[[1]] See C. Montefiore, Judaism and St. Paul.
[[2]] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[[3]] Irenaeus, Apostolic Preaching, p. 3.
[[4]] I would emphasise the word popular. The great missionaries were doubtless inspired by the desire to save others, by the will to minister rather than be ministered to, and by a readiness to give their lives as a ransom for others, but their converts were otherwise minded.
[[5]] This statement would be required to be modified for detailed application to various classes both among Christians and among initiates in the other cults. In all cults there was probably an uneducated substratum which thought very little about the subject. It was satisfied with the fact of salvation, and was not specially interested in its method. On the other hand, the educated with a metaphysical tendency were interested in the relation of the Lord of the cult to the Supreme God, and this might, in time, have produced something similar to the Christological speculations of the fourth century. Apuleius seems to identify the Supreme God with the Lord in a manner which at times reminds the reader of Sabellian Christianity. On the other hand, Heliogabalus seems to have produced a complete amalgam between Mithras and Helios, and reminds us of the tendency of uneducated Christianity in all generations to make the gospel become the preaching of the new God, or the true God, Jesus, of which I heard a somewhat extreme example from a preacher who maintained fervidly that Jehovah was the Hebrew of Jesus.