them into effect,
and others have unsuccessfully attempted to realize, in the right time
and under favorable circumstances are seized upon by an executive
genius, and a new epoch in history is opened. The numerous minor spirits
which contributed to the sum total of the creative idea disappear in the
brilliancy of the one star which remains visible in history. The world
is a machine shop. Each artificer makes the part of a machine. One
master mind combines the parts, and he is known as the master machinist.

Paul was one of those master machinists, one of those brilliant stars in
the horizon of history. In him the spirit of Jesus resurrected as
eminently and vigorously as John had resurrected in Jesus. He was the
author of Gentile Christianity. He conceived the idea of carrying into
effect what all the prophets, all pious Israelites of all ages, hoped
and expected--the denationalization of the Hebrew ideas, and their
promulgation in the form of universal religion among the Gentiles; to
conciliate and unite the human family under the great banner inscribed
with the motto of "One God and one code of morals to all." All Jews of
all ages hoped and expected that the kingdom of heaven should be
extended to all nations and tongues; but Paul went forth TO DO it; this
is his particular greatness.

The circumstances, of course, favored his enterprise. Graeco-Roman
paganism was undermined. The gods stood in disrepute, and the augurs
smiled. The state religion was an organized hypocrisy. The learned
believed nothing; the vulgar almost everything, if it was but
preposterously absurd enough. The progress of Grecian philosophy and the
inroads of Judaism in the Roman world were so considerable that royal
families had embraced Judaism, and the emperor Tiberius had found it
necessary to drive the Jews, together with the Egyptian priests, from
Rome, because their religion had its admirers in the very palace of the
Caesars, as well as among priests, nobles, and plebeians. All the devout
Gentiles whom Paul met on his journeys were Judaized Greeks or Syrians;
for the Pharisees traversed land and sea to make one proselyte.
Therefore, when Paul preached in Asia Minor, Cicero and Cato _had_
spoken in Rome; Seneca and Epictetus gave utterance to sentiments as
nearly like those of Paul and other Jews as are the two eyes of the same
head.

Again, on the other hand, Epicurism in its worst sequences, sensualism
in its most outrageous form, the des