It may have seemed strange to some of you that in this course of lectures we should be considering matters which at first sight appear so alien to Greek thinking as these oriental mysteries. The reason is to be found in the goal toward which we are aiming, for it has been our purpose from the beginning to trace the history of Greek religious thought through to the time when it had in large measure determined the form of Christian thought and had provided the means by which the latter could be made intelligible to the contemporary world. It is necessary therefore to examine the several elements which made up the sum total of the religious thought of the earlier Christian centuries. Moreover, as we have now seen, the purpose of the oriental mysteries was one with the aim of the Greek mysteries and with the object of the Greek mystic philosophies. Therefore we have been obliged to bring into our plan these eastern religions. But I need not remind you that at this time there was another oriental religion spreading over the world which we have not yet considered. When Christianity was introduced to the West, it must have presented itself as a new eastern mystery. Men had long been accustomed to such religions; for centuries they had sought either through mysteries such as were celebrated at Eleusis or like those brought in from the East, to find the satisfaction of their hopes for a happy immortality. In these mysteries, as in the mystic philosophies, one of the central ideas was that of the direct vision of the divine which was a revelation of God to man. This act of grace had supplanted, or rather had been added to, the use of the reason or of the will which the philosophers had urged as the means of man’s salvation. Through a long course of centuries men had been trained by philosophy, by mystery, and by political events, until an environment had been created which was favorable to the ideas of Christianity—an environment also which was destined to influence profoundly this new religion in its earlier centuries, so that it ultimately received a form different from that foreshadowed in the teachings of its founder. The relation of Christianity to the world into which it entered and some of the reasons for its triumph will be the subject of our final lectures. FOOTNOTES: [287] _CIL._ III, 4413. III, 4796 from Tanzenberg in southern Austria, is an important witness here, for it records the restoration in 311 by the governor of the province of a Mithraic shrine which had been deserted for over fifty years. [288] Apuleius, _Met._ XI, 5. [289] Plutarch, _de Is. et Osir._, 67. [290] Apuleius, _Met._ XI, 23. [291] Apuleius, _Met._ XI, 19-30. [292] Published by Cumont, _Mystères de Mithra_^2, p. 132, fig. 18.