Outwardly, however, they were the most respectable as well as honorable men of the nation—dignified, decorous, and studious of appearances. (M265) The next great party was that of the Sadducees, who aimed to restore the original Mosaic religion in its purity, and expunge every thing which had been added by tradition. But they were deficient in a profound sense of religion, denied the doctrine of immortality, and hence all punishment in a future life. They made up for their denial of the future by a rigid punishment of all crimes. They inculcated a belief of Divine Providence by whom all crime was supposed to be avenged in this world. The party was not so popular as that of their rivals, but embraced men of high rank. In common with the Pharisees, they maintained the strictness of the Jewish code, and professed great uprightness of morals. They had, however, no true, deep religious life, and were cold and heartless in their dispositions. They were mostly men of ease and wealth, and satisfied with earthly enjoyments, and inclined to the epicureanism which marked many of the Greek philosophers. Nor did they escape the hypocrisy which disgraced the Pharisees, and their bitter opposition to the truths of Christianity. (M266) In addition to these two great parties which controlled the people, were the Essenes. But they lived apart from men, in the deserts round the Dead Sea, and dreaded cities as nurseries of vice. They allowed no women to come within their settlements. They were recruited by strangers and proselytes, who thought all pleasure to be a sin. They established a community of goods, and prosecuted the desire of riches. They were clothed in white garments which they never changed, and regulated their lives by the severest forms. They abstained from animal food, and lived on roots and bread. They worked and ate in silence, and observed the Sabbath with great precision. They were great students, and were rigid in morals, and believed in immortality. They abhorred oaths, and slavery, and idolatry. They embraced the philosophy of the Orientals, and supposed that matter was evil, and that mind was divine. They were mystics who reveled in the pleasures of abstract contemplation. Their theosophy was sublime, but Brahminical. Practically they were industrious, ascetic, and devout—the precursors of those monks who fled from the abodes of man, and filled the solitudes of Upper Egypt and Arabia and Palestine, the loftiest and most misguided of the Christian sects in the second and third centuries, But the Essenes had no direct influence over the people of Judea like the Pharisees and Sadducees, except in encouraging obedience and charity.