Clement was not a deep or consistent thinker, and the task which he has set himself is clearly beyond his strength.  But he gathers up most of the religious and philosophical ideas of his time, and weaves them together into a system which is permeated by his cultivated, humane, and genial personality.

Especially interesting from the point of view of our present task is the use of mystery-language which we find everywhere in Clement.  The Christian revelation is “the Divine (or holy) mysteries,” “the Divine secrets,” “the secret Word,” “the mysteries of the Word”; Jesus Christ is “the Teacher of the Divine mysteries”; the ordinary teaching of the Church is “the lesser mysteries”; the higher knowledge of the Gnostic, leading to full initiation ([Greek:  epopteia]) “the great mysteries.”  He borrows verbatim from a Neopythagorean document a whole sentence, to the effect that “it is not lawful to reveal to profane persons the mysteries of the Word”—­the “Logos” taking the place of “the Eleusinian goddesses.”  This evident wish to claim the Greek mystery-worship, with its technical language, for Christianity, is very interesting, and the attempt was by no means unfruitful.  Among other ideas which seem to come direct from the mysteries is the notion of deification by the gift of immortality.  Clement[120] says categorically, [Greek:  to me phtheiresthai theiotetos metechein esti].  This is, historically, the way in which the doctrine of “deification” found its way into the scheme of Christian Mysticism.  The idea of immortality as the attribute constituting Godhead was, of course, as familiar to the Greeks as it was strange to the Jews.[121]

Origen supplies some valuable links in the history of speculative Mysticism, but his mind was less inclined to mystical modes of thought than was Clement’s.  I can here only touch upon a few points which bear directly upon our subject.

Origen follows Clement in his division of the religious life into two classes or stages, those of faith and knowledge.  He draws too hard a line between them, and speaks with a professorial arrogance of the “popular, irrational faith” which leads to “somatic Christianity,” as opposed to the “spiritual Christianity” conferred by Gnosis or Wisdom.[122] He makes it only too clear that by “somatic Christianity” he means that faith which is based on the gospel history.  Of teaching founded upon the historical narrative, he says, “What better method could be devised to assist the masses?” The Gnostic or Sage no longer needs the crucified Christ.  The “eternal” or “spiritual” Gospel, which is his possession, “shows clearly all things concerning the Son of God Himself, both the mysteries shown by His words, and the things of which His acts were the symbols.[123]” It is not that he denies or doubts the truth of the Gospel history, but he feels that events which only happened once can be of no importance, and regards the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as only one manifestation of an universal law, which was really enacted, not in this fleeting world of shadows, but in the eternal counsels of the Most High.  He considers that those who are thoroughly convinced of the universal truths revealed by the Incarnation and Atonement, need trouble themselves no more about their particular manifestations in time.