t intervened before the glorious coming of the Lord.
This was just how the primitive Christians felt. They had no organised
economic system; no one was compelled to give anything, but under the
pressure of the new spirit they willingly gave everything. What did it
matter? they thought; they were only like pilgrims within sight of
home, or watchers waiting for the morning.

+Origin of the idea of the church.+--Where, then, did the idea of the
church come from? It is as plain as anything can be that the primary
interest of early Christianity was the kingdom of God. It took the
conception over from Judaism with a deeper moral content derived from
the preaching and the life of Jesus. Its first adherents did not even
know that they had a new religion; they only thought they had found the
true Messiah, although the Jewish nation as a whole had rejected Him.
What they wanted above everything was to see the kingdom come upon
earth, and we now know that they were mistaken in imagining that it
would be established speedily and suddenly by the visible second coming
of Jesus on the clouds of heaven. But seeing that they were thinking
of it in this way, how did the church arise and why?

It is doubtful if Jesus ever used the word "church," for the two verses
in Matthew in which He is credited with it are probably of late date
and point to a time when the ecclesiastical organisation was fairly
well established. Still the word itself has an interest and a history
of its own apart from its Christian use. The _ecclesia_, as most of my
readers may be aware, was the assembly of the citizens of any Greek
city-state. It was the custom for the whole body of the members of a
Greek self-governing community to be called together from time to time
for the transaction of public business. This assembly was the final
authority in matters affecting the communal welfare, and even after the
various Greek states became absorbed in the Roman empire this custom
was allowed to continue. It was the policy of the Romans to permit a
large measure of self-government to their subjects of any alien race,
and therefore the _ecclesia_ of any particular city-state continued to
be summoned as usual to decide upon matters of local importance. There
is a reference to this in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, where we
read that the preaching of Christianity in Ephesus caused a riot which
the town clerk--a thoroughly typical town clerk!--succeeded in alla