And the causes of this were more than one. In the first place, the whole Hebrew nature was more fervid, more impassioned, more prophetic than the Hellenic; and again, the autocratic character which belongs to all monotheism, imparted to the moral message of the missionaries an urgency and a lofty intolerance, which in an atmosphere compounded of polytheism in its lower {211} sphere and of logic in its upper sphere was impossible. A divine command superadded to fervid human sympathies necessarily creates a mission in the person who is the subject of them; but the divine command is much more stringent from an autocratic Jehovah than from a limited monarch like Jove, and the fervour of human sympathy is more intense in proportion as the offence of the rebels against the sovereign authority is looked upon as more heinous. We are brought back therefore again to the great doctrine of the Divine Unity, if we would make it fully evident to ourselves why St. Paul was so much more aggressive than Socrates: Socrates was only partly a missionary, and the messenger of a god whose authority was limited by an inferior but acknowledged authority in other gods; St. Paul was a missionary of the one true God, to whose authority there could be no limit, and to whose command there could be no contradiction. From this principle of divine autocracy there necessarily grew up the conception of sin, not as folly merely and imperfection, but as contumacy, rebellion, and treason; and the conviction of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the exceeding misery of the sinner became the strongest spur to the missionary activity of the Christian preachers, and gave a true moral sublimity to an aggressive attitude, which in a mere reasoner had appeared impertinent. Nothing indeed is more remarkable than the contrast between the strong colours in which sin is painted by the writers of the New Testament and its more venial aspect in the mild regard of the philosopher. Aristotle can surrender a whole generation of young men to the dominion of πάθος and think nothing more about it. {212} They are as incapable of moral ideas, these young sensualists, as swine are of cleanliness; let them wallow in the mire for a season; we shall speak to them, when they have outgrown their animalism. But the converted Pharisee who wrote his burning epistles to the young Christian churches in magnificent Rome and luxurious Ephesus used very different language. Sin with him is a very serious offence, on account of which the curse of God lies on the whole world. Sinners, whether old or young, are by nature the children of wrath; and by the act and fact of the transgression of divine law, so utterly cast down and degraded from the proper human dignity, that they require to be born again, and baptized with a fire-baptism before they can be purified from their foulness and restored to the original rights and privileges which belonged to them, as to all men, in right of their divine fatherhood.