esentation of Christianity had already been made an
excuse for disorderly licence. The usual symptoms of degenerate
Mysticism had appeared at Corinth. There were men there who called
themselves "spiritual persons[105]" or prophets, and showed an arrogant
independence; there were others who wished to start sects of their own;
others who carried antinomianism into the sphere of morals; others who
prided themselves on various "spiritual gifts." As regards the last
class, we are rather surprised at the half-sanction which the apostle
gives to what reads like primitive Irvingism;[106] but he was evidently
prepared to enforce discipline with a strong hand. Still, it may be
fairly said that he trusts mainly to his personal ascendancy, and to his
teaching about the organic unity of the Christian body, to preserve or
restore due discipline and cohesion. There have been hardly any
religious leaders, if we except George Fox, the founder of Quakerism,
who have valued ceremonies so little. In this, again, he is a genuine
mystic.

Of the other books of the New Testament it is not necessary to say
much. The Epistle to the Hebrews cannot be the work of St. Paul. It
shows strong traces of Jewish Alexandrianism; indeed, the writer
seems to have been well acquainted with the Book of Wisdom and with
Philo. Alexandrian idealism is always ready to pass into speculative
Mysticism, but the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews can hardly be
called mystical in the sense in which St. Paul was a mystic. The most
interesting side of his theology, from our present point of view, is
the way in which he combines his view of religious ordinances as types
and adumbrations of higher spiritual truths, with a comprehensive view
of history as a progressive realisation of a Divine scheme. The
keynote of the book is that mankind has been educated partly by
ceremonial laws and partly by "promises." Systems of laws and
ordinances, of which the Jewish Law is the chief example, have their
place in history. They rightly claim obedience until the practical
lessons which they can teach have been learned, and until the higher
truths which they conceal under the protecting husk of symbolism can
be apprehended without disguise. Then their task is done, and mankind
is no longer bound by them. In the same way, the "promises" which were
made under the old dispensation proved to be only symbols of deeper
and more spiritual blessings, which in the moral childhood of humanit