Herodotus, the father of history, is said to have recited parts of his history at the Olympic games, B.C. 456, and Thucydides, who was then a boy, to have heard him; and this is also the date of the death of Æschylus. The date of the battle of Thermopylæ is 480, of the death of Socrates 399, of the birth of Alexander 356. The period of Confucius, Lao-Tseu, and Pythagoras is in the vicinity of the year 550. The beginning of the Persian Empire under Cyrus was in 559. The common date of the building of Rome is 753 B.C. Carthage was destroyed in 146. Julius Cæsar began his career in the year 80. Within this period occurred also the restoration of the Jews to their own country, the founding of the Jewish temple and community at Alexandria, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, the rise and triumph of the Asmonæan dynasty of the Machabees, the usurpation of Herod, and the beginning of Roman supremacy in Palestine. We now proceed to show the relation between this period and its great events, as making the most important chapter in ancient universal history, with the origin and extension of Christianity. The modern rationalist theory of a purely natural origin of the Christian religion by development from previous stages of purely natural phases of the human intellect, should be refuted by a true exposition of the connection between the natural and the supernatural causes which concurred in producing the great historical phenomenon of Christianity. The history of the one true and revealed religion, and specifically of its latest form in Christianity, is not isolated and separate from the general history of mankind.