rection
(taking into consideration, that is, the scope of his one remaining book
and its brevity), and the Resurrection of Christ is the crowning miracle
which stamps the whole dispensation as supernatural.

So far, then, as the Supernatural is concerned, it makes no difference
whatsoever whether Clement used the Gospel according to St. Matthew or
the Gospel according to the Hebrews. His Gospel, whatever it was, not
only filled his heart with an intense and absorbing love of Christ, and
a desire that all men should imitate Him, but it filled his mind with
that view of the religion of Christ which we call supernatural and
evangelical, but which the author of "Supernatural Religion" calls
ecclesiastical.

The question now arises, not so much from whom, but when, did he receive
this view of Christ and His system. I do not mean, of course, the more
minute features, but the substance. To what period must his
reminiscences as a Christian extend? What time must his experiences
cover? Irenaeus, in the place I have quoted, speaks of him as the
companion of Apostles, Clement of Alexandria as an Apostle, Eusebius and
Origen as the fellow-labourer of St. Paul. Now, I will not at present
insist upon the more than likelihood that such was the fact. I will, for
argument's sake, assume that he was some other Clement; but, whoever he
was, one thing respecting him is certain--that the knowledge of
Christianity was not poured into him at the moment when he wrote his
Epistle, nor did he receive it ten--twenty--thirty years before. St.
Peter and St. Paul were martyred in A.D. 68; the rest of the Apostolic
College were dispersed long before. This Epistle shows little or no
trace of the peculiar Johannean teaching or tradition of the Apostle who
survived all the others; so, unless he had received his Christian
teaching some years before the Martyrdom of the two Apostles Peter and
Paul, that is, some time before A.D. 68, probably many years, I do not
see that there can have been the smallest ground even for the tradition
of the very next generation after his own that he knew the Apostles.
Such a tradition could not possibly have been connected with the name of
a man who became a Christian late in the century.

Now, supposing that he was sixty-five years old when he wrote his
Epistle, he was born about the time of our Lord's Death: he was
consequently a contemporary of the generation that had witnessed the
Death and Resurrection of Christ an