ssive moments of his life, to change the Christian student, into the
apostate, to convert disbelief into hatred, and to degrade the philosopher
into the persecutor? History happily offers so few parallels to enable us
to form a conjecture on the answer, that we may be content to leave the
problem unsolved.

We have now summed up the causes which operated in the first great
intellectual struggle in which Christianity was engaged. No means exist
for estimating the amount of harm done by the writings of unbelievers. The
retributive destruction of some of them and the indignant alarm of the
Christian apologists indicate the probability that these works had excited
attention. But under a merciful Providence truth has in the end gained
rather than lost by this first conflict of reason against Christianity.
The church encountered the unbelievers by apologetic treatises, and met
the Gnostics by dogmatic decisions. The truths brought out by the action
and reaction, and embodied in the literature stimulated by Gnosticism, in
the apologies created by unbelief, and in the creeds suggested as a
protest against heresy, are the permanent result which the struggle has
contributed to the world.

The contest however is not quite obsolete, and has a practical as well as
antiquarian interest. Though the analogy to the attacks of ancient
unbelievers must be sought in pagan countries in the objections of modern
heathens, yet some resemblance to them may be found in the unbelief of
Christian lands. Such parallels are frequently hasty generalizations
founded on a superficial perception of agreement, without due recognition
of the differences which more exact observation would bring to view; for
identity of cause as well as result is necessary in order to establish
philosophical affinity. In the present cases however the agreement is
moral if not intellectual, in spirit if not in form, generally also in
condition if not in cause. The flippant wit of Lucian, which attributes
religion to imposture and craft, is repeated in the French criticism of
the last century. Some of the doubts of Celsus reappear in the English
deists. The delicate criticism of Porphyry is reproduced in the modern
exegesis. The disposition to explain Christianity as a psychological
phenomenon, as merely one form of the religious consciousness, an organic
product of human thought, unsuited for men of superior knowledge, who can
attain to the philosophical truth which underlie