Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

130 SPIRITUAL SABBATHISM
tian Church."
While Syria was holding out against
the new religion, and Christians were forced to build
outside the Syrian city of the Sun, Emesa, Christianity
of a certain sort spread in Pontus like the explosion
of gunpowder. And why not? Peter and
Paul and Silas had not been able to penetrate into
those regions, to warn the people against mistaking
the Sun of Righteousness for the sun of victory and
fertility. Even in those regions to which missionaries
penetrated, "Should we be astonished," says
Cumont, "if the multitudes of devotees failed always
to observe the subtle distinctions of the doctors,
and rendered to the radiant star of day the homage
which orthodoxy reserved for God? In the fifth
century, not only heretics but even faithful followers
were still wont to bow their heads towards its
dazzling disc as it rose above the horizon, and to
murmur the prayer, 'Have mercy upon us.' " If
that was true in the fifth century in Rome, what
must have been true of the first century in Pontus?
There were two types of Mithraism, one more
faithful to its ancient Persian origin, one more corrupted
by sex-worship. We do not know which
type was introduced to Rome by the captured
Ciliclan pirates whom Pompey brought with
him seventy years before Christ. But it was
the Persian type which captured Roman soldiers sta-