principle which Jesus and his apostles taught in its most perfect and effective form as the "communion of saints," the partnership or fellowship of the holy ([Greek: _koinônia ton hagiôn_]); community of property and rights among all who believe; a principle which good men have been vainly seeking to restore in some form ever since the subversion of Christianity, in the fourth century, by the agency of numberless nugatory statutes and associations; a divine truth which in its Christless forms of "communism," "socialism," and "Nihilism," now threatens the very existence of law and order throughout Christendom; a system perhaps impossible to any government which recognizes the legality of private-property rights, and is therefore committed to Mammon-worship. But these Christians had learned a higher truth than any known to human laws: they were the owners of nothing; they were only stewards of their Lord’s goods; the wealth which they accumulated and held for the common good was to them "true riches"; the wealth which any individual held for himself and his own private aggrandizement was the "mammon of unrighteousness." Hence no Christian could be in want while the community was prosperous; no community could suffer while any other communities accessible to them by land or sea had anything to spare; and the faith of Christ made the general prosperity of all Christians insure the individual prosperity of each one; so that there were no "rich" and no "poor" among them. Plato’s dreams of a perfect community ("Republic") admitted human slavery--Jesus Christ taught the freedom, equality, and fraternity of all men: Sir Thomas More’s "Utopia" abolished marriage, and proposed to hold women in common--Jesus Christ elevated marriage into a sacrament; denied man’s right to "hold" woman at all; proclaimed freedom and equality _for her_ also, repudiating the universal idea that she was a chattel, and teaching that she is a soul endowed with the same rights, duties, and responsibilities as are inherent in the soul of man. Modern reformers propose to "divide" out all property, and limit individual acquisitions thereof; but Jesus proposed to divide out nothing, and to limit nothing; but, that all things should be accumulated, owned, and used in common, as every one hath need, just as air, and sunlight, and the boundless sea are common. The word "catholic" ([Greek: _kata holos_]) was unknown to Jesus and the New Testament; the word "common" ([Greek: _koiyos_]) was the key to all of his teachings, social, spiritual, and political.