So long as Christendom is thus divided into hostile camps the ideal of brotherhood is impossible of realisation. I do not want however to discuss this matter from the point of view of Church unity. I want to point out that within the groups themselves there is small vision of the meaning of the oneness of Christ. For brotherhood is the expression of a spiritual reality. It looked for a moment in the early days of the Church as though the ideal would be realised. The description of the Church was that "all that believed were together, and had all things in common: and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." That was, no doubt, a passing phase of the life of the Church in Jerusalem, but we have evidence that elsewhere all distinctions based upon social considerations were for the moment swept away. There is "neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Our glimpses of the congregations of the early Church are of men and women of all classes held together by the bond of a common membership in Christ, so strongly felt as to enable them to forget all worldly distinctions. Their sense of redemption was strong. They thrilled with the joy of deliverance from the old life "after the flesh." They knew that they were regenerate, new creations, and that this was the distinction of the brother who knelt beside them at their communions. It mattered not at all what he was in the world, whether he were Greek or Barbarian, whether he were patrician or freedman, whether he were of the slaves of Rome or of Caesar's household. The man who knelt to receive his communion might be a great nobleman, the priest who communicated him might be a slave: that did not matter; the significant thing was that they were both one in Jesus Christ. That did not last. I suppose that it could not be expected to last in an unconverted or half converted world. It could only last on condition of the fairly complete isolation of the Christian group from the rest of society, pending the conversion of society as a whole. But it proved impossible to secure the isolation. The only real isolation was in monastic groups which naturally could contain only such men and women as God called to a special sort of life: the whole of society could not be so organised. As the Church grew and took in the various social constituents included in the Empire, it took them in differentiated as they were. There seems to have been no real effort to break down race distinctions or class distinctions. There were no doubt protests, but the protests were as ineffective then as now. "You cannot change human nature," men say; but that in fact is precisely what Christianity claims to do. Unless it can change human nature it is a failure.