Page:Jesus and the Gospel.djvu/46

26 and absolute truth, anything that proposes to supplement Christ on the one side or faith on the other, is treason to the gospel. It strikes at the root of Christianity, at the absolute sufficiency of grace in God and of faith in man to solve the problem of salvation; it denies the glory of Christ and destroys the hope of sinners. This is how Paul conceived it, and it is this, and not any personal intolerance of opposition, which prompts the solemn vehemence of Gal. 18: Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema. The interest of the words for us is the force with which they bring out the absolute and unshared place which Christ filled in the religion of Paul. His faith in Christ was such that it admitted of no other object; Christ completely filled his religious horizon; his whole being, as a spiritual man with a life toward God, depended upon and was determined by Christ alone. And for this view, which he was perhaps the first to think out in clearness and simplicity, Paul was able to command the assent of the apostles who had been admitted to the intimacy of Jesus. James, Cephas, and John gave him and his fellow-worker Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.

It is essentially the same religious question which is raised in another form in the second great controversy of the apostle's life — that to which we are introduced in the Epistle to the Colossians. The law appears here also, but the real danger now is not that of supplementing Christ by ritual observances, but that of dispensing with Him, to a greater or less extent, in favour of angelic mediators. Paul's attitude in this new situation is precisely what it was in Galatians. Christ is all, is the burden of his argument. We do not need to look anywhere but to Him for that knowledge and presence of God on which salvation depends; in Him are all the