It follows, then, first, that the nation, in its international relations, must compromise with the ideals of Jesus in order to preserve its national existence, and to safeguard Christianity against the attacks of its external foes; and second, that the individual, in his daily life, must compromise with these ideals to preserve the well-being and continuity of the family and to ensure the progress of mankind in happiness, morality and material prosperity.
The Crucifixion was but a few years old when those two old enemies whom Jesus had fought so persistently--creeds and ceremonies--began to be active among the early Christians. _Right theological thinking_ began to assert its supremacy over the _right practical living_, taught by Jesus as the first essential of His professed followers. The outside of the cup was being carefully polished up, although the inside might be unclean. Paul, who had never had any personal intercourse with Jesus, was the protagonist of this retrograde movement. Zealous, energetic, a ready writer and a subtile dialectician, his numerous epistles furnished an arsenal of weapons for all future controversial theologians. His arrogance in defining the tenets of the rapidly growing Gentile Church was not one whit abated by the fact that he had never been in personal contact with Jesus, and that in his views he was opposed to those who had been the most intimate associates of Jesus during his entire prophetic career. Quite early in his ministration, Paul has a bitter quarrel with Peter, James, Cephas, John (the pillars) and other disciples of Jesus over some question of circumcision, and has no hesitation in telling Peter (the "rock" of the new Church) to his face that "he was to be blamed" for his views (Galatians II:11 et seq.).
It is not too much to say that he took the fair, smiling child of religion, as left by Jesus, and transformed it into a misshapen dwarf, with twisted and contorted limbs, and upon its face a frown of almost malevolent austerity.
When right theological thinking became established as the primary essential of a Christian, and especially when Christianity acquired temporal power, it was inevitable that there should be extracted from Paul's militant writings that most abominable doctrine of "No compromise with evil." In company with dogmatic distinctions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, it has inflicted its full quota of misery and suffering upon the human race. It formed the justification of the cruelties of the Inquisition, the religious persecutions and wars of the Middle Ages, the conversion of savages by fire and sword, the extermination of so-called witches, and the burning at the stake of countless advanced thinkers in science and religion, and other so-called heretics.