[Sidenote: Neo-Platonic doctrine of the Logos.] For my purpose this is more than enough. I need not turn, to refute these sceptics, to show how the author of the book of Revelation, if he be the same, made great strides in Greek letters before he wrote the Gospel, thus showing the importance he attached not only to Greek thought, but to Greek expression. The Alexandrian tone of Saint John's Gospel, derived from the same sources as those which gave birth to Neo-Platonism, is as evident as the Stoical tone in Saint Paul, derived from the schools of Tarsus and Cilicia. Here is a chapter of deeper Greek history yet to be written from the Greek side, not as an appendage to Roman history, or as an interlude in theological controversy. [Sidenote: The Cynic independence of all men;] [Sidenote: the Epicurean dependence upon friends.] § 89. So much for the influence of the highest and most serious forms of Greek thinking upon the religion of the Roman Empire. But even from the inferior developments of philosophy, its parodies of strength and its exaggerations of weakness, elements passed into this faith which is asserted to be wholly foreign to Hellenism. The Cynic ostentation of independence, of living apart from the world, free from all cares and responsibilities, found its echo in the Christian anchorite, who chose solitude and poverty from higher but kindred motives. The sentimental display of personal affection, by which the Epicurean endeavoured to substitute the love of friends for the love of principle or devotion to the State, had its echo in those personal ties among early Christians which replaced their civic attachments and consoled them when outlawed by the State. Indeed, there is much in Epicureanism which has passed into Christianity,--an unsuspected fact till it was brought out by very recent writers[206:1]. [Sidenote: The university of Athens.] What shall we say too of the culture of this age? Is not the eloquence of the early Christian Fathers, of John Chrysostom, of Basil, worthy of admiration; and was not all their culture derived from the old Greek schools and universities, which had lasted with unbroken though changing traditions from the earliest Hellenistic days? One must read Libanius, a writer of the fourth century after Christ, to understand how thoroughly Athens was still old Greek in temper, in tone, in type, and how it had become the university of the civilized world[206:2]. The traditions of this Hellenistic university life and system passed silently, but not less certainly, into the oldest mediæval Italian universities, and thence to Paris and to England,--just as the Greek tones or scales passed into the chants of Saint Ambrose at Milan, and thence into the noble music of Palestrina and of Tallis, which our own degenerate age has laid aside for weaker and more sentimental measures. [Sidenote: Greece indestructible.]