On the whole, the mystery-religions exercised but a slight influence on the oldest Christianity (Clemen, Der Eirtfluss der Mysterienreligionen, p. 81). And when, after the beginning of the 3rd cent., they were in a position to exert it with any degree of potency, the Church had already substantially formed her doctrines. Similarities of terms used by both can be explained on the ground that both drew their expressions from a common stock of language, which the religious aspirations of the past had formed. St. Paul would naturally use the ordinary religious speech of his day, but the ideas expressed in it by him were not the ideas of the mystery-religions. They bore another character and breathed a ditterent spirit. In its early cere- monies and customs Christianity ga,ve no indication that it was a mystery-religion. Its Scriptures, its doctrines, even its sacraments, were open to the gaze of all. It was not until the 4th cent, that the secrecy which reminds us of that of the mystery- religions made itself conspicuous and began to be strictly enjoined on the communicant. But even then the substantial doctrines of Christianity, formed centuries before this, kept it steadj^ under pagan accumulations, and enabled it in the course of years to throw off more or less of this accre- tion. For example, the secrecy, the arcani dis- ciplhia, attached to its rites in the time of Augustine fell away and disappeared not long after his death. Christianity can hardly be called a mystery-religion even of a higher order, and they
who thus designate it have deceived themselves concerning the actual potency of the mystery- religions over it, or have forgotten the steady dominance and persistence of an inherited nature.
LlTEBATURB.— L. R. Famell, The Cults of the Greek States, 5 vols., Oxford, :S96-1909, iii. and v. ; F. Cumont, The Orirnlat Religions in Ituman Far/aniam. Chicago, 1911 ; P. Gardner, The Iteliijiuvs Experience of St. Paul, London, 1911 ; H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Relirjions, do., 1913 ; C. Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its ^on~Jewish Sources, Erig. tr., Edinburgh, 1912; J. G. Simpson, The Sacraments of the Gospel, London, 1914 ; W. M, Groton, The Christian Eucharist and the Pai/an Cults, do., 1914 ; J. Toutain, Les Cultcs paiens dans I'empire romain, 2 vols., Paris, 1907-11 ; C. A. Lobeck, Afitaophamus, Konigeberg, 1829 ; C. Clemen. Der Einjlxiss der M iisterienreligionen, Giessen, 1913 ; R. Reitzen- stein. Die hetlenistischen M usterienreligiimen, Leipzig, 1910 ; K. H. E. de Jong, Das antike Mystcrienwesen, Leiden, 1909 ; G. Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinein Einjtuss auf das Christentum, Gottingen, 1893; L. R. Farnell, art. 'M.V8tery,' in JJBr" xix. 117 ff.; L. C. Purser, artt. ' M.vs- teria* and 'Orphica.' in Smith's DGUA'^, London, 1890-91, ii. 202, 297; W. Kroll, art. 'Mysterien' in RGG iv. (1912J 686. W. M. GEOTON.
MYSTICISM.— There are definitions of mystici.sra which place the subject outside the limits of this work. Harnack says : ' Mysticism is Catholic piety in general, so far as this piety is not merely ecclesiastical obedience, that is, _/?(/e.?im/)&i<a. . . . If Protestantism is not at some time yet, so far as it means anything at all, to become entirely Mystical, it will never be possible to make Mys- ticism Protestant without flying in the face of history and Catholicism ' (History of Dogma, Eng. tr., London, 1894-99, vi. 98 il'.). E. Lehmann asserts that ' the aim of mysticism ... is and always has been quiescence and emptiness of soul, darkened consciousness, and the suspension of natural under- standing. All this eventually ends in conventual practices and the technics of the confessional' (Mysticism in Heathendom and Christendom, London, 1910, p. 235). But Christian mysticism cannot be identified with either its scholastic or its ecclesiastical forms ; even Lehmann, in his sym- pathetic account of Santa Teresa, ' the greatest saint of mysticism,' significantly describes her thoughts as ' almost Protestant. . . . Union with God did not mean union in a pantheistic sense, but rather a transformation of the soul through love, leading up to a condition of perfect acquiescence to the will of God ' (op. cit. p. 234). Harnack also acknowledges that ' that Mysticism cannot cer- tainly be Ijanished which at one time is called Quietism, at another time "Spurious Mysticism" ; for the Church continually gives impulses towards the origination of this kind of Christianity, and can itself in no way avoid training it, uj) to a certain point' (op. cit. vii. 100). That mysticism degenerated into fanaticism which has no warrant in apostolic teaching is indisputable ; it is, for this reason, essential that the false mysticism should be distinguished from the true. ' It was always the Ultra's, who, by making an appeal to them, brought discredit upon the "Church" Mystics' (Harnack, op. cit. vi. 105 n.).
Mysticism and historical religion are sometimes regarded as mutually exclusive alternatives. S. W. Fresenius, having expounded Luther's teach- ing in his de Libertate Christiana, says : ' that is historical religion as the Reformers understood it, but it is not Mysticism ' (Mystik und geschichtliche Bcligion, Gottingen, 1912, p. 94). There may, however, be a mystical element in Christianity, although it does not rest upon a mystical basis. Christianity is a historical religion founded on facts, apart from which the experience of Christian believers is inexplicable ; that experience is mysti- cal in proportion as the soul has direct personal intercourse with God through Christ. But this is not to affirm that every Christian realizes the mystical implications of his own experience. From