three thousand converts at Pentecost made this confession of faith they were baptized.(1) The Ethiopian is converted whilst passing in his chariot, and is immediately baptized,(2) as are likewise Cornelius and his household after a short address from Peter.(3) The new faith involved no abandonment of the old. On the contrary, the advent of the Messiah was so essential a part of Judaic belief, and the Messianic claim of Jesus was so completely based by the Apostles on the fulfilment of prophecy--"showing by the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ,"--that recognition of the fact rather constituted firmer adhesion to Mosaism, and deeper faith in the inviolable truth of the Covenant with Israel. If there had been no Mosaism, so to say, there could have been no Messiah. So far from being opposed either to the form or spirit of the religion of Israel, the proclamation of the Messiah was its necessary complement, and could only be intelligible by confirmation of its truth and maintenance of its validity. Christianity--belief in the Messiah--in its earlier phases, drew its whole nourishment from roots that sank deeply into Mosaism. It was indeed nothing more than Mosaism in a developed form. The only difference between the Jew and the Christian was that the latter believed the Messiah to have already appeared in Jesus, whilst the former still expected him in the future;(4) though even this difference {123} was singularly diminished, in appearance at least, by the Christian expectation of the second advent.