It is an atmosphere in which
the aim of the good man is not so much to live justly, to help the
society to which he belongs and enjoy the esteem of his fellow
creatures; but rather, by means of a burning faith, by contempt for the
world and its standards, by ecstasy, suffering and martyrdom, to be
granted pardon for his unspeakable unworthiness, his immeasurable sins.
There is an intensifying of certain spiritual emotions; an increase of
sensitiveness, a failure of nerve." It was in such a state of the
social mind that Christianity had its birth. It was, as we have before
pointed out, one of many competing for dominance.

These competing religions had much in common, {69} though it was the
advantage of Christianity to have inherited the ethical monotheism of
the prophets. Upon Paul, the Hellenist and Jew of the dispersion, was
focussed this august tradition along with traditions of a more mystical
character. Syria had been the home of certain mysteries from an early
day, for we read in the Old Testament of women mourning the death of
Tammuz, the god of vegetation who dies and is born again. Now Adonis
or Attis was the corresponding god of Phrygia, and all people of Syria
were well acquainted with the cult which showed the mother-goddess
mourning for her son. But these more primitive rites were being
displaced by a more developed and ethical form called Mithraism. I
well remember my surprise when, visiting one of the older churches at
Rome, I was shown the earlier church beneath and told that, beneath
that again, a church dedicated to Mithra had been discovered. Now
Tarsus was one of the chief seats of Mithraism, and it is practically
certain that Paul was acquainted with its main rituals and beliefs.
Let us try to realize the importance of this fact.

Mithraism had an initiatory service in which the proselytes were
admitted into the faith. The liturgy of this service is still extant
and we know that it represented a mystical dying and rebirth in which
the guilt of the old life is removed and a new immortal life is created
through the spirit. The initiates spoke of themselves as reborn for
eternity. "So striking," writes Pfleiderer the German critic, "is the
connection of these ideas with Paul's teaching of Christian baptism as
a community of death and resurrection with Christ (Romans 6) that the
thought of historical relation between the two cannot be evaded....
Mithraism also {70} had a sacrament correspon