controversy might properly be described as a battle of books. On the other hand the pressure of persecution without, combined with the disappearance of creative leadership within, is visibly forcing the independent provinces of Christendom toward organic unity under the principle of apostolic authority. First Peter is the first and greatest evidence of this tendency to union promoted by external pressure. Hebrews and James follow as illustrative of the need felt for maintaining the standards both of doctrine and of morals at their full height. Christianity must not be thought of as on a level with Judaism, it is the final and universal revelation. It must not be practised half-heartedly, with "double-mindedness," nor in vain philosophizing and professions belied by deeds. It must be obeyed as a new and royal law, the mirror of divine perfection. If, then, we turn from these evidences of general conditions in church and empire to the inward dangers revealed by the writings against heresy, we shall see how this disruptive influence, already distinctly apprehended in Paul's later writings, makes itself more and more strongly felt, and in more and more definite form, with Ephesus and the churches of Asia as its chief breeding-place. The Pastoral Epistles in their present form cannot be dated much before the time when they begin to be used by Ignatius and Polycarp (110-117). Indeed some phrases (perhaps editorial additions) seem to imply a still later date, as when in 1st Tim. vi. 20, Timothy is warned against the "antitheses of miscalled Gnosis," as if with direct reference to Marcion's system of this title. Their avowed purpose is to counteract the inroads of heresy, and the remedy applied is ecclesiastical authority and discipline. Far more of Paul's inspired gospel of Son ship and liberty, far more of his conception of the redemption in Christ as a triumph over the spiritual world-rulers of this darkness, is found in 1st Peter and Hebrews than here. Nothing appears of Paul's broad horizon, his spirit of missionary conquest, his devotion to the unity of Jew and Gentile in their common access to the Father in one Spirit. There is no trace of the great Pauline doctrines of the conflict of flesh and spirit, the superseding of the dispensation of Law by the dispensation of Grace, the Adoption, the Redemption, the Inheritance. The attention is turned wholly to local conditions, maintenance of the transmitted doctrine and order, resistance to the advance of "vain talk," "Jewish fables," "foolish questionings, genealogies and strifes about the Law," which go hand in hand with moral laxity. In short the outlook and temper are those of the Epistle of James, while the remedy is that of Acts and the Epistles of Ignatius. The Paul who here speaks is not the missionary and mystic, but the shrewd ecclesiastic. There is only too much evidence to show that in the Pauline mission-field the remedy resorted to against the licence in thought and action which