This imposition of hands, already so familiar to Jesus,{5.74} was the crowning sacramental act.{5.75} It conferred inspiration, inward illumination, the power of working wonders, of prophesying and of speaking languages. This was what they called the baptism of the Spirit. They believed that they recollected a saying of Jesus: "John baptized you with water: but as for you, you shall be baptized with the Spirit."{5.76} Little by little these ideas became confused, and baptism was conferred "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."{5.77} But it is not probable that this formula, at the early period which we are describing, was as yet employed. The simplicity of this primitive Christian worship is evident. Neither Jesus nor the apostles had invented it. Certain Jewish sects had adopted, before them, grave and solemn ceremonies, which appear to have come partly from Chaldæa, where they are still practised with special liturgies, by the Sabæans and Mendäites.{5.78} The Persian religion contained, likewise, many rites of the same description.{5.79} The beliefs in popular medicine, which had accompanied the strength of Jesus, continued to be held by his disciples. The power of healing was one of the marvellous graces conferred by the Spirit.{5.80} The first Christians, like all the Jews of the age, regarded diseases as the punishment due to a fault,{5.81} or the work of a malicious demon.{5.82} The apostles, as well as Jesus, passed for powerful exorcists.{5.83} They imagined that anointings with oil, administered by them, with imposition of hands and invocation of the name of Jesus, were all-powerful to wash away the sins which were the causes of the disease, and to cure the sick.{5.84} Oil has always been in the East the chiefest of medicines.{5.85} Of itself, moreover, the imposition of hands by the apostles was supposed to have the same effect.{5.86} This imposition was conferred by immediate contact with the person; and it is not impossible that, in certain cases, the warmth of the hands, being sensibly communicated to the head, produced some little relief to the sick man. The sect being young and few in number, the question of the dead was only subsequently brought under their notice. The effect caused by the first deaths which took place in the ranks of the brotherhood was strange.{5.87} They disquieted themselves about the condition of the departed; they inquired if they would be less favored than those who were reserved to see with their eyes the second advent of the Son of Man. They generally came to the conclusion that the interval between death and the resurrection was a sort of blank in the recollection of the defunct.{5.88} The idea, expressed in the _Phædon_ that the soul exists before and after death; that death is a benefit; that it is even the state above all others favorable to philosophy, because the soul is then altogether free and disengaged--this idea,