Therefore while Jesus lived on the earth He belonged to His own people. From among them He called the twelve apostles, in order to fashion the new Israel. And when He had by His Resurrection proved Himself the “Son of God in power” (Rom. i, 4) and as such had bidden His disciples evangelize the whole world, it was from this Jewish sapling that the mighty tree grew, in whose branches dwell the birds of the air. The catholicity of the new society, which was to embrace all languages and all men, was manifested at the very beginning in the Pentecostal miracle of tongues. The life of the young plant, in its early days needed a protective sheath of Jewish custom; but this sheath was not able to hinder or restrict further development, and it was decisively set aside by St. Peter and St. Paul. St. Peter was the first to admit a pagan, the centurion Cornelius, into the Christian community; and St. Paul, by his vigorous reasoning as much as by his strong action, finally demolished the barriers of Jewish legalism and gave Christianity free course into the world. The universal character, which is implicit in our Lord’s preaching, was made explicit by St. Peter and St. Paul. It has been maintained recently that by making Christianity co-terminous with the Church, St. Paul was unfaithful to our Lord’s fundamental thought.[2] But that is to overlook the fact that St. Paul conceives the Church, not as one particular sect, but as a society embracing the whole of redeemed humanity. The Church is not an institution to be established within humanity, which for that reason introduces new lines of division and produces a sectional organization and a sort of new synagogue. On the contrary, it is so world-wide in its nature that it breaks down all barriers and all divisions. It is as big and as wide as humanity itself.