The earliest forms of Christianity were not only outside the sphere of Greek philosophy, but they also appealed, on the one hand, mainly to the classes which philosophy did not reach, and, on the other hand, to a standard which philosophy did not recognize. “Not many wise men after the flesh” were called in St. Paul’s time: and more than a century afterwards, Celsus sarcastically declared the law of admission to the Christian communities to be—“Let no educated man enter, no wise man, no prudent man, for such things we deem evil; but whoever is ignorant, whoever is unintelligent, whoever is uneducated, whoever is simple, let him come and be welcome.”[210] It proclaimed, moreover, that “the philosophy of the world was foolishness with God.” It appealed to prophecy and to testimony. “Instead of logical demonstration, it produced living witnesses of the words and wonderful doings of Jesus Christ.” The philosophers from the point of view of “worldly education” made sport of it: Celsus[211] declared that the Christian teachers were no better than the priests of Mithra or of Hekaté, leading men wherever they willed with the maxims of a blind belief. * * * * * It is therefore the more remarkable that within a century and a half after Christianity and philosophy first came into close contact, the ideas and methods of philosophy had flowed in such mass into Christianity, and filled so large a place in it, as to have made it no less a philosophy than a religion. The question which arises, and which should properly be discussed before the influences of particular ideas are traced in particular doctrines, is, how this result is to be accounted for as a whole. The answer must explain both how Christianity and philosophy came into contact, and how when in contact the one exercised upon the other the influence of a moulding force.