“Side by side with these religious cults flourishing among the lower elements ... different schools of philosophic thought flourished among the more learned folk. One of these was the philosophy developed in the city of Alexandria by an Egyptian Jew named Philo. According to this philosophy, God, the Father of All, manifested himself only through an intermediary called the Logos, the Word. This Logos, which was sometimes called the ‘Son of God,’ or the ‘Holy Ghost,’ had created the earth and was the sole mediator between it and heaven.”[180] So--“If in later years the Nazarene faith began to take on the color and shape of those heathen cults and strange philosophies, these Palestinian Nazarenes were not in the least responsible. It was one from outside the original brotherhood, a Jew from beyond the borders of Palestine, who was responsible. It was Saul of Tarsus [later called Paul] who brought on that change.”[181] You will note that St. Paul was responsible for coloring Christianity not only with the strange philosophy of learned folk but with the color of mystery cults which, originating in a desire to explain the annual death and rebirth of vegetation, whipped men among the lower elements of society into orgies of hopefulness. And he did this notwithstanding the fact that before his own conversion Christianity, originating with One who was a transcendant person who spoke in a tone “almost” that of God himself, and yet was but an ethical teacher, an insistent pacifist who but for bodily weakness would have taken up arms against the Roman Empire and perished by the sword--Christianity had already become drunk with the heady liquor of mystery salvation. There seems to be some idea floating around in Browne’s head. He seems vaguely aware that since the Crucifixion there had come a change. Indeed, there had. But it was not a change from ethics to religion, nor a change from a belief in a non-miraculous Messiah to a belief in a Messiah who was miraculous. Nobody ever believed in a non-miraculous Messiah. A non-miraculous Messiah is a contradiction in terms. But since the Crucifixion it had become evident even to charlatans, madmen, arrant knaves and driveling fools that Jesus was not to found a temporal, national kingdom of the Jews. Even the people were beginning to understand that Christ’s Kingdom was spiritual and at least as broad as the earth. And if the Palestinian Nazarenes were not responsible, it must have been because their own belief and their own preaching signally failed of effect. But let us get back to this Saul of Tarsus, who “must have had rather more than a passing acquaintance with Greek and Alexandrian philosophy.”