correct nor elegant.  His eloquence is of the kind which proceeds from intense conviction, and from a thorough knowledge of Old Testament prophecy and psalmody—­no bad preparation for a religious teacher.  If at times he argued like a Rabbi, these frigid debates were as acceptable to ancient Jews as they are to modern Scotsmen.  And when he takes fire, as he deals with some vital truth which he has lived as well as learned and taught, he establishes his right to be called what he never aimed at being—­a writer of genius.  Such passages as 1 Cor. xiii., Phil, ii., Rom. viii., rank among the finest compositions in later Greek literature.  Regarded merely as a piece of poetical prose, 1 Cor. xiii. is finer than anything that had been written in the Greek language since the great Attic prose-writers.  And if this was dictated impromptu, similar outbursts of splendid eloquence were probably frequent in his mission-preaching.  Their effect must have been overwhelming, when reinforced by the flashing eye of the speaker, and by the absolute sincerity which none could doubt who saw his face and figure, furrowed by toil and scarred by torture.

In addressing the Gentiles, we may assume that he followed the customary Jewish line of apologetic, denouncing the folly of idolatry—­an aid to worship which is quite innocent and natural in some peoples, but which the Jews never understood; that he spoke much of judgment to come; and especially that he contrasted the pure and affectionate social life of the Christian brotherhood with the licentiousness, cruelty, injustice, oppression, and mutual suspicion of Pagan society.  This argument probably struck home in very many ‘Gentile’ hearts.  The old civilisation, with all the brilliant qualities which make many moderns regret its destruction, rested on too narrow a base.  The woman and the slave were left out, the woman especially by the Greeks, and the slave by the Romans.  Acute social inequalities always create pride, brutality, and widespread sexual immorality.  And when the structure which maintained these inequalities is itself tottering, the oppressed classes begin to feel that they are unnecessary, and to hope for emancipation.  When St. Paul drew his lurid pictures of Pagan society steeped in unnatural abominations, without hope for the future, ’hateful and hating one another,’ and then pointed to the little flock of Christians—­among whom no one was allowed to be idle and no one to starve, and where family life was pure and mutual confidence full, frank and seldom abused—­the woman and the slave, of whom Aristotle had spoken so contemptuously, flocked into his congregations, and began to organise themselves for that victory which Nietzsche thought so deplorable.