controversy--for the demonstration of Paul's exemplary legalism in the temple is merely incidental. The gift Paul brought was "alms to my nation" (!) (Acts xxiv. 17). The reader asks in vain what necessitates this dangerous journey. The only motives assigned are a Nazarite vow assumed in Cenchreæ (xviii. 18; xxi. 24), and regard for the Jewish feasts (xx. 16). Footnote 12: On the reading "Greeks" in Acts xi. 20 see Footnote 10 above., p. 59. The background of history against which the modern reader must place the great letters of Paul of the first period, is manifestly something quite different from the mere unsifted story of Acts. Their real origin is in a profound difference in Paul's idea of 'the gospel' and the necessity of defending the independence of it and of the Gentile churches founded on it. The difference originates in Paul's own religious experience. It found its first expression in his antithesis of Law and Grace, his doctrine that the cross marks the abolition of the economy of Law. Both in Galatians and everywhere else Paul treats on equal terms with the representatives of the "apostleship of the circumcision." He denounces Peter and "the rest of the Jews," including "even Barnabas," at Antioch, after they have withdrawn from Gentile fellowship in order to preserve their legal 'cleanness,' and the point of the denunciation is that this is inconsistent with _their_ (implied) abandonment of the Law as a means of salvation when they "sought to be justified by faith in Christ." This makes their conduct not only inconsistent but cowardly and "hypocritical." Here is something far deeper than a mere question of policy. Paul's attitude shows that from the beginning he has really been preaching "a different gospel." A gospel _about_ Christ in which the central fact is the cross as the token of the abolition of a dispensation of Law wherein Jew and Gentile alike were in a servile relation to God, under angelic (or demonic) "stewards and governors," and the inauguration of a dispensation of Grace, wherein all who have 'faith' and receive in baptism the gift of 'the Spirit,' are thereby adopted to be God's sons. Beside this cosmic drama of the cross and resurrection wherein God reveals his redemptive purpose for the world, the mere inculcation of the easy yoke of Jesus as a new Law, simplifying and supplementing the old by restoring the doctrine of forgiveness for the repentant believer (_cf._ Matt. xxviii. 20; Acts x. 42 f.; xiii. 39; xxvi. 22 f.) seems only half a gospel.