There is no doubt, however, that the Jewish prophets had already prepared a point of contact and attachment for this system, and developed affinities therewith, by their great battle-cry to the nation for right against wrong, and their undying conviction of an ultimate restoration of all good things.  But the Jews found also in the Persian faith the one among all religions most like their own, in this, that it had no idols, and no worship but that addressed to the Unseen.  Sun and fire were his symbols, but he himself was hidden behind the glorious veil of being.  And it seems as if the Jews needed this support of finding another nation also hating idolatry, before they could really rise above their tendency to backslide into it.  “In the mouth of two witnesses,” the spiritual worship of God was established; and not till Zoroaster took the hand of Moses did the Jews cease to be idolaters.  After the return from the captivity that tendency wholly disappears.

But a deeper and more essential point of agreement is to be found in the special practical character of the two systems, regarding life as a battle between right and wrong, waged by a communion of good men fighting against bad men and bad principles.

Perhaps, in reading the New Testament, we do not always see how much Christianity turns around the phrase, and the idea behind it, of a “kingdom of Heaven.”  The Beatitudes begin “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.”  Both John the Baptist and Christ announce that the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  The parables revolve round the same idea of “the kingdom.” which is likened first to this, and then to that; and so, passing on into the Epistles, we have the “kingdom of Heaven” still as the leading conception of Christianity.  “The kingdom of God is not meat nor drink";—­such are common expressions.

The peculiar conception of the Messiah also is of the King, the Anointed one, the Head of this divine Monarchy.  When we call Jesus the Christ, we repeat this ancient notion of the kingdom of God among men.  He himself accepted it; he called himself the Christ.  “Thou sayest,” said he, to Pilate, “that I am a king.  To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.”

All through antiquity there ran the longing for a communion or association of the wise and good, in order to establish truth and justice in the world.  The tendency of error is to divide; the tendency of selfishness is to separation.  Only goodness and truth are capable of real communion, interpenetration, and so of organic life and growth.  This is their strength, power, and hope.  Hence all the efforts at associated action in antiquity, such as the College of Pythagoras, the ideal Republic of Plato, the Spartan Commonwealth, the communities of the Essenes, the monastic institutions of Asia and Europe; and hence, too, the modern attempts, in Protestantism, by Fourier, the Moravians, the Shakers, Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, and others.