If I have clearly indicated the relations of the Pharisees and Sadducees to each other, and to the mass of the nation, it will be easy to indicate the place of two other classes of persons bearing well-known names. The Essenes stand apart from the main body of the Jewish people; they were ascetics and recluses, of more than Pharisaic strictness (for asceticism was not a characteristic feature of Pharisaism either in practice or theory), and they combined with the religion of Torah certain mystical doctrines of their own. Whatever influence they may have had upon other elements in Judaism, they had little if any upon Pharisaism. There remains the class called "Am-ha-aretz," or "the people of the land "--the "people that knoweth not the law" (John vii. 49). This title denotes, not a definite division, but simply those amongst the people who in fact were least influenced by the Pharisees, and least drawn to them. Such would be not only the careless and indifferent, but also those who, for higher reasons, did not readily fall in with the Pharisaic system, or to whom religion as presented by them was not acceptable. It is these mainly who are referred to when it is said that Jesus saw the people "as sheep without a shepherd" (Mark vi. 34). And it is only likely that those would most gladly hear him who were least inclined to follow the Pharisees. From this sketch of the composition of the Jewish nation, in the time of Christ and thereabouts, it will be seen that the main line of development is represented by Pharisaism. It comes down from the time of Ezra, as the religion of Torah, expounded and administered by approved teachers, known from the first as Sopherim. The names Ḥasidim and Pharisee denote its most zealous representatives at two different periods; but they imply no change of principle, or even of method. What change there was is seen in the growth of a body of teaching, the decisions and interpretations of successive exponents of Torah, handed on and repeated from memory, for the instruction of those who should come after. This is what is known as the Tradition of the Elders, referred to in Mark vii. 5 and elsewhere. And when I come to deal with the theory of Torah in the next chapter, I shall show how this Tradition of the Elders was a sign of the continued vitality of the religion of Torah, not the gradual strangling of it. At present I am only concerned with the fact, not with the meaning of it. The Tradition of the Elders can be traced in the Mishnah up to the time of the early Sopherim, not far distant from Ezra; it is the thread which binds together the development, through Ḥasidism and Pharisaism, of the Jewish religion. And it marks the course of the main stream of Judaism far on through the centuries. The Essenes vanished. The Sadducees were swept away when the Temple was destroyed. It was the Pharisees who alone could or did weather that storm, and carry the divine treasure of the religion of Torah into safety.