his own accomplishment of his mission, or the introduction of his disciples into the Mysteries of his spiritual kingdom: terms, which were used just in the same sense by the Pagans to describe both the labours of the great father himself and the initiation of his votaries into the sacred Orgies *

"Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures today "and tomorrow, and the THIRD DAY I shall be PERFECTED ."

Here days are mystically put for years: and, as the great father in the Orgies was thought to rise from the dead or to be initiatively perfected on the third day; so Christ, referring by way of illustration to those rites, says, that he also shall be perfected or initiated on the third day by really springing from the tomb.

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt

LOVE thy NEIGHBOUR and HATE thine ENEMY: "but I say unto you, Love your enemies. Be PERFECT, even as your Father which is in heaven is PERFECT."

is and

* The words used by our Lord are the adjective the verb τελειω. Among the pagan Greeks τα τελη denote the Mysteries themselves; TEλew signifies to celebrate the Mysteries; τελειοω, to initiate a person into the Mysteries: τελείωσίς; an initiation; τελειωλης, an initiator or a hierophant; τελεφτικος, appertaining to the Mysteries; TEXσmpiov, a place where persons are initiated; Then, the rite of initiation; aplieλns, one recently initiated; altλsolos, one who has not been initiated or a profane person; ispoleλcolns, a hierophant.

In this passage, after referring to the famous pagan rule of contraries, our Lord naturally goes on to allude to the pagan Mysteries. With such reference, he charges his audience, instead of seeking that vain initiative perfection by which the aspirants professed to become assimilated to the initiative perfection of the great father; he charges his audience, rather to court a solid perfection, even that perfection which characterizes their Father which is in heaven.

"I in them, and thou in me, that they may be "made PERFECT IN ONE. O righteous Father, the "world hath not KNOWN thee; but I have DECLARED unto these thy name

When the aspirant was initiated or perfected, he claimed to know the great father as an epopt and to be henceforth even identified with him: our Lord promises somewhat similar privileges, in a much higher sense, to those who should be perfected or initiated into his divine religion.

"Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be PERFECT,

go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor. "But, when the young man heard that saying, he "went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. "Then said Jesus unto his disciples, It is easier for

a camel to go through THE EYE OF A NEEDLE, "than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of "God t."

Our Lord, having by way of trial unsuccessfully

* John xvii. 23, 25, 26.

+ Matt. xix. 21, 22, 23, 24. proposed

proposed to a rich man a very painful test of his unwillingness to be perfected or initiated into the Mysteries of Christianity, remarks, after his departure, that it is easier for a camel to force its body through the eye of a needle than for an opulent person to force himself through the narrow gate which leads to heaven. Much has been said by different commentators respecting this curious passage: but our Saviour's use of the mystical word PERFECT in its immediate context may perhaps lead us to the right understanding of it. We are not to imagine, that it sets forth any impossibility of a rich man's entering into the kingdom of God: it only intimates, that his admission would cost him as vehement an effort of selfdenial, as a protrusion of the aspirant's body through a sacred orifice in a rock was attended with considerable pain and labour and difficulty. Such narrow rocky passages have been used for the purpose of initiation in every part of the world from Hindostan to Britain and we find them alluded to by Isaiah in close connection with the idolatrous worship of the ancient Israelites *. Now there is some reason to suppose, that an orifice of this description, which

"The idols he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go "into THE HOLES OF THE ROCKS and into the (Mithratic) "CAVES of the earth for fear of the Lord. In that day a man "shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold to the moles "and to the bats, to go into THE CLEFTS OF THE ROCKS.' Isaiah ii. 18, 19, 20, 21. They shall vainly fly for refuge to those sacred caverns and orifices, which had once been so necessary for the due administration of their superstitious rites.

was threaded (as it were) by the aspirants who squeezed themselves through it, was occasionally denominated the needle's eye*. To one of these well known apertures in the rocky vicinity of Jerusalem, perhaps in the environs of the mount of Olives once desecrated to the Mysteries of the Phenician great father and mother †, I think it probable that Christ referred. His disciples naturally expressed their surprize at the mention of so large an animal as a camel passing through such an orifice: but he plainly intimates to them, that he spoke only proverbially and that his words were not to be taken in their strict literal import. "With men this is im"possible: but with God all things are possible."

2. Authorized by the practice of his divine Master, and writing in a special manner to the gentiles, St. Paul seems to delight (as it were) in illustrating what he treats of by the same allusion, so perpetual are his references to the ancient pagan Mysteries. After what has been already said, little more will be necessary than simply to adduce the passages.

(1.) Let us first notice those, in which the word MYSTERY itself is used by him.

The uninitiated were said to be BLINDED with

• One of these orifices in our own country bears the name of St. Winifred's needle. The old pagan appellation seems to have been retained, though all property in the mystic orifice was made over to a Popish saint. Instances of such transfers are far from being uncommon. St. Wilfrid likewise has his needle in Ripon minster.

+ See 2 Kings xxiii, 13.

vice and error, while the initiated were styled EPOPTÆ and AUTO PTE or those who clearly DISCERNED things as they really were.

"For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this MYSTERY, lest ye should be wise "in your own conceits; that BLINDNESS in part is "happened to Israel *."

The doctrines taught in the Mysteries were kept SECRET from the profane, and REVEALED only to the initiated.

"Now to him that is of power to stablish you ac"cording to my Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the REVELATION of the

MYSTERY, which was kept SECRET since the world began, but now is made MANIFEST; to God only WISE be glory through Jesus Christ for ever +"My speech and my preaching was not with en

ticing words of man's WISDOM, but in demonstra"tion of the Spirit and of power; that your faith

"should not stand in the wISDOM of men, but in "the power of God. Howbeit we speak wISDOM " among them that are PERFECT" (or initiated into the truths of the Gospel); " yet not the WISDOM of "the world" (not the pretended wisdom of the Orgies) "nor of the princes of this world that come to "nought, But we speak the wISDOM of God in a

MYSTERY, even the HIDDEN WISDOM which God "ordained before the world unto our glory; which "none of the princes of this world KNEW -The

* Rom. xi. 25. † Rom. xvi. 25, 26, 27. ‡ 1 Corin. ii. 4–8, "f MYSTERY,