In his theology he avoided certain errors which lay near at hand. He avoided the error of Marcion, who in the middle of the second century combated Jewish particularism by representing the whole of the Old Testament economy as evil and as the work of a being hostile to the good God. That error would have deprived the Church of the prestige which it derived from the possession of an ancient and authoritative Book; as a merely new religion Christianity never could have appealed to the Gentile world. Paul avoided also the error of the so-called "Epistle of Barnabas," which, while it accepted the Old Testament, rejected the entire Jewish interpretation of it; the Old Testament Law, according to the Epistle of Barnabas, was never intended to require literal sacrifices and circumcision, in the way in which it was interpreted by the Jews. That error, also, would have been disastrous; it would have introduced such boundless absurdity into the Christian use of the Scriptures that all truth and soberness would have fled. Avoiding all such errors, Paul was able with a perfectly good conscience to accept the priceless support of the Old Testament Scriptures in his missionary work while at the same time he rejected for his Gentile converts the ceremonial requirements which the Old Testament imposed. The solution of the problem is set forth clearly in the Epistle to the Galatians. The Old Testament Law, according to Paul, was truly authoritative and truly divine. But it was temporary; it was authoritative only until the fulfillment of the promise should come. It was a schoolmaster to bring the Jews to Christ; and (such is the implication, according to the Epistle to the Romans) it could also be a schoolmaster to bring every one to Christ, since it was intended to produce the necessary consciousness of sin. This treatment of the Old Testament was the only practical solution of the difficulty. But Paul did not adopt it because it was practical; he adopted it because it was true. It never occurred to him to hold principle in abeyance even for the welfare of the souls of men. The deadening blight of pragmatism had never fallen upon his soul. The Pauline grounding of the Gentile mission is not to be limited, however, to his specific answer to the question, "What then is the law?" It extends rather to his entire unfolding of the significance of the Cross of Christ. He exhibited the temporary character of the Old Testament dispensation by showing that a new era had begun, by exhibiting positively the epoch-making significance of the Cross.