action of the Church at Jerusalem, a similar mode of life and charity should not have found place in other Churches, @ eé.g., in the Church at Thessalonica, where the belief in Christ’s speedy return ®was so overwhelmingly felt (Felten). No picture could be more extraordinary than that drawn by O. Holtzmann of the Christian Church at Jerusalem, driven by the voice of Chris- tian prophets to enjoin an absolutely compulsory community of goods in ex- pectation of the nearness of the Parousia, and of Ananias and Sapphira as the victims of this tyrannical product ot fanaticism and overwrought excitement. It is a relief to turn from such a strange perversion of the narrative to the en- thusiastic language in which, whilst in- sisting on its idealising tendency, Renan and Pfleiderer alike have recognised the beauty of St. Luke’s picture, and of the social transformation which was destined to.renew the face of the earth, which found its pattern of serving and patient love in Jesus the Friend of the poor, whose brotherhood opened a place of refuge for the oppressed, the destitute, the weak, who enjoyed in the mutual love of their fellows a foretaste of the future kingdom in which God Himself will wipe all tears from their eyes. Whatever qualifications must be made in accepting the whole description given us by Renan and ΡΠεῖ- derer, they were at least right in recog- nising the important factor of the Person of Jesus, and the probability that dur- ing His lifetime He had Himself laid the foundations of the social movement which so soon ennobled and _ blessed His Church. It is far more credible that the disciples should have continued the common life in which they had lived with their Master than that they should have derived a social system from the institutions of the Essenes. There is no proof of any historical connection between this sect and the Apostolic Church, nor can we say that the high moral standard and mode of common life adopted by the Essenes, although in some respects an- alogous to their own, had any direct influence on the followers of Christ. Moreover, with points of comparison, there were also points of contrast. St. Luke’s notice, ii. 46, that the believers continued steadfastly in the Temple, stands out in contrast to the perpetual absence of the Essenes from the Temple, to which they sent their gifts (Jos., Ant., xviii. 2, 5); the common meals of the Essene brotherhood naturally present a likeness to St. Luke’s description of the
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