. It has fulfilled
its destiny. It was a state of preparation for this period of universal
salvation to all who have love, hope, and faith. With Adam and the flesh
came the sin, law, and death; with Jesus the flesh ceases, hence no more
sin, law, or death.

These are the main features of Paul's gospel: The Son of God, the
theological kingdom of heaven, the vicarious atonement, the bodily
resurrection of the Crucified One, the abrogation of the law, and the
beginning of the new covenant. He was the first man to utter these
doctrines; with him Christianity begins, and he named it.

But Paul knew well that doctrines alone would be insufficient to rouse
the heathen world from its demoralized state, its dreary and stupid
dreams; and he resorted to the most terrible and most shocking of all
messages. He came to the heathens with the terror-striking proclamation,
"The end is nigh!" The whole earth, with all the creatures thereon; the
whole human family, with all its wickedness, all its atrocious crimes,
will be destroyed in one moment. All of you, men, women, and children,
with all your vices and crimes, will be suddenly summoned before the
Eternal and All-just; you have to go, all of you, and appear before the
omniscient God. The end is nigh, the destruction of the human family is
certain and right before you. It will come soon. It may come any day, at
any moment.

Now Paul's gospel came in. Here is your choice. There are death and
damnation; here are life and happiness everlasting. God has sent his Son
in advance of the approaching catastrophe to warn you, and he is
appointed now to conduct the end of all flesh. Cling to him and be
saved, or believe not and be condemned forever. So he came to the
heathens. This was his gospel. How did he succeed? We will explain after
a brief pause.

All passages in the Gospels and the Acts which have reference to the
above Christology, to the end of things or against it--in which the
synoptics most fatally contradict one another--are the products of
writers long after Paul, when the attempts to reconcile Jewish and
Gentile Christianity were made. For with Paul begins the new form of
Christianity and the struggle with the representatives of the old form.
Within ten years he traversed the land from Antioch to Athens, in three
different journeys, and established his bishopric, the first Christian
congregations among the Gentiles. He organized them fully, with deacons
and deaconesses, prea