reatise on "The Government of the Athenians," not, perhaps,
composed, but utilised, by Aristotle, but also many fragments of Christian
literature, which made it probable that the libraries of Christian
families also had been thrown on the market, and that papyrus leaves, when
they appeared useless for any other purpose, were used as waste paper, or
as a kind of papier-mache.

But why should the "True History" of Celsus, the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, or _Sermo
Verus_, excite our curiosity? The reason is quite plain. We know
practically nothing of the history of the teaching of Christ in the first,
second, and even third centuries, except what has been transmitted to us
by Christian writers. It is an old rule, however, that it is well to learn
from the enemy also,--"Fas est et ab hoste doccri." Celsus was a resolute
foe of the new Christian teaching, and we should, at all events, learn
from his treatise how the Christian religion appeared in the eyes of a
cultivated man of the second century, who, it seems, concurred in many
important points with the philosophical conception cherished in the
Christian church, or at least was familiar with it, namely, the Logos
idea; but who could not comprehend how men, who had once understood and
assimilated a view of the world founded on the Logos, could combine with
it the belief in Christ as the incarnate Logos. To Celsus the Christian
religion is something objective; in all other works of the first three
centuries it is, and remains, almost entirely subjective.

This could hardly be otherwise, for a religion in its first inception
scarcely exists for the outer world. What at that time were Jerusalem and
Palestine in the eyes of the so-called world? A province yielding little
profit, and often in rebellion. The Jews and their religion had certainly
attracted the attention of Rome and Athens by their peculiarities; but the
Jewish sects interested the classical world much less than the sects of
the Platonic and Stoic schools. Christians were regarded as Jews, just as,
not many years ago, Jains were treated by us as Buddhists, Sikhs as
Brahmans, and Buddhists, Jains, Sik