From that time on the history of Christianity might be written as a series of syntheses with the thought and practice of the Roman world, beginning with the circumference and moving to the centre. The first element which was absorbed was the least Roman, the Graeco-Oriental cults. Christianity had been originally the worship of God, as he was understood by the Jews, combined with the belief that Jesus was he whom God had appointed, or would appoint, as his representative at the day of judgement. To this were now joined the longings for private salvation of the less fortunate classes in the Roman Empire, and their belief that this salvation could come from sacraments instituted by a Lord who was either divine by nature or had attained apotheosis. It thus became, partly indeed, the recognition of the Jewish God as supreme, but chiefly the recognition of Jesus as the divine Lord who had instituted saving mysteries for those who accepted him. Christianity became the Jewish contribution to the Oriental cults, offering, as the Synagogue never did, private salvation by supernatural means to all who were willing to accept it. Such Christianity became, and such in some districts, notably in Rome, it remained for one or two generations. But in Ephesus and possibly elsewhere a further synthesis was accomplished. {9} This sacramentalised Christianity began to come to terms with Greek philosophy, as the other mystery religions tried to do. It asked what was the philosophic explanation of its Lord, and it hit on the device of identifying him with the Logos--a phrase common to several types of philosophy though used in quite different meanings. The development of this second synthesis was comparatively slow. Probably some of the systems which are loosely described as gnostic were unsuccessful attempts at its accomplishment; but in the end the Alexandrian theologians Clement and Origen followed the lead given them by the Fourth Gospel and some of the apologists to the triumphant construction of a system which really reconciled in part and seemed to reconcile entirely the Christian cult and the later Platonic metaphysics.