Thus Baur was wrong. But suppose Baur were right about the point which has just been discussed; suppose even the most impossible admissions be made; suppose it be granted that the original apostles differed fundamentally from Paul. Even then the testimony of the original apostles to the true connection between Paul and Jesus is not invalidated. For even if the original apostles differed fundamentally from Paul, the difference concerned only the place of the Mosaic Law in the Christian economy, and did not concern the Pauline conception of the person of Christ. So much at least must be insisted upon against Baur. The really astounding fact, which emerges from all discussion of the apostolic age, is that the Pauline conception of the person of Christ, whatever may be said of the Pauline doctrine of Gentile freedom, was never criticized by the original apostles. Indeed, so far as can be seen, it was never criticized even by the Judaizers themselves. Apparently it never occurred to Paul that his conception of the heavenly Christ required defense. About other things there was controversy; the doctrine of Christian freedom, for example, had to be defended against all sorts of objections and by the use of all sorts of evidence. But about the person of Christ there was not one word of debate. "Not by man but by Jesus Christ," Paul says at the beginning of Galatians. Evidently the Judaizers said, "Not by Jesus Christ but by man." But apparently it never occurred to Paul that any one might say, "By Jesus Christ and therefore by man." The Judaizers, apparently, as well as Paul, recognized the alternative between Jesus Christ and man; like Paul they separated Jesus Christ from ordinary humanity and placed Him on the side of God. The same phenomenon appears everywhere in the Pauline Epistles--the tremendous doctrine of the person of Christ is never defended, but always assumed. Indeed, in the earlier epistles the doctrine is never even set forth in any systematic way; it is simply presupposed. In Colossians, indeed, it is more definitely set forth, and apparently in opposition to errorists who failed to recognize its full implications. Even in Colossæ, however, the doctrine does not seem to have been denied; the errorists apparently did not deny the supreme place of Jesus in the scale of being, but merely erred in attaching undue importance to other beings. What is really significant in Colossians is the character of the errorists. Evidently they were not conservative disciples, who appealed against the heavenly Christ of Paul to the facts about the historic Jesus. On the contrary, they were gnostics, engaged in unhistorical speculations, and as far removed as possible from anything that primitive Palestinian Christianity might conceivably have been. So when Paul first has to defend his doctrine of the exclusive and supreme importance of Christ, he defends it not against conservative disciples, who could appeal either with or without reason to the