i8z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not be saved ; neither could Paul, if he carried into practice his 

 views as to the indifference of eating meats offered to idols. Or, 

 to put the matter another way, the center of gravity of orthodoxy, 

 which is at the extreme right of the series in the nineteenth cent- 

 ury, was at the extreme left, just before the middle of the first 

 century, when the " sect of the Nazarenes " constituted the whole 

 church founded by Jesus and the apostles ; while, in the time of 

 Justin, it lay midway between the two. It is therefore a profound 

 mistake to imagine that the Judseo-Christians (Nazarenes and 

 Ebionites) of later times were heretical outgrowths from a primi- 

 tive, universalist " Christianity." On the contrary, the universal- 

 ist " Christianity " is an outgrowth from the primitive, purely Jew- 

 ish, Nazarenism ; which, gradually eliminating all the ceremonial 

 and dietary parts of the Jewish law, has thrust aside its parent, 

 and all the intermediate stages of its development, into the posi- 

 tion of damnable heresies. 



Such being the case, we are in a position to form a safe judg- 

 ment of the limits within which the teaching of Jesus of Naza- 

 reth must have been confined. Ecclesiastical authority would 

 have us believe that the words which are given at the end of the 

 first Gospel, " Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the na- 

 tions, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son 

 and of the Holy Ghost," are part of the last commands of Jesus, 

 issued at the moment of his parting with the eleven. If so, Peter 

 and John must have heard these words ; they are too plain to be 

 misunderstood ; and the occasion is too solemn for them to be ever 

 forgotten. Yet the " Acts " tells us that Peter needed a vision to 

 enable him so much as to baptize Cornelius ; and Paul, in the Ga- 

 latians, knows nothing of words which would have completely 

 borne him out as against those who, though they heard, must be 

 supposed to have either forgotten or ignored them. On the other 

 hand, Peter and John, who are supposed to have heard the " Ser- 

 mon on the Mount," know nothing of the saying that Jesus had 

 not come to destroy the law, but that every jot and tittle of the 

 law must be fulfilled, which surely would have been pretty good 

 evidence for their view of the question. 



We are sometimes told that the personal friends and daily 

 companions of Jesus remained zealous Jews and opposed Paul's 

 innovations, because they were hard of heart and dull of compre- 

 hension. This hypothesis is hardly in accordance with the con- 

 comitant faith of those who adopt it, in the miraculous insight and 

 superhuman sagacity of their Master ; nor do I see any way of 

 getting it to harmonize with the other orthodox postulate ; namely, 

 that Matthew was the author of the first Gospel and John of the 

 fourth. If that is so, then, most assuredly, Matthew was no dul- 

 lard ; and as for the fourth Gospel — a theosophic romance of the 



