It is not hard to understand this. Though conditions of industry were not what they are to-day, it is likely that conversion was followed by the economic results with which we are familiar. The teaching of the church condemned the vices that war against thrift; and the new life that filled the convert had its inevitable effect in quickening insight and energy. The community insisted on every man having a trade and working at it. With no such end in view, the church must have numbered among its adherents more and more people of wealth and influence in spite of all defections, just as to-day Protestantism in France has power and responsibility out of all proportions to mere numbers. The Emperor Hadrian, is said to have made the observation that in Egypt, whether men worshipped Christ or Serapis, they all worshipped money.[1] The remark had probably as much truth as such sayings generally have, but we may probably infer that many Christians were punctual in {263} their observance of the duty laid on them to be "not slothful in business." The first four or five generations of Christians could not, on the whole, boast much culture--so far as their records permit us to judge. "Not many wise," said Paul, and their fewness has left an impress on the history of the church. A tendency to flightiness in speculation on the one hand, and a stolid refusal to speculate at all on the other, are the marks of second century Christianity. The early attempts made to come to terms with "human wisdom" were not happy, either at the centre or on the circumference of the body. The adjustment of the Gospel story to Old Testament prophecy was not a real triumph of the human mind, nor were the efforts at scientific theology any better. Docetism, with its phantom Christ, and Gnosticism with its antithesis of the just God and the good God, were not likely to satisfy mankind. Simple people felt that these things struck at their life, and they rejected them, and began to suspect the intellect. The century saw the growth of ecclesiastical system, episcopal order and apostolic tradition. Men began to speak of the "old church," the "original church" and the "catholic church," and to cleave to its "rule of faith" and "tradition of sound words." By 200 A.D. the church was no longer a new thing in the world; it had its own "ancient history" without going back to Judaism and the old covenant; it had its legends; and it could now speak like the Greeks of "the old faith of our fathers."