Now for Paul again. Anyone who ascribes to him the conception of a sacramental eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ does violence to his words. [pg 204] But admitting that he really thought in this way, that would prove nothing. It would first need to be shown that it really was a cultus-conception drawn from the primitive nature-religions which came to life again in him. Now, for the Mystery-religions the necessary presuppositions might appear to be present, since they arise out of ancient cults which sprouted and grew up again in later times. Paul, however, is a Jew, and even as a believer in Christ he stands, in spite of his polemic against the law, wholly and solely on the basis of the absolute, transcendent Jewish conception of God. Any relation on his part to the nature-cults cannot be proved and ought not to be assumed. By what wind were the seeds of this primitive conception wafted to his mind? And how could they suddenly sprout and grow in the stony soil of a Jewish heart? The Apostle would certainly be the first and the only Jewish theologian to fall under the spell of the primitive conception of eating the god! And where was such a conception at that time to be found? But what matter such prosaic considerations when it is a question of great ideas, of ideas, moreover, fathered by Comparative Religion? When Heitmüller in the spring of 1903 appeared before the members of the Clergy Theological Society_(_166_)_ in Hanover to give them the latest information about baptism and the Lord’s Supper, he led them abroad, after an introduction on the “physico-hyperphysical” in Paul, first to the Aztecs, then in the clouds of night, by the torch’s gleam, to the Thracian mountain sides, and thence to Sinai._(_167_)_ And when they had assisted at the slaughtering and devouring of the prisoners of war, the ox, and the camel, he expressed himself to the following effect: “Little as the _δεῖπνον κυριακόν_ of Paul might seem to have in common with these . . . proceedings, and [pg 205] loth as we at first are even to name the Lord’s Supper in the same breath with them, as little is it to me a matter of doubt that, when looked at from the point of view of Comparative Religion, the Lord’s Supper of primitive Christianity has the closest connexion with them. Those pictures supply the background from which the Lord’s Supper stands out; they show us the world of ideas to which the Lord’s Supper belongs in its most primitive, and therefore perspicuous, form.”