h a vicarious efficacy by suffering the
pangs of mankind's guilt to buy their ransom from the inexorable
justice of God; whereas the apostle really represents Christ's
redeeming mission as consisting simply in a dramatic
exemplification of the Father's spontaneous love and purpose to
pardon past offences, unbolt the gates of Hades, and receive the
worthy to heaven. Moreover, while Paul describes the heavenly
salvation as an undeserved gift from the grace of God, the
Catholic often seems to make it a prize to be earned, under the
Christian dispensation, by good works which may fairly challenge
that reward. However, we have little doubt that this apparent
opposition is rather in the practical mode of exhortation than in
any interior difference of dogma; for Paul himself makes personal
salvation hinge on personal conditions, the province of grace
being seen in the new extension to man of the opportunity and
invitation to secure his own acceptance. And so the Roman Catholic
exposition of Paul's doctrine is much more nearly correct than any
other interpretation now prevalent. We should expect, a priori,
that it would be, since that Church, containing two thirds of
Christendom, is the most intimately connected, by its scholars,
members, and traditions, with the apostolic age.

A prominent feature in the belief of Paul, and one deserving
distinct notice as necessarily involving a considerable part of
the theory which we have attributed to him, is the supposition
that Christ was the first person, clothed with humanity and
experiencing death, admitted into heaven. Of all the hosts who had
lived and died, every soul had gone down into the dusky under
world. There they all were held in durance, waiting for the Great
Deliverer. In the splendors of the realm over the sky, God and his
angels dwelt alone. That we do not err in ascribing this belief to
Paul we might summon the whole body of the Fathers to testify in
almost unbroken phalanx, from Polycarp to St. Bernard. The Roman,
Greek, and English Churches still maintain the same dogma. But the
apostle's own plain words will be sufficient for our purpose.
"That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that
should rise from among the dead." "Now is Christ risen from among
the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept." "He is
the beginning, the first born from among the dead, that among all
he might have the pre eminence." "God raised Christ from among the
de