THE LIBERAL PARTY. 229 



was the Messiah, and that he would return in power 

 and glory to judge the earth. 



Jerusalem was frequented at the time of the pil- 

 grimage by thousands of Jews from the great cities 

 of Europe, North Africa and Asia-Minor. These 

 pilgrims were of a very different class from the fisher- 

 men of Galilee. They were Jews in religion, but 

 they were scarcely Jews in nationality. They were 

 members of great and flourishing municipalities ; 

 they enjoyed political liberty and civil rights. They 

 prayed in Greek, and read the Bible in a Greek trans- 

 lation. Their doctrine was tolerant and latitudinarian. 

 At Alexandria there was a school of Jews who 

 had mingled the metaphysics of Plato with their 

 own theology. Many of these Greek Jews became 

 converted, and it is to them that Jesus owes his re- 

 putation, Christianity its existence. The Palestine 

 Jews desired to reserve the Gospel to the Jews ; 

 they had no taste or sympathy for the Gentiles, from 

 whom they lived entirely apart, and who were asso- 

 ciated in their minds with the abominations of idolatry, 

 the payment of taxes, and the persecution of Antiochus. 

 But these same Gentiles, these poor benighted Greeks 

 and Romans, were the compatriots and fellow-citizens 

 of the Hellenic Jews, who therefore entertained more 

 liberal ideas upon the subject. Two parties accord- 

 ingly arose, — the conservative, or Jewish party, who 

 would receive no converts except according to the 

 custom of the orthodox Jews in such cases ; and the 

 Greek party, who agitated for complete freedom from 

 the law of Moses. The latter were headed by Paul, 

 an enthusiastic and ambitious man, who refused to 

 place himself under the rule of the twelve apostles, but 

 claimed a special revelation. A conference was held 



