peculiar religious phraseology in so tar as it does indeed differ from . features common to the earlier groups of letters; so that whatever considerations help us to account for the former change will also aid in the solution of the problem of style and vocabulary.
The other arguments against the Pauline authorship, based on: (3) the impossibility of fitting into the Acts of the Apostles the personal and local references in the Pastorals, (4) the alleged marks of the second century in the heresy which is combated, and (5) the allegation that the details of Church organisation reflect the policy of the dominant party of the early second century—are, it is believed, assumptions for which there is no foundation. And, in fact, (4) and (5) are not now insisted on by many of the anti- traditional school, and will not be dealt with in this introduction.
Before passing on to a brief discussion of the style and the historical setting of the Epistles, it will not be amiss to suggest some considerations which may help, not indeed to solve the problem before us, but to enable us to believe that it would not be a problem at all could we only know a little more about the personal history of St. Paul, and of the inner life of the Christian Church in the first century. In the first place, we must remember that it was a period of intensely vigorous and rapidly developing Church life. We are so much accustomed to regard as normal Christian communities in which nine-tenths of the professed adherents are spiritually only half alive, that we find it difficult to realise what manner of thing Church life was when every one took a keen interest in his religion, and the spiritual life of every Church member was full and strong, even if not always consistent. The years that elapsed between Pentecost and 100 a.p. represent the infancy of the Church; and we all know how momentous in their after consequences are a child’s experiences during the first five or six years of its life. But the first century was even more significant for the subsequent history of the Church than is infancy in the case of a human being. The development of the Church, as we experience it, at least in Europe, is slow; looking back thirty years we can indeed perceive some change; but in the first century a year wrought what it now takes a generation to effect. What we know of the rapid development in applied science in our own day supplies us with an experience somewhat analogous to the growth of the Christian Church— doctrinally and institutionally—in the first century. We have seen in the space of ten, or even five, years a complete revolution in men’s notions as to what is possible and reasonable in the rate of travel on the high road or in the air.