The Pauline treatment of the death and resurrection of Christ is entirely different. By Bousset, indeed, the difference is partly obscured; Bousset tries to show that the Pauline conception of the dying and rising of the believer with Christ was derived from the celebration of the sacraments. But there could be no more radical error. What is plainest of all in the Epistles is the historical character of the Pauline message. The religion of Paul was rooted in an event, and the sacraments were one way of setting forth the significance of the event. The event was the redemptive work of Christ in His death and resurrection. Here lies the profoundest of all differences between Paul and contemporary religion. Paulinism was not a philosophy; it was not a set of directions for escape from the misery of the world; it was not an account of what had always been true. On the contrary, it was an account of something that had happened. The thing that had happened, moreover, was not hidden in the dim and distant past. The account of it was not evolved as a justification for existing religious forms. On the contrary, the death and resurrection of Jesus, upon which Paul's gospel was based, had happened only a few years before. And the facts could be established by adequate testimony; the eyewitnesses could be questioned, and Paul appeals to the eyewitnesses in detail. The single passage, 1 Cor. xv. 1-8, is sufficient to place a stupendous gulf between the Pauline Christ and the pagan saviour-gods. But the character of Paulinism does not depend upon one passage. Everywhere in the Epistles Paul stakes all his life upon the truth of what he says about the death and resurrection of Jesus. The gospel which Paul preached was an account of something that had happened. If the account was true, the origin of Paulinism is explained; if it was not true, the Church is based upon an inexplicable error.