d hour of which, however, no one
knows, is at hand. In consequence of this, also, the exhortation to
renounce all earthly good takes a prominent place. But Jesus does not
impose ascetic commandments as a new law, far less does he see in
asceticism as such, sanctification[70]--he himself did not live as an
ascetic, but was reproached as a wine-bibber--but he prescribed a
perfect simplicity and purity of disposition, and a singleness of heart
which remains invariably the same in trouble and renunciation, in
possession and use of earthly good. A uniform equality of all in the
conduct of life is not commanded: "To whom much is given, of him much
shall be required." The disciples are kept as far from fanaticism and
overrating of spiritual results as from asceticism. "Rejoice not that
the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written
in heaven." When they besought him to teach them to pray, he taught them
the "Lord's prayer", a prayer which demands such a collected mind, and
such a tranquil, childlike elevation of the heart to God, that it cannot
be offered at all by minds subject to passion or preoccupied by any
daily cares.

7. Jesus himself did not found a new religious community, but gathered
round him a circle of disciples, and chose Apostles whom he commanded to
preach the Gospel. His preaching was universalistic inasmuch as it
attributed no value to ceremonialism as such, and placed the fulfilment
of the Mosaic law in the exhibition of its moral contents, partly
against or beyond the letter. He made the law perfect by harmonising its
particular requirements with the fundamental moral requirements which
were also expressed in the Mosaic law. He emphasised the fundamental
requirements more decidedly than was done by the law itself, and taught
that all details should be referred to them and deduced from them. The
external righteousness of Pharisaism was thereby declared to be not only
an outer covering, but also a fraud, and the bond which still united
religion and nationality in Judaism was sundered.[71] Political and
national elements may probably have been made prominent in the hopes of
the future, as Jesus appropriated them for his preaching. But from the
conditions to which the realising of the hopes for the individual was
attached, there already shone the clearer ray which was to eclipse those
elements, and one saying such as Matt. XXII. 21, annulled at once
political religion and religious pol