually on a wrong track. This seems, in spite of ambiguities, to be the conviction of scholars like Harnack, who thinks that Christology is a mistake, and would lighten the distressed ship of the gospel by throwing it overboard. He goes so far as to censure the primitive Church for turning aside from its proper

1 Encyclopædia Biblica, 42.

2 Das Wesen des Christentums, 79 f.

duty-teaching men to observe all things that Jesus had commanded to the apologetic task of proving that Jesus was the Christ.1 Our present question, we repeat, is not whether Peter and the other early preachers fulfilled their calling well or ill, but what it was that they actually did, and of this there can be no doubt. Their own relation to Jesus, as we see it in Acts, depends finally upon His Resurrection and His gift of the Spirit; and though these may be said in a sense to transcend history, they do not lie beyond experience. Peter had seen the Risen Jesus and received the Holy Spirit: in virtue of these experiences, Jesus had a place in his life and his faith which belonged to Him alone. He was both Lord and Christ, and there was nothing in the religious world of the apostle that was not henceforth determined by Him. It is this religious significance of Jesus, rather than the Christology of Peter, in the strict sense of the term, which it is our purpose to exhibit.

The apostle starts in his preaching from the historical person of Jesus, and appeals to his hearers to confirm what he says: 'Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by miracles and portents and signs which God wrought through Him, as you yourselves know (Acts 222). We cannot tell what precisely was the significance to Peter of the wonderful works of Jesus, which are here assumed to be matter of common knowledge; the expression 'a man approved of God' is somewhat indefinite, and need not mean that Jesus was demonstrated by these works to be the Messiah. In point of fact, the characteristic of this primitive Christianity is

1 Dogmengeschichte, i. 57 f.