ness, after the example of Jesus.

This was the negative part of Paul's work. This was the knocking down of
the barriers which had kept men, and would always have kept them, from
entering into the kingdom of heaven. But the positive part of Paul's
work is contained in his theory of the salvation of men from death
through the second Adam, whom Jehovah rescued from Sheol for his
sinlessness. The resurrection of Jesus was the visible token of the
escape from death which might be achieved by all men who, with God's
aid, should succeed in freeing themselves from the burden of sin which
had encumbered all the children of Adam. The end of the world was at
hand, and they who would live with Christ must figuratively die with
Christ, must become dead to sin. Thus to the pure and spiritual ethics
contained in the teachings of Jesus, Paul added an incalculably powerful
incentive to right action, and a theory of life calculated to satisfy
the speculative necessities of the pagan or Gentile world. To the
educated and sceptical Athenian, as to the critical scholar of modern
times, the physical resurrection of Jesus from the grave, and his ascent
through the vaulted floor of heaven, might seem foolishness or naivete.
But to the average Greek or Roman the conception presented no serious
difficulty. The cosmical theories upon which the conception was founded
were essentially the same among Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but
little modified until the establishment of the Copernican astronomy.
The doctrine of the Messiah's second coming was also received without
opposition, and for about a century men lived in continual anticipation
of that event, until hope long deferred produced its usual results;
the writings in which that event was predicted were gradually explained
away, ignored, or stigmatized as uncanonical; and the Church ended by
condemning as a heresy the very doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing
apostles, who agreed in little else, had alike made the basis of
their speculative teachings. Nevertheless, by the dint of allegorical
interpretation, the belief has maintained an obscure existence even down
to the present time; the Antiochus of the Book of Daniel and the Nero of
the Apocalypse having given place to the Roman Pontiff or to the Emperor
of the French.

But as the millenarism of the primitive Church gradually died out during
the second century, the essential principles involved in it lost none of
their hold on men's m