Two elements must be distinguished in such teaching. Permanently important in it is the recognition of the fact that a helping hand of grace stretches out from the unknown to help man when he cries from the depths: but it contains also a theory as to the origin and nature of grace. The fact is indisputable, the theory depends on evidence; and there is really none to justify confident assertion. No doubt it was an enormous asset to Christianity to proclaim that the grace found by its adherents came straight from the cause of all existence. The same situation was reproduced after the Reformation, and it was an asset to Protestantism to claim direct access to God, without the mediation of saints. Nevertheless, it is hard to see that there is any evidence to favour the theory that grace comes in the one way rather than the other. The element of truth in the early Christian teaching is not the side which was most popular, but rather that which, a little later, partly unconsciously, animated the Church in rejecting Marcionism--the conviction that there is no essential disharmony or {84} final clash in history, that the God of creation is not hostile to the God of grace.[6] Moreover, it was not only--or even chiefly--the helping hand of grace in the troubles and sorrows of life which Greek Christians especially hoped for by union with the supreme God or by the power of Jesus. It was rather the gift of eternal Life after death, which was the special characteristic of the Gods. The points of importance are the means whereby they thought that this immortality was obtained, and the nature which they ascribed to it.