sect. 6). The acts which Christ has done in silence are worthy of the Father; and he that truly possesses the

Word of Christ is able even to hear His silence, so as to be perfect, so that through what he says he may be

doing, and through his silence he may be understood (Eph. sect. 15). And so again he is astonished at the

moderation of the Philadelphian bishop, whose silence is more effective than the speech of others.

So far the passages quoted, though noteworthy, do not imply anything more than a vivid appreciation of

the value of reserve, so that speech should convey the impression of a latent and still unused store of

strength. But the following passages do more; they show that a certain mystic and Divine nature and value

were attributed by Ignatius to Silence; and in the light of those two passages, the words quoted above from

Eph. sect. 15 are seen to have also a mystic value.

In Eph. sect. 19 he speaks of the three great Christian mysteries --the virginity of Mary, the birth of her Son,

and the death of the Lord, "three mysteries shouting aloud (in the world of men), which were wrought in the

Silence of God." In Magn. sect. 8 he speaks of God as having manifested Himself through His Son, who is

His Word that proceeded from Silence.

Now, we must ask what was the origin of this mystic power that Ignatius assigns to Silence. Personally, I

cannot doubt that his mind and thought were influenced by his recollection of the deep impression that

certain Pagan Mysteries had formerly made on him.

It is mentioned in the Philosophumena, lib. v., that "the great and wonderful and most perfect mystery,

placed before those who were [at Eleusis] initiated into the second and higher order, was a shoot of corn

harvested in silence." In this brief description a strikin g scene is set before us: the hushed expectation of the

initiated, the contrast with the louder and more crowded and dramatic scenes of the previous Mystic acts, as

in absolute silence the Divine life works itself out to an end in the growing ear of corn, which is reaped

before them. There can be no doubt, amid all the obscurity which envelopes the Eleusinian ceremonial, that

great part of the effect which they produced on the educated and thoughtful, the intellectual and

philosophic minds, lay in the skilful, dramatically presented contrast between the earlier naturalistic life, set

before them in scenes of violence and repulsive horror, and the later reconciliation of the jarring elements in

the peaceful Divine life, as revealed for the benefit of men by the Divine power, and shown on the mystic

stage as perfected in profound silence. Think of the hierophant, a little before, shouting aloud, "a holy son

Brimos the Lady Brimo has borne," as the culmination of a series of outrages and barbarities: then imagin e

the dead stillness, and the Divine life symbolised to the imagination of the sympathetic and responsive

mystai in the growing and garnered ear of the Divinely revealed corn which dies only to live again, which is

destroyed only to be useful.

The scene which we have described is mentioned only as forming part of the Eleusinian Mysteries; and it

may be regarded as quite probable that Ignatius had been initiated at Eleusis. Initiation at Eleusis (which had

in earlier times been confined to the Athenian people) was widened in later times so that all "Hellenes," i.e.

all persons whose language and education and spirit were Greek, were admitted. Thus, for example,

Apollonius of Tyana, who had been rejected in AD 51 on the ground, not that he was a foreigner, but that

he was suspected of magic, was admitted to initiation in AD 55. But it is also true that (as is pointed out in

Dr. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, v., p. 126) "the Mysteries celebrated at different religious centres

competed with one another in attractiveness," and they all borrowed from one another and "adapted to their

own purposes elements which seemed to be attractive in others." Hence it may be that Ignatius had

witnessed that same scene, or a similar one, in other Mysteries.

That the highest and most truly Divine nature is silent must have been the lesson of the Eleusinian

Mysteries, just as surely as they taught--not by any formal dogmatic teaching (for the words uttered in the

representation of the Divine drama before the initiated were concerned only with the dramatic action), but

through the impression produced on those who comprehended the meaning of the drama, and (as the

ancients say) it required a philosophic spirit and a reverent religious frame of mind to comprehend--that the

life of man is immortal. Both those lessons were to Ignatius stages in the development of his religious