The long felt want was for a God of definite character, of approved prowess, with human feelings, human wrath, and human love, made after man's own likeness, who should stand for a doctrine of personal immortality, and give some promise of a hereafter. The Jews, the only monotheists of the time, were prepared to furnish such a God, but he was too spiritual, and was worshiped by altogether too indefinite rites and peculiar usages. Nevertheless the God of the Jews was utilized for this purpose while the mystic elements with which he was to be surrounded were furnished by the ancient Grecian mysteries and the doctrines of the Pythagoreans and Essenes. So completely did the Jews and Greeks mingle in Egypt and in Judea, that the idea prevailed among both races that the time had come for something new in the desired direction. The various secret leagues demanded a separation of the divine from the human and their subsequent reconciliation, all of which was subsequently furnished to their satisfaction in the accounts of the origin and death of Christ. Even during the early years of the Roman Empire men looked for a new kingdom in the East, and both Jews and Heathen awaited some divine intervention. This took more definite form in the Jewish expectation of a Messiah who should restore the kingdom of Israel, and in their worship of Jehovah, while the Greeks yearned for something to take the place of their degenerate polytheism. The times were thus ready for the appearance of Jesus, who lived for most of his life in obscurity, and of whose career no mention is made by contemporary Greek and Roman writers. This was perhaps fortunate for his followers, for none could contradict what any other might choose to say of Him who rose above the bigotry of his day and people, who was executed because of his independence of the priests and scribes, and who was thus regarded as the longed for Messiah. On the Jewish branch of his real origin were grafted Grecian mystical off-shoots of superhuman origin;--an immaculate conception, a vicarious sacrifice, a resurrection and an assumption of a portion of the God-head. Thus, in what has come down to us concerning the Founder of the Christian church, truth and fiction mingle; the former being that which is consistent with highest laws and natural phenomena; and the latter that which conflicts with these. Jesus himself never made pretentions to being more than a man. When he spoke of his father he spoke of him as equally the father of all mankind; he was the greatest moral reformer that ever lived, and he differed widely from the Essenes in that he sought to save man, not by Essenism and withdrawing him from the world, but by living with him and setting him a beautiful example.