heaven; for the individual it is not the resurrection of the body but
the immortality of the soul. So Jesus is no longer Christ or Messiah,
but the Son of God. These terms again are variously interpreted: heaven
is still thought of by many under the imagery of the book of Revelation,
and by others it is conceived as a mystical union of the soul with God
through the intelligence or of feelings. Yet the older conceptions still
continue, Christianity not becoming purely and simply Greek. Again and
again individuals and groups turn back to the Semitic cycle of hopes and
ideas, while the reconciliation of the two systems, Jewish and
Graeco-Roman, becomes the task of exegetes and theologians.

These hopes and theories of salvation, however, do not explain the power
of Christianity. Jesus wearied himself with the healing of man's
physical ailments, and he was remembered as the great physician. Early
Christian literature is filled with medical terms, applied (it is true)
for the greater part to the cure of souls. The records of the Church are
also filled with the efforts of Jesus' followers to heal the diseases
and satisfy the wants of men. A vast activity animated the early Church:
to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to succour the diseased, to rescue
the fallen, to visit the prisoners, to forgive the erring, to teach the
ignorant, were ministries of salvation. A mighty power impelled men to
deny themselves in the service of others, and to find in this service
their own true life. None the less the first place is given to the
salvation of the soul, since, created for an unending existence, it is
of transcendent importance. While man is fallen and by nature vile,
nevertheless his possibilities are so vast that in comparison the
affairs of earth are insignificant. The word, "What shall it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" comes to mean
that the individual soul outvalues the whole world. With emphasis upon
God as creator and ruler, and upon man as made in God's image, endowed
with an unending existence, and subject to eternal torture if not
redeemed, the concept of personality has been exalted at the expense of
that of nature, and the future has been magnified at the expense of the
present. Thus a future heaven is man's true home, and theology instead
of philosophy or natural science is his proper study.

Indeed, intellectual interest centred in religion. Natural science was
forsaken, except in so