Is this true? Is it the case that the Greeks were, after all, only brilliant children, playing with life, and never awaking to the real seriousness of the world's problems? There has seldom been a plausible statement circulated which is further from the truth. However capital the fact that the first great teacher and revealer of Christianity was a Jew, however carefully the dogmas of the Old Testament were worked up into the New, Christianity, as we have it historically, would have been impossible without Hellenism. [Sidenote: The language of the New Testament exclusively Greek.] In the first place, the documents of the New Testament were one and all composed in Greek, as the _lingua franca_ of the East and West; and the very first author in the list, Saint Matthew, was a tax-gatherer, whose business required him to know it[202:1]. If, therefore, the vehicle of Christianity from the first was the Greek language, this is not an unimportant factor to start with; and yet it is the smallest and most superficial contribution that Greek thought has given to Christianity. When my later studies on the history of Hellenism under the Roman Empire see the light, I trust that the evidence for the following grave facts, already admitted by most critical theologians, will be brought before the lay reader. [Sidenote: Saint Paul's teaching.] [Sidenote: Stoic elements in Saint Paul.] § 87. When we pass by the first three, or Synoptical, Gospels, there remains a series of books by early Christian teachers, of whom Saint Paul and Saint John are by far the most prominent. To Saint Paul is due a peculiar development of the faith which brings into prominence that side of Christianity now known as Protestantism,--the doctrine of justification by faith; of the greater importance of dogma than of practice; of the predestination or election of those that will be saved. This whole way of thinking, this mode of looking at the world, so different from anything in the Jewish books, so developed beyond the teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, was quite familiar to the most serious school of Hellenism, to the Stoic theory of life popular all over the Hellenistic world, and especially at Tarsus, where Saint Paul received his education. [Sidenote: The Stoic sage.]