volume 1, pages 30-35.

"We find the early [Jewish] Christians observing the national feasts and holidays (Acts ii. 1: xviii. 21: xx. 6, 16: Romans xiv. 5). They take part in the worship of the temple and the synagogue; they pray at the customary hours (chapters ii. 46; iii. 1; volume 42; x. 9). They observe the fasts, and undergo voluntary abstinence, binding themselves by special vows like all pious Jews (xiii. 2: xvii. 18; xxi. 23). They scrupulously avoid unlawful food, and all legal defilement (x. 14). They have their children circumcised (xv. 5; xvi. 3; 65493 volume 2). ... This scrupulous piety won for them the esteem and admiration of the people (chap. volume 13)." At first their creed was "comprised in a single dogma: 'Jesus is the Messiah.' ... Their preaching of the Gospel strictly followed the lines of Messianic tradition (i. 7; ii. 36; iii. 20). ... But in reality all this formed only the outside of their life and creed. ... Herein lies the profound significance of the miracle of Pentecost. That day was the birthday of the Church, not because of the marvelous success of Peter's preaching, but because the Christian principle, hitherto existing only objectively and externally in the person of Jesus, passed from that moment into the souls of His disciples. ... And thus in the very midst of Judaism we see created and unfolded a form of religious life essentially different from it--the Christian life."

_A. Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, pages 35-36._

"By the two parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, Christ marked out the two sides or aspects of His truth--its external growth from the least to the greatest, and its internal action on society at large--as setting up a ferment, and making a new lump out of the unkneaded mass of the old humanity. With these two symbols in view we may gauge what the gospel was designed to be and to do. It was to grow into a great outward society--the tree of the Church; but it was also to do a work on secular society as such, corresponding to the action of leaven on flour. The history of Christianity has been the carrying out of these two distinct and contrasted conceptions; but how imperfectly, and under what drawbacks."

_Reverend J. B. Heard, Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theology Contrasted, page 186._

"The organic connection of Jewish Christians with the synagogue, which must, in accordance with the facts before us, be regarded as a rule, is certainly not to be taken as a mere incidental phenomenon, a customary habit or arbitrary accommodation, but as a moral fact resting upon an internal necessity, having its foundation in the love of Jewish Christians to their nation, and in the adhesion of their religious consciousness to the old covenant. To mistake this would be to underrate the wide bearing of the fact. But lest we should over-estimate its importance, we must at once proceed to another consideration. Within Judaism we must distinguish not only the Rabbinical or Pharisaic tradition of the original canonical revelation, but also within the canon itself we have to distinguish the Levitical element from the prophetic, ... taking the latter not in a close but a wide sense as the living spiritual development of the theocracy."

_G. V. Lechler, The Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Times,