race as to see in the four rivers of Eden the four cardinal virtues, in the trees of paradise the lesser virtues, and in the great figures of Jewish history personifications of various moral conceptions, all of which was out-doing the manner in which his Grecian friends had developed their own mysteries. Moreover, and this is very important, Philo taught that God had made a world of ideas and according to this model had subsequently made a corporeal world; the former having for its central point the Word. This statement that the _Word_ was the first and the _World_ his second deed passed later into the gospel of St. John, which opens "In the beginning was the _word_, and the _word_ was God." Philo founded a sect based upon the doctrine that the soul's union with the body is to be regarded as a punishment from which man should free himself, for his soul's sake. This sect was known as the Essenes, who in spite of claims to the highest antiquity really were founded during the first century B. C., and who constituted in effect a secret society. They were the true socialists of their day, and held things in common. They invented a peculiar nomenclature for the angels and imposed upon their new members to keep these names secret. As a society they did not long survive the beginning of the Christian era, being made superfluous by Christian asceticism. The Essenes, however, were of importance in this regard that they constituted the middle terms between the Grecian mysteries and Christianity, as they did between Grecian philosophy and Judaism. They were, in effect, a Jewish imitation of the Pythagorean league. _When with Grecian mysticism were associated the nobility of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, the science of Aristotle and the Jewish belief in one God, it is not strange that out of these elements, combined with the teachings of simple humanity enunciated by Christ, there resulted a power which transformed the world._ The view that all mankind are brothers, originally Jewish, was also of independent Greek origin and came especially from the Stoics, who had to lie dormant until some tie stronger than mere political association held men together. This tie subsequently became a religious one. Polytheism had nothing more to give up; all the forces had been worked over in the God-making process, the Pantheon was full, and men ridiculed alike the Gods, their oracles and their priests. These same priests smiled at each other when they met, and forfeited all public respect by the lives they led. Olympic wantoning and derision of the Gods must necessarily have ended so soon as anything better could be substituted therefor.