RELIGION, in its original form, was simple and intelligible. It was intended for the instruction and education of all ranks of men; and of consequence its doctrines were on a level with vulgar capacities. The Jewish dispensation was openly practised; nothing was performed in secret; every article was plain, open, and accessible. The divine Author of the Christian economy commanded his disciples to preach his doctrine in the most public manner: "What ye have heard in secret (says he) preach openly; and what I have taught you in private teach ye publicly, and proclaim it on the house tops." Such are the charms of truth, and such the character of that religion which came down from heaven, that they, as it were, "delight, and lift up their voice in the streets, and cry in the chief places of concourse."
But such is the depravity of the nature of man, that the noblest institutions degenerate in his hands. Religion itself, originally pure, simple, and amiable, under his management has often been transformed into pollution, perplexity, and deformity. The ministers of religion, whose province it was to guard the sacred deposit, and to secure it from foreign and spurious intermixtures, have generally been the first innovators, and the first and most industrious agents in corrupting its integrity and tarnishing its beauty. Avarice and ambition prompted that class of men to deviate from the original plainness and simplicity of religious institutions, and to introduce articles, rites, and usages, which might furnish them with opportunities of gratifying these unbounded and insatiable passions. Hence distinctions unknown to pure and undefiled religion were fabricated; and that heavenly institution, heretofore, one, simple, indivisible, was divided into two partitions: the one popular and public; the other dark, secret, and mysterious. The latter of these we intend as the subject of this article.
The English word mystery is derived from the Greek μυστήριον; and in its modern acceptance imports something above human intelligence, something awfully obscure and enigmatical; any thing artfully made difficult; the secret of any business or profession. The word is often used by the founder of the Christian religion, and more frequently by his apostles, especially St. Paul. In these cases, it generally signifies those doctrines of Christianity which the Jews, prior to the advent of the Messiah, either did not or could not understand. The Trinity in Unity, and the Unity in Trinity; the incarnation of the Son of God; the union of two natures in one and the same person, &c. we generally
call mysteries, because they are infinitely above human comprehension. All these significations are out of the question at present. Our intention in this article is to lay before our readers the fullest and fairest account this article we have been able to collect, of those ἀπορρήτια, or secret rites, of the Pagan superstition, which were carefully concealed from the knowledge of the vulgar, and which are universally known under the denomination of mysteries.
The word μυστήριον is evidently deduced from μυστός; but the origin of this last term is not altogether so obvious. The etymologies of it exhibited by the learned are various; some of them absurd and inconsistent, others foolish and futile. Instead of fatiguing our readers with a detail of these, which would be equally unentertaining and uninteresting, we shall only produce one, which to us appears to come nearest the truth. The mysteries under consideration at present were certainly imported into Greece from the east. In those regions, then, we ought of course to look for the etymology of the word. Mistor or mistur, in Hebrew, signifies "any place or thing hidden or concealed." As this word implies a kind of definition of the nature of the thing intended, and as it is one of the excellencies of original languages to apply vocables with this propriety, we find ourselves strongly inclined to assign the word mistur as the root of the term μυστήριον, myster.
We have already observed, that the avarice and ambition of the Pagan priesthood probably gave birth to the institution of the mysteries. To this observation we may now add, that the ministers of that superstition might possibly imagine, that some articles of their ritual were too profound to be comprehended by the vulgar; others, too sacred to be communicated to a description of men, whom the institutions of civil society had placed in a situation not only subordinate but even contemptible. It was imagined, that things sacred and venerable would have contracted a taint and pollution by an intercourse with sordid and untutored souls. These appear to us the most probable motives for making that odious and pernicious distinction between the popular religion and that contained in the sacred and mysterious ritual.
The learned Bishop Warburton is positive, that the mysteries of the Pagan religion were the invention of legislators* and other great personages, whom fortune or their own merit had placed at the head of those civil societies which were formed in the earliest ages in different parts of the world. It is with reluctance, and indeed