PRESENT DAY FACTORS IN NEW TESTAMENT STUDY. 45 



0)1 the Cross never flowed for tlie disciples of Mithra" 

 (Cnmoiit, The Mysteries of Mithra, p. 195, 1912). 



Compare this passage with the vague language of Loisy who 

 has given us a summary of St. Paul's conception of Jesus Christ 

 (Hibbert Journal, Decennial number, October, 1911, p. 81). 



According to Loisy, St. Paul entertains the conception of a 

 Saviour-God after the manner of Mithra. But we note 

 that, as a matter of fact, St. Paul never calls Jesus a Saviour- 

 God, and that it is the reverse of scientific to institute a 

 comparison between an historical person known to Paul, and an 

 Osiris or an Attis, originally my thological personifications of the 

 processes of vegetation (see for this, and a full description of the 

 mystery religions, a series of articles in the Expositor, 1912, of 

 great value, by Professor H. A. Kennedy). 



May we not also ask what possible connection could there be 

 between the legendary and mythical deaths of such gods, mere 

 personifications of the seasons and vicissitudes of nature, and the 

 redemption wrought by Christ with its moral and spiritual and 

 universal import. 



Let us briefly take two instances to show what a totally 

 diherent atmosphere we breathe in the mystery religions, and 

 in the teaching of St. Paul. Take, e.g., the famous ceremony of the 

 Taurobolium, in which the worshipper is buried, as it were, to his 

 former self, and rises again to newness of life, after being drenched 

 with the blood of the bull. And what was the eHect of what 

 Cumont does not hesitate to call this barbarous ceremony ? 

 The worshipper tluis strengthened and purified by such means 

 was regarded as the equal of a deity through this red baptism, 

 and the crowd worshipped him in veneration. And yet how 

 different, toto calo, from the attitude and conceptions of the 

 Christian worshipper : " If we walk in the light as he is in the 

 light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of 

 Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 



Or take as a second instance — the conception of faith in St. 

 Paul, the conception of a personal surrender to a living Person of 

 a life lived in the flesh, and yet lived by faith, faith in the Son of 

 God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Surely it 

 is not unfair to say that there is no conception in the mystery 

 religions which can be compared to this, and it reminds us, too, of 

 the thoroughly ethical character of St. Paul's mysticism : Christ in 

 you, the source and the giver of all good things, the strengthener 

 of all that is pure and lovely and of good report : Christ in you, 

 the hope of glory, deepening more and more the contrast between 

 things seen and temporal and things unseen and eternal. 



