all are one in Him.  And Paul reminds them,—­a bitter pill to the Jews,—­that this is taught in the promise made to Abraham four hundred and fifty years before the Law was declared by Moses, by which promise all races and tribes and people are to be blessed to remotest generations.  This epistle not only breathes the largest Christian liberty,—­the equality of all men before God,—­but it asserts, as in the Epistle to the Romans, with terrible distinctness, that salvation is by faith in Christ and not by deeds of the Law, which is only a schoolmaster to prepare the way for the ascendency of Jesus.

I need not dwell on these two great epistles, which embody the substance of the Pauline theology received by the Church for eighteen hundred years, and which can never be abrogated so long as Paul is regarded as an authority in Christian doctrine.

I return to a brief notice of Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem, which was made against the expostulations of his friends and disciples in Ephesus, who gathered around him weeping, knowing well that they never would see his face again.  But he was inflexible in his resolution, declaring that he had no fear of chains, and was ready to die at Jerusalem for the name of Jesus.  Why he should have persisted in his resolution, so full of danger; why he should again have thrown himself into the hands of his bitterest enemies, thirsty for his blood,—­we do not know, for he had no new truth to declare.  But the brethren were forced to yield to his strong will, and all they could do was to provide him with a sufficient escort to shield him from ordinary dangers on the way.

The long voyage from Ephesus was prosperous but tedious, and on the last day before the Pentecostal feast, in May, in the year 58 A.D., Paul for the fifth time entered Jerusalem.  His meeting with the elders, under the presidency of James,—­“the stern, white-robed, ascetic, mysterious prophet,”—­was cold.  His personal friends in Jerusalem were few, and his enemies were numerous, powerful, and bitter; for he had not only emancipated himself from the Jewish Law, with all its rites and ceremonies, but had made it of no account in all the churches he had founded.  What had he naturally to expect from the zealots for that Law but a renewed persecution?  Even the Jewish Christians gave no thanks for the splendid contribution which Paul had gathered in Asia for the relief of their poor.  Nor was there any exultation among them when Paul narrated his successful labors among the Gentiles.  They pretended to rejoice, but added, “You observe, brother, how many myriads of the Jews there are that have embraced the faith, and they are all zealots for the Law.  And we are informed that thou teachest all the Jews that are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses.”  There was no cordiality among the Jewish elders of the Christian community, and deadly hostility among the unconverted Jews, for they had doubtless heard of Paul’s marvellous career.