In the interval, knowing how much depended on the decision now invoked, the Apostle Paul held private interviews[910] (Gal. ii. 2) with the more prominent members[911] of the Church, and especially with James, Peter and John, the great Pillars of the new society, and used every effort to remove the prejudices against the reception of heathen converts without conforming to the requirements of the Law, and to avoid misunderstanding as to the great principle he had proclaimed wherever he had preached――the freedom of the Gentile churches. At length the council met, and consisted of the Apostles, elders, and general body of disciples. The debate was earnest, and led to much disputing (Acts xv. 7), in the midst of which Peter rose up, and reminded his hearers that these recent converts in Syria and Cilicia were not the first Gentile believers[912]. “He himself had been chosen some years before[913] to preach the word to ‘those without’ and admit them into the Christian Church, and God _who knoweth the hearts_ had shewn that He was no _respecter of persons_, for He had bestowed upon them the same miraculous gifts as upon the Jews, and had purified their hearts by faith. In the face of these facts, then, he for his part could not believe it was right to tempt God by laying upon the necks of the new converts a yoke[914] which neither they themselves nor their fathers had been able to bear, and from which they had only been delivered by the salvation offered through faith in Jesus Christ (Acts xv. 11).” This address of the Great Apostle of the circumcision was received with attention by the Council, and in the midst of the general silence (Acts xv. 12) Paul and Barnabas rose, and were eagerly listened to while they recounted in a continued narrative what God had wrought by their instrumentality among the Gentiles in Antioch and Cyprus and the cities of Pamphylia and Lycaonia, and declared how He had attested their labours by the signs and wonders which He had enabled them to perform (Acts xv. 12). When they had concluded, another speaker arose to address the assembly. This was James, _the brother of the Lord_, to whom the direction of the Church at Jerusalem had apparently been committed[915]. No man was more calculated to command the earnest attention and deference of all present. Austere[916] and inflexibly upright[917], so that both Jews and Christians called him _James the Just_, resembling not only in the earnestness of his exhortations, but even in his outward garb[918], the Baptist or one of the prophets of the older Dispensation, he might be expected to conciliate even the Pharisaic section in the Council.