Christianity showed a superior power of adaptation to every class; it was a practical guide of life for all, a guide which was soon recognized by its opponents to be of the highest ethical value. In spite of the human weaknesses of Christians, their superior morality was generally recognized from the time of Pliny.[385] Their motives for righteous living sprang from love and faith rather than from any social or rational sanctions; and the fruits were “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance.” These virtues and the belief that Christ’s revelation and the mystic union of man with the Divine brought salvation, could be understood by the most unlettered. The intellectual classes found Christianity fulfilling the aim of both Greek thought and of Old Testament prophecy; in it they saw the ultimate philosophy. Christianity therefore proved itself a religion which satisfied men’s desires and hopes as well as their philosophic aims in a more complete and spiritual way than oriental mysticism or Greek rationalism; and it gave a nobler assurance of salvation. Finally, experience taught the value of Christianity; already in the second century the Apologists could make the appeal to common knowledge of the Christians to show the superiority of their faith. Yet by the close of the second century Christianity had not won many adherents outside of Syria and Asia Minor, save in the greater cities. The third century was the period in which paganism rapidly decayed and Christianity swiftly advanced toward its triumph; by the year 300 it had filled the Mediterranean world, and the proud claim which Tertullian had made a century before, began to be justified: “We are of yesterday, and yet we have filled all your holdings, cities, houses, castles, towns, councils, your very camps, tribes, wards, the palace, the senate, the forum—we have left you only your temples.”[386] The victory over pagan religions and philosophies was indeed certain; but this success had been secured on the intellectual side by the transformation of the teachings of Jesus and of the apostles into a Greek philosophy. It is as such that Christianity has the final place in a history of Greek religious thought. FOOTNOTES: [336] _History of Dogma_, II, 170. [337] Vid. Justin’s arguments, _Apol._ I, 31-53. Athenagoras, _Legat._ 9, limits himself to the testimonies of the prophets as to the nature of God. Cf. also Tatian, 20, at the end. [338] Justin, _Apol._ II, 8 ff.; cf. I, 46. In two passages (_Apol._ I, 44 and 59) Justin illogically declares that the Greeks owed all their true knowledge to their borrowings from Moses. Herein he was simply following the Alexandrian Jews. [339] _Legat._ 7. [340] Tatian, _Orat._ 5; cf. Athen., _Legat._ 4. The ideas recur frequently in nearly all the Apologists. [341] (Justin) _Dial. cum Tryphone_ 61, 62, 105, 128; Tatian, _Orat._ 5-7; Athen., _Legat._ 10, 16, 24.