Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/82

the interest of this party; James is not mentioned in it at all, and Peter plays but quite a, subordinate part, and is thrown into the shade by John. The disciples are spoken of as often misunderstanding their great Teacher. These peculiarities cannot be considered as accidental; they are monuments of the controversy then going on between the two parties. Paul stood in direct opposition to the Jewish Christians. This is plain from the Epistle to the Galatians, in which the heads of the rival sects appear very unlike the description given of them in the book of Acts. The observance of Jewish sacred days was one of the subjects of controversy. Let us look only at the matter of the Sabbath, as it came in question between the two parties. Paul exalts Christ far above the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament, calling him an image of the invisible God, and declaring that all the fulness of divinity dwells in him, and adds, that he had annulled the old Hebrew law. "Therefore," says Paul, "let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath."^[1] Here he distinctly states the issue between the two Christian sects. Elsewhere he speaks of the Jewish party, as men that "would pervert the gospel of Christ," by teaching that a man was "justified by the works of the law;" that is, by a minute observance of the Hebrew ritual.^[2] Paul rejects the authority of the Old Testament. The law of Moses was but a school-master's servant, to bring us to Christ; man had come to Christ, and needed that servant no longer; the law was a taskmaster and guardian set over man in his minority, now he had come of age, and was free; the law was a shadow of good things, and they had come; it was a law of sin and death, which no man could bear, and now the law of the spirit of life, as revealed by Jesus Christ, had made men free from the law of sin and death. Such was the work of the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Thus sweeping off the authority of the old law in general, he proceeds to particulars: he rejects circumcision, and the offering of sacrifices; rejects the distinction of nations as Jew and Gentile; the distinction of meats as clean and unclean, and all distinction of days as holy and not holy. If one man thought one day holier than another day, if an-

1. Col. ii. 16.
2. Gal. i. 5.