heathen could only obtain admission into the family of Israel, and become partakers in the covenant, by submitting to the initiatory rite. It was palpably under the influence of this view, and with a conviction that the Messianic kingdom was primarily destined for the children of Israel, that the elder Apostles, even after the date of Paul's second visit to Jerusalem, continued to confine their ministry "to the circumcision." Paul's view was very different. He recognized and maintained the universality of the Gospel and, in resolving to go to the heathen, he practically repudiated the very theory of Jewish preference which he is here supposed to advance. If the Gospel, instead of being a power of God to salvation to every man who believed, was for the Jew first, the Apostolate of the Gentiles was a mere delusion and a snare. What could be the advantage of so urgently offering salvation to the Greek, if the gift, instead of being "for every one that believeth," was a mere prospective benefit, inoperative until the Jew had first been saved? "Salvation to the Jew first and also to the Greek," if it have any significance whatever of the kind argued,--involving either a prior claim to the offer of salvation, or precedence in its distribution,--so completely destroys all the present interest in it of the Gentile, that the Gospel must to him have lost all power. To suppose that such an expression simply means, that the Gospel must first be preached to the Jews in any town to which the Apostle might come before it could legitimately be proclaimed to the Gentiles of that town, is childish. We have no reason to suppose that Paul held the deputy Sergius Paulus, who desired to hear the word of God and believed, in suspense until the Jews of Paphos had {292}