Religions seldom begin in that form, and paganism was even less
intellectual and less dogmatic than early Christianity. The most
primitive Christian faith consisted in a conversion of the whole
man--intellect, habits, and affections--from the life of the world to
a new mystical life, in answer to a moral summons and a prophecy about
destiny. The moral summons was to renounce home, kindred, possessions,
the respect of men, the hypocrisies of the synagogue, and to devote
oneself to a wandering and begging life, healing, praying, and
preaching. And preaching what? Preaching the prophecy about destiny
which justified that conversion and renunciation; preaching that the
world, in its present constitution, was about to be destroyed on
account of its wickedness, and that the ignorant, the poor, and the
down-trodden, if they trusted this prophecy, and turned their backs at
once on all the world pursues, would be saved in the new deluge, and
would form a new society, of a more or less supernatural kind, to be
raised on the ruins of all present institutions. The poor were called,
but the rich were called also, and perhaps even the heathen; for there
was in all men, even in all nature (this is the one touch of
speculative feeling in the gospel), a precious potentiality of
goodness.
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