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HPB-SB-14-116: Difference between revisions
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Sir,—It is necessary to give a reply…|14-115}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued|Sir,—It is necessary to give a reply…|14-115}} | ||
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<div style="flex:1; text-align:center;">LIGHT.</div> | |||
<div>[December 9, 1882.</div> | |||
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{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-117}} | {{Style P-No indent|psychic truths. This science was founded on the study of the Celestial Planisphere, and its earliest and most universal text-book was the Zodiac. The phenomenon known as the Precession of the Equinoxes, causes a different sign in the Zodiac to appear at the vernal equinox about every 2,000 years, and to the character of this vernal sign prominent expression was given by the initiated, in the theological cultus of the period. Thus, history has shewn us successfully the Bull (Apis) and the Lamb (Aries) as the dominant emblems of Egyptian and Jewish worship; and this latter sign has survived in Christian symbolism because Aries is always the first Zodiacal hieroglyph, and thus the permanent emblem of the one eternal year or great sun-cycle. But the sign which actually ushered in the Christian dispensation, and which therefore we should expect to find reflected in the sacred legends of the period, was ''Pisces,'' or the fish.}} | ||
Hence the Messiah, who appeared under the auspices of this sign, is portrayed as being followed by fishers; as distributing fishes, (the “two small fishes” of the Zodiac) to His disciples; as preparing fish for the food of His apostles; and as Himself partaking of fish after His resurrection. | |||
Besides, the fish is the maritime emblem, and Jesus is said to have been born of Maria and the Holy Ghost, or of water and the Spirit. The prophet Esdras (Esdras, book ii., chap. 13) sees Christ in a vision coming up out of the sea; and the ceremony of “passing through the sea and the cloud” is still connected with initiation into Christian doctrine. | |||
For these reasons, the Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a net, and the apostles are told they should be “fishers of men.” Clement of Alexandria writes to his people early in the third century: “Let our signets be a dove (the Holy Spirit), or a fish (symbol of the water), or the heavenward sailing ship, or the lyre (of the sea-nymph), or the anchor.” All these symbols are found in the celestial planisphere. | |||
In the Roman Catacombs—the home of primitive Christian art—the most remarkable and the most general symbol employed to express the name of Christ was that of the fish, which affords, significatively, a combination of everything desirable in a tessera, or mystic sign. The Greek word for fish—ἸΧΘΥΣ—contains the initials of the words,—''Ἰησους Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υιος Σωτὴρ''” (Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Saviour.) Sometimes the word ''Ἰχθυς'' was written at length in place of the graven symbol. | |||
Augustine also applies this emblem to Jesus, and says that “He is a Fish which lives in the midst of waters.” Paulinus, speaking of the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes, (the mystic number of the planets,) alludes to Jesus as “the Fish of the living waters.” Prosper refers to Him as “the Fish dressed at his death.” And Tertullian calls the Christians “fishes bred in the water and saved by one great Fish.” Jerome, commending a disciple who sought baptism, tells him, “that like the Son of the Fish, he desires to be cast into the water.” | |||
As thus the Messiah of the Gospels is associated with the sea and with redemption through and by water, so with perfect reason, the successors of Peter, His chief apostle and vicar, claim as their distinctive title the name of the “Fisherman,” and the ring with which each successive Pontiff is invested, in token of his office and authority, is known as the “Fisherman’s Ring.” It has been observed also, that the mitre, characteristic of ecclesiastical authority in the Christian Church, represents a fish’s head, and expresses, therefore, the relation of the wearer to the Founder of the religion inaugurated under that sign. Fish were connected in primitive Christian times with all theological ceremonies; the saints in the sacred mysteries were called “pisciculi”—little fishes,—and to this day the water vase at the entrance of Catholic churches bears the name of “piscina.” | |||
The custom of eating fish on Friday, in commemoration of the chief event in the history of Him whose Mother is identical with the genius of that day, is still common in the larger section of Christians. | |||
We might insist at greater length on the peculiarly symbolical character of the whole 21st chapter of John’s Gospel, containing the account of the final fish-miracle, which chapter is appended as an epilogue to the Gospel itself, whose formally concluding verse closes the preceding chapter. | |||
More than one critic has pointed out the strong probability that the episode referred to, with its curiously emphasised numerals,—seven, two hundred, a hundred and fifty and three—and the unlikely character of its literal interpretation (see the Rev. Malcolm White on the symbolical numbers of Scripture), is altogether mystical and perhaps prophetical in meaning. | |||
But enough has been said to indicate the reasons for attaching a sense, not historical but symbolical to the various statements contained in the four Gospels on the subject of Christ’s connection with fish and fishery, and the reason of the substitution of the fish for the lamb, which represented the former dispensation. | |||
His connection with bread and wine is equally mystic in its character, and needs no explanation for those who are acquainted with the facts and doctrines of ancient mythology and the relation of the latter to the religion of which they are the lineal ancestors. | |||
A frank acknowledgment of, and apology for, his error, would, we think, have better become Mr. Tommy than the ingenious (rather than ingenuous) reply he has elaborated. His objection, it is now clear, ''really is to the teaching of Jesus'' in the verse cited. But he has not the courage to avow this, and tries therefore by means of involved phraseology to shift his strictures on to our shoulders. What we have done is to remove the harsh meaning he ascribed to the words of Jesus, and we therefore surely deserve his thanks rather than his reproaches. | |||
The letter signed “S. C.” exhibits the same features which characterise the majority of the criticisms put forth by our opponents. These features are a superficial and inaccurate reading both of “The Perfect Way” and of the Bible; and a manner indicative of a desire to wound rather than to discuss. | |||
We entirely deny that we have “heaped loose and indiscriminate imputations on the ministers of the Gospel.” For the true “ministers of the Gospel” we have no words of blame; we spoke of “priesthoods and of their inveterate tendency to materialise spiritual doctrines,” not in the Christian religion only but in all others. But it is hardly so strange that “S. C.” should misquote and misunderstand us, as that—as his next sentence shews—he should be so ignorant of the plain teaching of his own communion! The Resurrection of Jesus is ''not'' held by Christians of any recognised Church to have been a ''spiritual'' resurrection. Both Catholic and Protestant divines have invariably taught that Jesus rose from the dead in the ''body,'' in that body appeared to His disciples (Luke xxiv. 39), and with that body ascended into Heaven, where, ''in that body'' He sits at the right hand of God the Father. If “S. C.” holds otherwise, he cannot believe the letter of the Scriptures, nor the Articles of the orthodox faith, of both of which he appears to be the champion. As it is, while spiritualising the Resurrection, he seems to ascribe a physical meaning to the Incarnation. | |||
As regards the doctrine of re-births, “S. C.” writes as though we had been the inventors, or at least the first promulgators of that doctrine, which, he ought to know, is so ancient that upon it all the early theosophies and philosophies were built. It is really too late in the day to discuss a doctrine which is now,—since the publication of “The Perfect Way”—openly taught and at great length insisted on in the pages of the Theosophist, and which has but very recently been clearly expounded in “Light” by “C. C. M.” If “S. C.” is not content with these, he may turn to some letters on “Re-Incarnation” published in “Light” a year ago, under the signature “Anna Kingsford, M.D.” He will there find plainly set forth the true nature of that doctrine, which, in common with most Spiritualists, he wholly misunderstands.<sup>*</sup> In passing, it is, however, well to remind him that Spirit is Divine in its nature, and therefore, of course, possesses and includes the dual principles. Hence Spirit incarnate must needs comprehend the potentiality of both sexes. Were it otherwise, the “perfected man” could not be in the image of God. A full humanity must comprise all experiences and all human relations. Otherwise all would be disorderly, unsystematised, and unequal. The text quoted by “S. C.” is quite foreign to the subject, the physiological fact being the very reverse of the conclusion he seems to draw from it, as it would be easy to shew were the pages of this journal suited to such discussion. | |||
It is not possible within the limits of these columns, already so generously accorded to this discussion, to reply in detail to the many objections raised by “S. C.” He completely inverts the purport of our remarks about Swedenborg, and after the example of Mr. Tommy, attributes to us words we never used. Will “S. C.” be good enough to read what we say about Swedenborg in Lecture ix. p. 266, and in the letter to which he refers? He will then perceive what our estimate of the seer really is, and will find that so far from supposing Swedenborg{{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|14-117}} | |||
{{Footnotes start}} | |||
<sup>*</sup> Also, let him read Appendix VII. of “The Perfect Way.” | |||
{{Footnotes end}} | |||