'spiritual marriage, after the likeness of the conjunctions ' above."

Other Gnostics adorned their meeting places with busts of their revered masters-Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagoras -and to these they added the bust of Christ made by 'Pilate.' These images they crowned, and adored with heathen rites. The followers of Comte, in our own times, seem to have copied the Markosians, just as the old heresy of Tertullian and Origen, which made the soul corporeal,' seems to lurk, in microscopic form, in the theory of somatic ⚫ and immortal cells,' which is our latest doctrine of life.

Manes seems to have been one of the most influential of the Gnostic leaders who strove to solve the problems then agitating men's minds, by incorporating in one system all the religions of the known world. His influence was not only widely spread, but it long endured. It extended to Gaul and Spain from Persia, and it was not quite exhausted. in the twelfth century A.D. Cyril of Jerusalem, who thunders against the Manichæans, relates how Manes (in the third century) was the disciple of a Buddha, and skilled in Persian learning and philosophy. He announced himself to be the Paraclete, and was finally killed by the Persian priests. The Oriental systems, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the Christian teaching were combined in his system, and the Manichæans said that the sun was Christ.* The sect, which resembled many later Moslem heresies, lived on in Armenia till the ninth century, and spread among the Bulgarians, in Italy, in France, in Greece, in Asia Minor, Persia, Turkestan, China, and Syria, where Justinian persecuted its votaries. But it was only one among numberless heresies which threatened to discredit Christianity, and which were spread all over Asia and Egypt. The jargon of their halfpagan symbolism still meets us on the gems and amulets, carved as tokens of fellowship in some sect, or worn defences against sickness and sorcery.

as

No doubt the number of really Gnostic gems has been much exaggerated; for, as Pliny tells us, the wearing of amulets was common to all classes of the heathen. But the Hebrew words which accompany some of the mystic designs on gems from Egypt or from Asia, written as they are in Greek letters, yet in a language little understood by the majority of the sectaries, are often the same names of 'power' which the patristic writers attribute to various

*Catechet. Lect. iv. 20-23.

Gnostic heretics. Abraxas, Iao, Semes Ailam, Adone, Sabao, and Michael are among the most distinctive Gnostic terms, with strange accompanying figures of the human trunk with cock's head, and serpent legs and shield, or the serpent lion-headed or crowned with rays, representing the Agathodæmon. The Gnostics were among the most dangerous enemies of the infant Church, because Christians generally were reproached with their extravagances, and with their endless schisms.

If, however, the simplicity of the first age of Christianity was such as is indicated by the writings of the time, by the organisation of the communities, and by such monuments as are left to us, how are we to understand the rapid growth of ritual and of mysticism which overspread religion and fostered superstition as soon as Christianity was tolerated and established? In the East and in the West alike this tardy recognition of the teaching which, in three centuries, had made perhaps half the population of Western Asia professing Christians, seems to have been attended with disaster to the purity of the faith. Crowds of ignorant and superstitious converts mingled their ancient beliefs with the new; and self-seekers strove to turn to their own advantage the Imperial favour shown to the Church. St. Chrysostom bewails the decay of that Church as a faded 'beauty' whose former charms were now repaired with rouge and paints. He joined with Basil and Gregory in denouncing the priests and bishops of his time, and the superstitions of the pilgrims. Jerome fled from Rome disgusted with the luxury of the Court of Pope Damasus. The worship of forged relics, the mendicancy of the hermits, the scandals of the kiss of peace, and of the feasts in honour of saints and martyrs, the worship of images, crosses and pictures, the pretensions of a sacred caste headed by bishops, who claimed to be regarded as almost divine, and many other abuses, became such growing evils, even in the fourth century, that the triumph of Christianity seemed destined to be soon followed by its entire disappearance. The great men of the age protested and exhorted in vain, and in the East the sword of Islam avenged the degradation of the pure faith. In the West the abuses flourished among ruder populations for nearly a thousand years more, till the light of learning was diffused throughout Europe in the worst ages of the Roman Church. When we consider the

* In 1 Cor. Homil. xxxvi. 5.

monumental and literary evidence, which shows us so clearly what were the religious systems adopted in Rome in the second century, side by side with the old Italian paganism, we can hardly but conclude that mysticism and ritual were not of Christian but of pagan origin. Paganism revenged its defeat by adulterating the Christian creed; and the process was the same which has corrupted the mild philanthropy of the Buddha* by admixture of the Shamanism of Central Asia, or which has wrought a deep schism among Moslems by bringing the Zoroastrian teachings into Persian Islam, and the paganism of the West into the beliefs of Sunnee peasants.

The rites and customs of the wilder pagan populations were almost as barbarous in the second century and down even to the fourth as they were before the times of a Roman empire. In Rome itself human blood was still necessary for certain rites, and the bloody baptisms of the Taurobolia were not unnatural to a people delighting in the shows of the arena. In Egypt the gloomy Serapis was adored with equally savage rites, and the beast worship of the temples survived even ridicule. Human sacrifices continued at Carthage; but perhaps the most bloodthirsty deities were those of Asia Minor and Syria. In the time of Hadrian human beings were still immolated at the shrines of Zeus throughout Greece and in its islands. The servants of Venus still prostituted themselves in her temples at Phrygia, at Paphos, at Daphne near Antioch, and at Afca on Lebanon, even as late as Constantine's reign. At the temple of Hierapolis on the Euphrates the famous rites of the Dea Syria included the flinging of children tied up in sacks over a precipice, with self-mutilations and gashings-survivals of the ancient worship of Baal and Ashtoreth. Hermits here stood on pillars, like the later Stylites or the earlier Hindu ascetics; and miraculous images were believed to float in the air. The wealth of this temple made it widely famous in the time of Lucian.

Such barbarism could not attract the Christian; but in Rome itself more seductive mysticism had become widely popular, especially in connexion with the worship of Isis

See, for instance, the Life of Hiuen Tsiang, the famous Buddhist pilgrim from China to India in the time of Muhammad (630 A.D.), translated by Beal (1888). The relics, sacred footprints, holy Bo-tree, pictures, images, and legends, of which he speaks, recall those of the pilgrim diaries in Palestine from the fourth century downwards.

imported from Egypt, and that of Mithra first brought by Pompey from the borders of Persia. To the latter there are several allusions in the patristic literature, as presenting blasphemous parallelism to the Christian rites.

The mother goddess nursing the infant god is a familiar group in pagan art. It is known as Ashtoreth with Tammuz in Phoenicia and Chaldæa, as Khrishna and his mother in India, as Lucina with her babe in Italy, as Isis with the infant Horus in Egypt. The Isis rites in Rome included the offering of the wine-cup and wafer; the pictures of Pompeii and Herculaneum show us the shaven priests of Isis wearing a kind of alb. They sprinkled the holy water of the Nile, and bore the statue of the goddess in procession through the streets of Rome, on which the votaries gazed with ecstasy. Women were consecrated as priestesses of Isis, and the death and resurrection of Osiris were celebrated; fasts were observed, and the Egyptian ritual was repeated by various members of a graduated hierarchy. To the Roman women the mysteries of Isis and her child were especially dear.

The worship of Mithra was widely spread over the Roman Empire. His cave chapels existed not only in Italy, but even in Germany and in England, and monuments of Mithra worshippers exist as late as 377 A.D. The remains of a Mithræum are found under the foundations of the chapel of Clement in Rome: the Mithraic gems are numerous. Justin Martyr speaks of the Christian Eucharist

'which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done. For that bread and a cup of water are placed, with certain incantations, in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated you either know or can learn.'

Tertullian writes:-

For washing is the means whereby they are initiated into the sacred rites of an Isis or a Mithra. The gods themselves they honour with washings. Moreover, by carrying water round and sprinkling it, they everywhere expiate country seats, houses, temples, and cities. + And again :

'Mithra sets his mark on the foreheads of his soldiers, and celebrates also an oblation of bread and introduces an image of a resurrection.' +

The festival of Mithra was held on December 25 in Italy-. theDies Natalis Invicti Solis,' which Chrysostom § states to have been recently chosen in his own times as the

* 1 Apol. lxvi. Postscript. xl.

† On Baptism, v.
§ Hom. xxxi.

Christmas Day in Rome. For Mithra was the Persian God of Light, and the cup used in his rites was not of water only, but contained the expressed juice of the Haoma plant, making a sacred drink-that still prepared by the Parsees. The Haoma was the older Aryan Soma, which in Vedic hymns and Indian sacred books is at once the liquor of immortality and the god himself. I am the Soma,' says Khrishna. The mitre which Clement of Alexandria mentions as a pagan dress* took its name apparently from Mithra. The initiate refused the wreath offered to him in these curious mysteries, and exclaimed, My only crown is Mithra.' It is the head-dress of the Persian priests and of the Mithra worshippers of Commagene on statues of the early Roman period. This is by no means the only instance in which pagan vestments came to be used by Christian priests. The scarlet robes of the flamens were adopted by cardinals; the alb was an Egyptian sacred dress; the dalmatic, a shortsleeved shirt, was worn by Commodus and by Elagabalus, the Emperor who was priest of the Sun God, symbolised by the black stone brought from Emesa, in Syria, to Rome. The practice of kissing_the_foot of an emperor was introduced by Caligula from Persia.

That it was the policy of popes to conciliate the heathen, by consecrating to Christian worship the ancient sacred places of heathendom, is evidenced by the letter of Gregory the Great to his missionaries, whom he instructed not to attempt to suppress the holy places of the Saxons. The traces of ancient altars with pagan legends are still found in or near churches throughout Europe, in Scotland, in France, in the Channel Islands, in Spain, and elsewhere, showing how generally such policy was carried out. The ancient yule feast was consecrated as Christmas Day, and the old ceremonies survived under the sanction of Roman priests.

For, although the pagan rites were forbidden and the temples destroyed in the time of Constantine, paganism was not easily rooted out. In 515 A.D. a chapel of St. George was raised at Ezr'a, in Bashan, on the site of the old temple of Theandrites, a deity of Bostra, and not far off in the same region dedications to the same divinity occur as late as 389 and 394 A.D. † Temples on Hermon and at Gaza

*Not leaning on the thyrsus, not crowned with ivy: throw away the mitre throw away the fawnskin.' Cohort. xii.

Inscriptions de la Syrie, Nos. 2498, 2046, 1965. A new temple was building in the Haurân as late as 320 A.D. (No. 2393).

VOL. CLXXXI. NO. CCCLXXI.

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