Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/87

 Rh failure to observe this simple caution lies at the bottom of much of the heresy and sectarianism of the centuries, and of no little crude religious teaching today. It is therefore, above all, necessary to study the words of Jesus not only as detached maxims, but as the scattered parts of a complete system.

At this point one naturally meets the question, Are the teachings of Jesus commensurate with the teachings of the entire New Testament? In a certain sense it is perhaps true that Christian doctrine is thus commensurate. Waiving in this discussion the question of the inspiration of the apostolic writers, it is yet reasonable to hold that in the teachings that emanated from the companions of Jesus we have that which must be regarded as expressive of the spirit and purpose of Christ. Nevertheless, it would be contrary not only to the most ordinary processes of historical study but also to the testimony of Christian consciousness to make no distinction between the social teachings of the gospels and those of the epistles. In the latter we have the application of the former to the needs of the growing Christian societies of the first century. In some cases these applications are clearly adapted only to the peculiar circumstances of those early years. At all events, it is very apparent that in the passage from the social teachings of the four gospels to those of the other New Testament writings, we are passing from a constitution to statutory law, from principle to attempted realization of principle, from philosophy to conduct. For this reason, following the historical method of the recent science of biblical theology, it is better to confine the search for the data of Christian sociology, as it is defined above, to the gospel narrative and its brief continuation in the opening section of the Acts.

Yet even here the circle whence these data are to come must be slightly restricted. Wholly apart from the question as to the origin and mutual relations of the four gospels, it is beyond dispute that in their present form the accounts they contain are the work of writers who lived in at least the second generation after the death of Jesus. The component parts of each gospel may be