The Apostle implies a baptism in the name of a divine person. Of a baptism performed in the name of Osiris, Attis, or Mithra we know nothing, though no doubt the assumption naturally suggests itself that the lustrations and baptisms practised in these cults were considered to be at the same time acts of confession of faith in the divinity with whose worship they were associated. But this character was by no means so distinctly stamped on them as was the case in Christian baptism—as is, indeed, readily intelligible. In the Mystery-religions the confession of the god is naturally implied; in Christianity there is the special confession of faith in the Messiahship of Jesus. To this there was nothing analogous. As regards the utterance of the name of the divinity and the magical efficacy attaching thereto according to ancient conceptions, many illustrations can be adduced from Comparative Religion. But the really important point, the association of the utterance of the name with a baptismal rite, cannot be directly shown to have existed in the Mystery-religions._(_172_)_ [pg 209] In order to arrive at his sacramental view Paul does not follow the natural method of advancing by way of the thought of purification to that of renewal by regeneration, but follows a different route, which leads him to an estimate of it that has nothing to do with the fundamental conception of purification, and therefore remains without analogy in the Mystery-religions. This is a fact of great significance. The Mystery-religions speak, as Paul also does, of the _pneuma_ and its workings, but the possession of the _pneuma_ is never represented as an immediate and inevitable consequence of baptism. With the Mystery-religions are associated speculations about the renewal of man’s being, represented as taking place in regeneration, which they bring into some kind of relation, closer or more remote, with baptism. But when Paul speaks of the new creature which comes into being in the sacrament, the thought of regeneration does not for him come into view, for he makes no use of it at all. Instead of that he asserts in Rom. vi. that in baptism there is an experience of death and resurrection in fellowship with Christ, from which results newness of life and the new ethic associated therewith. How the act and the result are logically connected he does not explain. He is content to place them side by side. [pg 210] So far as we know, there exists in the Mystery-religions no analogue to this dying and rising again effected solely by the use of water. To interpret Rom. vi., as Dieterich does, as referring to a spiritual death and “new birth” is not permissible, since the text says not a word about that. The post-Pauline theology, that is the Johannine and Early Greek theology, explain baptism as regeneration, and seek to find a logical basis for this effect in the doctrine that the Spirit unites with the water as the generating power. Paul has nothing of all this.