The second cause may be called external, and was the introduction of many eastern religions into the empire. It has been common to exaggerate the vices of the Romans of the first Christian centuries, and to point to the corruption of the times as the cause of the great rise of religions.[42] No doubt, in the city of Rome and other large cities the populations were very licentious and corrupt. But this was not the case with the people in the small municipalities and the country. The people were united in peace under one government. There was great commercial prosperity and widespread travel. Education prospered. The religion of the Romans, however, long since decadent, had become an object of derision. All faith in it had been lost, and magicians and romancers had a large patronage. The inner life of man demanded some external spiritual authority to satisfy it, and, finding it could not be satisfied in the realm of sense, turned to the supersensuous. It was an age of universal superstitions, reported miracles, and the multiplying of myths. In the realm of the religious emotions everything was in flux. Even the Greek philosophies――the Stoic, the Platonic, the Cynic, and the neo-Pythagorean――show it in their emphasis upon renunciation in practical life. In place of the Grecian love for earthly existence, a longing for the mysterious was growing into a feverish desire for strange and mysterious cults. A great religious movement possessed the nations of the empire, and into Roman civilization of the first century A. D. there streamed many new religions. From the Orient came the Mithra, Magna Mater, Star Worship, Isis and Osiris, and many others. These mingled with the western religions, and their rivalry was energetic for the possession of men’s spirits. The Roman people were hospitable to all religions, and Rome became a religious battleground. With the interest turned from earthly to heavenly things, salvation from trouble seemed to lie in the supernatural. =The Need of Spiritual Authority.= Thus the complacent Ethical Period gave way to the cry for some authority in morals and science. Man was no longer confident that he could attain present happiness or his soul’s salvation by his own strength. He turned for help both to the religious tradition of the past and to the revelation that might come to him in the present. The authority in either was practically the same; for the past was only the crystallization of an ever-present divine spirit. Yet present and past revelations differ in their credentials: the present revelation is an immediate illumination of the spirit; the past is presented in historic records. The Alexandrian school accepted both forms of revelation as the highest source of knowledge.