A. The Greek Mysteries and related Cults.

Side by side in Greece with the religion which was openly professed and with the religious rites which were practised in the temples, not in antagonism to them, but intensifying their better elements and elaborating their ritual, were the splendid rites which were known as the Mysteries. Side by side also with the great political communities, and sheltered within them by the common law and drawn together by a stronger than political brotherhood, were innumerable associations for the practice of the new forms of worship which came in with foreign commerce, and for the expression in a common worship of the religious feelings which the public religion did not satisfy. These associations were known as θίασοι, ἔρανοι or ὀργεῶνες.

I will speak first of the mysteries, and then of the associations for the practice of other cults.

1. The mysteries were probably the survival of the oldest religions of the Greek races and of the races which preceded them. They were the worship not of the gods of the sky, Zeus and Apollo and Athené, but of the gods of the earth and the under-world, the gods of the productive forces of nature and of death.[595]

The most important of them were celebrated at Eleusis, near Athens, and the scattered information which exists about them has been made more impressive and more intelligible to us by excavations, which have brought to light large remains of the great temple—the largest in Greece—in which they were celebrated. It had been a cult common to the Ionian tribes, probably borrowed from the earlier races among whom they had settled. It was originally the cult of the powers which produce the harvest, conceived as a triad of divinities—a god and two goddesses, Pluto, Demeter and Koré, of whom the latter became so dominant in the worship, that the god almost disappeared from view, and was replaced by a divinity, Iacchus, who had no place in the original myth.[596] Its chief elements were the initiation, the sacrifice, and the scenic representation of the great facts of natural life and human life, of which the histories of the gods were themselves symbols.[597]

(i.) The main underlying conception of initiation was, that there were elements in human life from which the candidate must purify himself before he could be fit to approach God. There was a distinction between those who were not purified, and those who, in consequence of being purified, were admitted to a diviner life and to the hope of a resurrection. The creation of this distinction is itself remarkable. The race of mankind was lifted on to a higher plane when it came to be taught that only the pure in heart can see God. The rites of Eleusis were originally confined to the inhabitants of Attica: but they came in time to be open to all Greeks, later to all Romans, and were open to women as well as to men.[598] The bar at the entrance came to be only a moral bar.

The whole ceremonial began with a solemn proclamation: “Let no one enter whose hands are not clean and whose tongue is not prudent.” In other mysteries it was: “He only may enter who is pure from all defilement, and whose soul is conscious of no wrong, and who has lived well and justly.”[599]

The proclamation was probably accompanied by some words or sights of terror. When Nero went to Eleusis and thought at first of being initiated, he was deterred by it. Here is another instance of exclusion, which is not less important in its bearing upon Christian rites. Apollonius of Tyana was excluded because he was a magician (γόης) and not pure in respect of τὰ δαιμόνια—he had intercourse with other divinities than those of the mysteries, and practised magical rites.[600]

We learn something from the parody of the mysteries in Lucian’s romance of the pseudo-prophet Alexander. In it Alexander institutes a celebration of mysteries and torchlights and sacred shows, which go on for three successive days. On the first there is a proclamation of a similar kind to that at Athens. “If any Atheist or Christian or Epicurean has come as a spy upon the festival, let him flee; let the initiation of those who believe in the god go on successfully.” Then forthwith at the very beginning a chasing away takes place. The prophet himself sets the example, saying, “Christians, away!” and the whole crowd responds, “Epicureans, away!” Then the show begins—the birth of Apollo, the marriage of Coronis, the coming of Æsculapius, are represented; the ceremonies proceed through several days in imitation of the mysteries and in glorification of Alexander.[601]

The proclamation was thus intended to exclude notorious sinners from the first or initial ceremonial.[602] The rest was thrown upon a man’s own conscience. He was asked to confess his sins, or at least to confess the greatest crime that he had ever committed. “To whom am I to confess it?” said Lysander to the mystagogoi who were conducting him. “To the gods.” “Then if you will go away,” said he, “I will tell them.”

Confession was followed by a kind of baptism.[603] The candidates for initiation bathed in the pure waters of the sea. The manner of bathing and the number of immersions varied with the degree of guilt which they had confessed. They came from the bath new men. It was a κάθαρσις, a λουτρὸν, a laver of regeneration. They had to practise certain forms of abstinence: they had to fast; and when they ate they had to abstain from certain kinds of food.[604]

(ii.) The purification was followed by a sacrifice—which was known as σωτήρια—a sacrifice of salvation: and in addition to the great public sacrifice, each of the candidates for initiation sacrificed a pig for himself.[605] Then there was an interval of two days before the more solemn sacrifices and shows began. They began with a great procession—each of those who were to be initiated carrying a long lighted torch, and singing loud pæans in honour of the god.[606] It set out from Athens at sunrise and reached Eleusis at night. The next day there was another great sacrifice. Then followed three days and nights in which the initiated shared the mourning of Demeter for her daughter, and broke their fast only by drinking the mystic κυκεὼν—a drink of flour and water and pounded mint, and by eating the sacred cakes.[607]

(iii.) And at night there were the mystic plays: the scenic representation, the drama in symbol and for sight. Their torches were extinguished: they stood outside the temple in the silence and the darkness. The doors opened—there was a blaze of light—and before them was acted the drama of Demeter and Koré—the loss of the daughter, the wanderings of the mother, the birth of the child. It was a symbol of the earth passing through its yearly periods. It was the poetry of Nature. It was the drama which is acted every year, of summer and winter and spring. Winter by winter the fruits and flowers and grain die down into the darkness, and spring after spring they come forth again to new life. Winter after winter the sorrowing earth is seeking for her lost child; the hopes of men look forward to the new blossoming of spring.

It was a drama also of human life. It was the poetry of the hope of a world to come. Death gave place to life. It was a purgatio animæ, by which the soul might be fit for the presence of God. Those who had been baptized and initiated were lifted into a new life. Death had no terrors for them. The blaze of light after darkness, the symbolic scenery of the life of the gods, were a foreshadowing of the life to come.[608]

There is a passage in Plutarch which so clearly shows this, that I will quote it.[609]

There was probably no dogmatic teaching—there were possibly no words spoken—it was all an acted parable.[610] But it was all kept in silence. There was an awful individuality about it. They saw the sight in common, but they saw it each man for himself. It was his personal communion with the divine life. The glamour and the glory of it were gone when it was published to all the world.[611] The effect of it was conceived to be a change both of character and of relation to the gods. The initiated were by virtue of their initiation made partakers of a life to come. “Thrice happy they who go to the world below having seen these mysteries: to them alone is life there, to all others is misery.”[612]

2. In time, however, new myths and new forms of worship were added. It is not easy to draw a definite line between the mysteries, strictly so called, and the forms of worship which went on side by side with them. Not only are they sometimes spoken of in common as mysteries, but there is a remarkable syncretist painting in a non-Christian catacomb at Rome, in which the elements of the Greek mysteries of Demeter are blended with those of Sabazius and Mithra, in a way which shows that the worship was blended also.[613] These forms of worship also had an initiation: they also aimed at a pure religion. The condition of entrance was: “Let no one enter the most venerable assembly of the association unless he be pure and pious and good.” Nor was it left to the individual conscience: a man had to be tested and examined by the officers.[614] But the main element in the association was not so much the initiation as the sacrifice and the common meal which followed it. The offerings were brought by individuals and offered in common: they were offered upon what is sometimes spoken of as the “holy table.” They were distributed by the servants (the deacons), and the offerer shared with the rest in the distribution. In one association, at Xanthos in Lycia, of which the rules remain on an inscription, the offerer had the right to half of what he had brought. The feast which followed was an effort after real fellowship.[615] There was in it, as there is in Christian times, a sense of communion with one another in a communion with God.

During the earliest centuries of Christianity, the mysteries, and the religious societies which were akin to the mysteries,[616] existed on an enormous scale throughout the eastern part of the Empire. There were elements in some of them from which Christianity recoiled, and against which the Christian Apologists use the language of strong invective.[617] But, on the other hand, the majority of them had the same aims as Christianity itself—the aim of worshipping a pure God, the aim of living a pure life, and the aim of cultivating the spirit of brotherhood.[618] They were part of a great religious revival which distinguishes the age.[619]

B. The Mysteries and the Church.

It was inevitable when a new group of associations came to exist side by side with a large existing body of associations, from which it was continually detaching members, introducing them into its own midst with the practices of their original societies impressed upon their minds, that this new group should tend to assimilate, with the assimilation of their members, some of the elements of these existing groups.[620] This is what we find to have been in fact the case. It is possible that they made the Christian associations more secret than before. Up to a certain time there is no evidence that Christianity had any secrets. It was preached openly to the world. It guarded worship by imposing a moral bar to admission. But its rites were simple and its teaching was public. After a certain time all is changed: mysteries have arisen in the once open and easily accessible faith, and there are doctrines which must not be declared in the hearing of the uninitiated.[621] But the influence of the mysteries, and of the religious cults which were analogous to the mysteries, was not simply general; they modified in some important respects the Christian sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist—the practice, that is, of admission to the society by a symbolical purification, and the practice of expressing membership of the society by a common meal. I will ask you to consider first Baptism, and secondly the Lord’s Supper, each in its simplest form, and then I will attempt to show how the elements which are found in the later and not in the earlier form, are elements which are found outside Christianity in the institutions of which I have spoken.

1. Baptism. In the earliest times, (1) baptism followed at once upon conversion; (2) the ritual was of the simplest kind, nor does it appear that it needed any special minister.

The first point is shown by the Acts of the Apostles; the men who repented at Pentecost, those who believed when Philip preached in Samaria, the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, Lydia, the jailor at Philippi, the converts at Corinth and Ephesus, were baptized as soon as they were known to recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah.[622] The second point is also shown by the Acts. It was a baptism of water.

A later, though still very early stage, with significant modifications, is seen in the “Teaching of the Apostles:”[623] (1) no special minister of baptism is specified, the vague “he that baptizeth” (ὁ βαπτίζων) seeming to exclude a limitation of it to an officer; (2) the only element that is specified is water; (3) previous instruction is implied, but there is no period of catechumenate defined; (4) a fast is enjoined before baptism.

These were the simple elements of early Christian baptism. When it emerges after a period of obscurity—like a river which flows under the sand—the enormous changes of later times have already begun.

(i.) The first point of change is the change of name.

(a) So early as the time of Justin Martyr we find a name given to baptism which comes straight from the Greek mysteries—the name “enlightenment” (φωτισμός, φωτίζεσθαι).[624] It came to be the constant technical term.[625]

(b) The name “seal” (σφραγίς), which also came both from the mysteries[626] and from some forms of foreign cult, was used partly of those who had passed the tests and who were “consignati,” as Tertullian calls them,[627] partly of those who were actually sealed upon the forehead in sign of a new ownership.[628]

(c) The term μυστήριον is applied to baptism,[629] and with it comes a whole series of technical terms unknown to the Apostolic Church, but well known to the mysteries, and explicable only through ideas and usages peculiar to them. Thus we have words expressive either of the rite or act of initiation, like μύησις,[630] τελετή,[631] τελείωσις,[632] μυσταγωγία;[633] of the agent or minister, like μυσταγωγός;[634] of the subject, like μυσταγωγούμενος,[635] μεμυημένος, μυηθείς, or, with reference to the unbaptized, ἀμύητος.[636] In this terminology we can more easily trace the influence of the mysteries than of the New Testament.[637]

(ii.) The second point is the change of time, which involves a change of conception. (a) Instead of baptism being given immediately upon conversion, it came to be in all cases postponed by a long period of preparation, and in some cases deferred until the end of life.[638] (b) The Christians were separated into two classes, those who had and those who had not been baptized. Tertullian regards it as a mark of heretics that they have not this distinction: who among them is a catechumen, who a believer, is uncertain: they are no sooner hearers than they “join in the prayers;” and “their catechumens are perfect before they are fully instructed (edocti).”[639] And Basil gives the custom of the mysteries as a reason for the absence of the catechumens from the service.[640] (c) As if to show conclusively that the change was due to the influence of the mysteries, baptized persons were, as we have seen, distinguished from unbaptized by the very term which was in use for the similar distinction in regard to the mysteries—initiated and uninitiated, and the minister is μυσταγωγός, and the persons being baptized are μυσταγωγούμενοι. I dwell upon these broad features, and especially on the transference of names, because it is necessary to show that the relation of the mysteries to the sacrament was not merely a curious coincidence; and what I have said as to the change of name and the change of conception, might be largely supplemented by evidence of parallelism in the benefits which were conceived to attach to the one and the other. There are many slighter indications serving to supplement what has been already adduced.

(α) As those who were admitted to the inner sights of the mysteries had a formula or pass-word (σύμβολον or σύνθημα), so the catechumens had a formula which was only entrusted to them in the last days of their catechumenate—the baptismal formula itself and the Lord’s Prayer.[641] In the Western rites the traditio symboli occupies an important place in the whole ceremony. There was a special rite for it. It took place a week or ten days before the great office of Baptism on Easter-eve. Otherwise the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed were kept secret and kept so as mysteries; and to the present day the technical name for a creed is σύμβολον or pass-word.

(β) Sometimes the baptized received the communion at once after baptism, just as those who had been initiated at Eleusis proceeded at once—after a day’s fast—to drink of the mystic κυκεὼν and to eat of the sacred cakes.

(γ) The baptized were sometimes crowned with a garland, as the initiated wore a mystic crown at Eleusis. The usage was local, but lasted at Alexandria until modern times. It is mentioned by Vansleb.[642]

(δ) Just as the divinities watched the initiation from out of the blaze of light, so Chrysostom pictures Christian baptism in the blaze of Easter-eve;[643] and Cyril describes the white-robed band of the baptized approaching the doors of the church where the lights turned darkness into day.

(ε) Baptism was administered, not at any place or time, but only in the great churches, and only as a rule once a year—on Easter-eve, though Pentecost was also a recognized season. The primitive “See here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized?” passed into a ritual which at every turn recalls the ritual of the mysteries. I will abridge the account which is given of the practice at Rome so late as the ninth century.[644] Preparation went on through the greater part of Lent. The candidates were examined and tested: they fasted: they received the secret symbols, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. On Easter-eve, as the day declined towards afternoon, they assembled in the church of St. John Lateran. The rites of exorcism and renunciation were gone through in solemn form, and the rituals survive. The Pope and his priests come forth in their sacred vestments, with lights carried in front of them, which the Pope then blesses: there is a reading of lessons and a singing of psalms. And then, while they chant a litany, there is a procession to the great bath of baptism, and the water is blessed. The baptized come forth from the water, are signed with the cross, and are presented to the Pope one by one, who vests them in a white robe and signs their foreheads again with the cross. They are arranged in a great circle, and each of them carries a light. Then a vast array of lights is kindled; the blaze of them, says a Greek Father, makes night continuous with dawn. It is the beginning of a new life. The mass is celebrated—the mystic offering on the Cross is represented in figure; but for the newly baptized the chalice is filled, not with wine, but with milk and honey, that they may understand, says an old writer, that they have entered already upon the promised land. And there was one more symbolical rite in that early Easter sacrament, the mention of which is often suppressed—a lamb was offered on the altar—afterwards cakes in the shape of a lamb.[645] It was simply the ritual which we have seen already in the mysteries. The purified crowd at Eleusis saw a blaze of light, and in the light were represented in symbol life and death and resurrection.

2. Baptism had felt the spell of the Greek ritual: not less so had the Lord’s Supper. Its elements in the earliest times may be gathered altogether apart from the passages of the New Testament, upon which, however clearly we may feel, no sensible man will found an argument, and which, taken by themselves, possibly admit of more than one meaning.

The extra-biblical accounts are:

(1) “The Teaching of the Apostles;”[646] which implies:

(a) Thanksgiving for the wine. “We thank Thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Christ Thy Servant. To Thee be glory for ever.”

(b) Thanksgiving for the broken bread. “We thank Thee, our Father, for the life which Thou hast made known to us through Jesus Thy Servant. To Thee be glory for ever.”

After the thanksgiving they ate and drank: none could eat or drink until he had been baptized into the name of the Lord. After the partaking there was another thanksgiving and a prayer of supplication.

(2) There is a fragmentary account which has been singularly overlooked, in the Apostolical Constitutions,[647] which carries us one stage further. After the reading and the teaching, the deacon made a proclamation which vividly recalls the proclamation at the beginning of the Mysteries. “Is there any one who has a quarrel with any? Is there any one with bad feeling” (ἐν ὑποκρίσει)?

(3) The next stage is found in the same book of the Apostolical Constitutions.[648] The advance consists in the fact that the catechumens and penitents go out, just as those who were not yet initiated and those who were impure were excluded from the Greek Mysteries.

This marked separation of the catechumens and the baptized, which was possibly strengthened by the philosophic distinction between οἱ προκόπτοντες and οἱ τέλειοι, lasted until, under influences which it would be beyond our present purpose to discuss, the prevalence of infant baptism caused the distinction no longer to exist.[649]

(4) In a later stage there is a mention of the holy table as an altar, and of the offerings placed upon the table of which the faithful partook, as mysteries.[650]

(a) The conception of the table as an altar is later than the middle of the second century.[651] It is used in the Apostolic Fathers of the Jewish altar. It is used by Ignatius in a Christian sense, but always metaphorically.[652] It may be noted that though the Apostolic Constitutions (Bk. ii.) speak of a θυσία, they do not speak of a θυσιαστήριον.[653] This use of θυσιαστήριον is probably not earlier than Eusebius.[654]

(b) The conception of the elements as μυστήρια is even later;[655] but once established, it became permanent, like the Latin term “sacramentum.”

(5) The conception of a priest—into which I will not now enter—was certainly strengthened by the mysteries and associations.

The full development or translation of the idea is found in the great mystical writer of the end of the fifth century, in whom every Christian ordinance is expressed in terms which are applicable only to the mysteries. The extreme tendency which he shows is perhaps personal to him; but he was in sympathy with his time, and his influence on the Church of the after-time must count for a large factor in the history of Christian thought. There are few Catholic treatises on the Eucharist and few Catholic manuals of devotion into which his conceptions do not enter.[656]

I will here quote his description of the Communion itself: “All the other initiations are incomplete without this. The consummation and crown of all the rest is the participation of him who is initiated in the thearchic mysteries. For though it be the common characteristic of all the hierarchic acts to make the initiated partakers of the divine light, yet this alone imparted to me the vision through whose mystic light, as it were, I am guided to the contemplation (ἐποψίαν) of the other sacred things.” The ritual is then described. The sacred bread and the cup of blessing are placed upon the altar. “Then the sacred hierarch (ἱεράρχης) initiates the sacred prayer and announces to all the holy peace: and after all have saluted each other, the mystic recital of the sacred lists is completed. The hierarch and the priests wash their hands in water; he stands in the midst of the divine altar, and around him stand the priests and the chosen ministers. The hierarch sings the praises of the divine working and consecrates the most divine mysteries, (ἱερουργεῖ τὰ θειότατα), and by means of the symbols which are sacredly set forth, he brings into open vision the things of which he sings the praises. And when he has shown the gifts of the divine working, he himself comes into a sacred communion with them, and then invites the rest. And having both partaken and given to the others a share in the thearchic communion, he ends with a sacred thanksgiving; and while the people bend over what are divine symbols only, he himself, always by the thearchic spirit, is led in a priestly manner, in purity of his godlike frame of mind (ἐν καθαρότητι τῆς θεοειδοῦς ἕξεως), through blessed and spiritual contemplation, to the holy realities of the mysteries.”[657]

Once again I must point out that the elements—the conceptions which he has added to the primitive practices—are identical with those in the mysteries. The tendency which he represented grew: the Eucharistic sacrifice came in the East to be celebrated behind closed doors: the breaking of bread from house to house was changed into so awful a mystery that none but the hierophant himself might see it. The idea of prayer and thought as offerings was preserved by the Neo-Platonists.

There are two minor points which, though interesting, are less certain and also less important. (a) It seems likely that the use of δίπτυχα—tablets commemorating benefactors or departed saints—was a continuation of a similar usage of the religious associations.[658] (b) The blaze of lights at mysteries may have suggested the use of lights at the Lord’s Supper.[659]

It seems fair to infer that, since there were great changes in the ritual of the sacraments, and since the new elements of these changes were identical with elements that already existed in cognate and largely diffused forms of worship, the one should be due to the other.

This inference is strengthened when we find that the Christian communities which were nearest in form and spirit to the Hellenic culture, were the first in which these elements appear, and also those in which they assumed the strongest form. Such were the Valentinians, of whom Tertullian expressly speaks in this connection.[660] We read of Simon Magus that he taught that baptism had so supreme an efficacy as to give by itself eternal life to all who were baptized. The λουτρὸν ζωῆς was expanded to its full extent, and it was even thought that to the water of baptism was added a fire which came from heaven upon all who entered into it. Some even introduced a second baptism.[661]

So also the Marcosians and some Valentinian schools believed in a baptism that was an absolute sundering of the baptized from the corruptible world and an emancipation into a perfect and eternal life. Similarly, some other schools added to the simple initiation rites of a less noble and more sensuous order.[662]

It was but the old belief in the effect of the mysteries thrown into a Christian form. So also another Gnostic school is said to have not only treated the truths of Christianity as sacred, but also to have felt about them what the initiated were supposed to feel about the mysteries—“I swear by Him who is above all, by the Good One, to keep these mysteries and to reveal them to no one;” and after that oath each seemed to feel the power of God to be upon him, as it were the pass-word of entrance into the highest mysteries.[663] As soon as the oath had been taken, he sees what no eye has seen, and hears what no ear has heard, and drinks of the living water—which is their baptism, as they think, a spring of water springing up within them to everlasting life.

Again, it is probably through the Gnostics that the period of preparation for baptism was prolonged. Tertullian says of the Valentinians that their period of probation is longer than their period of baptized life, which is precisely what happened in the Greek practice of the fourth century.

The general inference of the large influence of the Gnostics on baptism, is confirmed by the fact that another element, which certainly came through them, though its source is not certain and is more likely to have been Oriental than Greek, has maintained a permanent place in most rituals—the element of anointing. There were two customs in this matter, one more characteristic of the East, the other of the West—the anointing with (1) the oil of exorcism before baptism and after the renunciation of the devil, and (2) the oil of thanksgiving, which was used immediately after baptism, first by the presbyter and then by the bishop, who then sealed the candidate on the forehead. The very variety of the custom shows how deep and yet natural the action of the Gnostic systems, with the mystic and magic customs of the Gnostic societies or associations, had been on the practices and ceremonies of the Church.[664]

But beyond matters of practice, it is among the Gnostics that there appears for the first time an attempt to realize the change of the elements to the material body and blood of Christ. The fact that they were so regarded is found in Justin Martyr.[665] But at the same time, that the change was not vividly realized, is proved by the fact that, instead of being regarded as too awful for men to touch, the elements were taken by the communicants to their homes and carried about with them on their travels. But we read of Marcus that in his realistic conception of the Eucharistic service the white wine actually turned to the colour of blood before the eyes of the communicants.[666]

Thus the whole conception of Christian worship was changed.[667] But it was changed by the influence upon Christian worship of the contemporary worship of the mysteries and the concurrent cults. The tendency to an elaborate ceremonial which had produced the magnificence of those mysteries and cults, and which had combined with the love of a purer faith and the tendency towards fellowship, was based upon a tendency of human nature which was not crushed by Christianity. It rose to a new life, and though it lives only by a survival, it lives that new life still. In the splendid ceremonial of Eastern and Western worship, in the blaze of lights, in the separation of the central point of the rite from common view, in the procession of torch-bearers chanting their sacred hymns—there is the survival, and in some cases the galvanized survival, of what I cannot find it in my heart to call a pagan ceremonial; because though it was the expression of a less enlightened faith, yet it was offered to God from a heart that was not less earnest in its search for God and in its effort after holiness than our own.