was to place for the first time
the love of man as man distinctly in the list of virtues, to dissipate
the exclusive prejudices of ethnic morality, and to give selfishness the
character of sin.

When a theory of selfishness is rife in a whole community, it is a bold
and hazardous step for a part of the community to abandon it. For in the
society of selfish people selfishness is simply self-defence; to
renounce it is to evacuate one's entrenched position, to surrender at
discretion to the enemy. If society is to disarm, it should do so by
common consent. Christ, however, though he confidently expected
ultimately to gather all mankind into his society, did not expect to do
so soon. Accordingly he commands his followers not to wait for this
consummation but, in spite of the hazardous nature of the step, to
disarm at once. They are sent forth "as sheep in the midst of wolves."
Injuries they are to expect, but they are neither to shun nor to
retaliate them. Harmless they are to be as _doves_. The discipline of
suffering will wean them more and more from self, and make the channels
of humanity freer within them; and sometimes their patience may shame
the spoiler; he may grow weary of rapacity which meets with no
resistance, and be induced to envy those who can forego without
reluctance that which he devotes every thought to acquire.

But we shall soon be convinced that Christ could not design by a mere
edict, however authoritative, to give this passion of humanity strength
enough to make it a living and infallible principle of morality in
every man, when we consider, first, what an ardent enthusiasm he
demanded from his followers, and secondly, how frail and tender a germ
this passion naturally is in human nature. Widely diffused indeed it is,
and seldom entirely eradicated; but for the most part, at least in the
ancient world, it was crushed under a weight of predominant passions and
interests; it had seldom power enough to dictate any action, but made
itself felt in faint misgivings and relentings, which sometimes
restrained men from extremes of cruelty. Like Enceladus under Aetna, it
lay fettered at the bottom of human nature, now and then making the mass
above it quake by an uneasy change of posture. To make this outraged and
enslaved passion predominant, to give it, instead of a veto rarely used,
the whole power of government, to train it from a dim misgiving into a
clear and strong passion, required much more than a p