THE CITY OF GOD 99 or moral passages, which are suggestive in thought and some- times even in phraseology of the New Testament. Many philosophers had already come to a belief in one God, whom, however, they did not venture to describe as a per- son. The Stoics advanced the idea of one law of nature and ! of the brotherhood of man, even including slaves. Plutarch, l though still immersed in pagan religions and old supersti- 1 tions, shows us a distinct advance in the early Empire over | the moral standards of the older Greeks and Romans, and I Juvenal, another non-Christian writer of Rome, tells us that "fools seek revenge, philosophers forgive." Nor were the | teachings of philosophy confined to the educated and intel- lectual classes, for we hear of philosophers who preached to the mob in the streets or who rolled over naked in the snow | to show the privates in the imperial army that cold has no terrors for the good man. The actual daily life of most I people was, however, far from realizing the ideals of the I philosophers, — people seldom have lived up to their ideals ! in any age, — and the Apostle Paul had to warn his Chris- 1 tian converts repeatedly and painstakingly against worship | of idols and illicit sexual intercourse. Not philosophy alone, I but other religions had been moving in much the same (general direction as Christianity. We have already noted in the spread of other Oriental cults in the Empire the em- Iphasis upon personal relation with the deity, forgiveness of I sins, a redeemer, and a resurrection or after life. Thus the iway was prepared for the spread of Christianity by other movements, either earlier or contemporaneous with it. What especially distinguished Christianity from the other cults was the remarkable personality of its founder, sketched so vividly in the four Gospels against The distinc- tly familiar background of daily human experi- aUtyoi 80 ence. For one thing, for example, He was a most chnst unconventional person who brushed aside the cobwebs of conservatism. He broke the Jewish Sabbath, talked with a woman of Samaria, feasted with tax-collectors and sinners, forgave an adulteress, justified Mary Magdalene for buy- ing costly ointment with which to bathe his feet instead of
