ured to those who were initiated.

It is useless to deny that St. Paul regarded Christianity as, at least
on one side, a mystery-religion. Why else should he have used a number
of technical terms which his readers would recognise at once as
belonging to the mysteries? Why else should he repeatedly use the word
'mystery' itself, applying it to doctrines distinctive of Christianity,
such as the resurrection with a 'spiritual body,' the relation of the
Jewish people to God, and, above all, the mystical union between Christ
and Christians? The great' mystery' is 'Christ in you, the hope of
glory' (Col i. 27). It was as a mystery-religion that Europe accepted
Christianity. Just as the Jewish Christians took with them the whole
framework of apocalyptic Messianism, and set the figure of Jesus within
it, so the Greeks took with them the whole scheme of the mysteries, with
their sacraments, their purifications and fasts, their idea of a
mystical brotherhood, and their doctrine of 'salvation' (soterhia is
essentially a mystery word) through membership in a divine society,
worshipping Christ as the patronal deity of their mysteries.

Historically, this type of Christianity was the origin of Catholicism,
both Western and Eastern; though it is only recently that this character
of the Pauline churches has been recognised. And students of the New
Testament have not yet realised the importance of the fact that St.
Paul, who was ready to fight to the death against the Judaising of
Christianity, was willing to take the first step, and a long one,
towards the Paganising of it. It does not appear that his personal
religion was of this type. He speaks with contempt of some doctrines and
practices of the Pagan mysteries, and will allow no _rapprochement_ with
what he regards as devil-worship. In this he remains a pure Hebrew. But
he does not appear to see any danger in allowing his Hellenistic
churches to assimilate the worship of Christ to the honours paid to the
gods of the mysteries, and to set their whole religion in this
framework, provided only that they have no part nor lot with those who
sit at 'the table of demons'--the sacramental love-feasts of the heathen
mysteries. The dangers which he does see, and against which he issues
warnings, are, besides Judaism, antinomianism and disorder on the one
hand, and dualistic asceticism on the other. He dislikes or mistrusts
'the speaking with tongues' (glossolalhia), which was the favourite