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 Israel the general doctrine of the natural inferiority of women had been mitigated, and in great part corrected, by the teaching, moral and theological, of the prophets, and we have seen that our Saviour emphatically endorsed the prophetic view of marriage; still, it cannot be denied that St. Paul reveals in many places a mental attitude on the subject of sexual relationship, which can only be explained by the Rabbinic training which he had received at the feet of Gamaliel.

There is, however, clear indication that his views on this, as on other subjects, were developing under the influence of the Holy Spirit, interpreting to him his richly-varied experiences, and leading him to realise more thoroughly, as time passed, the practical consequences of his Christian principles. The noble passage in the Epistle to the Ephesians carries the theory of marriage far beyond the point at which it stands in the Epistle to the Corinthians, and we shall be justified, by all we know of the great apostle's mental history,