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Untitled Article
and the service of one Saviour . It was a crisis perilous for humanity . The same power might have enabled Christianity to make all men slaves . In other hands the keys of heaven and earth might have proved a far more formidable pharisaism , than they ever became in those of Jews .
* One belief greatly contributed to the strength and rapidity with which Christianity rooted itself in the world ; and that was the belief , originating with its founder , of his own speedy return from heaven , and the revelation of his kingdom upon earth . Jesus had avowed this belief at the judgment-seat , and often repeated it in the concluding days of his life ; and his disciples fondly clung to it . Spiritual Christians gave the hope a spiritual application ; while those who were carnal dwelt on carnal images : and as the exalted imagination of those regions and those times framed even its ideal world from sensible conceptions , there sprung up apocalypses , conceived in a spirit of judaizing Christianity , filled with predictions , symbols , and visions of various kinds . Antichrist must first be overthrown ; and as Christ delayed to return , Antichrist would first reveal himself , then wax mighty , and multiply his abominations to the utmost ; till the time of redemption came , and the returning Saviour revived his people . It cannot be denied , that hopes of this kind must have occasioned many persecutions of the first Christians ; since it was not to be supposed that Rome , the mistress of the world , could possibly be indifferent to the prevalence of doctrines , which
inculcated the belief of her own approaching destruction ^ and an abhorrence of her own power , as odious , despicable , and antichristian . Thus , such prophets were soon regarded as unpatriotic despisers of their country and the world , or as criminals convicted of a general hatred of mankind ; and many , who could not wait for the return of the Lord , eagerly courted martyrdom . Meanwhile , it is certain that this hope of an approaching kingdom of Christ in heaven or on earth , bound the spirits of Christians closely to
each other , and cut them off from the world . The world they despised , as lying in wickedness ; and what they believed to be so near , they saw already before them and around them . This strengthened their courage to overcome , what no one could otherwise overcome , the spirit of the time , the might of persecutors , and the mockery of unbelievers : they tarried as strangers here , and lived there , whither their Leader had passed before them , and whence they expected he would soon reveal himself again * . '
Among the circumstances which are peculiar to the Christian institution , and which have been perverted by the evil ingenuity of men into occasions of abuse , Herder enumerates the brotherly love inculcated by Christ , on which the doctrine of a community of goods and the duty of indiscriminate alms-giving have been
* Book XVII ., ch . i ., pp . 50—55 .
Untitled Article
The Philosophy of the History of Mankind . 225
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1832, page 225, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1810/page/9/
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