n the darkest days
of his life, to build up the ideal of a spiritual society which should
weld Israel together, to proclaim a new covenant (xxxi. 31-34) which
Jehovah would make with Israel when representatives of the previously
exiled ten tribes should return with the exiles of Judah. This prophecy
is instinct with the growing sense of the personal responsibility of
individual men brought into communion with God. The religion of Israel
from this time of the captivity ceased to be a merely national religion
connected with particular forms of sacrifice in a particular land. The
synagogues which traced their origin to the time of Ezekiel, when the
sacrificial cultus was impossible, extended this ideal yet further.
During the centuries preceding the birth of Christ there grew up an
apocalyptic literature which regarded as a primary truth the conception
of a kingdom of righteousness ruled over by a present God. The
preaching of John the Baptist was thus in sympathy with the ideals of
his generation, though the sternness of the repentance which he set
forth as the necessary preparation for entrance into the new kingdom of
heaven, which was to be made visible on earth, was not less repugnant to
the men of his day than of later times. Christ's own teaching and that
of his disciples began with the proclamation of the kingdom of God (or
of heaven) (Luke iv. 43, viii. 1, ix. 2; Matt. x. 7). That he intended
it to find outward expression in a visible society appears from the
careful way in which he trained the apostles to become leaders
hereafter, crowning that work by the institution of the sacraments of
baptism and the Eucharist. "It was not from accident or for convenience
that Christ formed a society."[3] His parables even more than his
sermons reveal the principles of his endeavour. But he seldom used the
word _ecclesia_, church, which became the universal designation of his
society.

All the more emphatic is Christ's use of the term _ecclesia_ upon the
distinct advance in faith made by the apostles when St Peter as their
spokesman confessed him to be "the Christ, the Son of the living God"
(Matt. xvi. 16). Instantly came the reply, "I say unto thee, that thou
art _Petros_ (rockman), and on this _Petra_ (rock) I will build my
_ecclesia_ (church); and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against
it." On the rock of a human character, ennobled by faith in his divine
Sonship, he could raise the church of the future, which should