The old pagan religions showed many local varieties, and from those a world-wide religion could only be evolved by some speculative doctrines which reconciled their divergences. Never has a religion of any extension been formed from local cults otherwise than by the ministry of some kind of speculative theology: sometimes the fusion of cults has spontaneously provided such a theology, as was the case in the Nile valley and in Mesopotamia in early times, and when the theology was produced it brought its solvent power to bear rapidly and effectively on other surrounding cults. As many races and states were associated together in the Greek Empire which, though apparently separated into several kingdoms, yet had an intellectual coherence and a common civilization, and this was still more definitely the case when the closer federation of the Roman Empire followed, philosophy was forced more and more in the direction of speculative theology: it assumed those ethical and doctrinal functions which we generally associate with religion, the contemporary local cults concerning themselves only with ritual duties. Thus in the early centuries of the Christian era Hellenistic philosophy was evolving a kind of religion, of a high moral tone and definitely monotheistic in doctrine. This theological philosophy was eclectic, but rested upon a basis of Platonism. Whilst the philosophers were developing a monotheistic and moral system which they hoped to make a world religion, the Christians were attempting a similar task on somewhat different lines. The earlier converts to the Christian religion were not as a rule drawn from the educated classes and shewed a marked suspicion and dislike towards those superior persons, such as the Gnostics, or at least the pre-Marcionite Gnostics, who were disposed to patronise them. Gradually however this attitude changed and we begin to find men like Justin Martyr who had received a philosophical education and yet found it quite possible to co-ordinate contemporary science and Christian doctrine. In Rome, in Africa, and in Greece the Christians were a despised minority, chiefly drawn from the unlettered class, and ostentatiously ignored by the writers of the day. Like the Jew of the Ghetto they were forced to live an isolated life and thrown back upon their internal resources. But in Alexandria and, to a lesser degree in Syria, they were more in the position of the modern Jew in Anglo Saxon lands, though bitterly hated and occasionally persecuted, and were brought under the intellectual influences of the surrounding community and thus experienced a solvent force in their own ideas. When at last Christianity appears in the ascendant it has been largely re-cast by Hellenistic influences, its theology is re-stated in philosophical terms, and thus in the guise of theology a large amount of philosophical material was transmitted to the vernacular speaking hinterland of Western Asia.