ding to the Christian
eucharist at which the sanctified bread and a cup of water or even wine
served as mystic symbols of the distribution of the divine life to
Mithra-believers."

When we bear in mind how little importance Paul attached to the actual
life and ethical teaching of Jesus, we are not surprised at the
frequent suggestion that Paul was the real founder of both liturgical
and theological Christianity. He did not create this liturgy but found
it to hand. The early church followed this natural impulse and added
to the simpler inherited rites. Into the psychology of Paul's
conception of the Christ it is difficult to enter. He was probably an
enthusiast with the tendency to exalted moods peculiar to epileptics
and yet with high mental ability. He felt himself inspired. He gives
us to understand that he was subject to visions, and it is well known
that religious excitement is capable of welding together the myriad
suggestions which play upon the self. We can comprehend the work of
Paul, one of the main founders of Christianity, only when we see him as
the mystical interpreter weaving the Jewish traditions of the soberer
type, the apocalyptic outlook of such books as Daniel and Ezra, the
mystery cults of the Hellenistic world and the theories of the Stoic
philosophy into one whole, dominantly supernaturalistic. Scholars will
continue to differ in regard to the comparative proportions of the
ingredients he fused together, but few will gainsay that Paul's
teaching is a product of many sources. In this connection a very
significant fact should be noted: although the Pauline epistles are the
earliest records of Christianity, "aside from the crucifixion, not a
single fact in the life of Jesus can be gleaned from these {71}
epistles, nor do they record a single saying of Jesus."

We shall next pass to a brief study of the Jesus of the synoptic
gospels, the figure which has become endeared to humanity and with
which the Western world has associated its noblest sentiments. But
even the present study of some of the more mystical elements in
Christianity must have persuaded the reader that we have in this
movement the focussing of the complex life of ancient times. The
circle of ideas passionately held by the members of the church was not
created by any one man or group of men. It was the flowering out of
primitive ideas and ethical aspirations. Moral idealism goes hand in
hand with cosmological myth. We who