Therefore, the Mystery-religions and Paulinism cannot in the last resort be compared at all, as is indeed confirmed by the fact that the real analogies both in the mysticism and the sacramental doctrine are so surprisingly few. Reitzenstein’s attempt has not succeeded in altering this result, but only in confirming it. What remains of his material when the circle of ideas connected with the thought of “re-birth” is eliminated, and the all-pervading eschatological character of the fundamental ideas and underlying logic of Paulinism are duly considered in making the comparison? Finally, the question may be permitted, What would have been the bearing of the result if Dieterich and Reitzenstein had really proved the dependence of the Apostle’s doctrine upon the Mystery-religions? The simple declaration of the result would have been only [pg 229] the beginning of things, for immediately the problem whether, understood in this way, the Apostle’s doctrine could still have belonged to primitive Christianity would have arisen and called aloud for solution. The theory that Paul personally transformed the Gospel on the analogy of the Graeco-Oriental Mystery-religions is menaced by the same difficulties which previously brought about the downfall of the theory held by the Baur and post-Baur theology, that he Hellenised the Gospel. The hypothesis advanced by the students of Comparative Religion is only a special form of that general theory, and can do nothing to minimise the _a priori_ difficulties, or those raised by the history of dogma in connexion with it. How does Paulinism as understood by Dieterich and Reitzenstein fit into the history of the development of Christianity? If the Apostle during the first generation had introduced such a tremendous innovation as the Greek “physical” mysticism of redemption and the sacraments into primitive Jewish Christianity, could the latter have permitted this and continued to keep him in its midst? How was it possible for it to admit without a struggle, indeed unnoticed, something so entirely alien, and to raise no objections either to the Christology or to the mysticism or to the sacramental doctrine of the Apostle, but simply and solely to his attitude towards the law?