ns the subject had gained
fresh and poignant interest. A party of Christians having their centre
at Jerusalem had been trying--in spite of the decision of the apostolic
council at Jerusalem--to reimpose upon the consciences of {9} Gentile
Christians, and with especial success in the Galatian province, the
obligation of circumcision; or in other words had been trying to make
it evident that the Church of God was as much as ever the people of the
Jews, and that Gentiles could only become Christians by becoming also
Jewish proselytes pledged to keep the law of Moses. In view of this
attempt St. Paul re-embarks upon his great campaign for the catholicity
of the Church, and in his epistles of the second group[5] (especially
those to the Galatians and the Romans) the catholicity of Christianity
is vindicated controversially upon the basis of the principle of
_justification by faith, not by works of the law_.

The meaning and real importance of this doctrine ought not to be hard
for us to understand. To be justified means to be accepted or
acquitted by God. The Judaizers--that is the Christian representatives
of the narrower religious spirit of Israel--held that, as God's
covenant was with the Jews only, so men could obtain acceptance simply
by the observance of that Mosaic law which was to the Jew at once the
expression of the divine selection of his race, and the grounds of his
arrogant {10} contempt for all who had not 'Abraham to their
father[6].' But St. Paul had made trial of that theory, and had found
it wanting. The observance of the law and the glorying in Jewish
privileges had brought him no peace with God: had in fact served only
to produce and deepen a sense of inner alienation from God and
conviction of sin. Thus in acknowledging the messiahship of that Jesus
whom the chosen people had rejected and surrendered to be crucified, he
was abandoning utterly and for ever the standing-ground of Jewish
pride: he was acknowledging that the only divine function of the law
was to convince men of sin, and of their need of pardon and salvation:
he was taking his stand as a sinner among the Gentiles, and humbly
welcoming the unmerited boon of pardon and acceptance from the hand of
the divine mercy in Christ Jesus. When St. Paul in familiar arguments,
from the witness of the Old Testament itself, and from the moral
experience of men, convicts the law of inadequacy as an instrument of
justification, his reasoning is full