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was no such thing as a poor person in this community; and yet there was no such thing as a rich one! nobody possessed any thing, yet nobody wanted for any thing! In what society but this Christian one, not actually detached from the world, not totally abstracted from the common duties of life-was such a phenomenon before or afterwards to be seen? There was no distinction of rank or privilege, no difference of means or fortune among the members of this community; all were peers in personal dignity; all had the same rights; all were alike partners in the ownership of property, and alike sharers in its use and enjoyment. What exemplary self-denial; what genuine humility, on the part of the rich; what tenderness and indulgence to the poor; what peculiar honour and elevation bestowed on the latter, with no degradation or abasement on the part of the former; what mutual attachment; what sincere charity; what harmony and concord; did these things evince in all, or tend to excite in all, one towards another!

The equalization of external circumstances, produced by the voluntary resignation of every man's individual possessions for the benefit of the whole society, compensated as it was in return by a reciprocal sacrifice on the part of the rest, of what was theirs; the consequence of which would be, that though each had given up and lost his own, yet he had succeeded to the common use and enjoyment of many times his own: may be considered the literal fulfilment of our Saviour's promise, "There is no "man who hath forsaken an house, or brethren, or "sisters, or a father, or a mother, or a wife, or "children, or lands, for the sake of me and of the

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Gospel; but who shall receive an hundredfold "now in this season, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, together with persecutions; and in the period of ages which is coming, life everlastings." For it is evident concerning this promise of a return to be made in kind for sacrifices previously made, where so many instances of things sacrificed, and all so different, are specified as alike to be requited in kind, that the peculiar nature or mode of the return to be made for one particular sacrifice, must be like that of the return to be similarly made for another; and consequently that the sacrifice of such articles as houses or lands, that is, property in general, was to be compensated by a return in kind in the same sense as the sacrifice of a mother, or a sister, that is of natural relations in general. If the proper sacrifice of the latter, then, in the nature of things neither was, nor could be, to be rewarded by the acquisition of the same things manifold, in the same proper sense as before, neither was that of the former. But if the sacrifice of relations in the natural sense, for the sake of the Gospel, was to be compensated to the individual believer bereaved thereof, by the acquisition of many more in the spiritual sense; that is, of fathers, mothers, brethren and sisters of the faith-of relations in short, united together in the community of faith and hope, by the bonds of a spiritual union and attachment, as close and as endearing as the tenderest and strictest ties of natural sympathy and affection: so might the loss of property to the individual owner of it, be compensated

s Mark x. 29, 30. Cf. Matt. xix. 29. Luke xviii. 29, 30. Harm. P. iv. 53.

by the acquisition of a right to the property of others: and on the supposition of a community of possessions among the members of the Hebrew church, it would actually be so; since, though each individually, by entering into such a society, might cease to retain any thing of his own, yet by continuing to belong to it, he was admitted, nevertheless, to the enjoyment of many times his own.

So long as the Hebrew church was the only Christian society in the world, this peculiarity of its constitution would be a palpable mark of discrimination between Christians and the rest of mankind, whether Jews or Gentiles: and it has been seen that the duty of taking no thought for the morrow was inculcated as particularly incumbent upon the disciples, for this reason among others; viz. to draw a broad line of distinction between the disciples, who believed in Christ, and the rest of the world, who did not. This peculiarity seems a necessary consequence, too, of that exemplary charity and self-denial which were especially to be exacted from those, who should be first called upon to imitate in practice the great model of Christian perfection, Christ himself; and which might be exacted with great propriety from them, as his scholars and disciples in the strictest sense of the word-as bound by reasons peculiar to themselves, to emulate the example which he had set them, even above the rest of their Christian brethren. If greater activity was to be required from them as the first ministers of Christianity; if a less degree of abstraction from temporal pursuits, and a less complete devotion to spiritual ones, not merely by way of pattern or prototype to future believers, but even for the discharge of their delegated

official functions, would have been incompatible with their proper relations to Christ and to his church; if it was but in the nature of things, that the interests of a rising society, of an infant religion as it were, should demand more exclusive care and attention on the part of those who had to found it originally, and to bring it into being, as well as to fashion and mould it afterwards for perpetuity-to foster in short, and to nourish it from infancy to maturity; if it was agreeable to antecedent probability, that a more ardent warmth of personal affection, a deeper intensity of personal interest, a more glowing zeal and enthusiasm, would be felt and displayed by those who were embarking for the first time on a great and important business-in favour of its proper concerns and objects: this peculiar constitution of the first Christian church, by which its members were relieved from all care or anxiety about themselves, afforded free scope and opportunity for all these things-both for the discharge of delegated duties, for the satisfaction of acknowledged obligations, and for the indulgence and operation of natural feelings.

It is to be remembered too, that the promise of an extraordinary Providence for the supply of the temporal wants of the Hebrew Christians—that is, of a part of the Jews of our Saviour's day-even if realized, would be after all, only the revival of the privilege, anciently possessed by their fathers on a large and comprehensive scale. It is not more sur

prising that a portion of the Jewish community should thus be taken for a longer or a shorter period, under the special protection of the divine Providence than that the whole of their nation should have been so, during their forty years' sojourn in the

wilderness. The promise of the life that now is, upon condition of obedience to the declared will of God, was the proper sanction of the covenant of Horeb. What wonder, that the same promise should be repeated on the same conditions, to the descendants of the same people; accompanied too, as it was, with the promise of the life to come? a promise confined to the family of faith among the Jews, and compared with which, the promise of the life that now is, might justly be considered a mere appendage or superfluity of kindness; the absence of which could detract nothing from the independent, intrinsic value of the other gift; nor its presence add to its sufficiency and perfection by itself.

Perhaps, however, the true explanation of the reason of this constitution of the Hebrew church, from the time of its first formation and for some time after, is to resolve it into the purposes of the divine Providence, with regard to the punishment to be inflicted on the unbelieving part of the Jewish community, for the specific crime of their infidelity. It was naturally to be expected that the believing part of this community, who did not share in the guilt of that crime, should be exempted from sharing in its consequences; and a little consideration will teach us, that supposing the ultimate punishment of the unbelieving Jews, in some appropriate way, on the one hand, and the ultimate preservation of the believing ones from all such penal effects, on the other, to have been contemplated from the first, no form or constitution of society in the Hebrew church originally and for some time after, was so likely to promote this object, as that which we find to have been actually established in it.

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