2

was an adaptation in their minds—the χάρισμα διδασκαλίας, and, in consequence of it, were inferior only to the apostles in aptitude for giving public instruction. Besides that connected intellectual development of truth, there were also addresses, which proceeded not so much from an aptness of the understanding improved by exercise, and acting with a certain uniformity of operation, as from an instantaneous, immediate, inward awakening by the power of the Holy Spirit, in which a divine afflatus was felt both by the speaker and hearers: to this class belonged the προφητεῖαι, the χάρισμα προφητείας. Το the prophets also were ascribed the exhortations (πapakλýσεiç), which struck with the force of instantaneous impression on the minds of the hearers.' The διδάσκαλοι might also possess the gift of popŋrɛía, but not all who uttered particular instantaneous exhortations as prophets in the church, were capable of holding the office of didáσkuλoi.2 We have no precise information concerning the relation of the didávkaλoi to the presbyters in the primitive church, whether in the appointment of presbyters, care was taken that only those who were furnished with the gift of teaching should be admitted into the college of presbyters. Yet, in all cases, the oversight of the propagation of the Christian faith-of the administration of teaching and of devotional exercises in the social meetings of believers, belonged to that general superintendence of the church which was entrusted to them, as in the Jewish synagogues; although it was not the special and exclusive office of the elders to give public exhortations, yet whoever might speak in their assemblies, they exercised an inspection over them. Acts xiii. 15. In an epistle written towards the end of the apostolic era to an early church composed of Christians of Jewish descent in Palestine (the Epistle to the Hebrews), it is presupposed that the rulers of the church had from the first provided for the delivery of divine truth, and watched over the spiritual welfare of the church, and therefore had the care of souls.

1 The Levite Joses, who distinguished himself by his powerful addresses in the church, was reckoned among the prophets, and hence was called by the apostles, Bagváßas, and this is translated in the Acts (iv. 36) υἱὸς παρακλήσεως = υἱὸς προφητείας.

2 In Acts xix. 6, as a manifestation of the spiritual gifts that followed conversion, προφητεύειν is put next to γλώσσαις λαλεῖν.

Relative to the spread of Christianity among the Jews, the most remarkable feature is the gradual transition from Judaism to Christianity as a new independent creation, Christianity presenting itself as the crowning-point of Judaism in its consummation accomplished by the Messiah; the transfiguration and spiritualization of Judaism, the new, perfect law given by the Messiah as the fulfilling of the old; the new spirit of the higher life communicated by the Messiah, gradually developing itself in the old religious forms, to which it gave a real vitality. Such is that representation of Christianity which is given in the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, Peter appears before us, and then after he had passed over the limits of the old national theocracy to publish the gospel among the heathen, James presents himself as the representative of this first step in the development of Christianity in its most perfect form.

The transition from Judaism to Christianity in general gradually developed itself, beginning with the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah promised in the Old Testament; and hence many erroneous mixtures of the religious spirit prevalent among the Jews were formed with Christianity, in which the Jewish element predominated, and the Christian principle was depressed and hindered from distinctly unfolding itself. There were many to whom faith in the Messiahship of Jesus was added to their former religious views, only as an insulated outward fact, without developing a new principle in their inward life and disposition-baptized Jews who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, and expected his speedy return for the establishment of the Messianic kingdom in a temporal form, as they were wont to represent it to themselves from their carnal Jewish standing-point; they received some new precepts from Him as so many positive commands, without rightly understanding their sense and spirit, and were little distinguished in their lives from the common Jews. That Jesus faithfully observed the form of the Jewish law, was assumed by them as a proof that that form would always retain its value. They clung to the letter, the spirit was always & mystery: they could not understand in what sense he declared that he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. They adhered to not destroying it according to the letter, without understanding what this meant according to the spirit, since what was meant by fulfilling it was equally unknown to them.

Such persons would easily fall away from the faith which had never been in them a truly living one, when they found that their carnal expectations were not fulfilled, as is implied in the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews. As the common Jewish spirit manifested itself to be a one-sided attachment to externals in religion, a cleaving to the letter and outward forms, without any development and appropriation of the spirit, a preference for the shell without the kernel; so it appeared in the Jews as an opponent to the reception of the gospel, and to the renovation of the heart by it, as an overvaluation of the outward observance of the law, whether in ceremonies or in a certain outward propriety, and an undue estimation of a merely historical faith, something external to the soul, consisting only in outward profession, either of faith in one God as creator and governor, or in Jesus as the Messiah, as if the essence of religion were placed in either one or the other, or as if a righteousness before God could be thereby obtained. The genius of the gospel presented itself in opposition to both kinds of opus operatum and dependence on works, as we shall see in the sequel. At first it was the element of Pharisaic Judaism, which mingled itself with, and disturbed the pure Christian truth; at a later period Christianity aroused the attention of those mystical or theosophic tendencies which had developed themselves in opposition to the Pharisaism cleaving rigidly to the letter, and a carnal Judaism, partly and more immediately as a reaction from the inward religious element and spirit of Judaism, partly under the influence of Oriental and Grecian mental tendencies, by which the unbending and rugged Judaism was weakened and modified; and from this quarter other erroneous mixtures with Christianity proceeded, which cramped and depressed the pure development of the Word and Spirit.

We shall now pass on from the first internal development of the Christian Church among the Jews to its outward condition.

CHAPTER III.

THE OUTWARD CONDITION OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH: ITS PERSECUTIONS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES.

It does not appear that the Pharisees, though they had taken the lead in the condemnation of Christ, were eager, after that event, to persecute his followers. They looked on the illiterate Galileans as worthy of no further attention, especially since they strictly observed the ceremonial law, and at first abstained from controverting the peculiar tenets of their party; they allowed them to remain undisturbed, like some other sects by whom their own interests were not affected. Meanwhile, the church was enabled continually to enlarge itself. An increasing number were attracted and won by the overpowering energy of spiritual influence which was manifested in the primitive church; the apostles also, by the miracles they wrought in the confidence and power of faith, first aroused the attention of carnal men, and then made use of this impression to bring them to an acknowledgment of the divine power of Him in whose name such wonders were performed, and to hold him forth to them as the deliverer from Peter, especially, possessed in an extraordinary degree that gift of faith which enabled him to perform cures, of which a remarkable example is recorded in the third chapter of the Acts.

When Peter and John, at one of the usual hours of prayer, about three in the afternoon, were going into the temple, they found at one of the gates of the temple (whose precincts, as afterwards those of Christian churches, were a common resort, of beggars) a man who had been lame from his birth. While he was looking for alms from them, Peter uttered the memorable words, which plainly testified the conscious possession of a divine power that could go far beyond the common powers of man and of nature; and which, pronounced with such confidence, carried the pledge of their fulfilment: "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have, give I thee; In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk." When the man, who had been universally known as a lame beggar, was seen standing with joy by the side of his two benefactors, to

whom he clung with overflowing gratitude, a crowd full of curiosity and astonishment collected around the apostles as they were leaving the temple, and were ready to pay them homage as persons of peculiar sanctity. But Peter said to them, "Why do you look full of wonder on us, as if we had done this by our own power and holiness? It is not our work, but the work of the Holy One whom ye rejected and delivered up to the Gentiles, whose death ye demanded, though a heathen judge wished to let him go, and felt compelled to acknowledge his innocence." We here meet with the charge which ever since the day of Pentecost, Peter had been used to bring forward, in order to lead the Jews to a consciousness of their guilt, to repentance, and to faith. "God himself has by subsequent events justified Him whom ye condemned, and proved your guilt. That God who was with our fathers, and revealed his presence by miraculous events, has now revealed himself by the glorification of Him whom ye condemned. Ye have put him to death, whom God destined thereto, to bestow on us a divine life of everlasting blessedness; but God raised him from the dead, and we are the eye-witnesses of his resurrection. The believing confidence implanted in our hearts by him, has effected this miracle before your eyes." Peter would have spoken in a different strain to obstinate unbelievers. But here he hoped to meet with minds open to conviction. He therefore avoided saying what would only exasperate and repel their feelings. After he had said what tended to convince them of their guilt, he adopted a milder tone, to infuse confidence and to revive the contrite. He brought forward what might be said in extenuation of those who had united in the condemnation of Christ, "that in ignorance they had denied the Messiah," and that as far as they and their rulers had acted in ignorance, it was in consequence of a higher necessity. It was the eternal counsel of God, that the Messiah should suffer for the salvation of men, as had been predicted by the prophets. But now is the time for you to prove, that you have erred only through ignorance, if

1 Peter by no means acquits them of all criminality, as the connexion of his words with what he had before said plainly shows; for he had brought forward the example of Pilate to point out how great was the criminality of those who, even in their blindness, condemned Jesus; but ignorance may be more or less culpable, according to the difference of the persons.