of the same description.

The beliefs in popular medicine, which constituted a part of the force
of Jesus, were continued in his disciples. The power of healing was one
of the marvellous gifts conferred by the Spirit. The first Christians,
like almost all the Jews of the time, looked upon diseases as the
punishment of a transgression, or the work of a malignant demon. The
apostles passed, just as Jesus did, for powerful exorcists. People
imagined that the anointings of oil administered by the apostles, with
imposition of hands and invocation of the name of Jesus, were
all-powerful to wash away the sins which were the cause of disease, and
to heal the afflicted one. Oil has always been in the East the medicine
_par excellence_. For the rest, the simple imposition of the hands of
the apostles was reputed to have the same effect. This imposition was
made by immediate contact. Nor is it impossible that, in certain cases,
the heat of the hands, being communicated suddenly to the head, insured
to the sick person a little relief.

The sect being young and not numerous, the question of deaths was not
taken into account until later on. The effect caused by the first
demises which took place in the ranks of the brethren was strange.
People were troubled by the manner of the deaths. It was asked whether
they were less favored than those who were reserved to see with their
eyes the advent of the Son of Man? They came generally to consider the
interval between death and the resurrection as a kind of blank in the
consciousness of the defunct. At the time of which we speak, belief in
the resurrection almost alone prevailed. The funeral rite was
undoubtedly the Jewish rite. No importance was attached to it; no
inscription indicated the name of the dead. The great resurrection was
near; the bodies of the faithful had only to make in the rock a very
short sojourn. It did not require much persuasion to put people in
accord on the question as to whether the resurrection was to be
universal, that is to say, whether it would embrace the good and the
bad, or whether it would apply to the elect only. One of the most
remarkable phenomena of the new religion was the reappearance of
prophecy. For a long time people had spoken but little of prophets in
Israel. That particular species of inspiration seemed to revive in the
little sect. The primitive Church had several prophets and prophetesses
analogous to those of the Old Testament. The psalmist