"In order to exclude all worldly ambitions and selfishness from the kingdom which he established in the world, our Lord ordained that his Church should be a community in which all men are free and equal--brethren only. Hence he ordained, as the fundamental law of the kingdom, that all private rights of property (including estates, rank, offices, prerogatives) should be forever abolished in his Church, and that Christians should hold them all in common. Hence, the kingdom of heaven is an absolute democracy, social and political, based upon faith in Christ, and community of rights and property among all who believe. Of this community the apostles themselves were the divinely appointed type. They used thaumaturgy for the common good only, and not for personal aggrandizement. The common treasure was put into a bag, and, as if to show the divine scorn of wealth and of all human distinctions that grow out of it, the bag was intrusted to Judas, the only base one of the twelve. It was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, because the law of that kingdom imperatively required the consecration of all that he had to the common good. But, under the power of a living faith, many complied with this law, and the Church prospered. Thus did the bishops that were ordained by the apostles, as Linus at Rome, Polycarp at Smyrna, Evodius at Antioch, and others also. Thus did Paulinus, Cyprian, Hilary, and others. Such has been the law and practice of the common Church even unto this day. For the primary law of the kingdom of heaven demandeth the consecration of all property, and the abdication of all worldly honors, offices, and authority. And Simon Magus desired not part or lot in this kingdom, but his own advantage only. And thou must perceive that thaumaturgical power exercised by such a church must necessarily be for the common good of all, and not for any personal, political, or sectarian purposes; and the faith that worketh wonders must therefore be impossible to any human association except to the church organized upon the foundation which Jesus himself laid, even the communion of the holy; for the liberty, fraternity, and equality, which constitute the socialism and politics of the kingdom, can not exist upon any other foundation. And, of course, thaumaturgic power will vanish even out of the Church if the day shall ever come in which those who believe shall abandon the communal organization of the kingdom of heaven, and establish human statutes as the law thereof." "I think," said Am-nem-hat, "that thy words remove many of the difficulties which have beset my study of thy sacred books. For I now perceive that the parables of Jesus--a species of literary composition unknown, perhaps impossible, to other men--which I supposed to refer to some spiritual, mystical doctrines, were in fact spoken concerning his Church, or kingdom, in this world."