that carried Mithraism
from one end of the Roman Empire to the other; a church appears to
flourish most on the religious side when it confines itself to
religion. A more important fact was that Mithraism was a religion of
redemption. It does not appear that there was any general organization
of the Mithraic associations; each of these was local, probably small,
had its own set of officers, and managed its own affairs.[2046] It was
thus free from some of the perils that beset Christianity. It is not
improbable that some of its liturgical forms were adopted by the
Christian Church, but it seems itself not to have borrowed from the
latter. Its weakness was its semibarbarous ritual and its polytheism; it
yielded of necessity to the simpler and loftier forms of Christianity.

+1114+. The cult of Isis, in spite of its ethically high character and
its impressive ceremonies of initiation (as described by
Apuleius[2047]), did not give rise to associations like the Mithraic. It
belongs to the mysteries, but had not their organization of meetings and
ritual, had no brotherhoods (except those whose bond of union was
devotion to this cult) and no general organization embracing the Empire.
The reason for its failure in this regard appears to lie in its lack of
definiteness in certain important points: it was in a sense
monotheistic, since the goddess was called the supreme controller of the
world of external nature and of men, but its monotheism was clouded by
its connection with the old national cults and by current theological
speculations--for Apuleius, it would seem, Isis was rather a name for a
vague Power in nature than for a well-defined divine person, and
particularly it offered no clear picture of the future and no clear hope
of moral redemption, two things that were then necessary to the success
of any system that aspired to supplant the popular faiths.[2048] Such
lacks as these appear in the cult of Sarapis also, which never developed
the characteristics of a church.

+1115+. _Manichaeism._ Of the religious movements that sprang from the
contact of Christianity with the East Manichaeism was the most important
on account of its great vitality. It possessed all the elements of a
church, voluntary membership, independence of the State (it was always
persecuted by the State), and the claim to a divine revelation of
salvation. Like Buddhism, Jainism, and Christianity, it owed its origin
to a single founder. Its plan of organiz