When the Apostles went forth to their work, they first addressed themselves to their own brethren, the people of Israel; and for twelve years they addressed themselves to their brethren alone. The great point to which they had to win Jewish consent was that Jesus was the Christ. Those to whom they preached were well convinced that there would be a Christ, and many of them also that the time for His coming was at hand. The work of the Apostles was to show that the life and death of Jesus corresponded to the manifold prophecies concerning the Messiah contained in the books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, and that He had done "the works of the Christ." In this first period of their preaching a considerable number, even of the priests, listened to their call; but a much greater number rejected it. In Jerusalem itself the Sanhedrim began the long list of Christian persecutions, and those who had slain the Lord commanded His disciples not to preach in His name. We cannot doubt that the enmity of those Jews who rejected a suffering Christ was very bitter against their countrymen who proclaimed Him. But as soon as the Apostles embraced the Gentiles in their teaching this bitterness would greatly increase; for then, besides proclaiming One who had suffered the death of the cross at the hands of His own people to be the appointed Head and Deliverer of that people, the Apostles opened all the benefits of His Headship to the very nations in the midst of which the Jews lived with the proudest sense of their own superior claim to the favour of God. We see, by the example of St. Paul and St. Barnabas, how the Apostles addressed themselves in each city to their brethren in the synagogue, and through them to the Gentile proselytes, male and female, who frequented it; how they received into the communion of the Church such as accepted their message, and these not only when they were Jews, but the Gentiles also; and how, by the decision of the Council at Jerusalem, the Gentiles so entering were not bound to accept the ceremonial law of Moses nor the rite of circumcision. If it was a grievous offence to Jewish pride that a crucified man should be propounded as the son of David and King of Israel, how intense was the anger excited by the fact that the children of the hated and despised nations were allowed to enter into possession of the divine inheritance of Israel's race without receiving circumcision, the pledge of the Jewish covenant, the mark of the children of Abraham! Such was the double cause of indignation which led the Jews continually to plot against the life of St. Paul, to cut off St. James by the sword of Agrippa, to attempt at the same time the life of St. Peter, and during the whole period of apostolic preaching to set the Roman magistrates against the Christians. We must add another cause of Jewish enmity, which, coming upon the two great causes already indicated, must have still more inflamed it.