In these celebrated rites, although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take a part, and a participation in them was even obligatory, very few indeed attained the higher and final initiation. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth book of his _Theology of Plato_. “The perfective rite τελετη, precedes in order the initiation--_Muesis_--and the initiation, _Epopteia_, or the final apocalypse (revelation).” Theon of Smyrna, in _Mathematica_, also divides the mystic rites into five parts: “the first of which is the previous purification; for _neither are the Mysteries communicated to all_ who are willing to receive them; ... there are certain persons who are prevented by the voice of the crier (κηρυξ) ... since it is necessary that such as are not expelled from the Mysteries should first be refined by certain purifications which the reception of the sacred rites succeeds. The third part is denominated _epopteia_ or reception. And the fourth, which is the end and design of the revelation, is _the binding of the head and fixing of the crowns_[156] ... whether after this he (the initiated person) becomes ... an hierophant or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal office. But the fifth, which is produced from all these, _is friendship and interior communion with God_.” And this was the last and most awful of all the Mysteries. There are writers who have often wondered at the meaning of this claim to a “friendship and interior communion with God.” Christian authors have denied the pretensions of the “Pagans” to such “communion,” affirming that only Christian saints were and are capable of enjoying it; materialistic skeptics have altogether scoffed at the idea of both. After long ages of religious materialism and spiritual stagnation, it has most certainly become difficult if not altogether impossible to substantiate the claims of either party. The old Greeks, who had once crowded around the Agora of Athens, with its altar to the “Unknown God,” are no more; and their descendants firmly believe that they have found the “Unknown” in the Jewish Jehova. The divine ecstasies of the early Christians have made room for visions of a more modern character, in perfect keeping with progress and civilization. The “Son of man” appearing to the rapt vision of the ancient Christian as coming from the seventh heaven, in a cloud of glory, and surrounded with angels and winged seraphim, has made room for a more prosaic and at the same time more business-like Jesus. The latter is now shown as making morning calls upon Mary and Martha in Bethany; as seating himself on “the _ottoman_” with the younger sister, a lover of “ethics,” while Martha goes off to the kitchen to cook. Anon the heated fancy of a blasphemous Brooklyn preacher and harlequin, the Reverend Dr. Talmage, makes us see her rushing back “with besweated brow, a pitcher in one hand and the tongs in the other ... into the presence of Christ,” and blowing him