al work of Jesus was
to create around him a circle of disciples, whom he inspired with
boundless affection, and amongst whom he deposited the germ of his
doctrine. To have made himself beloved, "to the degree that after his
death they ceased not to love him," was the great work of Jesus, and
that which most struck his contemporaries.[6] His doctrine was so
little dogmatic, that he never thought of writing it or of causing it
to be written. Men did not become his disciples by believing this
thing or that thing, but in being attached to his person and in loving
him. A few sentences collected from memory, and especially the type of
character he set forth, and the impression it had left, were what
remained of him. Jesus was not a founder of dogmas, or a maker of
creeds; he infused into the world a new spirit. The least Christian
men were, on the one hand, the doctors of the Greek Church, who,
beginning from the fourth century, entangled Christianity in a path of
puerile metaphysical discussions, and, on the other, the scholastics
of the Latin Middle Ages, who wished to draw from the Gospel the
thousands of articles of a colossal system. To follow Jesus in
expectation of the kingdom of God, was all that at first was implied
by being Christian.

[Footnote 1: Matt. viii. 5, and following; Luke vii. 1, and following;
John xii. 20, and following. Comp. Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.]

[Footnote 2: Tacitus, _Ann._, xv. 45; Suetonius, _Claudius_, 25.]

[Footnote 3: _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3. This passage has been altered by a
Christian hand.]

[Footnote 4: _Ant._, XVIII. i.; _B.J._, II. viii.; _Vita_, 2.]

[Footnote 5: Talm. of Jerusalem, _Sanhedrim_, xiv. 16; _Aboda zara_,
ii. 2; _Shabbath_, xiv. 4; Talm. of Babylon, _Sanhedrim_, 43 _a_, 67
_a_; _Shabbath_, 104 _b_, 116 _b_. Comp. _Chagigah_, 4 _b_; _Gittin_,
57 _a_, 90 _a_. The two Gemaras derive the greater part of their data
respecting Jesus from a burlesque and obscene legend, invented by the
adversaries of Christianity, and of no historical value.]

[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.]

It will thus be understood how, by an exceptional destiny, pure
Christianity still preserves, after eighteen centuries, the character
of a universal and eternal religion. It is, in fact, because the
religion of Jesus is in some respects the final religion. Produced by
a perfectly spontaneous movement of souls, freed at its birth from all
dogmatic restraint, having struggled three hund