to distinguish Peter and Paul, James and John, instead of losing them in the vague conception of 'apostolic' Even the reader who is not a professional student is aware of the distinctions, though he has no temptation to press them. He is conscious that the dialectical discussions of Galatians and Romans are profoundly unlike the intuitive and contemplative epistles of John. When he reads the first verses of Hebrews or of the Fourth Gospel he becomes aware that he has entered a new intellectual atmosphere; this is not the air which he breathes in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. That new method of study known to Germans as the 'religionsgeschichtliche Methode,' which regards the Christianity of the New Testament as a supreme example of religious syncretism, and by the help of the science of comparative religion traces all the elements of it to their independent sources, of course still further emphasises the differences. To it, Christianity is a stream which has its proximate source in Jesus; but as the stream flows out into the world tributaries pour into it from every side, swelling, colouring, sometimes poisoning its waters. This process does not begin, as we have perhaps been taught to believe, when the New Testament closes, so that we have the New Testament as a standard for the perpetual restoration of the true faith: it begins at the very beginning. The New Testament itself is the earliest witness to it, and it is the New Testament itself which we must purge if we would get Christianity pure and undefiled. All the sacramentarianism, for example, which we find in Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians; all the nascent Catholicism of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles; all the religious materialism which in one form or another connects itself with the Church and its ministry, has to be explained and discounted on these lines. It cannot be traced to Christ, and therefore it is not Christian; it can
