At the outset we are faced by the difficulty of deciding whether there is or ought to be in any real sense a Christian society at all. A common notion is that original Christianity consisted in a recognition of the vital truths of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, and that all organisation is a departure from primitive purity. It is pointed out that in the history of most religious movements we find the first incentive given by some enthusiastic prophet, who with his immediate followers is swept forward on the crest of a wave of fanatical emotion. Those who come after him, however, are not able to maintain this exalted position, and endeavour to preserve what they can of the Master’s spirit by reducing his teaching to a code and hedging it about with the protective barrier of an institution. But in the process a great deal of the original enthusiasm and freedom is inevitably lost. This, it is often contended, has been the fortune of Christianity. The original inspiration of Christ’s teaching has been organised out of recognition. In so far as He can justly be said to have founded a society at all, it was an invisible society, the limits of which were set not by material rites but by moral and spiritual considerations alone.
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