Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ... SOCIALISM OF CHRIST CHAPTER I GOVERNMENT BY THE POOR Like all other great world movements, Christiamty was at first largely political and socialistic, and depended on this character for its propagation. The common people in the time of Christ, as at present in Paris and Berlin, were dissatisfied in their misery, and looked for some revolution to relieve them. The disaffection of poverty against wealth, of labor against capital, of commonalty against aristocracy, of subject against ruler, and of slave against master was general throughout the Roman Empire. The lower classes as a body, demanded deliverance from their wrongs and better chances in the over-crowded avenues to wealth and happiness. Re-distribution of property, the abolition of individual possessions, the community of goods and other wild projects were espoused with intense interest. Remnants of the old Roman agrarianism, of Lacedemonian and Cretan communism or of Essenic co-operation appeared in nearly all the issues of the day. Any new agitation, accordingly, which, like Christianity, seemed to contemplate these objects, attracted the people, and was, in turn, moulded by them to a politico-social interest. At the same time, there was a large republican element--men of theoretical and ideal turn--who dreamed of absolute equality, justice and general good will; and who, accordingly, demanded the overthrow of kings, nobility, priests, privileges and distinctions of blood, and perhaps even anticipated the return of the ancient Roman Republic itself confederate and cosmopolitan. There was also a nation of discontented Jews, in whose country and race Christ was born, who, being dissatisfied in their subjection, looked for a deliverance from the Roman yoke, and' like the Irish and...
