Note 242 — Chapter XXI · THE FOREIGN CULTS: CYBELE, ISIS, MITHRAS. THE CHRISTIANS IN PAGAN EYES

Nearly all our evidence for Mithraism is archæological; we know little of either its doctrines or its ritual. Apparently it had a system of priests not unlike the Christian clergy and a ceremony resembling the Christian sacrament. It owed its success largely to the real nobility of its doctrines, but could not in the end maintain itself by appealing simply to a remote myth, while Christianity was able to appeal to a personal Founder.