Known and unknown goddess, my sins are seven times seven;
Forgive my sins!
Forgive my sins, and I will humble myself before thee.
May thy heart, as the heart of a mother who hath borne children, be glad!
As a father who hath begotten them, may it be glad!”
In this respect we agree with Ribot. “Depression,” says Ribot, “is related to fear.... Does not the worshipper entering a venerated sanctuary show all the symptoms of pallor, trembling, cold sweat, inability to speak—all that the ancients so justly called sacer horror? The self abasement, the humility of the worshipper before the deity supposed to be possessed of magic power, is essentially one of fear.” With the anthropologist we may refer this awe or fear to the terror which the savage mind feels in the presence of the magician, the witch, the medicine man, the man-god, and the woman-deity.
The Mithraic religion, which for some time has been the great rival of Christianity for the salvation of the individual from the terrors of the world, played a great rôle in the mystic ceremonies of the cult. In fact, the dying and the resurrection of a god-man for the salvation of the worshippers constituted a cardinal principle in the actual practices or rites of barbarous nations and savage tribes. The man-god or woman-deity had to die, had to be sacrificed by the community. The sins of the savages were redeemed by the divine flesh and blood of “the man-god.”
In describing the life and theological doctrines of St. Paul, Professor Pfleiderer says: “Perhaps Paul was influenced by the popular idea of the god who dies and returns to life, dominant at that time in the Adonis, Attis, and Osiris cults of Hither Asia (with various names and customs, everywhere much alike). At Antioch, the Syrian capital, in which Paul had been active for a considerable period, the main celebration of the Adonis feast took place in the spring time. On the first day, the death of ‘Adonis,’ the Lord, was celebrated, while on the following day, amid the wild songs of lamentations sung by the women, the burial of his corpse (represented by an image) was enacted. On the next day (in the Osiris celebration it was the third day after death, while in the Attis celebration it was the fourth day) proclamation was made that the god lived and he (his image) was made to rise in the air. It is noteworthy that the Greek Church has preserved a similar ceremony in its Easter celebration down to our own day.
“During the joyous feast of the resurrection of the god in the closely related Attis celebration, the priest anointed the mouths of the mourners with oil, and repeated the formula: