It now becomes clear why the Apostle cannot describe as a “Re-birth” the condition brought about by baptism. The renewal consists in the fact that the coming resurrection-life is, for the short period which remains of the present course of the world, received by anticipation. Re-birth, on the other hand, implies an uneschatological system of thought in which the individual reckons more or less on a normal span of life, for which he seeks an inner divine being which shall subsist alongside of or above the earthly. It is only at a period when eschatology is falling into the background that the Greek conception of re-birth, such as is associated with the Mysteries, can supersede the old mystico-eschatological conception of the proleptic resurrection. Accordingly it presently appears in Justin and the Fourth Evangelist. From that point onwards baptism brings re-birth. In Paul it produced only an antedated dying and rising again. The sacramental conception of the Apostle is therefore derived from an entirely different world of thought from that of the Mystery-religions. It is a different question, however, in what relation his “physical”_(_180_)_ mysticism in itself, apart from the [pg 218] sacraments, bears to the world of ideas associated with the Greek Mystery-religions. To this question Reitzenstein, the “pneumatic”_(_181_)_ among the students of Comparative Religion, devotes a careful study. He avoids conventional catchwords and rash conclusions, and endeavours to discover the conceptions and ideas which are common to both, and to follow them out in detail. With this purpose he brings together everything which he can find in the language of the Mysteries and the Hermetic literature relating to such ideas as “service” and “military service” of God, “justification,” “pre-existence,” “gnosis,” “spirit,” “revelation,” “pneumatic,” “heavenly garment,” and “transformation.” For the first time the material for a study of Paul from the point of view of Comparative Religion is brought together with a certain completeness, and the impression which it makes is very powerful. The theologian who reads these passages with an open mind will be lifted out of the ruts of conventional interpretation. It is as if a flood of new thought had streamed into the channels of ordinary exegesis, whether critical or otherwise, and swept away the accumulations of rubble.