tic ethics and religion. Our
own opinion is that in some of these institutions, at one period,
higher theological views and scientific speculations were
unfolded, but in others never. Still, it is extremely difficult to
prove any thing on this part of the general subject: there is much
that is plausible to be said on both sides of the question.
Another query to be noticed in passing is in regard to the degree
of exclusiveness and concealment really attached to the form of
initiation. Lobeck, in his celebrated work, "Aglaophamus," borne
away by a theory, assumes the extravagant position that the
Eleusinian Mysteries were almost freely open to all.1 His error
seems to lie in not distinguishing sufficiently between the Lesser
and the Greater Mysteries, and in not separating the noisy shows
of the public festal days from the initiatory and explanatory
rites of personal admission within the mystic pale. The notorious

1 Lib. i. sects. 4, 5.

facts that strict inquiry was made into the character and fitness
of the applicant before his admission, and that many were openly
rejected, that instant death was inflicted on all who intruded
unprepared within the sacred circuits, and that death was the
penalty of divulging what happened during the celebrations, all
are inconsistent with the notion of Lobeck, and prove that the
Mysteries were hedged about with dread. Aschylus narrowly escaped
being torn in pieces upon the stage by the people on suspicion
that in his play he had given a hint of something in the
Mysteries. He delivered himself by appealing to the Areopagus, and
proving that he had never been initiated. Andocides also, a Greek
orator who lived about four hundred years before Christ, was
somewhat similarly accused, and only escaped by a strenuous
defence of himself in an oration, still extant, entitled
"Concerning the Mysteries."

A third preliminary matter is as to the moral character of the
services performed by these companies. Some held that their
characteristics were divinely pure, intellectual, exalting; others
that in abandoned pleasures they were fouler than the Stygian pit.
The Church Fathers, Clement, Irenaus, Tertullian, and the rest,
influenced by a mixture of prejudice, hatred, and horror, against
every thing connected with paganism, declared, in round terms,
that the Mysteries were unmitigated sinks of iniquity and shame,
lust, murder, and all promiscuous deviltry. Without pausing to
except or qualify