ccustomed vocations, and with such Paul had
to expostulate in his epistles to the Thessalonians. A more or less
ascetic mode of life was also natural under the circumstances. Not
necessarily that the present world was evil, but that it was temporary
and of small worth, and that a Christian's heart should be set on higher
things. The belief that the Church was a supernatural institution found
expression in the Jewish notion of the presence and power of the Holy
Spirit. It was believed among the Jews that the Messianic age would be
the age of the Spirit in a marked degree, and this belief passed over
into the Christian Church and controlled its thought and life for some
generations. The Holy Spirit was supposed to be manifest in various
striking ways, in prophecy, speaking with tongues and miracle working.
In this idea Paul also shared, but he carried the matter farther than
most of his contemporaries and saw in the Spirit the abiding power and
ground of the Christian life. Not simply in extraordinary phenomena, but
also in the everyday life of Christians, the Holy Spirit was present,
and all the Christian graces were the fruits (cf. Gal. v. 22). A result
of this belief was to give their lives a peculiarly enthusiastic or
inspirational character. Theirs were not the everyday experiences of
ordinary men, but of men lifted out of themselves and transported into a
higher sphere. With the passing of time the early enthusiasm waned, the
expectation of the immediate return of Christ was widely given up, the
conviction of the Spirit's presence became less vivid, and the conflict
with heresy in the 2nd century led to the substitution of official
control for the original freedom (see below). The late 2nd century
movement known as Montanism was in essence a revolt against this growing
secularization of the Church, but the movement failed, and the
development against which it protested was only hastened. The Church as
an institution now looked forward to a long life upon earth and adjusted
itself to the new situation, taking on largely the forms and customs of
the world in which it lived. This did not mean that the Church ceased to
regard itself as a supernatural institution, but only that its
supernatural character was shown in a different way. A Christian was
still dependent upon divine aid for salvation, and his life was still
supernatural at least in theory. Indeed, the early conviction of the
essential difference between the life