and of necessity became the base and starting-point of their teaching.
In Christ all things were new. From him they learned the meaning of
their ancient scriptures; through him they knew their heavenly Father;
in him they saw their Saviour from this present world, and to him they
looked for the crown of life in that to come. His word was law, his love
was life, and in his name the world was overcome already. What mattered
it to analyse the power of life they felt within them? It was enough to
live and to rejoice; and their works are one long hymn of triumphant
hope and overflowing thankfulness.

[Sidenote: In contact (1) with the vulgar.]

It was easier for the first disciples to declare what their own eyes had
seen and their own hands had handled of the Word of Life, than for
another generation to take up a record which to themselves was only
history, and to pass from the traditional assertion of the Lord's
divinity to its deliberate enunciation in clear consciousness of the
difficulties which gathered round it when the gospel came under the keen
scrutiny of thoughtful heathens. Whatever vice might be in heathenism,
there was no want of interest in religion. If the doubts of some were
real, the scoffs of many were only surface-deep. If the old legends of
Olympus were outworn, philosophy was still a living faith, and every
sort of superstition flourished luxuriantly. Old worships were revived,
the ends of the earth were searched for new ones. Isis or Mithras might
help where Jupiter was powerless, and uncouth lustrations of the blood
of bulls and goats might peradventure cast a spell upon eternity. The
age was too sad to be an irreligious one. Thus from whatever quarter a
convert might approach the gospel, he brought earlier ideas to bear upon
its central question of the person of the Lord. Who then was this man
who was dead, whom all the churches affirmed to be alive and worshipped