THE SABBATH. 249 



our standard of manliness, Peter, in moral stature, fell far short of Paul. 

 In that supreme moment when his Master required of him " the durance 

 of a granite ledge" Peter proved "unstable as water." He ate with 

 the Gentiles when no Judeo-Christian was present to observe him ; 

 but when such appeared he withdrew himself, fearing those which 

 were of the circumcision. Paul charged him openly with dissimula- 

 tion. But Paul's quarrel with Peter was more than personal. Paul 

 contended for a principle, determined to shield his Gentile children in 

 the Lord from the yoke which their Jewish co-religionists would have 

 imposed upon them. "If thou," he says to Peter, "being a Jew, 

 livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why 

 compellest thou the Gentiles to live as the Jews ? " In the spirit of a 

 true liberal he overthrew the Judaic preferences for days, deferring at 

 the same time to the claims of conscience. " Let him who desires a 

 Sabbath," he virtually says, " enjoy it ; but let him not impose it on 

 his brother who does not." The rift thus revealed in the apostolic 

 lute widened with time, and Christian love was not the feeling which 

 long animated the respective followers of Peter and Paul. 



"VVe who have been born into a settled state of things can hardly 

 realize the primitive commotions out of which this tranquillity has 

 emerged. We have, for example, the canon of Scripture already 

 arranged for us. But to sift and select these writings from the mass 

 of spurious documents afloat at the time of compilation was a work 

 of vast labor, difficulty, and responsibility. The age was rife with 

 forgeries. Even good men lent themselves to these pious frauds, be- 

 lieving that true Christian doctrine, which of course was their doc- 

 trine, would be thereby quickened and promoted. There were gos- 

 pels and counter-gospels ; epistles and counter-epistles some frivo- 

 lous, some dull, some speculative and romantic, and some so rich and 

 peneti'ating, so saturated with the Master's spirit, that, though not 

 included in the canon, they enjoyed an authority almost equal to that 

 of the canonical books. The end being held to sanctify the means, 

 there was no lack of manufactured testimony. The Christian world 

 seethed not only with apocryphal writings, but with hostile interpre- 

 tations of writings not apocryphal. Then arose the sect of the Gnos- 

 tics men who Jcnoio who laid claim to the possession of a perfect 

 science, and who, if they were to be believed, had discovered the true 

 formula for what philosophers called "the absolute." But these spec- 

 ulative Gnostics were rejected by the conservative and orthodox Chris- 

 tians of their day as fiercely as their successors the Agnostics men 

 who clonH know are rejected by the orthodox in our own. The mar- 

 tyr Polycarp one day met Marcion, an ultra-Paulite, and a celebrated 

 member of the Gnostic sect. On being asked by Marcion whether he, 

 Polycarp, did not know him, Polycarp replied, " Yes, I know you very 

 well ; you are the first-born of the devil." * This is a sample of the 



' " L'figlise Chretienne," p. 450. 



