358 
The solemn echoes of the “ Sermon on the mount '' died 
away at evening-fall, like all other sounds of earth that day. 
Some men had been touched by them ; but their memory soon 
began to fade. Did any one of them even think of writing 
down the words ? — The same reflection arises as to all the 
rest of the teaching of the “ Greater than Moses.” The next 
generation had a record of that teaching ; and also a new 
social organization in which it was transmitted. Later 
still, it was translated into various languages, and read 
The Chris- periodically in the perpetuated societies which 
tian Litera- cherished it. — Centuries rolled on; and copies of 
the records, subject to the same kind of vicissitudes 
as other writings, became matter for the criticism of some, 
and the neglect of others. Then the genuineness of the original 
documents, their authenticity, completeness, and authority, — 
questions of the phenomenal, — would be inquired of, and that 
with increasing strictness, perhaps, in proportion as they 
were judged objectively and historically, by those who had 
frustrated their responsible advantages by not receiving in- 
wardly the principles which make a Religion to be spirit 
and life. 
151 . Just the same observations naturally occur in reference 
to the system, or polity, set up by the first teachers 
tian h ?oiity. ris ’ Christian facts, the first authors of the 
Christian literature. All the unusual circumstances 
which arrested the attention at first, whether of the populace 
of Jerusalem, or the Athenians on Mar's Hill, or Caesar's 
household at Rome, had to subside into their due place in the 
system of moral agency. The Christian polity had to shape 
itself as it grew, in some accordance with the social organiza- 
tion around it. Succeeding generations were responsible for 
dealing with the Christian system more and more as an insti- 
tution pertaining to the moral order and government of men, 
which could not be ignored. It was an external fact, tending 
to become identified with the law and social system of the 
world ; with this distinction, that it had a power of its own 
(which external law alone has not) of moulding the inner life 
of those who so accepted its external Revelation as to make it 
an internal principle. 
152. The Christian Polity, or Church as it is called, viewed as 
an external system, is, and must be capable of being, a part of 
the government and civilization of the world ; but viewed in 
reference to its own inner life, continuous and influential from 
the first, it is capable also of forming the individual character. 
And much as the people who had the Law from Moses, forgot 
the wonders of Egypt and of the wilderness, at the time e.g. of 
