Who were these Greeks, and where did they come from? After Pentecost, and still more so after the subsequent dispersion of the Apostles and the recognition of St. Paul as the Apostle of the Graeco-Roman world, the gospel of Christ spread rapidly throughout the bounds of the Roman Empire. Nay, it is clear that the zeal of unofficial preachers of Christ outran the slower movements of the authorized evangelists, and that the good news reached the extreme West, Spain, Gaul, and Britain, long before the arrival of Christian missionaries.

[paragraph continues] But there is no trace or sign of any interest taken in Christ, during His earthly life, by any European Greek. The centurions mentioned in the Gospels and Acts were Romans, not Greeks, and the Greek influence exercised in Palestine through Herodians and Sadducees was notoriously and actively opposed to Christ's claims and teachings. It is evident that the Greeks of whom St. John tells us were of a different kind from the friends and abettors of Herod.

We will call to mind the statement made by Irenaeus that the Gospel of St. John was written for the purpose of combating the heresy of the Nicolaitans, and we will anticipate matters a little by stating that there is very good reason for believing that the Nicolaitans professed a form of Buddhism almost identical with the still-existing Shingon sect of Japan, a sect which pins all its faith on the mercies of an abstract and eternal Buddha of the name of Vairoc'ana, and which, significantly enough, gives to S'akyamuni the title of the "Lord of this World." We will also remind ourselves of the fact that there existed an Asiatic colony of Greeks in the valley of the Indus,

who professed Buddhism as their religion, and who were still under the rule of their own Greek princelets during the time of Christ's earthly life.

It is quite clear to all students of the history of North-West India and the lands around the Hindu Kush that things were in a state of religious ferment at the period of which we are speaking. Some change was imminent. The Mahayana was approaching the end of its period of gestation; the vague prophecies of a teacher to come had filled men's minds with anticipation. The Greeks of Asia had felt it; they had also heard, from the hearsay stories of caravan travellers, of the great Teacher who had appeared ill the neighbourhood of the Sea of Galilee, and some of them went to the Passover at Jerusalem, "desiring to see Jesus," not from any idle curiosity, but because they had been taught to look for some such solution of their difficulties.