To be sure, there are many who are satisfied with an orthodox belief on the subject, because they have never questioned their sources of information. But the world has grown to that age when traditional dogmas, or whatever they may be called, must be subject to the test which advancing knowledge imposes. Tried by this test, what is true will appear brighter; what is false will be thrown off; and man, relieved of a burden which only weighed him down, will move on to an improved and better life. Man is not doomed by the condition of his nature to be eternally tugging at the stone of Sisyphus--nor is it consistent with the laws of a wise and beneficent Creator that mankind, in order to be prosperous and happy, should be compelled to live under a perpetual delusion. Like the source of some river, often traced to a mountain rill or the oozing waters of a morass, so the beginning of the church or churches of our own day is to be looked for in some obscure corner of history, covered by the _debris_ of ages. Located on a narrow isthmus between the Ægean and Ionian seas stood Corinth, one of the principal cities of Greece. Situated where the commerce from the East and the West meet _in transitu_, it grew in opulence and wealth, and was distinguished for the arts, and for the luxury and licentiousness of its inhabitants. Here Venus had a temple, presided over by a thousand priestesses, whose attractions increased the numbers who came from all parts of Greece to assist in celebrating the Isthmian games. It was at this place Paul planted a church, between the years A.D. 51 and A.D. 53, and where he remained eighteen months, working as no one but himself could work to build up and strengthen it. Paul left Corinth for a time for other fields of labor, because he belonged to no one place, but his mission embraced the world. The commerce of Corinth attracted to the place people from every part of the empire, east and west, and with others a large number of Alexandrian Jews. Among them were many of the Thera-peutæ, who brought with them into Greece the doctrines of Philo.