profound spiritual meaning, and that the interest of the writers like the interest of all mystics, was in spiritual truth alone and not in history at all, then at once a new face is put upon the matter. Then we see that we are at fault in not having spiritual imagination enough to take the writers' point of view. Why should they not take advantage of the common story of the miracle plays which we know were a familiar feature in the religious life of the time? Then we are not compelled to condemn the Jewish and Roman authorities unduly or at least unjustly, and we are enabled to credit the writers with a profoundly religious purpose. This theory lifts the veil that has so long covered the Gospels and discloses their true and beautiful meaning, the deeper sense intended by the writers themselves. It shows that the original sense is far grander, higher and more spiritual than has been supposed. It substitutes a satisfying and inspiring spiritual sense for a bewildering material one.

DUNDEE, SCOTLAND.

K. C. ANDERSON.

THE RELIGION OF TRAGEDY AND THE CHRIST

TR

IDEAL.

RAGEDY (which literally translated means "goatsong") has developed from a sacrificial performance in which a male-goat was offered to Dionysus. Arriving from abroad the god used to enter with his followers in festive processions. He was accompanied by Silenus, the lover of the cup, by fauns and bacchantes raving like maniacs in exuberance of life. The ass appeared in the procession, carrying a shrine or Silenus or the god himself. Wherever the procession went, there was great rejoicing, for Dionysus spread life, joy, liberty, rapture and drunk

enness.

In the Dionysian festival the adventures of the god are imitated. Having undergone suffering and death he has been born again and now he comes as a liberator and saviour. He offers himself as the exhilarating drink and is the martyr of his divinity. He, the offspring of the vine, passes through his first life as the grape. He is cruelly tortured and mangled in the wine-press; his blood is shed, and he passes through a process of fermentation to rise from the tomb again as the intoxicating drink of the vine.

The myth tells us that he was the son of Zeus and Semele, but that before his birth Hera, the wife of Zeus, induced Semele to demand that her lover should show himself to her in all his divinity. Since, however, as also

in the case of the Jewish Yahveh, no one could see God and live (Ex. xxxiii. 20) Semele died at the sight of this theophany and Zeus transferred the unborn babe to his thigh where it grew to full babyhood and was then born a second time; hence the child was called Dithyrambos, i. e., "he of two doors," the twice born, and the irregular meter of poetry celebrating his birth is called after him the dithyrambic measure.

Intoxication is here not regarded as a loss of selfcontrol, but as divine obsession. The god himself is assumed to speak out of the mouth of the one who is drunk, who is inspired. Liberated from the bondage of flesh, of sorrow, and of all evil, he enters into a state of ecstacy and enjoys the bliss of divinity, of liberty, of pure spirituality.

Connected with the worship of Dionysus were the socalled mysteries, dramatic performances representing the destiny of the god, his passion, his death, his resurrection, ending in his triumphal entry into the homes and hearts of the people.

Orphic and other mysteries are parallel formations, and it appears that all of them were imported from the East, although we may be sure that mysteries, or, generally speaking, half dramatic performances and dances of a symbolic nature, were common to all people all over the earth at a certain period of their development. They existed not only in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Phenicia and Greece, but also in Tibet, in Africa and even among the North American Indians. Under the symbolism of certain acts the initiated persons were taught in the mysteries certain religious doctrines such as the eternal reappearance of life and the immortality of the soul.

The priesthood of the old established gods of Greece may originally have been hostile or perhaps indifferent to the new movement of Dionysian mysteries, but the new

ideas were too powerful and became too popular to be ignored. It appears that the Eumolpids, the ancient priestly family of Athens, deemed it wise to incorporate the new methods in their own system of the Demeter cult, the worship of the earth-mother, and celebrated in annual repetition the Eleusinian mysteries in which the descent of Persephone to Hades was symbolized in a dramatic performance. The daughter of the earth-goddess, the maiden representing vegetation, dies annually in the fall and comes to life again in spring. The acts of the drama deal with the rape of Persephone, the search for her by the disconsolate mother and her friends, the instalment of Persephone as queen in the realm of the dead and her annual return in spring with the bloom of flowers as well as the fruit of the fields. The course of nature symbolizes man's destiny. To set forth the continuity of life a torch was handed from hand to hand, and the ear of wheat, the seed of future life, was worn by the initiates as an emblem of immortality.

We need not doubt that the performance of the fate of Osiris in the Egyptian ritual was kin in spirit, expressing the same idea. Osiris lived on earth as a benefactor of mankind, a lawgiver, as the inventor of agriculture, of writing, of science, of laws and the social order as well as of civilization in general. Egyptian religion knows of his death and his descent into the underworld where he becomes the judge of the dead endowed with the power to give to those who have obeyed his commandments a life of bliss in the fields of Aalu, the Greek Elysium.

Orpheus, the Thracian singer, was another figure in the mystery religions. We know that he lost his beloved wife Eurydice and followed her into the nether world where with his sweet song he touched the heart of the stern Hades. Hermes, the leader of souls, accompanied the faithful lovers back to life, but Orpheus could not re

strain himself and, contrary to the dictates of the law in the land of death, he turned to behold his bride, and she disappeared. The details of the mystery performance are lost to us; we only know that Orpheus sings to the lyre, that the whole creation, especially wild animals, come to listen to his enchanting strains and that he is killed and torn to pieces by his own worshipers, by the mænads who rove with him through the mountains.

All these mysteries, these dramatic presentations of the destinies of suffering gods who offer up their lives for the good of mankind, are tragedies, and comparative religion on the basis of anthropological research among savage races has discovered that they are a modified form of prior human sacrifices. It was the god's death that was enacted, and it was the god himself, his incarnation, his representative on earth, the high-priest of the tribe or the king himself, who was originally offered as the victim, as the hostia, and eaten. We live by eating the god of life, by nourishing ourselves with bread, the fruit of the fields, and by drinking the blood of the grape, and in the days of savagery it was deemed necessary to perform the act in all its cruel barbarity for the sake of perpetuating this divine munificence.

In the progress of civilization human sacrifices were abolished, and the sacred animal of the god was accepted as a fit substitute in the story of Abraham who offers a ram in the place of his son, Isaac. The symbol replaced the actual deed just as the hungry souls, originally fed with real food, had to be satisfied with the viands painted on the walls of their tombs (as instanced in the chambers of the dead of ancient Egypt); and while originally a master's slaves were killed to serve him in the other world, in a more cultured age a number of figurines (the ushabtiu of the Egyptians) were placed in his grave to serve the same purpose.