St. Paul is ruled by the Hebrew idea of sin as it became heightened by the life and death of Jesus. God is for him the supremely moral Person, and sin is ti'eason against His Sovereigntj'. On His Son, the Redeemer from sin, he lavishes all his loyalty and worship. Indeed. Christ becomes his intimate personal friend and Lord. For him it is Cluist to live, which is only another way of saying that Christ is his spiritual food as it is symbolized in the Supper (1 Co 10*- '"). He does not. it is true, lay inordinate emphasis on the celebration nt Baptism or the Supper (1 Co l^^-i'), but he finds 111 the common meal of love the most perfect earthly expression of the fellowship of the saints with the Head of the body. The living Christ draws the believers, who have abandoned their former pagan fellowship, into a new communion with Himself. He is the most real of all per- sons, dwelling in the hearts of a loving compan)'^ as their thought is focus.sed upon Him by the symbols of His redemption, and pledged bj' this memorial of His death to return (see Dobschiitz, PrahJeme d. apost. Zeitalters, 72, 73 ; Ramsay, Expos., Dec. li»00, Jan. 1901). Even the use by St. Paul of such words as ' mystery ' and ' to initiate' (reXeiovp), 1 Co 2«- ", 2 Co l-'--^, Ph 3^^, hardly justifies the assumption of conscious influ- ence (Heinrici, Com. [1887] zu 2 Kor. 121 ; Anrich, 112). Nor is there any more reason for discerning ' mysterj'-doctrine ' in John, for the conception of God and of true worship which rules this Gospel is unsurpassed (4--'--*), while in G** words which might be thought to have a materialistic sense are expressly said to be spirit and life. In the final discourses of Jesus the conditions for receiving the •Spirit of Christ are ethical. Those abide in Christ who show their love to Him bj' obeying His com- mand to love one another. In the First Epistle the final vision of God is promised for the world to come, but only those can know God now who love, and who have had their sins taken away through the Lamb of God who is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (1 Jn 2-, cf. Jn 1-^). ' Faith ' in Paid, ' love ' and ' knowledge,' almost convertible terms in John, are the subjective conditions for communion with God, who dwells in the individual heart attuned to the loving fellowship of the brotherhood.
It may be partially true to say that without the sacraments Christianity would not have conquered
Europe, and yet such a judgment should be quali- fied hy the fact that non-sacramental Judaism was the most effective proselytizer of aU the religions of the old world. "Widespread as the ' mystery ' cults were, the Jews became a church within the Roman Empire, exceeding other foreign worships in numbers, the attention it attracted, and the privileges it extorted from a hostile power. Philo, the only • myster\- ' philosopher of the Jews, was an isolated phenomenon (Bousset, op. cit. 78, 79).
Unquestionably, the heathen Mysteries satisfied man}' deep religious longings. The contemplation of impressive ceremonial and a Divine drama con- cealed from all but the initiated, the litany, the rhythmic music, appealed to the feeling of the wor- shipper, and swept liiiu into an attitude of mind in which he enjoyed Divine communion and received a pledge of his immortality. By means of a com- mon meal he entered into mystical union with the god, and began the process of deification through the infusion of the imperishable Divine nature. Degraded though these Mysteries often were by magic and superstition, they were felt by their purest votaries to be the guarantee of salvation here in fellowship with God and of a blessed future life (Anrich, pp. 39, 46, 47 ; Dill, 009-614). And yet Judaism was the most powerful factor in that religious world, because it satisfied more perfectly than any "my.stery' cult the more insistent ethical and spiritual needs of human nature. But Chris- tianity brought to the world a richer boon than either Judaism or the heathen Mysteries. It offered all that was best both in the Mysteries and in Judaism. By its sacraments it disclosed its • open secret' to Jew and Gentile ; and in these sacraments the believer, as one of a brotherhood of saints, was brought into perfect communion with the eternal God who had redeemed him.
The most sacred s.vmbol of this redemption, ' the core of religious worship,' was the Lord's Supper, and it remained truly symbolic until, after the first decade of the 2nd cent., the stream of Christian life, making its way through pagan soil that was satur- ated with ideas drained off from mystery practice and thought, began to grow discoloured. How far in the succeeding years there was direct imitation between Christianity and the mystery religions, or how far resemblances were due to ideas that had by a long process of religious development become almost essential to the thought of the early cen- turies, is a problem that still awaits solution. But it was the Gnostic sects that were first invaded and overcome by distinctly heathen influences. The Christian Church, with its immense reser^^e of spiritual power, performed a masterly and slow retreat from the more exalted positions of the Apostolic age (Harnack. Expansion of Christian- ity. 1. 285-299 ; Hatch, Hihhert Lectures, 283-309 ; Mayor, Clement of Alexandria, ch. iii. ; Inge, Christian JI>i.^ticism, Lect. ii. and Appendix B ; and esp. Dill and Anrich, itt supra).