THE POOR MAN'S GOSPEL.
(Contemporary Review, 1884.)
Ordinary histories concern themselves so little with the mass of the people, that prior to the French Revolution one might suppose the labouring classes of Europe resembled Issachar, who is described as a strong ass crouching down between two burdens—a strong ass who when it fell had only, as a truculent German ruler observed, to be whipped, and it slowly got up again, and went on dragging its load.
The reverse is the fact, for from the moment the Gospel of the kingdom of Heaven was proclaimed, a divine discontent set in; those who believed the message could no longer rest satisfied with things as they were, but by passive or active opposition did what in them lay to establish the reign of justice on earth. "This man," said the Scribes and Pharisees, "stirreth up the people;" and verily the charge was true.
St Chrysostom has in a few vigorous touches depicted the storm which the apostolic preaching aroused in the Roman world. What greater incentive to revolution than to proclaim a kingdom of righteousness among people so crushed by injustice as the inhabitants of the Roman Empire! Restrained for a time by a very decided apostolic injunction, and a firm belief in the immediate coming of the King to deliver His saints and establish His kingdom upon earth, the first believers refrained from social and political action; but when the hope of His second advent became more vague, and a sense of their ever-increasing numbers took possession of the Church, an agitation seems to have set in, which, like some great ground-swell, made the Roman Empire heave
