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. Just as the Jewish Christians took with them the whole framework of apocalyptic Messianism, and set the figure of Jesus within it, so the Greeks took with them the whole scheme of the mysteries, with their sacraments, their purifications and fasts, their idea of a mystical brotherhood, and their doctrine of salvation' (σwTnpía is essentially a mystery word) through membership in a divine society, worshipping Christ as the patronal deity of their mysteries.

Historically, this type of Christianity was the origin of Catholicism, both Western and Eastern; though it is only recently that this character of the Pauline churches has been recognised. And students of the New Testament have not yet realised the importance of the fact that St Paul, who was ready to fight to the death against the Judaising of Christianity, was willing to take the first step, and a long one, towards the Paganising of it. It does not appear that his personal religion was of this type. He speaks with contempt of some doctrines and

practices of Pagan mysteries, and will allow no rapprochement with what he regards as devil-worship. In this he remains a pure Hebrew. But he does not appear to see any danger in allowing his Hellenistic churches to assimilate the worship of Christ to the honours paid to the gods of the mysteries, and to set their whole religion in this framework, provided only that they have no part nor lot with those who sit at the table of demons'-the sacramental love-feasts of the heathen mysteries. The dangers which he does see, and against which he issues warnings, are, besides Judaism, antinomianism and disorder on the one hand, and dualistic asceticism on the other. He dislikes or mistrusts the speaking with tongues' (woooλaλía), which was the favourite exhibition of religious enthusiasm at Corinth. (On this subject Prof. Lake's excursus is the most instructive discussion that has yet appeared. The 'Testament of Job' and the magical papyri show that gibberish uttered in a state of spiritual excitement was supposed to be the language of angels and spirits, understood by them and acting upon them as a charm.) He urges his converts to do all things ⚫ decently and in order.' He is alarmed at signs of moral laxity on the part of self-styled 'spiritual persons -a great danger in all times of ecstatic enthusiasm. He is also alive to the dangers connected with that kind of asceticism which is based on theories of the impurity of the body-the typical Oriental form of world-renunciation. But he does not appear to have foreseen the unethical and polytheistic developments of sacramental institutionalism. In this particular his Judaising opponents had a little more justification than he is willing to allow them.

There is something transitional about all St Paul's teaching. We cannot take him out of his historical setting, as so many of his commentators in the 19th century tried to do. This is only another way of saying that he was, to use his own expression, a wise masterbuilder, not a detached thinker, an arm-chair philosopher. To the historian, there must always be something astounding in the magnitude of the task which he set himself, and in his enormous success. The future history of Europe and America for two thousand years, perhaps for all time, was determined by his missionary

journeys and hurried writings. It is impossible to guess what would have become of Christianity if he had never lived; we cannot even be sure that the name of Jesus would still be honoured amongst men. This stupendous achievement seems to have been due to an almost unique practical insight into the essential factors of a very difficult and complex situation. We watch him, with breathless interest, steering the vessel which carried the Christian Church and its fortunes through a narrow channel full of sunken rocks and shoals. With unerring instinct he avoids them all, and brings the ship, not into smooth water, but into the open sea, out of that perilous strait. And so far was his masterly policy from mere opportunism, that his correspondence has been 'Holy Scripture' for fifty generations of Christians, and there has been no religious revival within Christianity that has not been, on one side at least, a return to St Paul. Protestants have always felt their affinity with this institutionalist, mystics with this disciplinarian. The reason, put shortly, is that St Paul understood what most Christians never realise, namely, that the Gospel of Christ is not a religion, but religion itself.

W. R. INGE.

Art. 4.-THE CONTEMPORARY GERMAN DRAMA. 1. Das deutsche Drama. By Berthold Litzmann. burg: Voss, 1887.

Ham

2. Das Jüngste Deutschland. By Adalbert von Hanstein. Leipzig: Voigtländer, 1901.

3. Das deutsche Drama. By Sigismund Friedmann. Vol. II. Leipzig: Seeman, 1903.

4. Das Werden des neuen Dramas. By Edgar Steiger. Part II. Berlin Fleischel, 1903.

5. Dramaturgie des Schauspiels. By Heinrich Bulthaupt. Vol. IV. Oldenburg: Schulzesche Buchhandlung, 1905. 6. Das deutsche Drama der Gegenwart. By Rudolph Lothar. Munich: Müller, 1905.

7. Le Drame Naturaliste en Allemagne. By L. BenoistHanappier. Paris: Alcan, 1905.

THE Germans, after 1870-1, naturally bethought themselves that it behoved them to achieve a literature commensurate with their victories. But such a literature was not forthcoming. Other and more pressing cares beset them. The vast sums they had taken for ransom seemed only to excite a frenzy of commercial speculation, resulting in disaster. New classes demanded recognition. The constant rise in the socialistic vote was significant of a widely-spread dissatisfaction; while, upon those who stood apart from commerce and politics, the doctrine of Schopenhauer lay like a dead weight, stifling all energy. Wagner himself, celebrating the primeval qualities of the race, bade his heroic figures tread the dim path of resignation and self-oblivion.

At most, there was the consolation of the backward look. Freytag evoked 'Die Ahnen,' the ancestors, in the long stages of their laborious progress. Ebers and Dahn resuscitated epoch after epoch, the life of which seemed more rich and picturesque than that of the present. Wolf and Baumbach, the successors of Scheffel, chirped lays of mild humour and pretty medievalism. Most popular of all was the operetta of Offenbach, with its light melodies and Parisian blague. Against the witchery of these, no barrier could be raised by the poets and tragedy-writers of the Munich School, who pursued formal beauty and were averse from contemplating

modern conditions. And even if Lindau, Blumenthal, and their fellows, made attempts to set forth contemporary society, it was the drama of Sardou that they arranged or imitated. The old tale had renewed itself: 'Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit.' Nothing remained but to accept subservience to the art of the vanquished.

At last, the spell of decadence seemed broken. The Meiningen troop, famed for ensemble acting and sumptuous staging, produced Wildenbruch's 'Die Karolinger' in 1881. Hope was conceived of a Schiller reborn, or even of that modern Shakespeare who is the lasting object of German aspiration. Who could resist the glowing patriotism of Harold,' the loyal Teuton ensnared by French perfidy and now avenged; or of 'Der Mennonit' and 'Väter und Söhne,' kindling the memory of the years in which Germany was liberating itself from the mailed hand of Napoleon? But the muse of patriotism is limited, and monotonous in repetition. Youngest

Germany,' as it was beginning to style itself, would not applaud Christopher Marlowe,' poet and patriot. And when Wildenbruch, a soldier through the campaigns of 1866 and 1870, and a scion of the Hohenzollern stock according to friends and foes, began to dramatise Brandenburg-Prussian history in 'Die Quitzows' and its successors, they were careless of providential heroes who arose to rule at the nation's need.

The socialistic vote mounted higher and higher. Bismarck laboured alternately to conciliate and repress; the new Emperor lent an ear to the cry of the suffering masses. If Young Germany' of the years before 1848 was first liberal, and then radical, 'Youngest Germany' elected to be socialistic if anything, and rebellious to a certainty. Another Schiller! They abominated the old, with his wistful longing for Greek beauty and a harmonious culture, his fervent adhesion to Kant and the inward voice of duty. It was of no moment that he, in his time, had been youthful and rebellious. They dismissed him in summary scorn, as 'Young Germany' had dismissed Goethe. Long ago, the rebels of the 'Storm and Stress' period proclaimed Shakespeare and Rousseau as masters. Their successors had assimilated Darwin and Haeckel; they saw mankind necessarily obeying nature, heredity, and circumstance, in ways that flatly