Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/587

 the Greek people have always yearned and striven by manifold means in this life for close communion with their gods; the mysteries might well be a sacrament which afforded to the initiated both a means and a pledge of enjoying in the next world, to which body as well as soul should pass, the closest of all communion with their gods, the union of wedlock.

Let it then be supposed that the two main ideas of the mysteries, whether expounded in speech or represented in ritual, were these—bodily survival after death, and marriage of men with gods; what would have been the natural attitude of Christians towards these doctrines? For it is in the light of the charges brought by early Christian writers against the mysteries that such a supposition must first be examined. The doctrine of the immortality of the body as well as of the soul was evidently little exposed to Christian attacks; and it may have been because the Christian doctrine of the resurrection had much in common with the old Greek doctrine, that St Paul found among his audience on the Areopagus some who did not mock, but said 'We will hear thee again of this matter.' But with the further doctrine of marriage between men and gods Christianity could have no sympathy, but would inevitably regard it as offensive both in theology and in morality, as implying the existence of a plurality of gods, and as savouring of that sensuality, which above all other sin the apostle to the Gentiles set himself to combat.

And it is in fact upon these two points that the mass of the accusations brought by early Christian writers against Greek paganism hinge and hang. These were the points at which Greek religion seemed to its assailants most readily vulnerable, and against which they sought to use as weapons the very language of paganism itself. Just as Clement of Alexandria seeks to prove out of the mouth of Homer, who speaks of the gods in general as [Greek: daimones], that the Greek gods are confessedly mere demons (for the word [Greek: daimôn] had seemingly deteriorated in meaning), that is to say, abominable and unclean spirits, enemies of the one true God, so too the words [Greek: arrhêtos] and [Greek: aporrhêtos], used by the pagans of their 'unspeakable' mysteries, were misinterpreted by the Christians with one consent and became a handle for convicting the old religion of 'unnameable' impurities.