The belief 
was much in- 
fluenced by 
the ideas en- 
tertained as to 
Christ’s per- 
son. 
yet that it was not altogether the same, His followers 
before long began to perceive. As there was very 
soon a variety of opinion, so, as time went on, it 
continued, wherever His teaching became known, 
whether among the cultivated or uncultivated. And 
this diversity was specially influential on the idea of the kind 
ot hereafter which was looked for by Christ's disciples (p. 31) 
I he educated might naturally be affected (some ardently, some 
more dimly) by the elevated hope of - being for ever with 
their Divine Lord/’ and being -like Him as He is"; while 
others would be awed into a yet distincter faith of a certain 
kind, by the possibilities set before them of a perdition of the 
most fearful and explicit description, which was assigned to 
A somewhat undefined, but sublime, view of the Christian 
ruture (in connection with an advancing definitive- 
ness of expression as to the Person of Christ), was thSSStintto 
thus generally prevalent in the world for three West ‘ 
or four centuries, —say up to the times of Constantine, and 
perhaps in the age that followed ; but a preciser doctrine as to 
our hereafter seemed henceforth to take hold more and more 
( istinctly on the Western mind, in proportion as the unsettle- 
ment ot earthly civilization unhinged men, and the fall of the 
Roman empire became imminent. But, meanwhile, the East 
nacl, in this matter, a new destiny before it. 
8. Another religious system, involving a different doctrine of 
tne tuture life, rose suddenly in the seventh century, 
and swept over the whole sphere of Oriental Mahomet 
Christianity (p. 32). The prophet of Arabia, bor- theVutwe 
rowing from the most realistic forms of natural llfe 
faith, gave a bodily glow to his heaven and hell, exceeding in 
distinctness all that had been thus far accepted. Heaven to 
Mahomet was a -paradise" of intense earthly delights, and 
hell was delineated for the unbelievers in all the ima°-erv 
of physical terror typified by the old Jewish - Gehenna of 
which, in less detail, early Christianity had made use. 
c ubsequent to the rise of Mahometanism, the physical develop- 
ments of the hereafter became much more distinct amon^ 
i-jhristians, though accompanied by some speculations of an 
alleviating character. The certain Future Judgment 
o souls, and therefore the personal sameness of men 
at that judgment, now gave new prominence to the 
somewhat undeveloped thought of Bodily Resurrec- 
tion. 
9. This, of course, had eventually to encounter the strongest 
(See the 
Church of All 
Ages, p. 373. 
Hayes, Lon- 
don, 18/60 
