ons. That the
lower classes among Jews and Greeks followed the new teaching, is much
more intelligible, even without wishing to lay too much stress on the
evidential value of the miracles at that time. The great majority were
accustomed to miracles; what was almost entirely lacking was practical
religion. The Greek thinkers had created systems of philosophy and morals,
but the traditional worship had degenerated into a mere spectacle. Even
among the Jews the old religion had become a rigid temple ritual, which
offered but little comfort and hope to the weak heart of man. In the eyes
of the majority of the philosophers of the age every religion was only
pernicious superstition, good enough for the masses, but scarcely worth
consideration by the cultured. That Celsus made the Christian religion the
object of serious treatment and refutation, not only implies a subtle and
unprejudiced view of his age, but shows us at the same time how the
Christianity of that period, entirely independent of the Jewish religion,
had gained in significance, and had even in the eyes of a heathen
philosopher begun to be esteemed as something important, as something
dangerous, as something that had to be combated with philosophical
weapons.

Christianity is especially indebted for its rapid spread to its practical
side, to the energy of its love, which was bestowed on all who were weary
and heavy laden. Christ and the apostles had understood how to gather
around them the poor, the sinners, the most despised members of human
society. They were offered forgiveness of their sins, love, and sympathy,
if they merely promised to amend and sin no more. Among these earliest
followers of Christ there was scarcely a change of religion in our sense
of the word. Christianity was at first much more a new life than a new
religion. The first disciples were and remained Jews in the eyes of the
world, and that they came from the most despised classes even Origen does
not dispute. Celsus had reproached the Christians because the apostles,
around whose heads even in his time a halo had begun to shine, had been
men of bad character, criminals, fishermen, and tax-gatherers. Origen
admits that Matthew was a tax-gatherer, James and John fishermen, probably
Peter and Andrew as well; but declares that it was not known how the other
apostles gained a livelihood. Even that they had been malefactors and
criminals, Origen does not absolutely deny. He refers to the letter of