verse--herself indeed just a little spark from
it; despised and rejected; rejected by the world, despised by her two
elder sisters (the body and the intellect); yet she, the soul, though
latest-born, by far the most beautiful of the three. And of the Prince
of Love who redeems and sets her free; and of her wedding garment the
glory and beauty of all nature and of the heavens! The parables of
Jesus are charming in their way, but they hardly reach this height of
inspiration.

Or the world-old myth of Eros and Psyche. How strange that here again
there are three sisters (the three stages of human evolution), and the
latest-born the most beautiful of the three, and the jealousies and
persecutions heaped on the youngest by the others, and especially by
Aphrodite the goddess of mere sensual charm. And again the coming of the
unknown, the unseen Lover, on whom it is not permitted for mortals to
look; and the long, long tests and sufferings and trials which Psyche
has to undergo before Eros may really take her to his arms and translate
her to the heights of heaven. Can we not imagine how when these things
were represented in the Mysteries the world flocked to see them, and the
poets indeed said, "Happy are they that see and seeing can understand?"
Can we not understand how it was that the Amphictyonic decree of the
second century B.C. spoke of these same Mysteries as enforcing the
lesson that "the greatest of human blessings is fellowship and mutual
trust"?

XV. THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES

Thus we come to a thing which we must not pass over, because it throws
great light on the meaning and interpretation of all these rites and
ceremonies of the great World-religion. I mean the subject of the
Ancient Mysteries. And to this I will give a few pages.

These Mysteries were probably survivals of the oldest religious rites
of the Greek races, and in their earlier forms consisted not so much
in worship of the gods of Heaven as of the divinities of Earth, and
of Nature and Death. Crude, no doubt, at first, they gradually became
(especially in their Eleusinian form) more refined and philosophical;
the rites were gradually thrown open, on certain conditions, not only
to men generally, but also to women, and even to slaves; and in the end
they influenced Christianity deeply. (1)

(1) See Edwin Hatch, D.D., The Influence of Greek Ideas and
Usages on the Christian Church (London, 1890), pp. 283-5.

There were apparently three forms