ples the Egyptians of the Ancient Empire
entertained the idea of the equality of the sexes; but the equality of
man was not conceived by them. Still less did any notion of it exist in
the Jewish state. It was the fashion with the socialists of 1793, as it
has been with the international assemblages at Geneva in our own day, to
trace the genesis of their notions back to the first Christian age. The
far-reaching influence of the new gospel in the liberation of the human
mind and in promoting just and divinely-ordered relations among men is
admitted; its origination of the social and political dogma we are
considering is denied. We do not find that Christ himself anywhere
expressed it or acted on it. He associated with the lowly, the vile, the
outcast; he taught that all men, irrespective of rank or possessions, are
sinners, and in equal need of help. But he attempted no change in the
conditions of society. The "communism" of the early Christians was the
temporary relation of a persecuted and isolated sect, drawn together by
common necessities and dangers, and by the new enthusiasm of
self-surrender. ["The community of goods of the first Christians at
Jerusalem, so frequently cited and extolled, was only a community of use,
not of ownership (Acts iv. 32), and throughout a voluntary act of love,
not a duty (v. 4); least of all, a right which the poorer might assert.
Spite of all this, that community of goods produced a chronic state of
poverty in the church of Jerusalem." (Principles of Political Economy. By
William Roscher. Note to Section LXXXI. English translation. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. 1878.)]--Paul announced the universal brotherhood of
man, but he as clearly recognized the subordination of society, in the
duties of ruler and subject, master and slave, and in all the domestic
relations; and although his gospel may be interpreted to contain the
elements of revolution, it is not probable that he undertook to
inculcate, by the proclamation of "universal brotherhood," anything more
than the duty of universal sympathy between all peoples and classes as
society then existed.

If Christianity has been and is the force in promoting and shaping
civilization that we regard it, we may be sure that it is not as a
political agent, or an annuller of the inequalities of life, that we are
to expect aid from it. Its office, or rather one of its chief offices on
earth, is to diffuse through the world, regardless of condition or
pos