With such ideas, Paul made his way among the Greeks. The Jews were the first to make war upon him. But he stood his ground and gained more. The small churches which he established were like so many fortresses in an enemy's country. Wherever he went he started discussion. The friction between the new and the old ideas produced heat: and with heat came light. But, after all, Paul's converts, for the most part, were from the less informed and the middle classes. The learned turned away from him, because he had no tangible proof to satisfy them that what he preached was true. The story of his conversion was improbable, and could be ascribed to the effects of natural causes. The time for miracles had not yet come, and Paul did not claim anything from them.* * Had it been true that an apron which came in contact with Paul's person could cure diseases, all Asia would have been converted while he was making a few hundred believers. Tacitus speaks of Christians as a race of men detested for their evil practices, and classes their doctrines among the pernicious things which flowed into Rome as into a common sewer. (_Annals_, lib. xv. sec 54.) Still the churches established by Paul grew slowly, but seemed to require the influence of his presence and personal efforts to keep them alive. As long as the fight went on between Paul and the Jews, and unconverted Gentiles, his lofty courage and iron will were enough to hold him up. But he soon had troubles of a different kind. He found them in the churches themselves. It is not difficult to tell what would be the effect of Paul's ideas when brought face to face with doctrines of the Alexandrian school. It was like the meeting of the acid and the alkali. The first sign of the effervescence appears at Corinth, and two hundred years passed before it ceased, if it ceased at all. From the time the quarrel commenced at Corinth, between the followers of Paul, until the time when the questions disappear altogether, mental phenomena are exhibited unlike any other in the history of man. Even the quarrels and disputes of the Realists and Nominalists of the thirteenth century bear no comparison. The contest between the different sects had all the earnestness of a struggle between gladiators. From being warm disputants, men became dishonest. Books were forged entire, others were mutilated, and some suppressed and put out of sight. It was an age of downright dishonesty on all sides. But from these dark and discordant elements arose the true Church. CHAPTER III. Therapeutæ of Philo--and Essenes of Josephus.--An account of them.--Their disappearance from history, and what became of them.