was in fact but a revival of Pauline Christianity and it was Pauline Christianity which had built the Christian church. In it the tension between religion and life which is maintained in the religious idealism of Jesus is relaxed and the sensitive soul is given the assurance that a merciful God will know how to complete what is so incomplete and how to perfect our manifest imperfections. Thus the same Jesus who in the gospels is a bold adventurer of the spirit who challenges his disciples to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect becomes in the epistles the symbol of the divine grace which knows how to accept our intentions for our achievements. It may be unfair to speak of a conflict between the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul; for it was a heavenly Father and not a jealous judge who was central in the thought of Jesus, and his emphasis upon forgiveness shocked the strict moralists of his day. But if there is no conflict at this point, there is a marked change in emphasis. In the one the appropriation of divine grace is a necessary part of the moral adventure; in the other it is separated from the moral enterprise and easily becomes a substitute for it. Paul had indeed disavowed all antinomian tendencies in his doctrine of grace. “What shall we then say? Shall we continue to sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Obviously the mystical experience in both the Pauline and the Lutheran religion was not unrelated to the life of moral purpose and was not consciously used to obviate the necessity for moral enterprise. But what is to prevent men from making a premature appropriation of the peace it guarantees, before and without deserving it? In that lies a peril to morality in almost all religion which Pauline and Lutheran theology did not create but which it may accentuate. It is well to remember that some of the greatest perils to morality in the life of religion arise out of its most cherished and necessary characteristics. Religion is at once the necessary partner and the potential foe of moral life.