Mystery words frequently,
and gives to the orders of the Christian ministry the names which
distinguished the officiating priests at the Mysteries. The aim of
these writers was to prove that the Church offers a mysteriosophy
which includes all the good elements of the old Mysteries without
their corruptions. The alliance between a Mystery-religion and
speculative Mysticism within the Church was at this time as close as
that between the Neoplatonic philosophy and the revived pagan Mystery
cults. But when we try to determine the amount of direct _influence_
exercised by the later paganism on Christian usages and thought, we
are baffled both by the loss of documents, and by the extreme
difficulty of tracing the pedigree of religious ideas and customs. I
shall here content myself with calling attention to certain features
which were common to the Greek Mysteries and to Alexandrian
Christianity, and which may perhaps claim to be in part a legacy of
the old religion to the new. My object is not at all to throw
discredit upon modes of thought which may have been unfamiliar to
Palestinian Jews. A doctrine or custom is not necessarily un-Christian
because it is "Greek" or "pagan." I know of no stranger perversity
than for men who rest the whole weight of their religion upon
"history," to suppose that our Lord meant to raise an universal
religion on a purely Jewish basis.

The Greek Mysteries were perhaps survivals of an old-world ritual,
based on a primitive kind of Nature-Mysticism. The "public Mysteries,"
of which the festival at Eleusis was the most important, were so
called because the State admitted strangers by initiation to what was
originally a national cult. (There were also private Mysteries,
conducted for profit by itinerant priests [Greek: agyrtai] from the
East, who as a class bore no good reputation.) The main features of
the ritual at Eleusis are known. The festival began at Athens, where
the _mystae_ collected, and, after a fast of several days, were
"driven" to the sea, or to two salt lakes on the road to Eleusis, for
a purifying bath. This kind of baptism washed away the stains of their
former sins, the worst of which they were obliged to confess before
being admitted to the Mysteries. Then, after sacrifices had been
offered, the company went in procession to Eleusis, where
Mystery-plays were performed in a great hall, large enough to hold
thousands of people, and the votaries were allowed to handle certain
s