cred meal. The Church
Fathers were aware of these similarities and sought to explain away
their resemblances with the Christian ritual by means of the theory
that the Devil had blasphemously imitated Christian rites and
doctrines. Research has shown that this theory of parody is entirely
unhistorical. The fact is, that Christianity borrowed its ritual from
the cults among which it grew up. For instance, the belief in the
death and resurrection of a savior-god was very {24} prevalent in
Tarsus, Paul's own city. The Attis mysteries were celebrated at a
season which corresponded to the end of our Lenten period and the
beginning of Easter. They were preceded by fasting and began with
lamentations, "the votaries gathering in sorrow around the bier of the
dead divinity; then followed the resurrection, and the risen god gave
hope of salvation to the mystic brotherhood, and the whole service
closed with the feast of rejoicing, the Hilaria." There can be little
doubt that this whole cycle of ideas represents a development of the
primitive ritual of eating the sacred animal or plant in spring in
order to foster the re-birth of man's necessities. From this germ
sprang reflective ideas of atonement and communion and immortality.

Along with the growth of the mysteries went the introduction of more
ethical standards of conduct. Ritual purity suggested the idea of
spiritual purity. This ethicizing of myth is very apparent in Greece.
By the time of the dramatists, moral judgments had become more severe,
and the gods were looked upon as guardians of the moral law; and yet
this view was tragically thwarted by much of the old tradition. The
savage inheritance and the later moral idealism found themselves in
conflict. The consequence was the gradual weakening of the older myths
and the welcoming of new cults.

Ethical growth is usually in large measure unconscious. Man reads
ideas into the world around him before he becomes conscious that they
are his own. His own development is thus reflected in the pantheon
with which he has peopled nature. Zeus is at first the thunderer and
the cloud-gatherer; finally he represents {25} justice and those kingly
qualities which social growth stresses. Poets and philosophers refine
away the grosser myths which shock the taste of a more advanced social
level. When we compare the conceptions of Euripides, of Plato, of
Cleanthes, of Marcus Aurelius, with the conduct of the Homeric gods, we