Thus left to themselves and cut off from the higher classes and from all share in communal life, without a leader or adviser, the peasants easily fell under the influence of young Christianity. Jesus and his disciples had especially turned towards the unprotected class, and had there found the greater number of their followers. How flattering it must have been to these neglected beings to hear that on their account the Messiah had come, that he had been executed so that they might have a share in the good things of which they had been deprived, more especially of happiness in a better world. The Law deprived them of their rights, while Christianity opened the kingdom of heaven to them! The teachers of the Law, absorbed in the task of upholding the Law and Jewish life, overlooked the element from which a mighty foe to the Law would arise. Before they realized it they found an enemy on their own ground, who was desirous of obtaining the treasure which they had watched with such devotion. The development of Christianity as a branch of Judaism, drawing sustenance from its roots, constitutes, so long as its followers belonged to the Jewish people, a part of Jewish history. Of the small group of a hundred and twenty persons, who, after the death of Jesus, had formed his sole followers, a Christian community had been formed, especially through the energy of Paul. He endeavored to win over the heathens by the belief in the resurrection of Christ, and the Jews by the belief that the actual appearance of the Messiah had proved the inefficacy of the Jewish Law. Christianity could no longer be contemptuously overlooked, but began to be a new element in history. But the doctrine of Paul that the Jewish Law was unnecessary, had sown the seed of dissension in primitive Christianity, and the followers of Jesus were divided into two great parties, which were again divided into smaller sects, with special views and modes of life. Sectarianism did not show itself for the first time in Christianity, as is supposed, in the second century, but was present at its very commencement, and was a necessary result of fundamental differences. The two great parties, which were arrayed in sharp opposition, were, on the one hand, the _Jewish_ Christians, and, on the other, the _Pagan_ Christians. The Jewish Christians, belonging to the original community, which was composed of Jews, were closely connected with Judaism. They observed the Jewish laws in all their details, and pointed to the example of Jesus, who himself had lived according to Jewish laws. They put these words into the mouth of the founder of the religion, "Sooner shall heaven and earth disappear, than that an iota or a grain of the Law shall not be fulfilled"; further, "I have not come to destroy the Law of Moses, but to fulfil it." They entertained a hostile spirit towards the Pagan Christians, and applied to them one of the sayings of Jesus, "He who alters any, even the most trivial of the laws, and