People frequently say that if Christianity is a truth, it ought to have been accepted by all men at its very appearance, and ought at that very moment to have changed the lives of men and made them better. But to say this is the same as saying that if the seed is fertile, it must immediately produce a sprout, a flower, and a fruit.
The Christian teaching is no legislation which, being introduced by violence, can at once change the lives of men. Christianity is another, newer, higher concept of life, which is different from the previous one. But the new concept of life cannot be prescribed; it can only be freely adopted.
Now the new life-conception can be acquired only in two ways: in a spiritual (internal) and an experimental (external) way.
Some people—the minority—immediately, at once, by a prophetic feeling divine the truth of the teaching, abandon themselves to it, and execute it. Others—the majority—are led only through a long path of errors, experiences, and sufferings to the recognition of the truth of the teaching and the necessity of acquiring it.
It is to this necessity of acquiring the teaching in an experimental external way that the whole mass of the men of the Christian world have now been brought.
Sometimes we think: what need was there for that corruption of Christianity which even now more than anything else interferes with its adoption in its real sense? And yet this corruption of Christianity, having brought men to the condition in which they now are, was a necessary condition for the majority of men to be able to receive it in its real significance.