We come now to the purpose of the Epistle as related to St Paul's own life and work. On this subject it will not be possible for me to avoid some repetitions (in other words) of what I have had to say more than once before in connexion with different epistles or different aspects of the apostolic age. Our Epistle is the worthy fruit of the culmination of St Paul's career; but to understand it in this light, we must have some perception of the steps which led up to it.

Every one knows that St Paul's career as an apostle was determined by the part which he took with reference to the great question of his day, the relation of Jew to Gentile within the Church. But it needs some reflexion to gain a clear sense of the variety of the issues which were included within that one comprehensive question, and which had to be dealt with in one way or another by this Jewish Apostle to the Gentiles. The Bible gives no support to the common notion that there were two true “religions,” as they are conventionally called, the Jewish and the Christian, the one ending at the moment when the other began. The fundamental change brought by the coming of Christ was a deepening and enlargement of the one imperishable faith in the Lord God of Israel, and this change included gradations in its own accomplishment, and also in the manner in which it affected different classes of men.