The plan was as simple as it was practical. It was in perfect accord with all the laws, natural, social, and psychological, that later scientific study has disclosed. That it met at once with partial success is an established historic fact, for of the five hundred disciples to whom Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 15:6, probably the great majority, if not all, belonged to the Capernaum community. But it is equally clear that Jesus' success at Capernaum was not commensurate with his hopes and that his relative failure was due to that which the Infinite has made a basic principle in the universe--the freedom of the human will. The convincing common sense, the radiant sympathy and love, and the attractive social plan of the Master Teacher were not able to conquer the fixed habits and prejudices and hatreds of a majority of the inhabitants of the greater Capernaum. The wooden orthodoxy and the narrow jealousy of the Pharisees led them to block and undermine, rather than support his work. The opposition of these acknowledged religious leaders confused the minds of the people. How electrical and far-reaching would Jesus' great social experiment have been, had it met with the immediate success he craved, only the imagination can picture. That from Capernaum might have gone forth mighty influences that would have quickly transformed human society as a whole is not beyond the realm of practical possibility, for the world was closely knit together in the first Christian century and nothing is more potent in society than practical demonstration. Even as it was, the social leaven that Jesus placed in greater Capernaum spread with remarkable rapidity, so that before the close of the first Christian century fraternal communities were found not only in Damascus, Cæsarea, and Antioch, but in all the great cities and even the remote provinces of the Roman Empire. The strength of Jesus' social plan lay in its simplicity. Society in the first century, as at present, had become hopelessly complex. The individual was but a spoke in the wheel of things. He was so enmeshed in a rigid social organization that he had few opportunities for spontaneous self-expression. Jesus quietly set aside all this complex social machinery and substituted a simple neighborhood organization, so simple that its members were unconscious of any organization at all. The warm, fraternal spirit of the fraternal community, which was simply an extension of the high ideals and traditions of the Jewish home, provided the atmosphere that every man, and especially "the lost," the millions of detached men, women, and children in the old Roman Empire, were craving. In these Christian communities they found friendship and good-will. If they were needy, here they were sure of help. If they were sad, they found sympathy and comfort. If they stumbled and fell, they were tenderly lifted up, given counsel, and guided in the way of life.