take place. People's thoughts
were turned with great force toward a promise which it was supposed
Jesus had made. During his lifetime Jesus, it was said, had often spoken
of the Holy Spirit, which was understood to mean a personification of
divine wisdom. He had promised his disciples that the Spirit would nerve
them in the combats that they would have to engage in, would be their
inspirer in difficulties, and their advocate if they had to speak in
public. Sometimes it was supposed that Jesus suddenly presented himself
in the midst of his disciples assembled, and breathed on them out of his
own mouth a current of vivifying air. At other times the disappearance
of Jesus was regarded as a premonition of the coming of the Spirit. Many
people established an intimate connection between this descent and the
restoration of the kingdom of Israel.

The affection that the disciples had the one for the other, while Jesus
was alive, was thus enhanced tenfold after his death. They formed a very
small and very retired society, and lived exclusively by themselves. At
Jerusalem they numbered about one hundred and twenty. Their piety was
active, and, as yet, completely restrained by the forms of Jewish
piety. The Temple was then the chief place of devotion. They worked, no
doubt, for a living; but at that time manual labor in Jewish society
engaged very few. Everyone had a trade, but that trade by no means
hindered a man from being educated and well-bred.

The dominant idea in the Christian community, at the moment at which we
are now arrived, was the coming of the Holy Spirit. People were believed
to receive it in the form of a mysterious breath, which passed over the
assembly. Every inward consolation, every bold movement, every flush of
enthusiasm, every feeling of lively and pleasant gayety, which was
experienced without knowing whence it came, was the work of the Spirit.
These simple consciences referred, as usual, to some exterior cause the
exquisite sentiments which were being created in them. When all were
assembled, and when they awaited in silence inspiration from on high, a
murmur, any noise whatever, was believed to be the coming of the Spirit.
In the early times, it was the apparitions of Jesus which were produced
in this manner. Now the turn of ideas had changed. It was the divine
breath which passed over the little Church, and filled it with a
celestial effluvium. These beliefs were strengthened by notions drawn
from the