commerce, and sleepy Eastern merchants discovered that if they wished to do business they must conform to the prevailing tastes; so that Greek became the language of the market-place as well as of the Court. Finally, the learning and skill of the East confessed its conqueror. Greek art and Greek literature, Greek science and philosophy made the older Eastern styles seem worthless in comparison. Within two centuries following the death of Alexander the near East had been transformed. Hellenism had cast its spell over the whole of life. The period is one of profound interest for the study of humanity. On the one hand it did much to secure the perpetuation of the intellectual methods of the Greeks, which might have perished had they not been extended beyond the frontiers of the small Greek States in Europe; and on the other hand it showed that the East can change. Human nature is not, as some would have us believe, divided for ever into irreconcilable sections. There are no unbridgeable gulfs between the Eastern and the Western mind. If the modern Westernising movements in China or India should fully succeed, they will but demonstrate anew what was proved long ago in Asia Minor during the three critical centuries before Christ. The challenge these facts present to those who suppose that Christianity cannot become a universal faith is obvious. We must not attempt to give a detailed picture of Hellenism. But even these outlines are enough to show how thoroughly and dramatically the immemorial fashions of the East had been upset and new ambitions kindled, so that men must have felt as if they had been emancipated from the dead past and told to make trial of a new form of life, one that was already brilliant and delightful, but was most of all thrilling in its unknown possibilities. The peoples that walked in darkness thought they had seen a great light.