stood quite alone, with nobody either to protect him or to uphold the banner of monarchy. The régime gave way as if it had never had any links uniting it to the people; it crumbled in a single day as a giant with feet of clay. In this tragic hour the character of the Tsar disclosed its best traits, verging on an almost super-human greatness. While the Tsaritza in a hectic fever of excitement regarded every concession wrung from the Tsar as a clever political move to save the throne and monarchy, he accepted everything with an amazing fatalism and resignation.

A few days after his abdication, while still at army headquarters inspiring awe and apprehension in the revolutionary leaders, he despatched the following telegram to the Tsaritza: At last; your telegram received. Despair is passing. God bless you all. Love you tenderly.' * Later that same day, after seeing his mother, he writes again: "Thank you heartily for your telegram. Mother has arrived for two days; so cosy and nice; having dinner together in her train. Again snowstorm. In thought and prayers with you.' It is only just to record in this last hour of a dying régime the thought dominating the Tsaritza which is seen in the last phrase of her letter: Only this morning we received the news that everything is handed over to M[ichael] and that Baby is now in safety-what a relief!'

Seventeen months later in a small provincial town, far away from all political life, the Tsar's family was living under the guard of a local Soviet. Late one evening the president of the Soviet came up to their room followed by Red guards. He warned them that it was time to leave as the approaching Whites' made it

necessary. The whole family and the very few servants accompanying them dressed and descended the narrow stairs of the little house. The terrible tragedy that followed has left its lasting stain on humanity.

Art. 2.-THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS.

1. The Mystery-Religions and Christianity. By S. Angus, D.D. Murray, 1924.

2. St Paul and the Mystery Religions. By H. A. A. Kennedy, D.D. Hodder, 1913.

And other works.

In the middle of the second century A.D. the Fathers of the Christian Church complained that the Mysteries then current in the world around them were but imitations of their own rites inspired by demons. For centuries this explanation was accepted in silence, or at least no alternative suggestion was made. When in more recent years the subject has been taken up again, the pendulum not unnaturally has swung in the opposite direction, and the thesis set up that there is at least a very vital connexion, and even that Christianity is but a sheer imitation of the pagan mysteries. Since the publication of the pioneer work of Sainte-Croix in 1784 and of Lobeck's 'Aglaophamus' at Koenigsberg in 1829, scholarship, erudition, and ingenuity have been lavished upon the question. Cumont, Frazer, and Farnell have supplied facts; Reitzenstein, Loisy, and Dieterich have brought to bear a wealth of brilliant theorising. There are two great English contributions now available, 'St Paul and the Mystery Religions' by Dr H. A. A. Kennedy, and still more comprehensive, The Mystery-Religions and Christianity' by Dr Angus of Sydney. With the appearance of Dr Angus's book the final verdict is not far distant. Before publication the work travelled American universities in lecture notes during four years; and the bibliography quoted at the end, eighteen pages of modern authorities and another eighteen of ancient sources, is proof that the treatment is sufficiently comprehensive and, on the whole, judicial rather than theorising.

What is a mystery? Even now it is difficult to say. A chief demand made upon one who had been initiated was a vow of secrecy; and so faithfully and scrupulously have those vows been kept that we have no direct account of any mystery in ancient literatúre or any intelligible disclosure. In spite of the number of refer

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ences, in spite of the greatness of the issues acknowledged to be involved, the material that has come down to us is wholly inadequate, and in Prof. Gardner's phrase, 'as fluid as water and as unstable as cloud.' The fullest account is that in Apuleius's novel, 'The Metamorphosis,' but that is only of the externals, public processions and so forth: when he is coming to what was 'said' and done' at the Isiac initiation, he would disclose it if it ers were lawful for the reader to hear and for him to make the disclosure; but that would inflict upon the reader hand upon himself parem noxam. Pausanias narrated I of the mysteries of the Kabiri: 'Demeter deposited something in their hands, but what that object was, together with the subsequent procedure, my conscience forbids me to disclose.' For our information we are forced back upon a little fact, and that in its most lucid assertions from the pens of Christian critics who fervently disapproved, finding in unmeasured abuse and statements of diabolic imitation the best way of accounting for marked similarities between the Mysteries and their own religion; and upon conjecture.

However, this much at least is known of the Mysteries; they were old-established and widespread, and existed and throve in one form or another, perhaps without much alteration, for nearly a thousand years. Even in Homer's time the Greek Religion of Olympus was on its last legs. Its gods suffered from being unworthy of the name; they were amoral, at least, and any kind of mystic communion with them was impossible. The Greeks were a thinking race, and at best these could only inspire their state cults. More fervent and genuine religious feeling demanded other gods; and by the middle of the first millennium B.C. the Mystery-worship of Dionysus had come down from Thrace and the harddrinking North, to be fused in Greece with the cult of Orphism which, probably a little later, came up from Crete and the South. Thenceforward, and until well in the Christian era, Mysteries were prevalent all over the Mediterranean basin; those of Sabazius and the Great Mother from Phrygia, of Isis and Serapis from Egypt, of the Baals from Syria, and, to be developed more fully a little later, of Mithra from Persia.

They were all different, but the same in general

content. They enjoined secrecy upon the member; they were for individuals rather than for nations or classes: and they were syncretistic, and in no way jealous of each other. A man could join one or many, or he could join one instead of many; all the gods and goddesses were but the same deity masquerading under different forms. And that deity was the Life-force, describe it as you will, which has reached its highest expression in the Christian Deity, Love. All the Mysteries offered their adherents salvation, and a personal salvation. How far it was effective in this life is a moot point; but in death it was a salvation from the demons who guarded the various gates from this life to the next, and rigorously excluded all who lacked the sacred passwords only to be learned in the Mysteries; while in the world to come it offered an eternity of bliss.

Each Mystery had its legend, and in the comparison with Christianity one must remember that it was given and intended as pure myth, in no way subject to the canons of historical criticism. None of the Mysteries claimed the historical foundation of Buddhism, Islam, or Christianity; while the early Christian Church owed its life and sustenance to the power of an historical character. Without the Jesus of History there could have been no Christ. Mystery legends were of varying content, from tales of the God up to theories of the universe, especially of that portion of it traversed after death. But all illustrated the Death of the God and his Rebirth, whether Dionysus or Persephone or Attis or Mithra.

'The Mystery Religions,' says Dr Angus, 'were lowly and simple enough in their origin. They arose from the observation of the patent facts of recurring death and subsequent rebirth in nature, and from the attempt to see in these alternations of winter and spring, decay and generation, sunset and sunrise, a symbol of the life and hope of man, and a replica of the divine life, which in primitive thought was conceived merely as the all-vitalising energy resident in nature.'

Sacred books they had, and liturgies. But more than this cannot be said. To reconstruct from the fragments that have come down to us is to make bricks without straw, and those who make the attempt and supplement

er; twith ingenuity are more bold than discreet. The class Mithras-liturgy' which Dieterich has created in this alow way represents something neither Mithraic nor a liturgy. he coThe evidence we possess suggests that the Mysteries odd possessed nothing in any way comparable to the Jewish iffer scriptures or to the Christian liturgies. One of the beit prominent characteristics of the Mysteries was that sion they were religions of symbolism. It was an age which offer took readily to symbolism, and apparently could see in phallic representations the divine truths of life, with but a vision piercing through the offence which would be caused thereby both to a primitive and to a modern. O Through symbolic objects, acts, representations, and to experiences they could be raised to the contemplation of the divine, a sense of the unworthiness of unregenerate man, and to the experience of palingenesia, rebirth.

The watchword of the age was Redemption. Never did the gulf dividing human from divine seem greater, and never was there a stronger desire to bridge it. Motives of piety were reinforced by motives of fear. While higher thought ranged the mountain tops of idealism, those in the valleys lived in the unrelieved darkness of astralism, of fate, of a sense of sin, and of death. Sorcery and magic stalked throughout the world. But by union with the Mystery Gods men could partake in the divine superiority over the baleful powers, and so men flocked to the Mysteries and their Redeemer Gods. The Mysteries were also systems of gnosis. Like many other of the phrases of modern religion, 'to know God' seems so simple and obvious that it is hard to realise the vast amount of groping and struggle and endeavour with which this simplicity has been achieved. The task which ancient thought set itself was to know God. It was not so much that the pure in heart should see God, but that those who could see God would be pure in heart. In the Mysteries groping finite minds were offered knowledge of the divine by a revelation, a revelation in sacramental form, in acts and prayers and liturgical formulæ, which afforded to philosophic and simple alike a full knowledge of God. And the secret,' says Dr Angus, 'when imparted, rendered men superior to all the trials of life and ensured salvation.'

But we may be fairly certain that the strongest hold