Introductory


Church  would  do  well  straightway  to  disencumber
itself.  After  all  that  the  young  science  of  Biblical
Theology  has  done  to  reveal  the  manifold  variety
of  New  Testament  doctrine,  the  book  still  remains
a  unity  ;  and  the  attempt  to  play  off  one  part  of
it  against  another  —  the  Gospels  against  the
Epistles,  or  the  Epistles  against  the  Gospels — is
to  be  sternly  resented  and  resisted.  To  St.  Paul
himself  any  such  rivalry  would  have  been  im-
possible, and,  indeed,  unthinkable.  There  was
no  claim  which  he  made  with  more  passionate
vehemence  than  that  the  message  which  he
delivered  was  not  his,  but  Christ's.  "  As  touching
the  gospel  which  was  preached  by  me,"  he  says,
"  neither  did  I  receive  it  from  man,  nor  was  I
taught  it,  but  it  came  to  me  through  revelation  of
Jesus  Christ."  The  Spirit  who  spoke  through
him  and  his  brother  apostles  was  not  an  alien
spirit,  but  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  given  according  to
the  promise  of  Christ,  to  make  known  the  things
of  Christ ;  so  that  there  is  a  very  true  sense  in
which  their  words  may  be  called  "  the  final  testi-
mony of  Jesus  to  Himself."  "  We  have  the  mind  of
Christ,"  Paul  said,  and  both  in  the  Epistles  and  the
Gospels  we  may  seek  and  find  the  teaching  of  Jesus.1

1  "The  sources  for  our  knowledge  of  the  actual  teaching  of
Jesus  do  not  lie  merely  in  the  Gospel  accounts,  but  also  in  the
literature  of  the  apostolic  age,  especially  in  the  Epistles  of  Paul.
