"[5]
This is perfectly true, but it was not only the influence of milieu,
not only the fact that the 'hellenized' faiths were, as Cumont points
out, more advanced, richer in ideas and sentiments, more pregnant,
more poignant, than the more strictly 'classic' faiths, but they
possessed, in common with Christianity, certain distinctive features
lacking in these latter.
If we were asked to define the special characteristic of the central
Christian rite, should we not state it as being a Sacred meal of
Communion in which the worshipper, not merely symbolically, but
actually, partakes of, and becomes one with, his God, receiving
thereby the assurance of eternal life? (The Body of Our Lord Jesus
Christ preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life.)
But it is precisely this conception which is lacking in the Greek
Mysteries, and that inevitably, as Rohde points out: "The Eleusinian
Mysteries in common with all Greek religion, differentiated clearly
between gods and men, eins ist der Menschen, ein andres der
Gotter-Geschlecht--en andron, en theon genos." The attainment of
union with the god, by way of ecstasy, as in other Mystery cults, is
foreign to the Eleusinian idea. As Cumont puts it "The Greco-Roman
deities rejoice in the perpetual calm and youth of Olympus, the
Eastern deities die to live again.
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