l
conception of the world, the self-conscious pride, the absence of all
sense of sin, the temper of apathy, and unnatural suppression of
feelings were ideas which could not but rouse the apostle's strongest
antagonism. But, on the other hand, there were characteristics of a
nobler order in Stoic morality which, we may well believe, Paul found
ready to his hand and did not hesitate to incorporate in his teaching.
Of these we may mention, the Immanence of God, the idea of Wisdom, the
conception of freedom as {44} the prerogative of the individual, and
the notion of brotherhood as the goal of humanity.[7]

The Roman Stoics, notwithstanding their theoretic interest in moral
questions, lived in an ideal world, and hardly attempted to bring their
views into connection with the facts of life. Their philosophy was a
refuge from the evil around them rather than an effort to remove it.
They seek to overcome the world by being indifferent to it. In
Neo-Platonism--the last of the Greek schools of philosophy--this
tendency to withdraw from life and its problems becomes still more
marked. Absorption in God is the goal of existence and the essence of
religion. 'Man is left alone with God without any world to mediate
between them, and in the ecstatic vision of the Absolute the light of
reason is extinguished.'[8]

Meagre as our sketch of ancient thought has necessarily been, it is
perhaps enough to show that the debt of religion to Greek and Roman
Ethics is incalculable. It lifted man above vague wonder, and gave him
courage to define his relation to existence. It caused him to ask
questions of experience, and awakened him to the value of life and the
meaning of freedom, duty, and good. Finally, it brought into view
those contrasted aims of life and society which find their solution in
the Christian ideal.[9]

II

Christianity stands in the closest relation with _Hebrew religion_.
Much as the philosophy of Greece and Rome have contributed to
Christendom, there is no such intimate relation between them as that
which connects Christian Ethics with the morality of Israel. Christ
Himself, and still more the Apostle Paul, assumed as a substratum of
{45} their teaching the revelation which had been granted to the Jews.
The moral and religious doctrines comprehended under the designation of
the 'law' served, as the apostle said, as a _paidagogos_ or usher whose
function it was to lead them to the school of Christ.

At the ou