The explanation of the ready reception of these cults among all classes of society is that they guaranteed their adherents a satisfaction which the official religions were unable to offer. The state and municipal cults were mainly political in character, and with the disappearance of independent political life they lost their hold upon men who began to seek a refuge from the miseries of the present world in the world of the spirit and the promise of a future life. This want the Oriental cults were able to meet with the doctrines of a personal religion far different from the formal worship of the Graeco-Roman deities. Certain characteristics of doctrine and ritual were common to the majority of the Oriental cults. They had an elaborate ritual which appealed both to the senses and to the emotions of the worshippers. By witnessing certain symbolic ceremonies the believer was roused to a state of spiritual ecstasy in which he felt himself in communion with the deity, while by the performance of sacramental rites he felt himself cleansed from the defilements of his earthly life and fitted for a purer spiritual existence. A professional priesthood had charge of the worship, ministered to the needs of individuals, and conducted missionary work. To an age of declining intellectual vigor, when men gave over the attempt to solve by scientific methods the riddle of the universe, they spoke with the authority of revelation, giving a comforting theological interpretation of life. And they appealed to the conscience by imposing a rigid rule of conduct, the observance of which would fit the believer for a happier existence in a future life.