3. The effect of the fall of Jerusalem was to draw a sharp line of _division between Jews and Christians_. Before, the two classes had been closely related, and confused in the popular mind. Thenceforth the two streams ran further and further apart, and have continued apart even to our own time. All Jewish rites ceased in the church, Christians could no longer be Jews; and after 125 A. D. Jews could no longer be Christians without renouncing Judaism. The church was now thoroughly a Gentile, non-Jewish church. Note in the gospel of John how "the Jews" are everywhere named as enemies of Christ (John 5. 16; 7. 1; 11. 8; 18. 36); and yet the author of this book was himself a Jew by birth and training; but at the time of writing he had ceased to be a Jew. II. =St. John at Ephesus.= Ephesus, at the western end of Asia Minor, was now the leading city of Christianity. It is probable that the apostle John passed the last thirty years of his life in that city. He was revered as the _last of the apostles_; but he was not a statesman or man of affairs; rather a mystic and man of meditation. It is supposed that he died about 100 A. D. but the date is not certain. III. =The Rise of the Heresies.= 1. This was the inevitable _result of the Greek mind_ working on the simple doctrines of the gospel. The Christian doctrine was Jewish; and the Jewish mind was not given to subtle intellectual questions. But when Christianity ceased to be Jewish and began to Gentile it was dominated by the Greek spirit of restless inquiry. Asia Minor was the home of wild, uncontrolled thinking. Sects almost without number appeared, wrangled, and divided over every article of the creed. The more mysterious the question, the more apart from practical life and from human interest, the more fascinating became the study. 2. Two great classes of sects embraced many minor groups. 1.) _The Ebionites._ Strict Jews, who sought to make Christianity a branch of Pharisaism, keeping the Jewish law. 2.) _The Gnostics._ People with peculiar views concerning the nature of God, heavenly beings, the nature of Christ. 3. The _results_ of these controversies were both good and evil. 1.) _Good_ in that the clashing of ideas aided in _fixing_ in permanent form the true _doctrines_ of the church. 2.) But far more _evil_; for the energies of the members were absorbed in debate and controversy; the spiritual life of the church greatly declined; the aim ceased to be devotion to Christ, but was now orthodoxy in belief. Christianity became a creed, instead of an inner spiritual life.