"As a rule," wrote Galen, "men need to be educated in parables. Just as in our day we see those who are called Christians[55] have gained their faith from parables. Yet they sometimes act exactly as true philosophers would. That they despise death is a fact we all have before our eyes; and by some impulse of modesty they abstain from sexual intercourse--some among them, men and women, have done so all their lives. And some, in ruling and controlling themselves, and in their keen passion for virtue, have gone so far that real philosophers could not excel them."[56] So wrote a great heathen, and Celsus admits as much himself. In life at least, if not in theory, the Christians daily kept to the teaching of their Master. "Which is ampler?" asks Tertullian, "to say, Thou shalt not kill; or to teach, Be not even angry? Which is more perfect, to forbid adultery or to bid refrain from a single lustful look?"[57] There was as yet no flight from the world, though Christians had no illusions about it or about the devil who played so large a part in its affairs. They lived in an age that saw Antinous deified.[58] They stood for marriage and family life, while all around "holy" men felt there was an unclean and daemonic element in marriage.[59] One Christian writer even speaks of women being {161} saved by child-bearing.[60] Social conditions they accepted--even slavery among them--but they brought a new spirit into all; love and the sense of brotherhood could transform every thing. Slavery continued, but the word "slave" is not found in Christian catacombs.[61] Above all, they were filled with their Master's own desire to save men. "I am debtor," wrote Paul, "both to Greeks and to barbarians, wise and unwise."[62] If modern criticism is right in detaching the "missionary commission" (in Matthew) from the words of Jesus, the fact remains that the early Christians were "going into all the world" and "preaching the gospel to every creature" for half a century before the words were written. Why? "He that has the word of Jesus truly can hear his silence," said Ignatius; and if Jesus did not speak these words, men heard his silence to the same effect. Celsus, like Julian long after him, was shocked at the kind of people to whom the gospel was preached.[63]