In His apostles, and the disciples who gathered round them, endowed with the memory of His words and deeds, two simple sacraments, and a promise that He would be with them to the end of the æon, while they fulfilled His commission to evangelise and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, the continuance of the Church which our Lord had founded was secured. Buddha left behind him neither sacrament to signify and seal the benefits which he had conferred, nor any promise of personal fellowship with or interest in his followers; but he was survived by the Monastic Order which he had founded, by a law containing the essentials of his system, and a form of discipline containing the customs to be observed in their assemblies, and the rules to which all the brethren were to be subject. Though the personal guide to Nirvana was lost to them, they still in the law possessed his way to it, and by observing the law, and following his way, they would fulfil his last stirring exhortation,[319] “Be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves, O monks.” So much importance being attached to the law, his disciples, immediately after his decease, according to the tradition, set about collecting the materials of it, in his remembered discourses, decisions, and in all that he said; and this labour of recalling, determining, and perpetuating his teaching seems to have occupied them for several generations. There is no trace of any corresponding anxiety on the part of the Christian Church to collect the words of the Lord Jesus. The Gospels are not the earliest of our scriptures, and they were produced more for the edification of Jewish and Gentile converts, than to secure for the Church a standard of belief and of discipline. The function of the Church was not so much to recall and perpetuate the teaching of its Lord as to interpret the significance of His life, and death, and resurrection. No written or remembered instructions were required, for the apostles believed that they had Himself to tell them on every occasion what they should do and teach. From the very first they prayed to Him in full assurance that He heard and answered them. They believed that He had shown Himself to some of them, and that He was witnessed for in all of them by a new possession. The Gentile world had been familiar with the μανία of the medium through whom a Divine oracle was supposed to be given, and with the _rabies_ of the howling priests of the goddess Cybele, but the Christians professed to be inspired by the πνεῦμα ἅγιον. In some instances this inspiration manifested itself in extravagant forms and in mysterious utterances,[320] but those who were most under its control had complete possession of themselves; their speech was intelligible, and sober, and most convincing, making “manifest the secrets of the heart.”