In view of the facts with which we have been occupied we shall not make the error of thinking that Christianity brought the hope of immortality among men, for, as we have seen, hope—nay, sure confidence, in the soul’s survival was widespread throughout the ancient world when Jesus began his ministry. What can we say of early Christian teaching, and how was it related to its pagan environment?

Christianity grew out of Judaism. Now it is a striking fact that the Jews were later than most of the peoples about them in conceiving of individual immortality.[33] Clinging to monotheism and absorbed in the life of their nation, they had cut themselves off from some of the ideas developed by their neighbors. To follow out the intricate and uncertain history of eschatological ideas among the Jews would be too difficult here. We may simply say that when Jesus began his ministry a considerable part of the Jews had abandoned the expectation of a material kingdom of God and looked forward to a spiritual kingdom on a transformed earth or in heaven. In this kingdom those would share, who through God’s grace and their own righteousness had won a place therein; but the wicked were either to be punished forever or to be utterly destroyed. To these ideas Jesus’ teaching was closely related, although he gave a nobler meaning to Jewish doctrine, and he did not limit the hope of a future existence so narrowly as some would do. Moreover, he adopted from the law the teaching which made salvation and future happiness depend on a love for God and for one’s fellow-men, which would result in an unselfish life of righteousness. Salvation, he taught, was a present experience, open to every man who conformed to the requirement.

After the crucifixion of Jesus, the Apostles and their successors naturally made his person, death, and resurrection the great means through which his followers secured salvation. Paul, moreover, taught that through faith—using the word in a somewhat unusual sense—the believer secured the actual presence of Christ within him, entered into a mystic union with the divine Saviour, by which the man was freed from sin and reborn into a new spiritual life; this new life was confirmed by the indwelling Holy Spirit which completed the man’s moral regeneration. In the Fourth Gospel we find a similar doctrine of a mystic union with Christ, secured by belief in Him as the incarnate Word—a belief which brought about a spiritual rebirth and therewith gave a present warrant of eternal life.[34]

It is unnecessary for our present purpose to examine the beliefs of the earliest Christians as to the resurrection or the second coming of Christ, which they expected to take place within their own time—these beliefs and many others the Apostolic Church derived naturally from their Jewish tradition and from the teachings of Jesus. I shall ask you rather to focus your thought on the fundamental ideas of this early Christianity: that is to say, on the revelation of God, the punishment of sin by suffering or annihilation, the mystic union with the Divine, and a happy immortality as a reward for faith and righteousness. Were these ideas foreign to the peoples of the Mediterranean area? No, our survey has reminded us that on the contrary they were familiar over wide stretches of the Greco-Roman world.

Do not misunderstand me here. Of course I am not making the elementary blunder of saying that because certain beliefs of the Christians and the Pagans were similar, they therefore were identical, or that they were derived from one another, or that the many factors of which they were composed were the same. No one with any knowledge of the history of religious thought could maintain that. But the point which I do wish to emphasize is this, viz.: that the eschatological ideas widely current in the Mediterranean world were such that Christianity found a favorable environment when it began its proselyting work. This seems to me one of the most significant facts in the relation of early Christianity to paganism. The Christian teachings as to the means by which the assurance of a happy immortality was to be secured could hardly seem very strange at first hearing to any one who was familiar with mystery religions or with much of the religious philosophy current in the pagan world during the early Christian centuries. Closer examination would reveal fundamental differences between Christian belief and the pagan hope. But it is not insignificant that Christianity spread most rapidly at first in Syria and Asia Minor, countries long familiar with those mystic religions, which had promised what the nobler faith supplied.