Here then is a great clearing of the stage, and a great predisposing of thought and sentiment, for a religion which proclaimed a good tidings for all men without distinction of 'Jew or Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, bond or free'; for a religion of compassion; for a religion wholly spiritual and unpolitical. There are traces distinct and widespread of special tendencies to such a religion, and they are connected with the best side of the life of the time. The enormous diffusion of the 'collegia' or clubs, in which the members were drawn together without distinction of rank, or even of free and slave, in a partly religious bond, shews the instinct of the time feeling for a religion of brotherhood. There is a delicacy of family life as seen in Plutarch, in Pliny, in Fronto, which shews readiness for a religion such as should regenerate the simple instincts and relations of humanity. In the position and function of the philosophers (who sometimes half-remind one of mendicant friars[167], sometimes of the confessor or chaplain in families of rank, in their relation to education and to the vicissitudes of later life) there is implied a concentration of thought and interest upon character and upon the discipline of individual life, a sensibility to spiritual need, which all indicates a ground prepared for Christian influence. And, finally, whether it be from the stealing in of Eastern influences, or from a reaction against the cold scepticism of Ciceronian times, or from a half-political half-genuine sense of the necessity of religion to society, or from a sort of awed impression created by the marvellous fortune of Rome, or from the steady impact of the clear strong deep religious faith of the Jews scattered everywhere, and everywhere, as we know, to an extraordinary extent leavening society, or, as time went on, from a subtle influence of Christianity not yet accepted or even consciously known,--there was, it is notorious, a return towards religion in the mind of men. The temples were again thronged: priests became philosophers. In Neo-Platonism thought again looks upward, and the last phase of Greek philosophy was in the phrase of the dry and dispassionate Zeller[168] 'a philosophy of Revelation' which sought knowledge partly in the inner revelation of the Deity and partly in religious tradition. This movement was indeed a rival of Christianity; it came to put out some of its strength in conscious rivalry, or it tried in Gnostic heresies to rearrange Christianity on its own lines: but it was the result and witness of a disposition of men's hearts which made way for the Gospel.