Note (return) — Chapter II

9. From yet another side there makes its appearance an agreement between the circles of Palestinian believers in Jesus and the Gentile Christian communities, which endured for more than a century, though it was of course gradually effaced. It is the enthusiastic element which unites them, the consciousness of standing in an immediate union with God through the Spirit, and receiving directly from God's hand miraculous gifts, powers and revelations, granted to the individual that he may turn them to account in the service of the Church. The depotentiation of the Christian religion, where one may believe in the inspiration of another, but no longer feels his own, nay, dare not feel it, is not altogether coincident with its settlement on Greek soil. On the contrary, it was more than two centuries ere weakness and reflection suppressed, or all but suppressed, the forms in which the personal consciousness of God originally expressed itself.53 Now it certainly lies in the nature of enthusiasm, that it can assume the most diverse forms of expression, and follow very different impulses, and so far it frequently separates instead of uniting. But so long as criticism and reflection are not yet awakened, and a uniform ideal hovers before one, it does unite, and in this sense there existed an identity of disposition between the earliest Jewish Christians and the still enthusiastic Gentile Christian communities.