The Grecian idea of baptism is well set forth by OVID, in the following lines:
“From Greece the custom came, for Greece esteems Those free from guilt who bathe in sacred streams. Thus did old Pelius once Patroclus lave, And free from stain in the Hæmonian wave: As, in that same Hæmonian stream before, Acastus, Pelius freed from Phocus’ gore. The Phasian sorceress, in her fiery car, Borne by yoked dragons through the liquid air, To credulous Ægeus supplication made, And from him won an undeservèd aid. In Naupactoan Achelous’ flood, His horrid hands stained with his mother’s blood, Alcæmon bathed; ‘Cleanse me from crime,’ he cried, Nor by the stream was his request denied. Ah, vain the hope, and far too easy they, Who think the water takes such guilt away.” _Fasti_, book ii., line 58 ff.
The influence of the Greek mysteries in corrupting Christian baptism is more plainly seen than that of any other specific department of the pagan cult. These mysteries were the remnant of the oldest religion known to the Greeks. They embodied the worship of the gods of the productive forces in nature, and of the gods of death. The most important centre of this cult was at Eleusis, where the worship was celebrated in the largest temple in Greece. The chief elements in the cult were initiation, sacrifice, and scenic representations of the great facts in the processes of nature and in human life. The main conception in the initiation was that the candidate must be purified before he could approach God. The initiated, being thus purified, were inducted to a divine life and to the hope of a resurrection. The ceremonial began with the proclamation: “Let no one enter whose hands are not clean, and whose tongue is not prudent.”[106]
Confession was followed by a kind of baptism.[107] The candidates for initiation bathed in the pure waters of the sea. The manner of bathing and the number of immersions varied with the degree of guilt which they had confessed. They came from the bath new men. It was a κάθαρσις, a λουτρὸν, a “laver of regeneration.” Certain forms of abstinence were imposed; they had to fast; and when they ate they had to abstain from certain kinds of food.[108]
After this purification came a σωτήρια, “a great public sacrifice of salvation”; also personal sacrifices. After an interval of two days still more sacrifices, shows, and “processions” followed. The initiated carried lighted torches and sang “loud peans in honor of the God.”[109] Then came the scenic representations at night. The initiated stood outside the temple in deep darkness. Suddenly the door opened, and in a blaze of light the drama of Demeter and Kore appeared--in which the loss of the daughter, the wanderings of the mother, and the birth of the child, were enacted. This symbolized the earth in its great experiences, as well as the corresponding experiences in human life. All this was enacted in silence. Each man saw and meditated for himself. It was believed that this gave purity to the initiated, changed their relations to the gods, and made them “partakers of a life to come.”[110] Mithraicism had a similar form of initiation, a prominent feature of which was a sacred meal, upon a “holy table,” of which the initiated took part after they were purified. The societies which practised these mysteries existed on a large scale during the earliest centuries of our era, and had a marked influence upon the earliest Christian communities, and upon the subsequent church. HATCH thus describes these effects: