and over again of the illumination ([gr fwtismos]) which
was held to attend Initiation and Salvation. The doctrine of Salvation
indeed ([gr swthria]) was, as we have already seen, rife and widely
current in the Second Century B. C. It represented a real experience,
and the man who shared this experience became a [gr qeios] [gr anqrwpos]
or divine man. (2) In the Orphic Tablets the phrase "I am a child of
earth and the starry heaven, but my race is of heaven (alone)" occurs
more than once. In one of the longest of them the dead man is instructed
"after he has passed the waters (of Lethe) where the white Cypress and
the House of Hades are" to address these very words to the guardians
of the Lake of Memory while he asks for a drink of cold water from that
Lake. In another the dead person himself is thus addressed: "Hail, thou
who hast endured the Suffering, such as indeed thou hadst never suffered
before; thou hast become god from man!" (3) Ecstacy was the acme of the
religious life; and, what is especially interesting to us, Salvation or
the divine nature was open to all men--to all, that is, who should go
through the necessary stages of preparation for it. (4)

(1) Die hellenistischen Mysterien-Religionen, by R. Reitzenstein,
Leipzig, 1910.

(2) Reitzenstein, p. 12.

(3) These Tablets (so-called) are instructions to the dead as to
their passage into the other world, and have been found in the tombs, in
Italy and elsewhere, inscribed on very thin gold plates and buried with
the departed. See Manual of Greek Antiquities by Percy Gardner and F.
B. Jerome (1896); also Prolegomena to Greek Religion by Jane E. Harrison
(1908).

(4) Reitzenstein, pp. 15 and 18; also S. J. Case, Evolution of
Early Christianity, p. 301.

Reitzenstein contends (p. 26) that in the Mysteries, transfiguration
([gr metamorfwsis]), salvation ([gr swthria]), and new birth ([gr
paliggenesia]) were often conjoined. He says (p. 31), that in the
Egyptian Osiris-cult, the Initiate acquires a nature "equal to God"
([gr isoqeos]), the very same expression as that used of Christ Jesus in
Philippians ii. 6; he mentions Apollonius of Tyana and Sergius Paulus
as instances of men who by their contemporaries were considered to have
attained this nature; and he quotes Akhnaton (Pharaoh of Egypt in 1375
B.C.) as having said, "Thou art in my heart; none other knows Thee, save
thy son Akhnaton; Thou hast initiated him into thy wisdom and into thy
power." He