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SOME ANCIENT AND EXTINCT FAITHS
same trials. In the words of the writer of the Article on the Egyptian Mysteries in the ERE., "the Egyptian Mysteries, like the Eleusinian and Isiac Mysteries, claim to...reveal the way to enter upon a new blissful life. Every notion that we have of them is connected with the cult of Osiris, who is, in the Egyptian Pantheon, pre-eminently the dead and resuscitated god."
To come now to the Greek Mysteries of which there were several sorts, and which were believed to deliver men from the torments of the other world, while the neglect of them was punished by an awful doom : it was clearly stated that happiness in the next world was confined to those who had been initiated in these mysteries, and the initiate was enjoined in the following remarkable words : “ Above all remember and retain in your heart that the
remaining space of your life on earth is dedicated to me, to whom you owe all your being ” (ERE. vol. ix.
p. 82). As for the cult of these mysteries, the same theme of the death and resurrection of a god is common to them all. An interesting account of one of these mystery.cults is thus given in the ERE: “The special form of Dionysiac worship... is connected with
the name Zagreus, wbich was applied to Dionysus. The legends which told the story of the birth, death and resurrection of Zagreus are of a particularly revolting kind... Zagreng was the child of an amour of Zeus and Persephone. While still an infant he was entrapped by the Titans, who attracted him with toys and then
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