Religiously, morally, and intellectually, it was the time of the world's need. The old faiths of heathenism were crumbling away as the mythical elements of which they were composed were melting in the critical light that philosophy and its methods had thrown upon them. The mono theism of the Jews was embracing some of the nobler of the conceptions with which it had come into contact in Platonism and Greek thought. And yet at the same time the morality of the age was growing corrupt in the frivolous unreality of sceptical sophistry and general unbelief. The world seemed waiting for some catastrophe or some enlightenment that Should bring what was new and pure and saving to the rescue of the decaying old.