parable.1 But it was all kept in silence. There was an awful individuality about it. They saw the sight in common, but they saw it each man for himself. It was his personal communion with the divine life. The glamour and the glory of it were gone when it was published to all the world.2 The effect of it was conceived to be a change both of character and of relation to the gods. The initiated were by virtue of their initiation made partakers of a life to come. "Thrice happy they who go to the world below having seen these mysteries: to them alone is life there, to all others is misery."3

2. In time, however, new myths and new forms of worship were added. It is not easy to draw a definite line between the mysteries, strictly so called, and the forms of worship which went on side by side with them. Not only are they sometimes spoken of in common as mysteries, but there is a remarkable syncretist painting in a non-Christian catacomb at Rome, in which the elements of the Greek mysteries of Demeter are blended with those of Sabazius and Mithra, in a way which shows that the worship was blended also.4 These forms of worship

1 Synes. Orat. p. 48 (ed. Petav.), où μabeîv тi deîv åλλà πaðeîv кai διατεθῆναι γενομένους δηλονότι ἐπιτηδείους. But the μυσταγωγοί possibly gave some private instruction to the groups of μúσraι who were committed to them.

2 Cf. Lenormant, Cont. Rev. Sept. 1880, p. 414 sq.

8 Soph. frag. 719, ed. Dind. so in effect Pindar, frag. thren. 8; Cic. Legg. 2. 14. 36; Plato, Gorg. p. 493 B, Phado. 69 C (the lot of the uninitiated). They were bound to make their life on earth correspond to their initiation; see Lenormant, ut sup. p. 429 sqq. In later times it was supposed actually to make them better; Sopatros in Walz, Rhet. Gr. viii. 114.

4 See Garrucci, Les Mystères du Syncretisme Phrygien dans les Catacombes Romaines de Prætextat, Paris, 1854.

also had an initiation: they also aimed at a pure religion. The condition of entrance was: "Let no one enter the most venerable assembly of the association unless he be pure and pious and good." Nor was it left to the individual conscience: a man had to be tested and examined by the officers. But the main element in the association was not so much the initiation as the sacrifice and the common meal which followed it. The offerings were brought by individuals and offered in common: they were offered upon what is sometimes spoken. of as the "holy table." They were distributed by the servants (the deacons), and the offerer shared with the rest in the distribution. In one association, at Xanthos in Lycia, of which the rules remain on an inscription, the offerer had the right to half of what he had brought. The feast which followed was an effort after real fellowship.2 There was in it, as there is in Christian times, a sense of communion with one another in a communion with God.

During the earliest centuries of Christianity, the mysteries, and the religious societies which were akin to the mysteries,3 existed on an enormous scale throughout the eastern part of the Empire. There were elements in some of them from which Christianity recoiled, and against which the Christian Apologists use the language

1 There was a further and larger process before a man was réelos. Tert. adv. Valent. c. 1, says that it took five years to become Téλeios.

2 The most elaborate account is that of the Arval feast at Rome: cf. Henzen, Acta fratrum Arvalium.

3 μúoraι is used of members of a religious association at Teos (Inscr. in Bullet. de Corresp. Hellénique, 1880, p. 164), and of the Roman Monarchians in Epiph. 55. 8; cf. Harnack, Dogm. 628.

of strong invective.1 But, on the other hand, the majority of them had the same aims as Christianity itself—the aim of worshipping a pure God, the aim of living a pure life, and the aim of cultivating the spirit of brotherhood.2 They were part of a great religious revival which distinguishes the age.3

B. THE MYSTERIES AND THE CHURCH.

It was inevitable when a new group of associations came to exist side by side with a large existing body of associations, from which it was continually detaching members, introducing them into its own midst with the practices of their original societies impressed upon their minds, that this new group should tend to assimilate, with the assimilation of their members, some of the elements of these existing groups. This is what we

1 Clem. Alex. Protrep. 2; Hippol. 1, procm. Cf. Philo, de sacrif. 12 (ii. 260), τί γὰρ εἰ καλὰ ταῦτ ̓ ἐστὶν ὦ μύσται κ. τ. λ.

2 They also had the same sanction—the fear of future punishments, cf. Celsus in Orig. 8. 48. Origen does not controvert this statement, but appeals to the greater moral effect of Christianity as an argument for its truth. They possibly also communicated divine knowledge. There is an inscription of Dionysiac artists at Nysa, of the time of the Antonines, in honour of one who was eolóyos of the temples at Pergamos, as θαυμαστὸν θεολόγον and τῶν ἀπορρήτων μύστην. Bull. de Corr. Hellén. 1885, p. 124, 1. 4; cf. Porphyry in Eusebius, Præp. Ev. 5. 14.

3 This revival had many forms, cf. Harnack, Dogm. p. 101.

4 Similar practices existed in the Church and in the new religions which were growing up. Justin Martyr speaks of the way in which, under the inspiration of demons, the supper had been imitated in the Mithraic mysteries: ὅπερ καὶ ἐν τοῖς τοῦ Μίθρα μυστηρίοις παρέδωκαν γίνεσθαι μιμησάμενοι οἱ πονηροί δαίμονες: Αpol. 1. 66. Tertullian points to the fact as an instance of the power of the devil (de præsc.

find to have been in fact the case. It is possible that they made the Christian associations more secret than before. Up to a certain time there is no evidence that Christianity had any secrets. It was preached openly to the world. It guarded worship by imposing a moral bar to admission. But its rites were simple and its teaching was public. After a certain time all is changed: mysteries have arisen in the once open and easily accessible faith, and there are doctrines which must not be declared in the hearing of the uninitiated.1 But the in

hær. 40): "qui ipsas quoque res sacramentorum divinorum idolorum mysteriis æmulatur." He specifies, inter alia, "expositionem delictorum de lavacro repromittit. . . . celebrat et panis oblationem." Celsus, too, speaks of the μvorýpia and the teλeTaì of Mithras and others: Orig. c. Cels. 6. 22.

1 The objection which Celsus makes (c. Cels. 1. 1; Keim, p. 3) to the secrecy of the Christian associations would hardly have held good in the apostolic age. Origen admits (c. Cels. 1. 7) that there are exoteric and esoteric doctrines in Christianity, and justifies it by (1) the philosophies, (2) the mysteries. On the rise of this conception of Christian teaching as something to be hidden from the mass, cf. the Valentinians in Tert. c. Valent. 1, where there is a direct parallel drawn between them and the mysteries: also the distinction of men into two classes— πνευματικοὶ and ψυχικοὶ οι ὑλικοίamong the Gnostics: Harn. Dogm. 222, cf. Hipp. 1, proœm, p. 4, who condemns và ảπóρρητα μvστýρia of the heretics, adding, καὶ τότε δοκιμάσαντες δέσμιον εἶναι τῆς ἁμαρτίας μυοῦσι τὸ τέλειον τῶν κακῶν παραδιδόντες, ὅρκοις δήσαντες μήτε ἐξειπεῖν μήτε τῷ τυχόντι μεταδοῦναι κ.τ.λ. Yet this very secrecy was naturalized in the Church. Cf. Cyril Hier. Catech. vi. 30; Aug. in Psalm ciii., Hom. xcvi. in Joan.; Theodoret, Quæst. xv. in Num., and Dial. ii. (Inconfusus); Chry. Hom. xix. in Matt. Sozomen's (1. 20. 3) reason for not giving the Nicene Creed is significant alike as regards motive and language: εὐσεβῶν δὲ φίλων καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐπιστημόνων, οἷα δὲ μύσταις καὶ μυσταγωγοῖς μόνοις δέον τάδε λέγειν καὶ ἀκούειν ὑφηγουμένων, ἐπήνεσα τὴν βουλήν· οὐ γὰρ ἀπεικὸς καὶ τῶν ἀμυήτων τινὰς τῇδε τῇ βίβλῳ ἐντυχεῖν.

fluence of the mysteries, and of the religious cults which were analogous to the mysteries, was not simply general; they modified in some important respects the Christian sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist-the practice, that is, of admission to the society by a symbolical purification, and the practice of expressing membership of the society by a common meal. I will ask you to consider first Baptism, and secondly the Lord's Supper, each in its simplest form, and then I will attempt to show how the elements which are found in the later and not in the earlier form, are elements which are found outside Christianity in the institutions of which I have spoken.

1. Baptism. In the earliest times, (1) baptism followed at once upon conversion; (2) the ritual was of the simplest kind, nor does it appear that it needed any special minister.

The first point is shown by the Acts of the Apostles; the men who repented at Pentecost, those who believed when Philip preached in Samaria, the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, Lydia, the jailor at Philippi, the converts at Corinth and Ephesus, were baptized as soon as they were known to recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah.1 The second point is also shown by the Acts. It was a baptism of water.

A later, though still very early stage, with significant modifications, is seen in the "Teaching of the Apostles:"2 (1) no special minister of baptism is specified, the vague "he that baptizeth" (ó ẞaπтí(wv) seeming to exclude a

1 Acts ii. 38, 41; viii. 12, 13, 36, 38; x. 47, 48; xvi. 15, 33; xviii. 8; xix. 5.

2 c. 7.