PAGE LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY. The Problem: How the Church passed from the Sermon on the Mount to the Nicene Creed; the change in spirit coincident with a change in soil 1, 2 The need of caution: two preliminary considerations 2 1. A religion relative to the whole mental attitude of an age: hence need to estimate the general attitude of the Greek mind during the first three centuries A.D. 3, 4 2. Every permanent change in religious belief and usage rooted in historical conditions: roots of the Gospel in Judaism, but of fourth century Christianity—the key to historical—in Hellenism 4, 5 The Method: Evidence as to _process_ of change scanty, but ample and representative as to ante-Nicene Greek thought and post-Nicene Christian thought. Respects in which evidence defective 5-10 Two resulting tendencies: 1. To overrate the value of the surviving evidence. 2. To under-estimate opinions no longer accessible or known only through opponents 10 Hence method, the correlation of antecedents and consequents 11-13 Antecedents: sketch of the phenomena of Hellenism 13, 14 Consequents: changes in original Christian ideas and usages 14 Attitude of mind required 15 1. Demand upon attention and imagination 15, 16 2. Personal prepossessions to be allowed for 17, 18 3. Need to observe under-currents, e.g. (_a_) The dualistic hypothesis, its bearing on baptism and exorcism 19, 20 (_b_) The nature of religion, e.g. its relation to conscience 21 History as a scientific study: the true apologia in religion 21-24 LECTURE II. GREEK EDUCATION. The first step a study of environment, particularly as literary. The contemporary Greek world an educated world in a special literary sense 25-27 I. Its _forms_ varied, but all literary: Grammar 28-30 Rhetoric 30-32 A “lecture-room” Philosophy 32-35 II. Its _influence_ shown by: 1. Direct literary evidence 35-37