Stoicism was the noblest attainment of the Greek-Roman world. It was a clear and fearless application of reason to human life, with little attempt to solve the mystery of the universe. It gave an ideal and rule to thoughtful, robust, and masculine natures. It made small provision for the ignorant, the weak, or the feminine. Its watchwords were Reason, Nature, Will. The distinction of the Hebrew development was that the higher minds took up the popular mythology, elevated and purified it. The Hebrew genius was not intellectual but ethical and emotional. The typical Hebrew guide was not a philosopher but a prophet. Through a development of many centuries the popular religion from polytheistic became monotheistic, and from worshiping the sun and fire came to worship an embodiment of righteousness and of supreme power. An ideal of character grew up--in close association with religious worship and ceremonial--in which the central virtues were justice, benevolence, and chastity. The sentiments of the family, the nation, and the church were fused in one. Its outward expression was an elaborate ceremonial. Its heart was a passion which in one direction dashed the little province against the whole power of Rome; in another channel, preserved a people intact and separate through twenty centuries of dispersal and subjection; while, in another aspect, it gave birth to Jesus and to Christianity. Jesus was one of the great spiritual geniuses of the race,--so far as we know, the greatest. The highest ideas of Judaism he sublimated, intensified, and expressed in universal forms. Indifferent to the ceremonial of his people, he taught that the essence of religion lay in spirit and in conduct. The holy and awful Deity was to him a tender Father. The whole duty of man to man was love. Chastity of the body was exalted to purity of the heart. He lived close to the common people; taught, helped, healed them; caressed their children, pitied their outcasts, laid hands on the lepers, and calmed the insane. He brooded on the expectation of some great future which earlier seers had impressed on the popular thought, and saw as in prophetic vision the near approach of the perfect triumph of holiness and love. Overshadowed by danger, his hope and faith menaced as by denying Fate, he rallied from the shock, trusted the unseen Power, and went serenely to a martyr's death.