It is peculiarly interesting to remember that the figure of the sweet
singer grew into the centre of a great religious creed. The cult of
Orphism, higher and more spiritual than that of either Eleusis or
Dionysus, appears as early as the sixth century B.C., and reaches its
greatest in the fifth and fourth centuries. The Orphic hymns proclaim
the high doctrine of the divineness of all life, and open, at least for
the hopes of men, the gates of immortality. The secret societies which
professed the cult had the strongest possible influence upon the thought
of early Athens, but their most prominent effect is seen in Plato, who
derived from them his main doctrines of pre-existence, penance,
reincarnation and the final purification of the soul. Even the early
Christians, who hated so bitterly many of the myths of paganism, and
found in them nothing but doctrines of devils, treated this story
tenderly, blended the picture of Orpheus with that of their own Good
Shepherd, and found it edifying to Christian faith.
One more instance may be given in the story of Apollo, in which, more
perhaps than in any other, there is an amazing combination of bad and
good elements.
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