iii. We have seen that the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, was common ground for all Christians. It was on this ground that St. Paul and the Judaean churches felt themselves one. They also felt themselves one in what we ought not to call the doctrine of the Trinity, but in those root-facts out of which the doctrine of the Trinity afterwards came to be formulated. There was doubtless still room for variety of speculation. There was room for different interpretation of current terms and current beliefs. The doctrine of the Church had as yet a certain fluidity. St. Paul might take one line, and Cephas another, and Apollos a third. And yet Christ was not divided. There was a consciousness of union underlying these differences. There was a sense, that could not as yet be put adequately into words, of certain great facts, of certain fundamental beliefs, by virtue of which the Church was one. iv. It is out of this common ground, and not out of the special features of the Pauline theology, that the teaching of the Fourth Gospel really sprang. True, there are resemblances and affinities between details in the theologies of the Evangelist and the Apostle. But it does not follow that these were borrowed by the one from the other[73]. If they had been, we may be sure that there would have been clearer evidence of the fact. Somewhere in the group of Johannean writings there would have been a side-glance at St. Paul that we should have understood. As it is, the two great Apostolic cycles stand majestically apart. There may be a connexion between them, but it is a connexion in the main underground. There is no direct affiliation, but the parentage of both lies behind. Many a seed sprouted in the early years of the Pentecostal Church: but it was not this apostle or that who made them grow; the seeds were sown before Pentecost, and they had their watering and their growth and their increase from the same Hand. It is true that we cannot give chapter and verse for all this. The books from which chapter and verse might have been taken were never written. Even in our own much-lettered age, how many a pregnant thought is there that is not caught and fixed in writing! And what sort of record should we have of the thought, say, of America or England for some fifteen years, if the chronicle of it were compressed into a single document of the length of the first twelve chapters of the Acts?