In the cities an attempt to supply the deficiency was made by the party of the Pharisees. They sought to broaden and to spiritualize the meaning of scripture--they laid down new forms of religious observance by means of which every educated man became, so to speak, his own priest. The religion of the Pharisees however assumed a not inconsiderable degree of intellectual ability on the part of its followers. So far as it went it answered very well for the intelligent middle classes. But out in the country districts it did not answer at all; not for the herdsmen, not for the poor peasants, not for those who had not even the rudiments of learning and who could do nothing with a learned religion. And yet these very men before all others needed something to support them, something to cling to, even because they were so miserably poor and illiterate. They did not get what they wanted--they felt very strongly that the burdens upon them were exceedingly grievous; that while they suffered and starved, religion dwelt in palaces, and had no heart for their misfortunes. They felt that something was wrong and rotten in the then state of affairs, and that a new state must come, and a heaven-sent king, who would lend a voice to their needs, and lift them with strong arms from out their despair and degradation. Nowhere was this feeling more marked than in the district of Galilee. A beautiful land with green, grassy valleys, groves of sycamores, broad blue lakes, and villages nestling picturesquely on the mountain slopes, it nourished an ardent and impulsive population. Their impatience with the existing order of things had already found vent in furious revolt. Judah, their famous leader, had perished; his two sons, James and Simon, had been nailed to the cross; the Messiah was daily and hourly expected; various impostors successively arose and quickly disappeared; when would the hour of deliverance come; when would the true Messiah appear at last? It was at such a time and among such a people, that there arose Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee. What was the startling truth he taught? What was the new revelation he preached to the sons of men? An old truth, and an old sermon--Righteousness; no more, meaning nothing at all, a mere trite common-place, on the lips of the time-server and the plausible vendor of moral phrases. Meaning mighty changes for the better, when invoked with a profounder sense of its sanctity, and a new sacredness in life, and larger impulses for ever and for ever. Righteousness he taught, and the change that was to come by righteousness. Yes, so deep was his conviction, so profoundly had the current conceptions of the day affected him, that he believed the change to be near at hand, that he himself might be its author, himself Messiah.