I will not here enter upon Christian Greek literature, but point to Plutarch, who has certainly been more read and had more influence than any other Greek writer on the literature of modern Europe. Nay, in the lighter subjects, and where the writers must trust to style to commend them to the reader, not only is there a good deal of poetry once thought classical,--such as the Anacreontics and the Anthology--which is in great part the produce of later Greek genius, but the wit of Lucian and the seriousness of Julian found in the Greek language their appropriate vehicle. [Sidenote: Plotinus.] The deeper philosophy of these centuries, that attempt to fuse the metaphysics of heathendom and Christendom which is called Neo-Platonism,--this too was created and circulated by Greek writers and in Greek; so that though Hellas was laid asleep, and her independence a mere tradition, her legacy to the world was still bearing interest one hundredfold. [Sidenote: Theological Greek studies.] The writers who have dealt with this great and various development of later Hellenism are either the historians of the Roman Empire--especially Duruy, who has kept up the thread of his Greek History in his popular _History of Rome_--or the theologians. The latter have a field so specially their own, and the literature of the subject is so enormous, that the mere historian of Greece and the Greeks must content himself with the pagan side. To touch even in a general way, as I have hitherto done, upon the many controversies that now arise concerning Greek life and thought would here be impossible. § 86. But there is one important point at the very outset of the new departure into Christianity upon which I would gladly save the reader from a widely diffused error. [Sidenote: Have the Greeks no share in our religion?] It has been long the fashion--since the writings of Ernest Renan it has been almost a commonplace, to say: that while modern Europe owes to the Greeks all manner of wisdom and of refinement, in politics, literature, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, one thing there is which they could not impart to us,--religion. This deeper side of man, his relation to one God, his duty and his responsibilities beyond this ordinary life, we owe not to the Greeks, but to the legacy of the Semitic race. To the Jews, we are told, are due all the highest, all the most serious, all the most elevating features in modern Christianity. [Sidenote: Or is it altogether Semitic?]