Thus history flashes a light, transient but vivid, on the rising religion at three distinct periods. 1. When Christ by the Sea of Tiberias preached the memorable λόγια, and said, "Be eunuchs, sell all worldly goods. Blessed are the poor!" 2. When James started the vegetarian water-drinking celibates of the Church of Jerusalem. 3. When Irenæus attacked the vegetarian water-drinking celibates of the Church of Jerusalem which had migrated to Pella (A.D. 180). Now, these three flashes of light seem to me to dispel much, notably all disquisitions which seek to combine the Essene Christ and the anti-Essene Christ. Renan holds that the Church of Jerusalem were Pharisees. If so, why had they Essene rites, A.D. 34 and A.D. 181? He admits that these rites were borrowed from the Mendaites, or Disciples of John, and that there is the closest analogy between the rise of Christianity and the rise of "other ascetic religions, Buddhism for example." ("Les Apôtres," pp. 78-90.) He admits that the accounts in the Acts of Peter's bold preachings in the temple, are not to be reconciled with passages about "closed doors for few of the Jews." What has chiefly led to misapprehensions is not so much the dishonesty of writers like "Luke," as the fiction of the Essenes themselves that they were orthodox Jews. They were most particular about circumcision. They had a Sanhedrim of Justice, and so had the early Christians. The Church of Jerusalem had its "chief priest," as we see from the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. "The daily sacrifices are not offered everywhere, nor the peace-offerings, nor the sacrifices appointed for sins and transgressions, but only at Jerusalem, nor in any place there, but only at the altar before the temple." (Ch. xviii.) This chief priest must not be confused with the Jewish one. He has been established by God through Christ. (Ch. xix. 7.) It is also stated that Christ has laid down what "offerings and service" must be performed. (Ch. xviii. 14.) This gives a significance to the passages in Revelations describing the temple of the mystic Jerusalem, which would of course be modelled on the "temple" familiar to the white-robed virgin saints of the material New Jerusalem, the "angel" taking the "golden censer" and filling it with the fire of the altar, the "lamps," the "candlesticks," the "golden altar," the "incense." The ground near Jerusalem is perforated with caverns. This temple, probably, was some secret crypt like a chapel in the catacombs. Keim points out that the command given in chap. xi. verse 2 of the Revelations to leave out the court of the bloody sacrifices in the ideal temple of the New Jerusalem, is an additional piece of evidence in favour of the Essenism of the early Church. This is what Hegesippus, the earliest Christian historian, says about James, described in the Protevangelion as the "chief apostle and first Christian bishop."