But Christianity grew out of Judaism. It will be well therefore to recall briefly to our minds those religious ideas of the Jews to which the mission and the teaching of Jesus were immediately related. At the beginning of our era a majority of the Jews had abandoned the earlier notion of a golden age, a material kingdom of God, which was to be set up on earth, for a belief in a more spiritual kingdom, which was to be established at some future time either on a transformed earth or in a supermundane heaven. They no longer expected that the whole nation would share in the supreme happiness of this kingdom, but only those individuals who by righteousness and through God’s mercy had won a place therein; the wicked were to be either utterly destroyed or punished forever in Sheol. Moreover the Jews generally entertained Messianic expectations of various kinds; they did not, however, look forward with confidence, as their forefathers had done, to the coming of one who should be a national king on earth. There were besides hopes of revelation from God on which we must not pause. Nor is it necessary to speak of the weaknesses of Judaism, its tendency to make the practice of religion a matter of conformity to the minute regulations of the law, its frequent disregard of moral motives, its pride and religious pretence. * * * * * All thoughtful readers of the New Testament are aware that within it are represented three stages in the early development of Christianity. In the first the disciples of Jesus formed a group and then a sect within the Jewish nation. The second was that in which the gospel was carried outside Judea into the Roman Empire to Gentiles as well as to Jews. Thus the transformation of Christianity into a universal religion was begun. In that movement, as we all know, Paul was the chief figure. The third stage was that in which philosophic thought began to operate upon the doctrines of this new religion. It was the period in which Christian theology started to develop; the time in which Christian thought began to be expressed in philosophic form and squared with the philosophy of the day. The fourth Gospel is the document in our canon in which the use of a great philosophic conception for the expression of Christian ideas is first obvious. Let us now consider briefly the teachings that belong to these three stages, as they are represented by Jesus, by Paul, and by the writer of the Johannine books.