4.6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a recent writer, " of undoubtedly Oriental origin, and for centu- 

 ries common enough in Greece and Asia Minor, were apparently- 

 introduced into Etruria by a Greek adventurer, and from there 

 spread with extreme rapidity both in Italy and Rome. At first 

 women only were admitted into the secret associations which 

 formed the basis of the cult ; the initiation took place by day, and 

 the meetings were only held three times a year. But all this was 

 now changed ; men were initiated as well as women ; the initiated 

 were to be under twenty years of age. Meetings were held five 

 times in every month, and took place under the secrecy of night. 

 The inevitable enormities did not fail to follow, and the Bac- 

 chic associations became hotbeds not only of moral corruption, 

 but of civil crimes such as forgery and murder and even of 

 political conspiracy."* Attention having been called to these 

 abuses, the Senate acted vigorously, and the Bacchic rites were 

 stamped out with great severity (b. c. 188). A century later, the 

 same writer tells us, the Roman Government was confronted 

 with the Isis cult, but was not able to deal with it in the same en- 

 ergetic fashion, owing to the fact that the national religion had 

 largely lost its hold upon the people. " Mysterious rites of initia- 

 tion," we read, " sensuous music, a worship crowded with sym- 

 bolism no less awe-inspiring that it was imperfectly or not at all 

 understood ; and above all, a system of expiatory and purifica- 

 tory rites in which there was enough of asceticism to satisfy the 

 craving for something personal in religion, and enough of license 

 to attract the crowd in its non-religious moods, all these things 

 made the population of Rome peculiarly susceptible to the influ- 

 ence of cults like the Egyptian." f 



What bearing have these historical instances, it may be asked, 

 on the subject in hand ? A tolerably direct bearing, we think, as 

 tending to show that if there is anything that needs to be watched 

 and criticised, anything the claims of which to prescribe conduct 

 or to limit knowledge need to be challenged and examined, it is 

 precisely religion in its varying forms and phases. Religion, to go 

 back to Mr. Kidd's definition, provides an ultra-rational sanction 

 for socially useful actions ; but when, let us ask, has religion 

 been content with enjoining the performance of such actions on 

 the strength of its ultra-rational sanction ? It is true that an 

 apostle has beautifully said, " Pure religion and undefiled before 

 God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in 

 their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world " ; 

 but this is merely the utterance of a profound individual intuition, 

 not the expression of what, historically, religion has ever been. 



* E. G. Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government, p. 10. 

 f Ilardy, as above, p. 13. 



