the cruel bodily death of the cross. As many as are led by the spirit of God, says Paul, are the sons of God.[51] If this is so with even us, who live to God so feebly and who render such an imperfect obedience, how much more is he who lives to God entirely and who renders an unalterable obedience, the unique and only Son of God? [Footnote 51: _Rom._, viii, 14.] This is undoubtedly the main line of movement which Paul's ideas respecting Jesus Christ follow. He had been trained, however, in the scholastic theology of Judaism, just as we are trained in the scholastic theology of Christianity; would that we were as little embarrassed with our training as he was with his! The Jewish theological doctrine respecting the eternal word or wisdom of God, which was with God from the beginning before the oldest of his works, and through which the world was created, this doctrine, which appears in the Book of Proverbs and again in the Book of Wisdom,[52] Paul applied to Jesus Christ, and in the Epistle to the Colossians there is a remarkable passage[53] with clear signs of his thus applying it. But then this metaphysical and theological basis to the historic being of Jesus is something added by Paul from outside to his own essential ideas concerning him, something which fitted them and was naturally taken on to them; it is secondary, it is not an original part of his system, much less the ground of it. It fills a very different place in his system from the place which it fills in the system of the author of the Fourth Gospel, who takes his starting-point from it. Paul's starting-point, it cannot be too often repeated, is the idea of righteousness; and his concern with Jesus is as the clue to righteousness, not as the clue to transcendental ontology. Speculations in this region had no overpowering attraction for Paul, notwithstanding the traces of an acquaintance with them which we find in his writings, and notwithstanding the great activity of his intellect. This activity threw itself with an unerring instinct into a sphere where, with whatever travail and through whatever impediments to clear expression, directly practical religious results might yet be won, and not into any sphere of abstract speculation. [Footnote 52: _Prov._, viii, 22-31; and _Wisd._, vii, 25-27.] [Footnote 53: _Col._, i, 15-17.]