With the death of Jesus, died also His dream of converting the Jews to His religious ideas. A few scattered bands of followers--Nazarites or Ebionites--survived Him. But they existed only in a moribund condition, exerted no influence over the nation, and, in the course of a few centuries, disappeared from history. The Jews as a people rejected, and have always rejected, both Jesus as a Messiah and His teachings as their religion. If the Jews had then been an independent nation, living in their haughty isolation from other peoples, the power and hatred of the Pharisees would probably have stamped out the last remnants of Jesus' followers, and He would have survived only as a name in history. But the disciples (or apostles) found under the Roman rule protection for their teaching, and ready access to the Gentile communities, not only in Palestine, but throughout all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Among these communities Jesus' Gospel found a quick and ready acceptance, and, within two or three centuries after His death, it had become a mighty living force in the evolution of mankind. In the reign of Constantine, Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman empire, and it rapidly brought under its influence the Northern Barbarians, who, in their turn, were to be the conquerors of this empire. As Christianity grew and spread and became more powerful, it lost almost all resemblance to the religion of "right living," which Jesus had taught and practiced. The spiritual and temporal powers were once more re-united, dogmas, creeds, theological disquisitions multiplied, "until the fair body of religion, revealed in almost naked purity by the prophets, is once more hidden under a new accumulation of dogmas and of ritual practices of which the primitive Nazarene knew nothing; and which He would probably have regarded as blasphemous if He could have been made to understand them."