The change of expectation was, it is likely, a gradual, silent, and unperceived one, effected slowly, and not completed till a new conception of the Christ supplanted the old one, and transformed every feature of the Messianic belief. In less than twenty-five years after the death of Jesus, this change was so far effected that it was capable of full literary expression. The writings that publish it, are the genuine letters of Paul, and other scriptures produced under the inspiration of his idea. VI. PAUL'S NEW DEPARTURE. There is reason to think, as we have said, that the first Messianic impulse would have spent itself ineffectually in a few years, had not a fresh impulse been given by a new conception of the Messiah. The Christ outlined in the earliest literature of the New Testament would hardly have founded a permanent church, or given his name to a distinct religion. A new conception came, in due time, from an unexpected quarter, through a man who was both Jew and Greek; Jew by parentage, nurture, training and genius; Greek by birth-place, residence and association; a man well versed in scripture, a pupil of approved rabbis, familiar with the talmud, and deeply interested in talmudical speculation; a Pharisee of the straitest sect; an enthusiast--yes, a fanatic by temperament; on the other hand, a mind somewhat expanded by intercourse with the people and the literature of other nations. Paul's feeling on the "Christ question" was always intense. He made it a personal matter, even in his comparative youth; distinguishing himself by his zeal in behalf of correct opinion on the subject. He appears, first, a young man, as a persecutor of the Jews who believed that the Christ had actually come, and who were waiting for his return in clouds. That idea seemed to him visionary and dangerous; he made it his business to exterminate it by violence, if necessary. But the fury of his demonstration proved his interest in the general idea. He was at heart a Messianic believer, though not in that style. A Messianic believer he continued to be, but to the end as little as at first, in that style. To the ordinary belief he never was "converted;" his repudiation of it was perhaps at no time less vehement than it was at the beginning; as his own thought matured, his rejection of the faith he persecuted in his youth, became it seems more deliberate, if less violent.