In accounts of the theistic argument, as in the history of philosophy in general, it has been customary to pass over a space of well-nigh ten centuries of the Christian era in silence, or with such scanty and unsympathetic notice as to make silence the better alternative. Largely through the influence of such treatment as this, we moderns have almost forgotten at times that during this period there lived men inferior to none in history in endowments of mind and influence on succeeding generations, and that there then took place some of the most significant and far-reaching intellectual conflicts in the history of thought. "With Cicero," says Professor Stirling, "we reached in our course a most important and critical halting-place.... We have still ... to wait those thousand years yet before Anselm shall arrive with what is to be named the new proof, the proof ontological, and during the entire interval it is the Fathers of the Church and their immediate followers who, in repetition of the old, or suggestion of the new, connect thinker with thinker, philosopher with philosopher, pagan with Christian."[1] To attempt to account for even one of the details of thought during this period cannot be without its advantages. For Christianity gave a new and unique turn to thought. It brought with it a new set of data, and a new subject-matter. The Christian doctrine of God, the distinctions in the Trinity, the great doctrines centering around the person of Jesus Christ, though, perhaps, faintly foreshadowed in some of the earlier speculations, are, in their fulness and completeness, first given to the world by the Founder of Christianity. The claims made for these doctrines, too, gave them a unique character. In contrast with the half-hearted, faltering conclusions of the prevalent philosophical schools, Christianity asserted that its teachings were absolute truth; it claimed to be nothing less than a revelation from the Creator of the world. It will be readily seen that the introduction of such a system as this into the Greek world would be attended with important results, not only in its effects upon the intellectual life of the times, but also in the influence of the current philosophical conceptions on the statement of its doctrine. The significance of this early period lies in the fact that, in the positive, definite system of Christianity, systematic thought, which was fast becoming disorganized and sceptical, found a center about which it might rally and focus itself, and the scattered fragments of philosophy were all collected together, by either friends or foes, about the new religion. The new point of view and the new relations would be most significant, too, in that department of thought with which the contact of this new central system had most to do, and thus the treatment of the theistic problem exhibits in a special degree the alteration in the standpoint and method of philosophy. It threw into bold relief the old