. Paul's doctrine of true human liberty and
'fellowship in the body.'

On the whole I think these letters are worth more notice than they have
received, both in themselves and as a good example of the sort of
religious and moral doctrine current in the better heathen circles of
the Asiatic cities, while St. Paul was teaching. It presents many
points of connexion with St. Paul's teaching, and co-operated with the
influence of the Jewish synagogue to prepare men's minds for it. But
perhaps what chiefly strikes us is the contrast which the fierce and
arrogant contempt of the Stoic presents to the loving hopefulness of
the Christian messenger of the gospel.

NOTE C. See p. 74.

THE JEWISH DOCTRINE OF WORKS IN _THE APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH_.

Mr. R. H. Charles gives us the following statement[1]:--

'The Talmudic doctrine of works may be shortly summarized as follows:
Every good work--whether the fulfilment of a command or an act of
mercy--established a certain degree of merit with God, while every evil
work entailed a corresponding demerit. A man's position with God
depended on the relation existing between his merits and demerits, and
his salvation on the preponderance of the former over the latter. The
relation between his {258} merits and demerits was determined daily by
the weighing of his deeds. But as the results of such judgements were
necessarily unknown, there could not fail to be much uneasiness; and,
to allay this, the doctrine of the vicarious righteousness of the
patriarchs and saints of Israel was developed not later than the
beginning of the Christian era (cf. Matt. iii. 9). A man could thereby
summon to his aid the merits of the fathers, and so counterbalance his
demerits.

'It is obvious that such a system does not admit of forgiveness in any
spiritual sense of the term. It can only mean in such a connexion a
remission of penalty to the offender, on the ground that compensation
is furnished, either through his own merit or through that of the
righteous fathers. Thus, as Weber vigorously puts it: "Vergebung ohne
Bezahlung gibt es nicht." Thus, according to popular Pharisaism, _God
never remitted a debt until He was paid in full, and so long as it was
paid it mattered not by whom_.

'It will be observed that with the Pharisees forgiveness was _an
external thing_; it was concerned not with the man himself but with his
works--with these indeed as affecting him, but yet as existing
independe