RELIGIOUS BELIEF AS A BASIS OF MORALITY. 85 



munity so firmly together and so relentlessly ruptures all older 

 associations, is the creed, or what is known in Christian theology 

 as the symbol, the same term that, as we have already seen, was 

 used by the Greeks to denote the token or pledge of hereditary 

 hospitality and friendship between families, which furnished a 

 basis for the formation of treaties of amity and commerce be- 

 tween tribes. 



Strictly tribal religions never proselytize. Instead of seeking 

 to share with alien tribes the favor and protection of their gods, 

 they wish to monopolize whatever power and patronage may be 

 derived from this source as a means of rendering themselves 

 superior to their enemies. This was the case with the ancient 

 Hebrews, who never thought of sending missionaries into other 

 lands to make converts to Jehovah, but would have condemned 

 such a procedure as treasonable. It is true that Jesus, in his de- 

 nunciation of the Pharisees, declared that they " compass sea and 

 land to make one proselyte"; but this reproof referred to their 

 zeal as a political party in winning adherents among their own 

 countrymen, in order to supplant the more liberal-minded and 

 less rigidly ritualistic Sadducees in the Sanhedrin. 



Jesus himself evidently never intended to break away from 

 Judaism and to become the founder of a new religion. Accord- 

 ing to his own statement, he was "not sent but unto the lost 

 sheep of the house of Israel." His mission was not to destroy, 

 but to fulfill ; not to abrogate, but to accomplish the law. He 

 sought to give a spiritual interpretation to ancient precepts and 

 injunctions; to revivify and rehabilitate the moral sentiment, 

 hitherto dwarfed and deformed under the heavy burden of a per- 

 functory ceremonialism; and to enforce the commandments of 

 God free from all incrustations of the traditions of men. 



Curiously, and yet naturally enough, it was out of the very 

 strictest sect of the Pharisees, so severely rebuked on account of 

 their proselytic spirit, that the great proselyte Paul came the 

 man whose breadth of view and energy of purpose changed a 

 local reformatory movement, which seemed to have been practi- 

 cally suppressed by the crucifixion, into a world-wide religion, by 

 emancipating it from the fetters of Mosaic formalism, taking it 

 out of the narrow ghetto of tribalism, and imparting to it a uni- 

 versal character. In this bold efi^ort to turn apparent disaster 

 into permanent victory, by breaking through the barriers of 

 Judaism and preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, he met with 

 the most determined opposition from the near kin and personal 

 friends of Jesus, as well as from the principal disciples in Jeru- 

 salem. 



To this process of development by which Christianity, whose 

 "field is the world," rose out of Judaism, the special cult of a 



