I suppose it will be acknowledged that He lived at a time when the world was singularly _in want_. Heathenism had failed to satisfy it. The world had outgrown its infancy, and had tossed away its dolls. The philosophers derided, even the poets could hardly play with, their old heathen deities. Society was corrupt to its core. The old monarchies had sunk one by one,--Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia--oppressed with their own vices. Rome had indeed reached the height of power, but it was power to be vile and so to be miserable. And there was a groan uttered from universal humanity for something to save it from the utter exhaustion of sensuality hard by suffering, of moral, social, and political degradation. Judea itself, where still God was worshipped, was no exception to the general rule, though it had yet hardly fallen to the depth of imperial Rome. And what of philosophy? Certainly it could never have had a better trial. The greatest moral philosophers the world ever knew, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, had taught at Athens. The sound of their voices reached Rome, and echoed through all the civilized world. Without doubt, their teaching was valued, without doubt it was valuable to the thinking few; but the effect produced upon the many is too truly described by Ovid, "Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor." The salt of society had not been discovered; for society stank, and was corrupt throughout. And then Jesus Christ set forth a remedy, and it was HIMSELF. It cannot be too emphatically said, or too steadily borne in memory, that CHRISTIANITY IS CHRIST. So He taught; so His disciples after Him--not a law--not a theory--not a code of morals--not a system of casuistry--not even an elaborate theology--but "they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus Christ." _And this did satisfy human wants._