may be capable of fidelity, he who understands little may have his sins forgiven because he loves much.

Let us sum up the points of difference which we have discovered between the Old Theocracy and the New. The Old Theocracy was utterly independent of all political organisations. It was therefore able to create a political organisation of its own. The laws of the Theocracy were enforced by temporal punishments, as indeed at a time when the immortality of the soul was not recognised they could be enforced by no other. The New Theocracy was set up in the midst of a political organisation highly civilised and exacting. It was therefore as completely devoid of any system of temporal punishments as the Old had been devoid of any other system. But, on the other hand, its members believed themselves to live under the eye of a Judge whose tribunal was in heaven and into whose hands they were to fall at death. Again, the Old Theocracy selected a single family out of the mass of mankind, while the New gathered out of mankind, by a summons which though absolutely comprehensive was yet not likely to be obeyed but by a certain class, all such as possessed any natural loyalty to goodness, enthusiasm enough to join a great cause, and devotion enough to sacrifice something to it.

CHAPTER VII.

CONDITIONS OF MEMBERSHIP IN CHRIST'S KINGDOM.

THE question now arises, What was involved in obeying Christ's summons? When the crowd of faithful and loyal hearts gathered round him, struck with admiration of the wisdom that was so condescending and the power that was so beneficent, when, without throwing off the yoke of citizenship in earthly states, they accepted the burdens of citizenship in the New Jerusalem, and without ceasing to be amenable to Jewish and Roman judges, became responsible for all their deeds and even for all their thoughts to Christ, what was the extent of the new obligation which they incurred? How did a Christian differ from another man?

Ever since the Church was founded up to the present time this question, What makes a man a Christian? has been an all-important practical question. The answers given to it in the present day differ widely with the tolerance of those who give them, but they are generally the same in kind. They consist in specifying certain doctrines about God and Christ which a Christian must needs believe. One will say, He is no Christian who does not believe that the death of Christ effected a permanent change in the relations between man and God. Another will say, He is no Christian who does not believe in the

Divinity of Christ. A third will say, It is necessary to believe in the Resurrection. Whether or no these beliefs, any or all of them, be necessary to the character of a Christian now, we may assert with absolute confidence that they were not required of the first followers of Christ, and further, that most of them had never occurred to their minds. Nothing could suggest to them the Resurrection of Christ until he began darkly to prophesy of it to his most intimate disciples; and when he did so they listened, we are told, with bewilderment and incredulity. So far from regarding the cross of Christ as the basis of a reconciliation between God and man, they would have listened with horror to the suggestion that their Master was destined to such a death. The Divinity of his person might indeed occur to some of those who witnessed his miraculous works, but it was certainly not generally received in the society, for we find Christ pronouncing a solemn blessing upon Peter for being the first to arrive at the conclusion that he was the Messiah. It appears, then, that so long as their Master was with them the creed of the first Christians was of the most unformed and elementary character. To the ordinary belief of their age and country they added nothing except certain vague conceptions of the greatness of the new Prophet, whom the less advanced regarded as likely before long to establish a new royal dynasty at Jerusalem, while others of greater penetration regarded him as a new Moses and a divinely commissioned reformer of the law. It is clear, then, that those who consider an elaborate creed essential to the Christian character must pronounce Christ's first disciples utterly unworthy to bear the name of Christians. But to this such persons may answer that the first disciples

were indeed only Christians in a very imperfect sense, and that before the Resurrection it could not be otherwise. That event increased the number of dogmas which Christians are required to receive; before it happened their creed was necessarily meagre, but since it has happened a Christian is not worthy of the name if he does not believe much more than any of Christ's first followers.

This view is plausible and agrees at first sight with the conclusions at which we have already arrived. Christ, we have said, announced himself as the Founder and Legislator of a new state, and summoned men before him in that capacity. He did not invite them as friends, nor even as pupils, but summoned them as subjects. It was natural that when they first gathered round him, and even for some time afterwards, they should differ from other men in nothing but the loyalty which had led them to obey the call. They understood that they had been summoned in order to receive laws, but those laws could not be promulgated all at once. In the mean time, while they were expecting the institutions that had been promised to them, though Christians in will they could not be called Christians in the full sense of the word. Though out of them the Christian Church was to spring, yet they might well be as unlike the Christian Church as the acorn is unlike the oak, or as the crew of the Mayflower was unlike the States of New England. But after the Church had received its Founder's lawslaws which, like the Decalogue, contained not merely practical rules of life but declarations concerning the nature of God and man's relation to Him, then Christianity may have begun to mean no mere fidelity or loyalty to

Christ's person, but the practical obedience to his rules of life, and the unquestioning acceptance of his theological teaching.

And

In a sense it is true that Christianity does mean this. Christ demanded as much and was assuredly not satisfied with less. In the same way every state demands of its citizens perfect patriotism and perfect obedience to the laws. Yet perfect patriotism and obedience is scarcely found in any citizen of any state; but the state, though it demands so much, does not exclude the citizen who renders less. It is one thing to be an imperfect citizen, and another to be excluded from citizenship altogether. In like manner it is one thing to be an imperfect Christian, and another to be utterly unworthy of the name. it will be found on further examination that the Christian Church is content with a much more imperfect obedience to its law than any secular states. It does not, indeed, promulgate laws without expecting them to be observed; it constantly maintains a standard by which every Christian is to try himself; nevertheless whereas every secular state enacts and obtains from its members an almost perfect obedience to its laws, the laws of the Divine State are fully observed by scarcely any one, and the most that can be said even of Christians that rise decidedly above the average is that they do not forget them, and that by slow degrees they arrive at a general conformity with them. The reason of this will appear when we treat in detail of Christ's legislation. It will then become clear that Christ's legislation is of a nature infinitely more complex in its exactions upon every individual than any secular code, and that accordingly a complete observance of it is infinitely difficult. For this reason it is a matter