His work was carried on by his pupil Origen, the strangest and most adventurous of the Early Fathers. Gentle and scholarly by nature, Origen had an instinct for self-immolation that troubled his life and the lives of his friends. He was an Egyptian (the name is connected with Horus), and he was born here of Christian parents and tried as a boy to share his father’s martyrdom at the Temple of Serapis. Calmed for a while, he supported his mother and brothers, and was fellow pupil with Plotinus. Then he became head of the Theological College, and having attained fame as a teacher and lay preacher, castrated himself (a “Eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake.”—Matt. xix, 12). His patron, the Bishop of Alexandria, disowned him for this, and ruled that he could not now take orders; other bishops declared that he could, and the Christian communities were divided by the grotesque controversy. Origen was considerate and even repentant; he had no wish to cause scandal, and when ordered to leave Alexandria he obeyed. But his opinions ever verged towards the incorrect; he believed, like Plotinus, in pre-existence, he disbelieved in the eternity of punishment, and it is with the greatest hesitation that orthodoxy has received him to her bosom. In the main he developed the theory of his master Clement—that Christianity is the heir of the past and the interpreter of the future,—and he taught that Christ has been with mankind not only at his incarnation but since the beginning of creation, and has in all ages linked them, according to their capacity, with God. * * * * * Thus the characteristic of early orthodoxy was a belief in Christ as the link between God and Man. A humanising belief; the work of the Greek scholars who had subtilised and universalised the simpler faith of Palestine, and had imparted into it doctrines taught by Paganism. We must now watch it harden and transform. Several causes transformed it—e.g. the growth of an ignorant monasticism in Egypt, the growth in Northern Africa, of a gloomier type of Christianity under Tertullian, and the general spirit of aggression the new religion everywhere displayed as soon as Constantine labelled it as official. But there was one cause that was inherent in the belief itself, and that alone concerns us here. Christ was the Son of God. All agreed. But what was the _Nature_ of Christ? The subtle Alexandrian intellect asked this question about the year 300, and the Arian heresy was the result. It asked it again about 400 and produced the Monophysite heresy. And a third query about 600 produced a third heresy, the Monothelite. Let us glance at these three in turn. Heresies to others, they were of course orthodox in their own eyes. Each believed itself the only interpreter of the link that binds God to Man. UNCANONICAL GOSPELS: Appendix p. 217. (III). ARIANISM.