points which are not always remembered.

The first is that there is no evidence that the historical Christ ever
intended to found a new institutional religion. He neither attempted to
make a schism in the Jewish Church nor to substitute a new system for
it. He placed Himself deliberately in the prophetic line, only claiming
to sum up the series in Himself. The whole manner of His life and
teaching was prophetic. The differences which undoubtedly may be found
between His style and that of the older prophets do not remove Him from
the company in which He clearly wished to stand. He treated the
institutional religion of His people with the independence and
indifference of the prophet and mystic; and the hierarchy, which, like
other hierarchies, had a sure instinct in discerning a dangerous enemy,
was not slow to declare war to the knife against Him. Such, He reminded
His enemies, was the treatment which all the prophets had met with from
the class to which those enemies belonged. This, then, is the first fact
to remember. Institutional Christianity may be a legitimate and
necessary historical development from the original Gospel, but it is
something alien to the Gospel itself. The first disciples believed that
they had the Master's authority for expecting the end of the existing
world-order in their own lifetime. They believed that He had come
forward with the cry of 'Hora novissima!' Whether they misunderstood Him
or not, they clearly could not have held this opinion if they had
received instructions for the constitution of a Church.

The second point on which it is necessary to insist is that Christ never
expected, or taught His disciples to expect, that His teaching would
meet with wide acceptance, or exercise political influence. 'The
world'--organised human society--was the enemy and was to continue the
enemy. His message, He foresaw, would be scorned and rejected by the
majority; and those who preached it were to expect persecution. This
warning is repeated so often in the Gospels that it would be superfluous
to give quotations. He made it quite plain that the big battalions are
never likely to be gathered before the narrow gate. He declared that
only false prophets are well spoken of by the majority. When we consider
the revolutionary character of the Christian idealism, its indifference
to nearly all that passes for 'religion' with the vulgar, and its
reversal of all current valuations, it is plain that it is neve