8 THE SABBATH. 



Paul was too outspoken to escape assault. All in- 

 sincerity or double-facedness all humbug, in short 

 was hateful to him ; and even among his colleagues 

 he found scope for this feeling. Judged by 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 dissimulation. But Paul's quarrel with 

 Peter was more than personal. Paul contended for a 

 principle, and was determined at all hazards 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 liberal, not in name but in deed, 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. 



We who have been born into a settled state of things 

 can hardly realise the commotion out of which this tran- 

 quillity 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 docu- 

 ments afloat at the time of compilation was a work of 

 vast labour, difficulty, and responsibility. The age was 



