to make a light thing of entering it, to give their names to the Founder at a secret interview, and immediately return to their accustomed places of resort and take up the routine of secular life where it had been left. Those who would enroll themselves among the citizens of it were to understand that they began their life anew, as truly as if they had been born again. And lest the Divine Society, in its contempt for material boundaries and for the distinctness which is given by unity of place, should lose its distinctness altogether and degenerate into a theory or a sentiment or a devout imagination, the initiatory rite of baptism, with its publicity and formality, was pronounced as indispensable to membership as that spiritual inspiration which is membership itself.

Baptism being thus indispensable, we may be surprised to find it so seldom mentioned in the accounts of Christ's life. We do not read, for example, of the baptism of his principal disciples. But it is to be remembered that the rite of baptism, though used by Christ, was not introduced by him, and that he recognised the Theocracy as having begun to exist in a rudimentary form before his own public appearance. The work of John was merged in that of Christ as a river in the sea, but Christ regards those who had received John's baptism as being already members of the Theocracy. Since the time of John, he says, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. Now Christ's first followers were likely to be drawn from John's circle; partly because John himself directed his followers to Christ, partly because those who were affected by the eloquence of the one prophet were naturally formed to fall under the influence of the other. That the fact actually was so is attested by our biographies,

which distinctly speak of Christ as finding his earliest disciples in the neighbourhood and among the followers of the Baptist. This being the case, we may presume that the bulk of the first Christians received baptism from John, and found themselves already enrolled in a Society, the objects of which neither they nor perhaps the Baptist himself clearly understood, before they had ever seen the face of Christ. The Acts of the Apostles affords many proofs that the first Christians regarded John's disciples as members of the Church, but imperfectly instructed.

89

CHAPTER IX.

REFLECTIONS ON THE NATURE OF CHRIST'S SOCIETY.

Or the three parts into which our investigation is divided, Christ's Call, his Legislation, and his Divine Royalty or relation to Jehovah, the first is now completed. We have considered the nature of the Call, its difference from that which was given to Abraham, the means which were taken to procure a body of men such as might suitably form the foundation of a new and unique Commonwealth, and the nature of the obligations they incurred in accepting the Call : ἓν μὲν τόδ' ἤδη τῶν τριῶν παλαισμάτων.

But before we proceed to consider Christ's Legislation, it will be well to linger awhile and reflect on what we have learnt. Having ascertained so far what Christ undertook to do and did, it will be well to compare it with other similar schemes and to form some opinion upon the success it was likely to meet with.

Let us ask ourselves what was the ultimate object of Christ's scheme. When the Divine Society was established and organised, what did he expect it to accomplish? To the question we may suppose he would have answered, The object of the Divine Society is that God's will may be done on earth as it is done in heaven. In the language of our own day, its object was the improvement of morality. Now this is no strange or unusual object. Many

schemes have been proposed for curing human nature of its vices and helping it to right thought and right action. We have now before us the outline of Christ's scheme, and are in a condition to compare it with some others that have had the same object, and by so doing to discover in what its peculiarity consists. Now there is one large class of such schemes with which mankind have occupied themselves diligently for many centuries, and which for the purpose of comparison with Christianity may be treated as a single scheme. Ever since the time of Socrates philosophy has occupied itself with the same problem; it has been one of the principal boasts of philosophy that it teaches virtue and weeds vice out of the mind. At the present day those who reject Christianity commonly represent that in advanced civilisation it gives place naturally to moral philosophy. Their belief is that the true and only method of making men good is by philosophy; and that the good influence of Christianity in past ages has been due to the truths of moral philosophy which are blended in it with superstitions which the world in its progress is leaving behind.

Of course there have been a multitude of systems of moral philosophy, which have differed from each other in a considerable degree, but they have all resembled each other in being philosophy. For the present purpose their differences are not important; the important thing is that there have been two conspicuous attempts to improve mankind morally-the one by moral philosophy, the other by means of the Christian Church. Now, as nothing assists conception so much as comparison, and it is hardly possible to understand anything properly without putting it by the side of something else, we may

expect to gain some insight into Christ's method of curing human nature by comparing it with that of the philosophers.

At the first glance the two methods may seem to bear a strong resemblance, and we may suspect that the difference between them is superficial, and not more than is readily accounted for by the difference between manners and modes of thought in Greece and Palestine. It may seem to us that Socrates and Christ were in fact occupied in the same way; certainly both lived in the midst of admiring disciples, whose minds and characters were formed by their words; both discussed moral questions, the one with methodical reasoning as a Greek addressing Greeks, the other with the authoritative tone and earnestness of a Jew. There may seem here at first sight a substantial resemblance and a superficial difference. But if we make a more careful comparison, we shall find that precisely the contrary is true, and that the difference is really radical, while the resemblance is accidental. It is true that Socrates, like Christ, formed a sort of society, and that the successors of Socrates formed societies, which lasted several centuries, the Academy, the Porch, the Garden. But these philosophical societies merely existed for convenience. No necessary tie bound the members of them together. As the teacher had but one tongue and but one lifetime, it was obviously better that he should take his pupils in large numbers, or, as it were, in classes, rather than teach every individual separately, and therefore before the invention of the printing-press a philosopher usually gathered a society round him. Doubtless, when this had been done, a certain esprit de corps sprang up among such societies, and they did, in special