disreputable lives; but these were the most likely to appreciate the gain of being no longer outlaws, but members of a true family.  The heathen were amazed at the kind of people whom the Christians admitted and treated like brethren; but in the first century scandals do not seem to have been frequent.  Women, who were probably always the majority, enjoyed a consideration unknown by them before.  The extreme importance attached by the early Church to sexual purity made it possible for them to mix freely with Christian men; indeed, the strange and perilous practice of a ‘brother’ and a virgin sharing the same house seems to have already begun, if this is the meaning of the obscure passage in I Cor. vii. 36.

Chastity and indifference to death were the two qualities in Christians which made the greatest impression on their neighbours.  Galen is especially interesting on the former topic.  But we must add a third characteristic—­the cheerfulness and happiness which marked the early Christian communities.  ‘Joy’ as a moral quality is a Christian invention, as a study of the usage of charha in Greek will show.  Even in Augustine’s time the temper of the Christians, ’serena et non dissolute hilaris’ was one of the things which attracted him to the Church.  The secret of this happy social life was an intense realisation of corporate unity among the members of the confraternity, which they represented to themselves as a ’mystery’—­a mystical union between the Head and members of a ‘body.’  It is in this conception, and not in ritual details, that we are justified in finding a real and deep influence of the mystery-cults upon Christianity.  The Catholic conception of sacraments as bonds uniting religious communities, and as channels of grace flowing from a corporate treasury, was as certainly part of the Greek mystery-religion as it was foreign to Judaism.  The mysteries had their bad side, as might be expected in private and half-secret societies; but their influence as a whole was certainly good.  The three chief characteristics of mystery-religion were, first, rites of purification, both moral and ceremonial; second, the promise of spiritual communion with some deity, who through them enters into his worshippers; third, the hope of immortality, which the Greeks often called ‘deification,’ and which was secured to those who were initiated.

It is useless to deny that St. Paul regarded Christianity as, at least on one side, a mystery-religion.  Why else should he have used a number of technical terms which his readers would recognise at once as belonging to the mysteries?  Why else should he repeatedly use the word ‘mystery’ itself, applying it to doctrines distinctive of Christianity, such as the resurrection with a ‘spiritual body,’ the relation of the Jewish people to God, and, above all, the mystical union between Christ and Christians?  The great’ mystery’ is ’Christ in you, the hope of glory’ (Col i. 27).  It was as a mystery-religion that Europe accepted Christianity.