limited in its scope: it is very striking wherever the author is dealing with the doctrinal questions at issue between Judaism and Christianity and is scarcely perceptible elsewhere. The limitation is instructive, for it suggests that the author had made these subjects and the passages of the Old Testament which bear upon them an habitual topic of controversy with Jewish teachers in the synagogue. This view is borne out by comparison of the language used by other authors. Even the Epistle of James, widely different as are his lessons on the subject of faith and works, bases them on the same text as these Epistles, ‘‘ Abraham believed God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness”. Why was this? Because the blessing of Abraham, his faith and his righteousness were pre- vailing topics in the religious teaching of his day. Philo likewise refers constantly to the same passages of Scripture and bases his arguments upon them. Now, what had been the antecedents of Paul before and after his conversion? Educated in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, he had been a zealot for the Law, and a sincere believer in the teaching of the Pharisees. After growing up to man- hood in this faith, he had for fourteen years before he wrote the Galatian Epistle been engaged in perpetual controversy with his former teachers, encountering in every synagogue the same objec- tions, and combating them with similar arguments. Inevitably his thoughts and language on such subjects as the blessing of Abraham, faith and works, the Law and the Gospel, had become in a measure stereotyped; and in addressing former disciples of the synagogue, whether in Galatia or in Rome, he fell almost unconsciously into identical language and trains of thought.
The close analogy, however, of the two Epistles in certain parts serves to bring out in stronger relief their wide divergence in spirit and substance. The Galatian Epistle was evoked by an insidious attack on the Christian freedom of Greek Churches, and its tone is thoroughly controversial. It insists on the futility of seeking justification by obedience to the Law, it urges that Jewish Christians have all confessed themselves guilty sinners, and owe to Christ their redemption from the curses of the Law; it establishes the provisional character of the Sinaitic dispensation, and reduces it to a mere preparatory discipline designed for an age of spiritual child- hood and wholly unfit for Christians, seeing they have attained to spiritual manhood; it dwells on the bondage of Israel after the flesh, and identifies unbelieving Jews with Ishmael in their present temper and future destiny. In the Roman Epistle we breathe a different atmosphere. It is a comprehensive exposition of Christian