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answering to that of Pleroma, only in a far superior region; whereas, the Fathers assure us that the Gnostics gave the name of Bythos to the First Cause. As in the kabalistic system, it represents the boundless and infinite void within which is concealed in darkness the Unknown Primal motor of all. It envelops Him like a veil: in short we recognize again the “Shekinah” of the En-Soph. Alone, the name of ΙΑΩ, Iao, marks the upper centre, or rather the presumed spot where the Unknown One may be supposed to dwell. Around the Iao, runs the legend, ϹΕΜΕϹ ΕΙΑΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ. “The eternal Sun-Abrasax” (the Central Spiritual Sun of all the kabalists, represented in some diagrams of the latter by the circle of Tiphereth).

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{{Style P-No indent|answering to that of Pleroma, only in a far superior region; whereas, the Fathers assure us that the Gnostics gave the name of Bythos to the First Cause. As in the kabalistic system, it represents the boundless and infinite void within which is concealed in darkness the Unknown Primal motor of all. It envelops Him like a veil: in short we recognize again the “Shekinah” of the En-Soph. Alone, the name of ΙΑΩ, Iao, marks the upper centre, or rather the presumed spot where the Unknown One may be supposed to dwell. Around the Iao, runs the legend, ϹΕΜΕϹ ΕΙΑΑΜ ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ. “The eternal Sun-Abrasax” (the Central Spiritual Sun of all the kabalists, represented in some diagrams of the latter by the circle of Tiphereth).}}

From this region of unfathomable Depth, issues forth a circle formed of spirals; which, in the language of symbolism, means a grand cycle, κυκλος, composed of smaller ones. Coiled within, so as to follow the spirals, lies the serpent—emblem of wisdom and eternity—the Dual Androgyne: the cycle representing {{Style S-Italic|Ennoia}} or the Divine mind, and the Serpent—the Agathodaimon, Ophis—the Shadow of the Light. Both were the Logoï of the Ophites; or the unity as Logos manifesting itself as a double principle of good and evil; for, according to their views, these two principles are immutable, and existed from all eternity, as they will ever continue to exist.

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{| style="margin: 2em auto; border-spacing: 1em 0;"

|- valign=top

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| ~~widht~~=50% | Lord Jordan—“the Lord of all Jordans,” manifests {{Style S-Small capitals|Netubto}} (Faith without Works).{{Footnote mark|*|fn1527}}

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| width=50% | Lord Jordan—“the Lord of all Jordans,” manifests {{Style S-Small capitals|Netubto}} (Faith without Works).{{Footnote mark|*|fn1527}}

| Sophia-Achamoth emanates Ilda-Baoth—the Demiurge, who produces material and soulless creation. “Works without Faith” (or grace).*

|}

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“For, if the truth of God hath more abounded, {{Style S-Italic|through my lie}} unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner?” naively inquires Paul, the best and sincerest of all the apostles. And he then adds: “{{Style S-Italic|Let us do evil}}, that good may come!” ({{Style S-Italic|Romans}} iii. 7, 8). This is a confession which we are asked to believe as having been a direct inspiration from God! It explains, if it does not excuse, the maxim adopted later by the Church that “it is an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of {{Style S-Italic|the Church}} might be promoted.”{{Footnote mark|§|fn1561}} A maxim

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1558}} “Sagra Scrittura,” and “Paralipomeni.”

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They all appeared to be men of forty to forty-five years of age, and evidently of vast erudition . . . their knowledge of languages not to be doubted. . . . They never remained long in any one country, but passed away without creating notice.”~~[#~~fn1568 ~~1568]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|They all appeared to be men of forty to forty-five years of age, and evidently of vast erudition . . . their knowledge of languages not to be doubted. . . . They never remained long in any one country, but passed away without creating notice.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1568}}}}

Another of such sub-brotherhoods is the sect of the Pitris, in India. Known by name, now that Jacolliot has brought it into public notice, it yet is more arcane, perhaps, than the brotherhood that Mr. Mackenzie names the “Hermetic Brothers.” What Jacolliot learned of it, was from fragmentary manuscripts delivered to him by Brahmans, who had their reasons for doing so, we must believe. The {{Style S-Italic|Agrouchada Parikshai}} gives certain details about the association, as it was in days of old, and, when explaining mystic rites and magical incantations, explains nothing at all, so that the mystic L’om, L’Rhum, Sh’hrum, and Sho-rim Ramaya-Namaha, remain, for the mystified writer, as much a puzzle as ever. To do him justice, though, he fully admits the fact, and does not enter upon useless speculations.

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Whoever desires to assure himself that there now exists a religion which has baffled, for centuries, the impudent inquisitiveness of missionaries, and the persevering inquiry of science, let him violate, if he can, the seclusion of the Syrian Druzes. He will find them numbering over 80,000 warriors, scattered from the plain east of Damascus to the western coast. They covet no proselytes, shun notoriety, keep friendly—as far as possible—with both Christians and Mahometans, respect the religion of every other sect or people, but will never disclose their own secrets. Vainly do the missionaries stigmatize them as infidels, idolaters, brigands, and thieves. Neither threat, bribe, nor any other consideration will induce a Druze to become a convert to dogmatic Christianity. We have heard of two in fifty years, and both have finished their careers in prison, for drunkenness and theft. They proved to be “real {{~~Style S-Italic~~|~~Druzes,”[#~~fn1569 ~~1569]~~}} said one

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Whoever desires to assure himself that there now exists a religion which has baffled, for centuries, the impudent inquisitiveness of missionaries, and the persevering inquiry of science, let him violate, if he can, the seclusion of the Syrian Druzes. He will find them numbering over 80,000 warriors, scattered from the plain east of Damascus to the western coast. They covet no proselytes, shun notoriety, keep friendly—as far as possible—with both Christians and Mahometans, respect the religion of every other sect or people, but will never disclose their own secrets. Vainly do the missionaries stigmatize them as infidels, idolaters, brigands, and thieves. Neither threat, bribe, nor any other consideration will induce a Druze to become a convert to dogmatic Christianity. We have heard of two in fifty years, and both have finished their careers in prison, for drunkenness and theft. They proved to be “real ''Druzes'',”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1569}} said one

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~~[#fn1568anc 1568]. ~~What will, perhaps, still more astonish American readers, is the fact that, in the United States, a mystical fraternity now exists, which claims an intimate relationship with one of the oldest and most powerful of Eastern Brotherhoods. It is known as the Brotherhood of Luxor, and its faithful members have the custody of very important secrets of science. Its ramifications extend widely throughout the great Republic of the West. Though this brotherhood has been long and hard at work, the secret of its existence has been jealously guarded. Mackenzie describes it as having “a Rosicrucian basis, and numbering many members” (“Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 461). But, in this, the author is mistaken; it has no Rosicrucian basis. The name Luxor is primarily derived from the ancient Beloochistan city of Looksur, which lies between Bela and Kedgee, and also gave its name to the Egyptian city.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1568}} What will, perhaps, still more astonish American readers, is the fact that, in the United States, a mystical fraternity now exists, which claims an intimate relationship with one of the oldest and most powerful of Eastern Brotherhoods. It is known as the Brotherhood of Luxor, and its faithful members have the custody of very important secrets of science. Its ramifications extend widely throughout the great Republic of the West. Though this brotherhood has been long and hard at work, the secret of its existence has been jealously guarded. Mackenzie describes it as having “a Rosicrucian basis, and numbering many members” (“Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 461). But, in this, the author is mistaken; it has no Rosicrucian basis. The name Luxor is primarily derived from the ancient Beloochistan city of Looksur, which lies between Bela and Kedgee, and also gave its name to the Egyptian city.

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~~[#fn1569anc 1569]. ~~These people do not accept the name of Druzes, but regard the appellation as an insult. They call themselves the “disciples of Hamsa,” their Messiah, who came to them, in the tenth century, from the “Land of the Word of God,” and, together with his disciple, Mochtana Boha-eddin, committed this {{Style S-Italic|Word}} to writing, and entrusted it to the care of a few initiates, with the injunction of the greatest secresy. They are usually called Unitarians.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1569}} These people do not accept the name of Druzes, but regard the appellation as an insult. They call themselves the “disciples of Hamsa,” their Messiah, who came to them, in the tenth century, from the “Land of the Word of God,” and, together with his disciple, Mochtana Boha-eddin, committed this {{Style S-Italic|Word}} to writing, and entrusted it to the care of a few initiates, with the injunction of the greatest secresy. They are usually called Unitarians.

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309 THE BROTHERHOOD OF LUXOR.

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of their chiefs, in discussing the subject. There never was a case of an {{Style S-Italic|initiated}} Druze becoming a Christian. As to the uninitiated, they are never allowed to even see the sacred writings, and none of them have the remotest idea where these are kept. There are missionaries in Syria who boast of having in their possession a few copies. The volumes alleged to be the correct expositions from these secret books (such as the translation by Petis de la Croix, in 1701, from the works presented by Nasr-Allah to the French king), are nothing more than a compilation of “secrets,” known more or less to every inhabitant of the southern ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Libanus. They were the work of an apostate Dervish, who was expelled from the sect Hanafi, for improper conduct—the embezzlement of the money of widows and orphans. The {{Style S-Italic|Exposé de la Religion des Druzes,}} in two volumes, by Sylvestre de Sacy (1828), is another net-work of hypotheses. A copy of this work was to be found, in 1870, on the window-sill of one of their principal {{Style S-Italic|Holowey,}} or place of religious meeting. To the inquisitive question of an English traveller, as to their rites, the {{~~Style S-Italic~~|~~Okhal,[#~~fn1570 ~~1570]~~}} a venerable old man, who spoke English as well as French, opened the volume of de Sacy, and, offering it to his interlocutor, remarked, with a benevolent smile: “Read this instructive and truthful book; I could explain to you neither better nor more correctly the secrets of God and our blessed Hamsa, than it does.” The traveller understood the hint.

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{{Style P-No indent|of their chiefs, in discussing the subject. There never was a case of an {{Style S-Italic|initiated}} Druze becoming a Christian. As to the uninitiated, they are never allowed to even see the sacred writings, and none of them have the remotest idea where these are kept. There are missionaries in Syria who boast of having in their possession a few copies. The volumes alleged to be the correct expositions from these secret books (such as the translation by Petis de la Croix, in 1701, from the works presented by Nasr-Allah to the French king), are nothing more than a compilation of “secrets,” known more or less to every inhabitant of the southern ranges of Lebanon and Anti-Libanus. They were the work of an apostate Dervish, who was expelled from the sect Hanafi, for improper conduct—the embezzlement of the money of widows and orphans. The {{Style S-Italic|Exposé de la Religion des Druzes,}} in two volumes, by Sylvestre de Sacy (1828), is another net-work of hypotheses. A copy of this work was to be found, in 1870, on the window-sill of one of their principal {{Style S-Italic|Holowey,}} or place of religious meeting. To the inquisitive question of an English traveller, as to their rites, the ''Okhal'',{{Footnote mark|*|fn1570}} a venerable old man, who spoke English as well as French, opened the volume of de Sacy, and, offering it to his interlocutor, remarked, with a benevolent smile: “Read this instructive and truthful book; I could explain to you neither better nor more correctly the secrets of God and our blessed Hamsa, than it does.” The traveller understood the hint.}}

Mackenzie says they settled at Lebanon about the tenth century, and “seem to be a mixture of Kurds, Mardi-Arabs, and other semi-civilized tribes. Their religion is compounded of Judaism, Christianity, and Mahometanism. They have a regular order of priesthood and {{Style S-Italic|a kind of hierarchy}} . . . there is a regular system of passwords and signs. . . . Twelve month’s probation, to which either sex is admitted, preceded initiation.”

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That their religion exhibits traces of Magianism and Gnosticism is natural, as the whole of the Ophite esoteric philosophy is at the bottom of it. But the characteristic dogma of the Druzes is the absolute unity

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~~[#fn1570anc 1570]. ~~The Okhal (from the Arabic {{Style S-Italic|akl}}—intelligence or wisdom) are the initiated, or wise men of this sect. They hold, in their mysteries, the same position as the hierophant of old, in the Eleusinian and others.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1570}} The Okhal (from the Arabic {{Style S-Italic|akl}}—intelligence or wisdom) are the initiated, or wise men of this sect. They hold, in their mysteries, the same position as the hierophant of old, in the Eleusinian and others.

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310 ISIS UNVEILED.

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of God. He is the essence of life, and although incomprehensible and invisible, is to be known through {{Style S-Italic|occasional manifestations in human form.~~[#~~fn1571 ~~1571]~~}} Like the Hindus they hold that he was incarnated more than once on earth. Hamsa was the {{Style S-Italic|precursor}} of the last manifestation to be (the tenth {{Style S-Italic|avatar}})~~[#~~fn1572 ~~1572]~~ not the inheritor of Hakem, who is yet to come. Hamsa was the personification of the “Universal Wisdom.” Bohaeddin in his writings calls him Messiah. The whole number of his disciples, or those who at different ages of the world have imparted wisdom to mankind, which the latter as invariably have forgotten and rejected in course of time, is one hundred and sixty-four (164, the kabalistic {{Style S-Italic|s d k}}){{Style S-Italic|.}} Therefore, their stages or degrees of promotion after initiation are five; the first three degrees are typified by the “three feet of the candlestick of the inner Sanctuary, which holds the light of the {{Style S-Italic|five}} elements;” the last two degrees, the most important and terrifying in their solemn grandeur belonging to the highest orders; and the whole five degrees emblematically represent the said five mystic Elements. The “three feet are the holy {{Style S-Italic|Application,}} the {{Style S-Italic|Opening,}} and the {{Style S-Italic|Phantom,”}} says one of their books; on man’s inner and outer soul, and his body, a phantom, a passing shadow. The body, or matter, is also called the “Rival,” for “he is the minister of sin, the Devil ever creating dissensions between the Heavenly Intelligence (spirit) and the soul, which he tempts incessantly.” Their ideas on transmigration are Pythagorean and kabalistic. The spirit, or Temeami (the divine soul), was in Elijah and John the Baptist; and the soul of Jesus was that of H’amsa; that is to say, of the same degree of purity and sanctity. Until their resurrection, by which they understand the day when the spiritual bodies of men will be absorbed into God’s own essence and being (the Nirvana of the Hindus), the souls of men will keep their astral forms, except the few chosen ones who, from the moment of their separation from their bodies, begin to exist as pure spirits. The life of man they divide into soul, body, and intelligence, or mind. It is the latter which imparts and communicates to the soul the divine spark from its H’amsa (Christos).

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{{Style P-No indent|of God. He is the essence of life, and although incomprehensible and invisible, is to be known through {{Style S-Italic|occasional manifestations in human form.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1571}}}} Like the Hindus they hold that he was incarnated more than once on earth. Hamsa was the {{Style S-Italic|precursor}} of the last manifestation to be (the tenth {{Style S-Italic|avatar}}){{Footnote mark|†|fn1572}} not the inheritor of Hakem, who is yet to come. Hamsa was the personification of the “Universal Wisdom.” Bohaeddin in his writings calls him Messiah. The whole number of his disciples, or those who at different ages of the world have imparted wisdom to mankind, which the latter as invariably have forgotten and rejected in course of time, is one hundred and sixty-four (164, the kabalistic {{Style S-Italic|s d k}}){{Style S-Italic|.}} Therefore, their stages or degrees of promotion after initiation are five; the first three degrees are typified by the “three feet of the candlestick of the inner Sanctuary, which holds the light of the {{Style S-Italic|five}} elements;” the last two degrees, the most important and terrifying in their solemn grandeur belonging to the highest orders; and the whole five degrees emblematically represent the said five mystic Elements. The “three feet are the holy {{Style S-Italic|Application,}} the {{Style S-Italic|Opening,}} and the {{Style S-Italic|Phantom,”}} says one of their books; on man’s inner and outer soul, and his body, a phantom, a passing shadow. The body, or matter, is also called the “Rival,” for “he is the minister of sin, the Devil ever creating dissensions between the Heavenly Intelligence (spirit) and the soul, which he tempts incessantly.” Their ideas on transmigration are Pythagorean and kabalistic. The spirit, or Temeami (the divine soul), was in Elijah and John the Baptist; and the soul of Jesus was that of H’amsa; that is to say, of the same degree of purity and sanctity. Until their resurrection, by which they understand the day when the spiritual bodies of men will be absorbed into God’s own essence and being (the Nirvana of the Hindus), the souls of men will keep their astral forms, except the few chosen ones who, from the moment of their separation from their bodies, begin to exist as pure spirits. The life of man they divide into soul, body, and intelligence, or mind. It is the latter which imparts and communicates to the soul the divine spark from its H’amsa (Christos).}}

They have seven great commandments which are imparted equally to all the uninitiated; and yet, even these well-known articles of faith have been so mixed up in the accounts of outside writers, that, in one of the best Cyclopædias of America (Appleton’s), they are garbled after the fashion that may be seen in the comparative tabulation below; the spurious and the true order parallel:

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~~[#fn1571anc 1571]. ~~This is the doctrine of the Gnostics who held Christos to be the personal immortal Spirit of man.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1571}} This is the doctrine of the Gnostics who held Christos to be the personal immortal Spirit of man.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1572}} The ten Messiahs or avatars remind again of the five Buddhistic and ten Brahmanical avatars of Buddha and Christna.

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~~[#fn1572anc 1572]. The ten Messiahs or avatars remind again of the five Buddhistic and ten Brahmanical avatars of Buddha and Christna~~.

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~~311 THE DRUZES OF MOUNT LEBANON~~.

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{| style="margin: 2em auto; border-spacing: 1em 0;"

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|- valign=top

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| width=50% | {{Style S-Small capitals|Correct Version of the Commandments as Imparted Orally by the Teachers}}.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1573}}

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| {{Style S-Small capitals|Garbled Version Reported by the Christian Missionaries and Given in Pretended Expositions}}.{{Footnote mark|†|fn1574}}

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|- valign=top

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| 1. ''The unity of God'', or the infinite oneness of Deity.

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| 1. (2) “‘Truth in words,’ meaning in practice, ''only truth to the religion and to the initiated; it is lawful to act and to speak falsehood to men of another creed''.”{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1575}}

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|- valign=top

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| 2. ''The essential excellence of Truth''.

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| 2. (7) “Mutual help, watchfulness, and protection.”

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|- valign=top

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| 3. Toleration; right given to all men and women to freely express their opinions on religious matters, and make the latter subservient to reason.

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| 3. (?) “To renounce all other religions.”{{Footnote mark|§|fn1576}}

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|- valign=top

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| 4. Respect to all men and women according to their character and conduct.

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| 4. (?) “To be separate from infidels of every kind, not externally but only in heart.”{{Footnote mark|║|fn1577}}

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|- valign=top

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| 5 . Entire submission to God’s decrees.

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| 5. (1) “Recognize God’s eternal unity.”

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|- valign=top

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| 6. Chastity of body, mind, and soul.

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| 6. (5) “Satisfied with God’s acts.”

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|- valign=top

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| 7. Mutual help under all conditions.

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| 7. (5) “Resigned to God’s will.”

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|}

As will be seen, the only exposé in the above is that of the great ignorance, perhaps malice, of the writers who, like Sylvestre de Sacy, undertake to enlighten the world upon matters concerning which they know nothing.

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“Chastity, honesty, meekness, and mercy,” are thus the four theological virtues of all Druzes, besides several others demanded from the initiates: “murder, theft, cruelty, covetousness, slander,” the five sins, to which several other sins are added in the sacred tablets, but which we must abstain from giving. The morality of the Druzes is strict and

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~~[#fn1573anc 1573]. ~~See, farther on, a letter from an “Initiate.”

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1573}} See, farther on, a letter from an “Initiate.”

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~~[#fn1574anc 1574]. ~~In this column the first numbers are those given in the article on the {{Style S-Italic|Druzes}} in the “New American Cyclopædia” (Appleton’s), vol. vi., p. 631. The numbers in parentheses show the sequence in which the commandments would stand were they given correctly.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1574}} In this column the first numbers are those given in the article on the {{Style S-Italic|Druzes}} in the “New American Cyclopædia” (Appleton’s), vol. vi., p. 631. The numbers in parentheses show the sequence in which the commandments would stand were they given correctly.

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~~[#fn1575anc 1575]. ~~This pernicious doctrine belongs to the old policy of the Catholic Church, but is certainly false as regards the Druzes. They maintain that it is right and lawful to {{Style S-Italic|withhold the truth}} about their own tenets, no one outside their own sect having a right to pry into their religion. The {{Style S-Italic|okhals}} never countenance deliberate falsehood in any form, although the laymen have many a time got rid of the spies sent by the Christians to discover their secrets, by deceiving them with sham initiations. (See the letter of Prof. Rawson to the author, p. 313.)

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1575}} This pernicious doctrine belongs to the old policy of the Catholic Church, but is certainly false as regards the Druzes. They maintain that it is right and lawful to {{Style S-Italic|withhold the truth}} about their own tenets, no one outside their own sect having a right to pry into their religion. The {{Style S-Italic|okhals}} never countenance deliberate falsehood in any form, although the laymen have many a time got rid of the spies sent by the Christians to discover their secrets, by deceiving them with sham initiations. (See the letter of Prof. Rawson to the author, p. 313.)

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~~[#fn1576anc 1576]. ~~This commandment does not exist in the Lebanon teaching.

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{{Footnote return|§|fn1576}} This commandment does not exist in the Lebanon teaching.

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~~[#fn1577anc 1577]. ~~There is no such commandment, but the practice thereof exists by mutual agreement, as in the days of the Gnostic persecution.

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{{Footnote return|║|fn1577}} There is no such commandment, but the practice thereof exists by mutual agreement, as in the days of the Gnostic persecution.

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312 ISIS UNVEILED.

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uncompromising. Nothing can tempt one of these Lebanon Unitarians to go astray from what he is taught to consider his duty. {{Style S-Italic|Their ritual being unknown to outsiders,}} their would-be historians have hitherto denied them one. Their “Thursday meetings” are open to all, but no interloper has ever participated in the rites of initiation which take place occasionally on Fridays in the greatest secresy. Women are admitted to them as well as men, and they play a part of great importance at the initiation of men. The probation, unless some extraordinary exception is made, is long and severe. Once, in a certain period of time, a solemn ceremony takes place, during which all the elders and the initiates of the highest two degrees start out for a pilgrimage of several days to a certain place in the mountains. They meet within the safe precincts of a monastery said to have been erected during the earliest times of the Christian era. Outwardly one sees but old ruins of a once grand edifice, used, says the legend, by some Gnostic sects as a place of worship during the religious persecutions. The ruins above ground, however, are but a convenient mask; the subterranean chapel, halls, and cells, covering an area of ground far greater than the upper building; while the richness of ornamentation, the beauty of the ancient sculptures, and the gold and silver vessels in this sacred resort, appear like “a dream of glory,” according to the expression of an initiate. As the lamaseries of Mongolia and Thibet are visited upon grand occasions by the holy shadow of “Lord Buddha,” so here, during the ceremonial, appears the resplendent ethereal form of Hamsa, the Blessed, which instructs the faithful. The most extraordinary feats of what would be termed magic take place during the several nights that the convocation lasts; and one of the greatest mysteries—faithful copy of the past—is accomplished within the discreet bosom of our mother earth; not an echo, nor the faintest sound, not a glimmer of light betrays without the grand secret of the initiates.

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{{Style P-No indent|uncompromising. Nothing can tempt one of these Lebanon Unitarians to go astray from what he is taught to consider his duty. {{Style S-Italic|Their ritual being unknown to outsiders,}} their would-be historians have hitherto denied them one. Their “Thursday meetings” are open to all, but no interloper has ever participated in the rites of initiation which take place occasionally on Fridays in the greatest secresy. Women are admitted to them as well as men, and they play a part of great importance at the initiation of men. The probation, unless some extraordinary exception is made, is long and severe. Once, in a certain period of time, a solemn ceremony takes place, during which all the elders and the initiates of the highest two degrees start out for a pilgrimage of several days to a certain place in the mountains. They meet within the safe precincts of a monastery said to have been erected during the earliest times of the Christian era. Outwardly one sees but old ruins of a once grand edifice, used, says the legend, by some Gnostic sects as a place of worship during the religious persecutions. The ruins above ground, however, are but a convenient mask; the subterranean chapel, halls, and cells, covering an area of ground far greater than the upper building; while the richness of ornamentation, the beauty of the ancient sculptures, and the gold and silver vessels in this sacred resort, appear like “a dream of glory,” according to the expression of an initiate. As the lamaseries of Mongolia and Thibet are visited upon grand occasions by the holy shadow of “Lord Buddha,” so here, during the ceremonial, appears the resplendent ethereal form of Hamsa, the Blessed, which instructs the faithful. The most extraordinary feats of what would be termed magic take place during the several nights that the convocation lasts; and one of the greatest mysteries—faithful copy of the past—is accomplished within the discreet bosom of our mother earth; not an echo, nor the faintest sound, not a glimmer of light betrays without the grand secret of the initiates.}}

Hamsa, like Jesus, was a mortal man, and yet “Hamsa” and “Christos” are synonymous terms as to their inner and hidden meaning. Both are symbols of the {{Style S-Italic|Nous,}} the divine and higher soul of man—his spirit. The doctrine taught by the Druzes on that particular question of the duality of spiritual man, consisting of one soul mortal, and another immortal, is identical with that of the Gnostics, the older Greek philosophers, and other initiates.

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Outside the East we have met one initiate (and only one), who, for some reasons best known to himself, does not make a secret of his initiation into the Brotherhood of Lebanon. It is the learned traveller and artist, Professor A. L. Rawson, of New York City. This gentleman has passed many years in the East, four times visited Palestine, and has trav-

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313 A LETTER FROM AN INITIATE.

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elled to Mecca. It is safe to say that he has a priceless store of facts about the beginnings of the Christian Church, which none but one who had had free access to repositories closed against the ordinary traveller could have collected. Professor Rawson, with the true devotion of a man of science, noted down every important discovery he made in the Palestinian libraries, and every precious fact orally communicated to him by the mystics he encountered, and some day they will see the light. He has most obligingly sent us the following communication, which, as the reader will perceive, fully corroborates what is above written from our personal experience about the strange fraternity incorrectly styled the Druzes:

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{{Style P-~~Quote~~|~~“34 Bond St~~., ~~New York~~, ~~June 6~~, ~~1877~~.

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{{Style P-No indent|elled to Mecca. It is safe to say that he has a priceless store of facts about the beginnings of the Christian Church, which none but one who had had free access to repositories closed against the ordinary traveller could have collected. Professor Rawson, with the true devotion of a man of science, noted down every important discovery he made in the Palestinian libraries, and every precious fact orally communicated to him by the mystics he encountered, and some day they will see the light. He has most obligingly sent us the following communication, which, as the reader will perceive, fully corroborates what is above written from our personal experience about the strange fraternity incorrectly styled the Druzes:}}

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“. . . Your note, asking me to give you an account of my initiation into a secret order among the people commonly known as Druzes, in Mount Lebanon, was received this morning. I took, as you are fully aware, an obligation at that time to conceal within my own memory the greater part of the ‘mysteries,’ with the most interesting parts of the ‘instructions’; so that what is left may not be of any service to the public. Such information as I can rightfully give, you are welcome to have and use as you may have occasion.

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{{Style P-Quote|data=“34 Bond St., New York, June 6, 1877.

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|“. . . Your note, asking me to give you an account of my initiation into a secret order among the people commonly known as Druzes, in Mount Lebanon, was received this morning. I took, as you are fully aware, an obligation at that time to conceal within my own memory the greater part of the ‘mysteries,’ with the most interesting parts of the ‘instructions’; so that what is left may not be of any service to the public. Such information as I can rightfully give, you are welcome to have and use as you may have occasion.

“The probation in my case was, by {{Style S-Italic|special dispensation,}} made one month, during which time I was ‘shadowed’ by a priest, who served as my cook, guide, interpreter, and general servant, that he might be able to testify to the fact of my having strictly conformed to the rules in diet, ablutions, and other matters. He was also my instructor in the text of the ritual, which we recited from time to time for practice, in dialogue or in song, as it may have been. Whenever we happened to be near a Druze village, on a Thursday, we attended the ‘open’ meetings, where men and women assembled for instruction and worship, and to expose to the world generally their religious practices. I was never present at a Friday ‘close’ meeting before my initiation, nor do I believe any one else, man or woman, ever was, except by collusion with a priest, and that is not probable, for a false priest forfeits his life. The practical jokers among them sometimes ‘fool’ a too curious ‘Frank’ by a sham initiation, especially if such a one is suspected of having some connection with the missionaries at Beirut or elsewhere.

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“Among other tests of the neophyte’s self-control are the following: Choice pieces }}

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314 ISIS UNVEILED.

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{{Style P-Quote|of cooked meat, savory soup, pilau, and other appetizing dishes, with sherbet, coffee, wine, and water, are set, as if accidentally, in his way, and he is left alone for a time with the tempting things. To a hungry and fainting soul the trial is severe. But a more difficult ordeal is when the seven priestesses retire, all but one, the youngest and prettiest, and the door is closed and barred on the outside, after warning the candidate that he will be left to his ‘reflections,’ for half an hour. Wearied by the long-continued ceremonial, weak with hunger, parched with thirst, and a sweet reaction coming after the tremendous strain to keep his animal nature in subjection, this moment of privacy and of temptation is brimful of peril. The beautiful young vestal, timidly approaching, and with glances which lend a double magnetic allurement to her words, begs him in low tones to ‘bless her.’ Woe to him if he does! A hundred eyes see him from secret peep-holes, and only to the ignorant neophyte is there the appearance of concealment and opportunity.

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{{Style P-Quote|{{Style P-No indent|of cooked meat, savory soup, pilau, and other appetizing dishes, with sherbet, coffee, wine, and water, are set, as if accidentally, in his way, and he is left alone for a time with the tempting things. To a hungry and fainting soul the trial is severe. But a more difficult ordeal is when the seven priestesses retire, all but one, the youngest and prettiest, and the door is closed and barred on the outside, after warning the candidate that he will be left to his ‘reflections,’ for half an hour. Wearied by the long-continued ceremonial, weak with hunger, parched with thirst, and a sweet reaction coming after the tremendous strain to keep his animal nature in subjection, this moment of privacy and of temptation is brimful of peril. The beautiful young vestal, timidly approaching, and with glances which lend a double magnetic allurement to her words, begs him in low tones to ‘bless her.’ Woe to him if he does! A hundred eyes see him from secret peep-holes, and only to the ignorant neophyte is there the appearance of concealment and opportunity.}}

“There is no infidelity, idolatry, or other really bad feature in the system. They have the relics of what was once a grand form of nature-worship, which has been contracted under a despotism into a secret order, hidden from the light of day, and exposed only in the smoky glare of a few burning lamps, in some damp cave or chapel under ground. The chief tenets of their religious teachings are comprised in seven ‘tablets,’ which are these, to state them in general terms:

Line 448: Line 482:

“2. The essential excellence of truth.

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“3 ~~{{Style S-Italic|~~.}} The law of toleration as to all men and women in opinion.

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“3. The law of toleration as to all men and women in opinion.

“4. Respect for all men and women as to character and conduct.

Line 462: Line 496:

“The chief results of the initiation seemed to be a kind of mental illusion or sleep-waking, in which the neophyte saw, or thought he saw, the images of people who were known to be absent, and in some cases thousands of miles away. I thought (or perhaps it was my mind at work) I saw friends and relatives that I knew at the time were in New York State, while I was then in Lebanon. How these results were produced I cannot say. They appeared in a dark room, when the ‘guide’ was talking, the ‘company’ singing in the next ‘chamber,’ and near the close of the day, when I was tired out with fasting, walking, talking, singing, robing, unrobing, seeing a great many people in various conditions as to dress and undress, and with great mental strain in resisting certain physical manifestations that result from the appetites when they overcome the will, and in paying close attention to the passing scenes, hoping to remember them—so that I may have been unfit to judge of any new and surprising phenomena, and more especially of those apparently magical appearances which have always excited my suspicion and distrust. I know the various uses of the magic-lantern, and other apparatus, and took care to examine the room where the ‘visions’ appeared to me the same evening, and the next day, and several times afterwards, and knew that, in my case, there was no use made of any machinery or other means besides the voice of the ‘guide and instructor.’ On several occasions afterward, when at a great distance from the ‘chamber,’ the same or similar visions were produced, as, for instance, in Hornstein’s Hotel at Jerusalem. A daughter-in-law of a well-known Jewish merchant in Jerusalem is an initiated ‘sister,’ and can produce the visions almost at will on any one who will live }}

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315 THE “MOTHER LODGE” AND ITS BRANCHES.

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{{Style P-Quote|strictly according to the rules of the Order for a few weeks, more or less, according to their nature, as gross or refined, etc.

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{{Style P-Quote|{{Style P-No indent|strictly according to the rules of the Order for a few weeks, more or less, according to their nature, as gross or refined, etc.}}

“I am quite safe in saying that the initiation is so peculiar that it could not be printed so as to instruct one who had not been ‘worked’ through the ‘chamber.’ So it would be even more impossible to make an expose of them than of the Freemasons. The real secrets are acted and not spoken, and require several initiated persons to assist in the work.

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“It is not necessary for me to say how some of the notions of that people seem to perpetuate certain beliefs of the ancient Greeks—as, for instance, the idea that a man has two souls, and many others—for you probably were made familiar with them in your passage through the ‘upper’ and ‘lower chamber.’ If I am mistaken in supposing you an ‘initiate,’ please excuse me. I am aware that the closest friends often conceal that ‘sacred secret’ from each other; and even husband and wife may live—as I was informed in Dayr-el-Kamar was the fact in one family there—for twenty years together and yet neither know anything of the initiation of the other. You, undoubtedly, have good reasons for keeping your own counsel,

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“Yours truly,

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:::“Yours truly,

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|signature=“A. L. Rawson.” }}

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~~“A. L. Rawson.” }}~~

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Before we close the subject we may add that if a stranger ask for admission to a “Thursday” meeting he will never be refused. Only, if he is a Christian, the {{Style S-Italic|okhal}} will open a {{Style S-Italic|Bible}} and read from it; and if a Mahometan, he will hear a few chapters of the {{Style S-Italic|Koran,}} and the ceremony will end with this. They will wait until he is gone, and then, shutting well the doors of their convent, take to their own rites and books, passing for this purpose into their subterranean sanctuaries. “The Druzes remain, even more than the Jews, a peculiar people,” says Colonel Churchill,{{Footnote mark|*|fn1578}} one of the few fair and strictly impartial writers. “They marry within their own race; they are rarely if ever converted; they adhere tenaciously to their traditions, and they baffle all efforts to discover their cherished secrets. . . The bad name of that caliph whom they claim as their founder is fairly compensated by the pure lives of many whom they honor as saints, and by the heroism of their feudal leaders.”

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Before we close the subject we may add that if a stranger ask for admission to a “Thursday” meeting he will never be refused. Only, if he is a Christian, the {{Style S-Italic|okhal}} will open a {{Style S-Italic|Bible}} and read from it; and if a Mahometan, he will hear a few chapters of the {{Style S-Italic|Koran,}} and the ceremony will end with this. They will wait until he is gone, and then, shutting well the doors of their convent, take to their own rites and books, passing for this purpose into their subterranean sanctuaries. “The Druzes remain, even more than the Jews, a peculiar people,” says Colonel Churchill,~~[#~~fn1578 ~~1578]~~ one of the few fair and strictly impartial writers. “They marry within their own race; they are rarely if ever converted; they adhere tenaciously to their traditions, and they baffle all efforts to discover their cherished secrets. . . The bad name of that caliph whom they claim as their founder is fairly compensated by the pure lives of many whom they honor as saints, and by the heroism of their feudal leaders.”

And yet the Druzes may be said to belong to one of the least esoteric of secret societies. There are others far more powerful and learned, the existence of which is not even suspected in Europe. There are many branches belonging to the great “Mother Lodge” which, mixed up with certain communities, may be termed secret sects within other sects. One of them is the sect commonly known as that of Laghana-Sastra. It reckons several thousand adepts who are scattered about in small groups in the south of the Dekkan, India. In the popular superstition, this sect is dreaded on account of its great reputation for magic and sorcery. The Brahmans accuse its members of atheism and sacrilege, for none of them

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~~[#fn1578anc 1578]. ~~“Mount Lebanon,” vol. 3. London, 1853.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1578}} “Mount Lebanon,” vol. 3. London, 1853.

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316 ISIS UNVEILED.

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will consent to recognize the authority of either the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas}} or {{Style S-Italic|Manu,}} except so far as they conform to the versions in their possession, and which they maintain are professedly the only original texts; the Laghana-Sastra have neither temples nor priests, but, twice a month, every member of the community has to absent himself from home for three days. Popular rumor, originated among their women, ascribes such absences to pilgrimages performed to their places of fortnightly resort. In some secluded mountainous spots, unknown and inaccessible to other sects, hidden far from sight among the luxurious vegetation of India, they keep their bungalows, which look like small fortresses, encircled as they are by lofty and thick walls. These, in their turn, are surrounded by the sacred trees called {{Style S-Italic|assonata,}} and in Tamul {{Style S-Italic|arassa maram.}} These are the “sacred groves,” the originals of those of Egypt and Greece, whose initiates also built their temples within such “groves” inaccessible to the profane.~~[#~~fn1579 ~~1579]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|will consent to recognize the authority of either the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas}} or {{Style S-Italic|Manu,}} except so far as they conform to the versions in their possession, and which they maintain are professedly the only original texts; the Laghana-Sastra have neither temples nor priests, but, twice a month, every member of the community has to absent himself from home for three days. Popular rumor, originated among their women, ascribes such absences to pilgrimages performed to their places of fortnightly resort. In some secluded mountainous spots, unknown and inaccessible to other sects, hidden far from sight among the luxurious vegetation of India, they keep their bungalows, which look like small fortresses, encircled as they are by lofty and thick walls. These, in their turn, are surrounded by the sacred trees called {{Style S-Italic|assonata,}} and in Tamul {{Style S-Italic|arassa maram.}} These are the “sacred groves,” the originals of those of Egypt and Greece, whose initiates also built their temples within such “groves” inaccessible to the profane.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1579}}}}

It will not be found without interest to see what Mr. John Yarker, Jr., has to say on some modern secret societies among the Orientals. “The nearest resemblance to the Brahmanical Mysteries, is probably found in the very ancient ‘{{Style S-Italic|Paths’}} of the Dervishes, which are usually governed by twelve officers, the oldest ‘Court’ superintending the others by right of seniority. Here the master of the ‘Court’ is called {{Style S-Italic|‘Sheik,’}} and has his deputies, ‘Caliphs,’ or successors, of which there may be many (as, for instance, in the brevet degree of a Master Mason). The order is divided into at least four columns, pillars, or degrees. The first step is that of ‘Humanity,’ which supposes attention to the written law, and ‘annihilation in the {{Style S-Italic|Sheik}}.’ The second is that of the ‘Path,’ in which the {{Style S-Italic|‘Murid,’}} or disciple, attains spiritual powers and ‘self-annihilation’ into the ‘Peer’ or founder of the ‘Path.’ The third stage is called ‘Knowledge,’ and the {{Style S-Italic|‘Murid’}} is supposed to become inspired, called ‘annihilation into the Prophet.’ The fourth stage leads him even to God, when he becomes a part of the Deity and sees Him in all things. The first and second stages have received modern subdivisions, as ‘Integrity,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Temperance,’ ‘Benevolence.’ After this the Sheik confers upon him the grade of ‘Caliph,’ or Honorary Master, for in their mystical language, ‘the man must die before the saint can be born.’ It will be seen that this kind of mysticism is applicable to Christ as founder of a ‘Path.’”

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To this statement, the author adds the following on the Bektash Dervishes, who “often initiated the Janizaries. They wear {{Style S-Italic|a small marble cube spotted with blood.}} Their ceremony is as follows: Before reception a year’s probation is required, during which false secrets are

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~~[#fn1579anc 1579]. ~~Every temple in India is surrounded by such belts of sacred trees. And like the Koum-boum of Kansu (Mongolia) no one but an initiate has a right to approach them.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1579}} Every temple in India is surrounded by such belts of sacred trees. And like the Koum-boum of Kansu (Mongolia) no one but an initiate has a right to approach them.

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317 INITIATION AMONG THE BEKTASH DERVISHES.

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given to test the candidate; he has two godfathers {{Style S-Italic|and is divested of all metals and even clothing;}} from the wool of a sheep a cord is made for his neck, and a girdle for his loins; he is led into the centre of a square room, presented as a slave, and seated upon a large stone with twelve escallops; his arms are crossed upon his breast, his body inclined forward, his right toes extended over his left foot; after various prayers he is placed in a particular manner, with his hand in a peculiar way in that of the Sheik, who repeats a verse from the {{Style S-Italic|Koran:}} ‘Those who on giving thee their hand swear to thee an oath, swear it to God, the hand of God is placed in their hand; whoever violates this oath, will do so to his hurt, and to whoever remains faithful God will give a magnificent reward.’ Placing the hand below the chin is their sign, perhaps in memory of their vow. All use the double triangles. The Brahmans inscribe the angles with their trinity, and they possess also the Masonic sign of distress as used in France.”~~[#~~fn1580 ~~1580]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|given to test the candidate; he has two godfathers {{Style S-Italic|and is divested of all metals and even clothing;}} from the wool of a sheep a cord is made for his neck, and a girdle for his loins; he is led into the centre of a square room, presented as a slave, and seated upon a large stone with twelve escallops; his arms are crossed upon his breast, his body inclined forward, his right toes extended over his left foot; after various prayers he is placed in a particular manner, with his hand in a peculiar way in that of the Sheik, who repeats a verse from the {{Style S-Italic|Koran:}} ‘Those who on giving thee their hand swear to thee an oath, swear it to God, the hand of God is placed in their hand; whoever violates this oath, will do so to his hurt, and to whoever remains faithful God will give a magnificent reward.’ Placing the hand below the chin is their sign, perhaps in memory of their vow. All use the double triangles. The Brahmans inscribe the angles with their trinity, and they possess also the Masonic sign of distress as used in France.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1580}}}}

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From the very day when the first mystic found the means of communication between this world and the worlds of the invisible host, between the sphere of matter and that of pure spirit, he concluded that to abandon this mysterious science to the profanation of the rabble was to lose it. An abuse of it might lead mankind to speedy destruction; it was like surrounding a group of children with explosive batteries, and furnishing them with matches. The first self-made adept initiated but a select few, and kept silence with the multitudes. He recognized his God and felt the great Being within himself. The “Atman,” the Self,~~[#~~fn1581 ~~1581]~~ the

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From the very day when the first mystic found the means of communication between this world and the worlds of the invisible host, between the sphere of matter and that of pure spirit, he concluded that to abandon this mysterious science to the profanation of the rabble was to lose it. An abuse of it might lead mankind to speedy destruction; it was like surrounding a group of children with explosive batteries, and furnishing them with matches. The first self-made adept initiated but a select few, and kept silence with the multitudes. He recognized his God and felt the great Being within himself. The “Atman,” the Self,{{Footnote mark|†|fn1581}} the

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~~[#fn1580anc 1580]. ~~John Yarker, Jr.: “Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity,” etc.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1580}} John Yarker, Jr.: “Notes on the Scientific and Religious Mysteries of Antiquity,” etc.

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~~[#fn1581anc 1581]. ~~This “Self,” which the Greek philosophers called {{Style S-Italic|Augoeides,}} the “Shining One,” is impressively and beautifully described in Max Müller’s “Veda.” Showing the “Veda” to be the first book of the Aryan nations, the professor adds that “we have in it a period of the intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other part of the world. In the hymns of the “Veda” we see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world. . . . He invokes the gods around him, he praises, he worships them. But still with all these gods . . . beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at rest within himself. There, too, in his own breast, he has discovered a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is ‘Brahman’; for {{Style S-Italic|brahman}} meant originally force, will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal brahman, too, as soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not expressed. At last he calls it ‘Âtman,’ for Âtman, originally breath or spirit, comes to mean Self, and Self alone; {{Style S-Italic|Self}}, whether Divine or human; Self, whether creating or suffering; Self, whether one or all; but always Self, independent and free. ‘Who has seen the first-born,’ says the poet, when he who had no bones ({{Style S-Italic|i.e}}., form) bore him that had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any one who knew it?” (“Rig-Veda,” i., 164, 4). This idea of a divine Self, once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its supremacy; “{{Style S-Italic|Self}} is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all Selves are contained in this Self. Brahman itself is but Self” (Ibid., p. 478; “Khândogya-upanishad,” viii., 3, 3, 4); “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 69.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1581}} This “Self,” which the Greek philosophers called {{Style S-Italic|Augoeides,}} the “Shining One,” is impressively and beautifully described in Max Müller’s “Veda.” Showing the “Veda” to be the first book of the Aryan nations, the professor adds that “we have in it a period of the intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other part of the world. In the hymns of the “Veda” we see man left to himself to solve the riddle of this world. . . . He invokes the gods around him, he praises, he worships them. But still with all these gods . . . beneath him, and above him, the early poet seems ill at rest within himself. There, too, in his own breast, he has discovered a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when he fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers, and yet to listen to them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and all around him. The only name he can find for this mysterious power is ‘Brahman’; for {{Style S-Italic|brahman}} meant originally force, will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation. But this impersonal brahman, too, as soon as it is named, grows into something strange and divine. It ends by being one of many gods, one of the great triad, worshipped to the present day. And still the thought within him has no real name; that power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens, and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not expressed. At last he calls it ‘Âtman,’ for Âtman, originally breath or spirit, comes to mean Self, and Self alone; {{Style S-Italic|Self}}, whether Divine or human; Self, whether creating or suffering; Self, whether one or all; but always Self, independent and free. ‘Who has seen the first-born,’ says the poet, when he who had no bones ({{Style S-Italic|i.e}}., form) bore him that had bones? Where was the life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any one who knew it?” (“Rig-Veda,” i., 164, 4). This idea of a divine Self, once expressed, everything else must acknowledge its supremacy; “{{Style S-Italic|Self}} is the Lord of all things, Self is the King of all things. As all the spokes of a wheel are contained in the nave and the circumference, all things are contained in this Self; all Selves are contained in this Self. Brahman itself is but Self” (Ibid., p. 478; “Khândogya-upanishad,” viii., 3, 3, 4); “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 69.

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318 ISIS UNVEILED.

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mighty Lord and Protector, once that man knew him as the “{{Style S-Italic|I am,”}} the “{{Style S-Italic|Ego Sum,”}} the “{{Style S-Italic|Ahmi,”}} showed his full power to him who could recognize the “{{Style S-Italic|still small voice.”}} From the days of the primitive man described by the first Vedic poet, down to our modern age, there has not been a philosopher worthy of that name, who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart the grand and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt it as a sacred science; if otherwise, then, like Socrates repeating to himself, as well as to his fellow-men, the noble injunction, “O man, know thyself,” he succeeded in recognizing his God within himself. “Ye are gods,” the king-psalmist tells us, and we find Jesus reminding the scribes that the expression, “Ye are gods,” was addressed to other mortal men, claiming for himself the same privilege without any blasphemy.~~[#~~fn1582 ~~1582]~~ And, as a faithful echo, Paul, while asserting that we are all “the temple of the living God,”~~[#~~fn1583 ~~1583]~~ cautiously adds, that after all these things are only for the “wise,” and it is “unlawful” to speak of them.

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{{Style P-No indent|mighty Lord and Protector, once that man knew him as the “{{Style S-Italic|I am,”}} the “{{Style S-Italic|Ego Sum,”}} the “{{Style S-Italic|Ahmi,”}} showed his full power to him who could recognize the “{{Style S-Italic|still small voice.”}} From the days of the primitive man described by the first Vedic poet, down to our modern age, there has not been a philosopher worthy of that name, who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of his heart the grand and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt it as a sacred science; if otherwise, then, like Socrates repeating to himself, as well as to his fellow-men, the noble injunction, “O man, know thyself,” he succeeded in recognizing his God within himself. “Ye are gods,” the king-psalmist tells us, and we find Jesus reminding the scribes that the expression, “Ye are gods,” was addressed to other mortal men, claiming for himself the same privilege without any blasphemy.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1582}} And, as a faithful echo, Paul, while asserting that we are all “the temple of the living God,”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1583}} cautiously adds, that after all these things are only for the “wise,” and it is “unlawful” to speak of them.}}

Therefore, we must accept the reminder, and simply remark that even in the tortured and barbarous phraseology of the {{Style S-Italic|Codex Nazaræus,}} we detect throughout the same idea. Like an undercurrent, rapid and clear, it runs without mixing its crystalline purity with the muddy and heavy waves of dogmatism. We find it in the {{Style S-Italic|Codex}}, as well as in the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas}}, in the {{Style S-Italic|Avesta}}, as in the {{Style S-Italic|Abhidharma}}, and in {{Style S-Italic|Kapila’s Sankhya Sutras}} not less than in the {{Style S-Italic|Fourth Gospel}}. We cannot attain the “Kingdom of Heaven,” unless we unite ourselves indissolubly with our {{Style S-Italic|Rex Lucis}}, the Lord of Splendor and of Light, our Immortal God. We must first conquer immortality and “take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence,” offered to our material selves. “The first man is of the earth earthy; the {{Style S-Italic|second}} man {{Style S-Italic|is from heaven}}. . . . Behold, I show you a mystery,” says Paul (1 {{Style S-Italic|Corinthians}}, xv. 47). In the religion of Sakya-Muni, which learned commentators have delighted so much of late to set down as purely {{Style S-Italic|nihilistic}}, the doctrine of immortality is very clearly defined, notwithstanding the European or rather Christian ideas about Nirvana. In the sacred Jaïna books, of Patuna, the dying Gautama-

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~~[#fn1582anc 1582]. ~~{{~~Style S-Italic~~|John x. 34, 35.}}

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1582}} John x. 34, 35.

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~~[#fn1583anc 1583]. ~~{{~~Style S-Italic~~|2 Corinthians, vi. 16.}}

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1583}} 2 Corinthians, vi. 16.

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319 THE ESOTERIC DOCTRINE OF BUDDHISM.

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Buddha is thus addressed: “Arise into {{Style S-Italic|Nirvi}} (Nirvana) from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent. Ascend into {{Style S-Italic|thy former abode,}} O blessed Avatar!” This seems to us the very opposite of Nihilism. If Gautama is invited to reascend into his “former abode,” and this abode is Nirvana, then it is incontestable that Buddhistic philosophy does {{Style S-Italic|not}} teach final annihilation. As Jesus is alleged to have appeared to his disciples after death, so to the present day is Gautama believed to descend from Nirvana. And if he has an existence there, then this state cannot be a synonym for ~~{{Style S-Italic|~~annihilation.}}

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{{Style P-No indent|Buddha is thus addressed: “Arise into {{Style S-Italic|Nirvi}} (Nirvana) from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent. Ascend into {{Style S-Italic|thy former abode,}} O blessed Avatar!” This seems to us the very opposite of Nihilism. If Gautama is invited to reascend into his “former abode,” and this abode is Nirvana, then it is incontestable that Buddhistic philosophy does {{Style S-Italic|not}} teach final annihilation. As Jesus is alleged to have appeared to his disciples after death, so to the present day is Gautama believed to descend from Nirvana. And if he has an existence there, then this state cannot be a synonym for ''annihilation''.}}

Gautama, no less than all other great reformers, had a doctrine for his “elect” and another for the outside masses, though the main object of his reform consisted in initiating all, so far as it was permissible and prudent to do, without distinction of castes or wealth, to the great truths hitherto kept so secret by the selfish Brahmanical class. Gautama-Buddha it was whom we see the first in the world’s history, moved by that generous feeling which locks the whole humanity within one embrace, inviting the “poor,” the “lame,” and the “blind” to the King’s festival table, from which he excluded those who had hitherto sat alone, in haughty seclusion. It was he, who, with a bold hand, first opened the door of the sanctuary to the pariah, the fallen one, and all those “afflicted by men” clothed in gold and purple, often far less worthy than the outcast to whom their finger was scornfully pointing. All this did Siddhartha six centuries before another reformer, as noble and as loving, though less favored by opportunity, in another land. If both, aware of the great danger of furnishing an uncultivated populace with the double-edged weapon of {{Style S-Italic|knowledge which gives power,}} left the innermost corner of the sanctuary in the profoundest shade, who, that is acquainted with human nature, can blame them for it? But while one was actuated by prudence, the other was forced into such a course. Gautama left the esoteric and most dangerous portion of the “secret knowledge” untouched, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty, with the certainty of having taught the essential truths, and having converted to them one-third of the world; Jesus promised his disciples the knowledge which confers upon man the power {{Style S-Italic|of producing far greater miracles than he ever did himself,}} and he died, leaving but a few faithful men, only half way to knowledge, to struggle with the world to which they could impart but what they {{Style S-Italic|half}}-knew themselves. Later, their followers disfigured truth still more than they themselves had done.

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It is not true that Gautama never taught anything concerning a future life, or that he denied the immortality of the soul. Ask any intelligent Buddhist his ideas on Nirvana, and he will unquestionably express himself, as the well-known Wong-Chin-Fu, the Chinese orator, now

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travelling in this country, did in a recent conversation with us about {{Style S-Italic|Niepang}} (Nirvana). “This condition,” he remarked, “we all understand to mean a final reunion with God, coincident with the perfection of the human spirit by its ultimate disembarrassment of matter. It is the very opposite of personal annihilation.”

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{{Style P-No indent|travelling in this country, did in a recent conversation with us about {{Style S-Italic|Niepang}} (Nirvana). “This condition,” he remarked, “we all understand to mean a final reunion with God, coincident with the perfection of the human spirit by its ultimate disembarrassment of matter. It is the very opposite of personal annihilation.”}}

Nirvana means the certitude of personal immortality in {{Style S-Italic|Spirit,}} not in {{Style S-Italic|Soul,}} which, as a finite emanation, must certainly disintegrate its particles a compound of human sensations, passions, and yearning for some objective kind of existence, before the immortal spirit of the {{Style S-Italic|Ego}} is quite freed, and henceforth secure against further transmigration in any form. And how can man ever reach this state so long as the {{Style S-Italic|Upadna,}} that state of longing for {{Style S-Italic|life}}, more life, does not disappear from the sentient being, from the {{Style S-Italic|Ahancara}} clothed, however, in a sublimated body? It is the “Upadna” or the intense desire which produces WILL, and it is {{Style S-Italic|will}} which develops {{Style S-Italic|force,}} and the latter generates {{Style S-Italic|matter,}} or an object having form. Thus the disembodied {{Style S-Italic|Ego}}, through this sole undying desire in him, unconsciously furnishes the conditions of his successive self-procreations in various forms, which depend on his mental state and {{Style S-Italic|Karma,}} the good or bad deeds of his preceding existence, commonly called “merit and demerit.” This is why the “Master” recommended to his mendicants the cultivation of the four degrees of Dhyana, the noble “Path of the Four Truths,” {{Style S-Italic|i.e}}., that gradual acquirement of stoical indifference for either life or death; that state of spiritual self-contemplation during which man utterly loses sight of his physical and dual individuality, composed of soul and body; and uniting himself with his third and higher immortal self the {{Style S-Italic|real and heavenly man}} merges, so to say, into the divine Essence, whence his own spirit proceeded like a spark from the common hearth. Thus the Arhat, the holy mendicant, can reach Nirvana while yet on earth; and his spirit, totally freed from the trammels of the “psychical, terrestrial, {{Style S-Italic|devilish}} wisdom,” as James calls it, and being in its own nature omniscient and omnipotent, can on earth, through the sole power of his {{Style S-Italic|thought,}} produce the greatest of phenomena.

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“It is the missionaries in China and India, who first started this falsehood about Niepang, or Nïepana (Nirvana),” says Wong-Chin-Fu. Who can deny the truth of this accusation after reading the works of the Abbé Dubois, for instance? A missionary who passes forty years of his life in India, and then writes that the “Buddhists admit of no other God but the body of man, and have no other object but the satisfaction of their senses,” utters an untruth which can be proved on the testimony of the laws of the Talapoins of Siam and Birmah; laws, which prevail unto this very day and which sentence a sahan, or {{Style S-Italic|punghi}} (a learned man; from the Sanscrit {{Style S-Italic|pundit),}} as well as a simple Talapoin, to death by

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321 THE STRICT CHASTITY OF EASTERN MYSTICS.

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decapitation, for the crime of unchastity. No foreigner can be admitted into their {{Style S-Italic|Kyums,}} or Viharas (monasteries); and yet there are French writers, otherwise impartial and fair, who, speaking of the great severity of the rules to which the Buddhist monks are subjected in these communities, and without possessing one single fact to corroborate their skepticism, bluntly say, that “notwithstanding the great laudations bestowed upon them (Talapoins) by certain travellers, merely on the {{Style S-Italic|strength of appearances,}} I do not believe at all in their chastity.”~~[#~~fn1584 ~~1584]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|decapitation, for the crime of unchastity. No foreigner can be admitted into their {{Style S-Italic|Kyums,}} or Viharas (monasteries); and yet there are French writers, otherwise impartial and fair, who, speaking of the great severity of the rules to which the Buddhist monks are subjected in these communities, and without possessing one single fact to corroborate their skepticism, bluntly say, that “notwithstanding the great laudations bestowed upon them (Talapoins) by certain travellers, merely on the {{Style S-Italic|strength of appearances,}} I do not believe at all in their chastity.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1584}}}}

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Fortunately for the Buddhist talapoins, lamas, sahans, upasampadas,~~[#~~fn1585 ~~1585]~~ and even samenaïras,~~[#~~fn1586 ~~1586]~~ they have popular records and facts for themselves, which are weightier than the unsupported personal opinion of a Frenchman, born in Catholic lands, whom we can hardly blame for having lost all faith in clerical virtue. When a Buddhist monk becomes guilty (which does not happen once in a century, perhaps) of criminal conversation, he has neither a congregation of tender-hearted members, whom he can move to tears by an eloquent confession of his guilt, nor a Jesus, on whose overburdened, long-suffering bosom are flung, as in a common Christian dust-box, all the impurities of the race. No Buddhist transgressor can comfort himself with visions of a Vatican, within whose sin-encompassing walls black is turned into white, murderers into sinless saints, and golden or silvery lotions can be bought at the confessional to cleanse the tardy penitent of greater or lesser offenses against God and man.

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Fortunately for the Buddhist talapoins, lamas, sahans, upasampadas,{{Footnote mark|†|fn1585}} and even samenaïras,{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1586}} they have popular records and facts for themselves, which are weightier than the unsupported personal opinion of a Frenchman, born in Catholic lands, whom we can hardly blame for having lost all faith in clerical virtue. When a Buddhist monk becomes guilty (which does not happen once in a century, perhaps) of criminal conversation, he has neither a congregation of tender-hearted members, whom he can move to tears by an eloquent confession of his guilt, nor a Jesus, on whose overburdened, long-suffering bosom are flung, as in a common Christian dust-box, all the impurities of the race. No Buddhist transgressor can comfort himself with visions of a Vatican, within whose sin-encompassing walls black is turned into white, murderers into sinless saints, and golden or silvery lotions can be bought at the confessional to cleanse the tardy penitent of greater or lesser offenses against God and man.

Except a few impartial archæologists, who trace a direct Buddhistic element in Gnosticism, as in all those early short-lived sects we know of very few authors, who, in writing upon primitive Christianity, have accorded to the question its due importance. Have we not facts enough to, at least, suggest some interest in that direction? Do we not learn that, as early as in the days of Plato, there were “Brachmans”—read Buddhist, Samaneans, Saman, or Shaman missionaries—in Greece, and that, at one time, they had overflowed the country? Does not Pliny show them established on the shores of the Dead Sea, for “thousands of ages”? After making every necessary allowance for the exaggeration, we still have several centuries b.c. left as a margin. And is it possible that their influence should not have left deeper traces in all these sects than is generally thought? We know that the Jaïna sect claims Buddhism as derived from its tenets—that Buddhism existed before Siddhârtha, better known as Gautama-Buddha. The Hindu Brahmans who, by

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~~[#fn1584anc 1584]. ~~Jacolliot: “Voyage au Pays des Elephants.”

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1584}} Jacolliot: “Voyage au Pays des Elephants.”

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~~[#fn1585anc 1585]. ~~Buddhist chief priests at Ceylon.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1585}} Buddhist chief priests at Ceylon.

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~~[#fn1586anc 1586]. ~~Samenaïra is one who studies to obtain the high office of a {{Style S-Italic|Oepasampala.}} He is a disciple and is looked upon as a son by the chief priest. We suspect that the Catholic seminarist must look to the Buddhists for the parentage of his title.

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1586}} Samenaïra is one who studies to obtain the high office of a {{Style S-Italic|Oepasampala.}} He is a disciple and is looked upon as a son by the chief priest. We suspect that the Catholic seminarist must look to the Buddhists for the parentage of his title.

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the European Orientalists, are denied the right of knowing anything about their own country, or understanding their own language and records better than those who have never been in India, on the same principle as the Jews are forbidden, by the Christian theologians, to interpret their own Scriptures—the Brahmans, we say, have authentic records. And these show the incarnation from the Virgin Avany of the first Buddha—{{Style S-Italic|divine light—}}as having taken place more than some thousands of years b.c., on the island of Ceylon. The Brahmans reject the claim that it was an avatar of Vishnu, but admit the appearance of a reformer of Brahmanism at that time. The story of the Virgin Avany and her divine son, Sakya-muni, is recorded in one of the sacred books of the Cinghalese Buddhists—the {{Style S-Italic|Nirdhasa;}} and the Brahmanic chronology fixes the great Buddhistic revolution and religious war, and the subsequent spread of Sakya-muni’s doctrine in Thibet, China, Japan, and other places at 4,620 years b.c.~~[#~~fn1587 ~~1587]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|the European Orientalists, are denied the right of knowing anything about their own country, or understanding their own language and records better than those who have never been in India, on the same principle as the Jews are forbidden, by the Christian theologians, to interpret their own Scriptures—the Brahmans, we say, have authentic records. And these show the incarnation from the Virgin Avany of the first Buddha—{{Style S-Italic|divine light—}}as having taken place more than some thousands of years b.c., on the island of Ceylon. The Brahmans reject the claim that it was an avatar of Vishnu, but admit the appearance of a reformer of Brahmanism at that time. The story of the Virgin Avany and her divine son, Sakya-muni, is recorded in one of the sacred books of the Cinghalese Buddhists—the {{Style S-Italic|Nirdhasa;}} and the Brahmanic chronology fixes the great Buddhistic revolution and religious war, and the subsequent spread of Sakya-muni’s doctrine in Thibet, China, Japan, and other places at 4,620 years {{Style S-Small capitals|b.c}}.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1587}}}}

It is clear that Gautama-Buddha, the son of the King of Kapilavastu, and the descendant of the first Sakya, through his father, who was of the Kshatriya, or warrior-caste, did not invent his philosophy. Philanthropist by nature, his ideas were developed and matured while under the tuition of Tir-thankara, the famous guru of the Jaïna sect. The latter claim the present Buddhism as a diverging branch of their own philosophy, and themselves, as the only followers of the first Buddha who were allowed to remain in India, after the expulsion of all other Buddhists, probably because they had made a compromise, and admitted some of the Brahmanic notions. It is, to say the least, curious, that three dissenting and inimical religions, like Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jaïnism, should agree so perfectly in their traditions and chronology, as to Buddhism, and that our scientists should give a hearing but to their own unwarranted speculations and hypotheses. If the birth of Gautama may, with some show of reason, be placed at about 600 b.c., then the preceding Buddhas ought to have some place allowed them in chronology. The Buddhas are not gods, but simply individuals overshadowed by the spirit of Buddha—the divine ray. Or is it because, unable to extricate themselves from the difficulty by the help of their own researches only, our Orientalists prefer to obliterate and deny the whole, rather than accord to the Hindus the right of knowing something of their own religion and history? Strange way of discovering truths!

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The common argument adduced against the Jaïna claim, of having been the source of the restoration of ancient Buddhism, that the principal

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~~[#fn1587anc 1587]. ~~Jacolliot declares, in his “Fils de Dieu,” that he copied these dates from the “Book of the Historical Zodiacs,” preserved in the pagoda of Vilenur.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1587}} Jacolliot declares, in his “Fils de Dieu,” that he copied these dates from the “Book of the Historical Zodiacs,” preserved in the pagoda of Vilenur.

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323 MISSIONARY VANDALISM IN INDIA.

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tenet of the latter religion is opposed to the belief of the Jaïnas, is not a sound one. Buddhists, say our Orientalists, deny the existence of a Supreme Being; the Jaïnas admit one, but protest against the assumption that the “He” can ever interfere in the regulation of the universe. We have shown in the preceding chapter that the Buddhists do not deny any such thing. But if any disinterested scholar could study carefully the Jaïna literature, in their thousands of books preserved—or shall we say hidden—in Rajpootana, Jusselmere, at Patun, and other places;~~[#~~fn1588 ~~1588]~~ and especially if he could but gain access to the oldest of their sacred volumes, he would find a perfect identity of philosophical thought, if not of popular rites, between the Jaïnas and the Buddhists. The Adi-Buddha and Adinâtha (or Adiswara) are identical in essence and purpose. And now, if we trace the Jaïnas back, with their claims to the ownership of the oldest cave-temples (those superb specimens of Indian architecture and sculpture), and their records of an almost incredible antiquity, we can hardly refuse to view them in the light which they claim for themselves. We must admit, that in all probability they are the only true descendants of the primitive owners of old India, dispossessed by those conquering and mysterious hordes of white-skinned Brahmans whom, in the twilight of history, we see appearing at the first as wanderers in the valleys of Jumna and Ganges. The books of the Srawacs—the only descendants of the Arhatas or earliest Jaïnas, the naked forest-hermits of the days of old, might throw some light, perhaps, on many a puzzling question. But will our European scholars, so long as they pursue their own policy, ever have access to the {{Style S-Italic|right}} volumes? We have our doubts about this. Ask any trustworthy Hindu how the missionaries have dealt with those manuscripts which unluckily fell into their hands, and then see if we can blame the natives for trying to save from desecration the “gods of their fathers.”

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{{Style P-No indent|tenet of the latter religion is opposed to the belief of the Jaïnas, is not a sound one. Buddhists, say our Orientalists, deny the existence of a Supreme Being; the Jaïnas admit one, but protest against the assumption that the “He” can ever interfere in the regulation of the universe. We have shown in the preceding chapter that the Buddhists do not deny any such thing. But if any disinterested scholar could study carefully the Jaïna literature, in their thousands of books preserved—or shall we say hidden—in Rajpootana, Jusselmere, at Patun, and other places;{{Footnote mark|*|fn1588}} and especially if he could but gain access to the oldest of their sacred volumes, he would find a perfect identity of philosophical thought, if not of popular rites, between the Jaïnas and the Buddhists. The Adi-Buddha and Adinâtha (or Adiswara) are identical in essence and purpose. And now, if we trace the Jaïnas back, with their claims to the ownership of the oldest cave-temples (those superb specimens of Indian architecture and sculpture), and their records of an almost incredible antiquity, we can hardly refuse to view them in the light which they claim for themselves. We must admit, that in all probability they are the only true descendants of the primitive owners of old India, dispossessed by those conquering and mysterious hordes of white-skinned Brahmans whom, in the twilight of history, we see appearing at the first as wanderers in the valleys of Jumna and Ganges. The books of the Srawacs—the only descendants of the Arhatas or earliest Jaïnas, the naked forest-hermits of the days of old, might throw some light, perhaps, on many a puzzling question. But will our European scholars, so long as they pursue their own policy, ever have access to the {{Style S-Italic|right}} volumes? We have our doubts about this. Ask any trustworthy Hindu how the missionaries have dealt with those manuscripts which unluckily fell into their hands, and then see if we can blame the natives for trying to save from desecration the “gods of their fathers.”}}

To maintain their ground Irenæus and his school had to fight hard with the Gnostics. Such, also, was the lot of Eusebius, who found himself hopelessly perplexed to know how the Essenes should be disposed of. The ways and customs of Jesus and his apostles exhibited too close a resemblance to this sect to allow the fact to pass unexplained. Eusebius tried to make people believe that the Essenes were the first Christians. His efforts were thwarted by Philo Judæus, who wrote his historical account of the Essenes and described them with the minutest care, long before there had appeared a single Christian in Palestine. But, if there were no {{Style S-Italic|Christians,}} there were Christians long before the era of Christianity; and the Essenes belonged to the latter as well as to all other initiated

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~~[#fn1588anc 1588]. ~~We were told that there were nearly 20,000 of such books.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1588}} We were told that there were nearly 20,000 of such books.

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brotherhoods, without even mentioning the Christnites of India. Lepsius shows that the word {{Style S-Italic|Nofre}} means Chrēstos, “good,” and that one of the titles of Osiris, “Onnofre,” must be translated “the goodness of God made manifest.”~~[#~~fn1589 ~~1589]~~ “The worship of Christ was not universal at this early date,” explains Mackenzie, “by which I mean that Christolatry had not been introduced; but the worship of {{Style S-Italic|Chrēstos—}}the Good Principle—had preceded it by many centuries, and even survived the general adoption of Christianity, as shown on monuments still in existence. . . . Again, we have an inscription which is pre-Christian on an epitaphial tablet (Spon. {{Style S-Italic|Misc. Erud.,}} Ant., x. xviii. 2). Υαχινθε Λαρισαιων Δημοσιε Ηρως Χρηστε Χαιρε, and de Rossi ({{Style S-Italic|Roma Sotteranea,}} tome i. tav. xxi.) gives us another example from the catacombs—‘Ælia Chreste, in Pace.’”~~[#~~fn1590 ~~1590]~~ And, {{Style S-Italic|Kris,}} as Jacolliot shows, means in Sanscrit “sacred.”

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{{Style P-No indent|brotherhoods, without even mentioning the Christnites of India. Lepsius shows that the word {{Style S-Italic|Nofre}} means Chrēstos, “good,” and that one of the titles of Osiris, “Onnofre,” must be translated “the goodness of God made manifest.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1589}} “The worship of Christ was not universal at this early date,” explains Mackenzie, “by which I mean that Christolatry had not been introduced; but the worship of {{Style S-Italic|Chrēstos—}}the Good Principle—had preceded it by many centuries, and even survived the general adoption of Christianity, as shown on monuments still in existence. . . . Again, we have an inscription which is pre-Christian on an epitaphial tablet (Spon. {{Style S-Italic|Misc. Erud.,}} Ant., x. xviii. 2). Υαχινθε Λαρισαιων Δημοσιε Ηρως Χρηστε Χαιρε, and de Rossi ({{Style S-Italic|Roma Sotteranea,}} tome i. tav. xxi.) gives us another example from the catacombs—‘Ælia Chreste, in Pace.’”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1590}} And, {{Style S-Italic|Kris,}} as Jacolliot shows, means in Sanscrit “sacred.”}}

The meritorious stratagems of the trustworthy Eusebius thus proved lost labor. He was triumphantly detected by Basnage, who, says Gibbon, “examined with the utmost critical accuracy the curious treatise of Philo, which describes the Therapeutæ,” and found that “by proving it was composed as early as the time of Augustus, he has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius and a crowd of modern Catholics, that the Therapeutæ, were neither Christians nor monks.”

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“It comes to this,” writes Irenæus, complaining of the Gnostics,

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~~[#fn1589anc 1589]. ~~Lepsius: “Konigsbuch,” b. 11, {{Style S-Italic|tal. i. dyn.}} 5{{Style S-Italic|,}} h. p. in 1 Peter ii. 3, Jesus is called “the Lord Crestos.”

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1589}} Lepsius: “Konigsbuch,” b. 11, {{Style S-Italic|tal. i. dyn.}} 5{{Style S-Italic|,}} h. p. in 1 Peter ii. 3, Jesus is called “the Lord Crestos.”

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~~[#fn1590anc 1590]. ~~Mackenzie: “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 207.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1590}} Mackenzie: “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 207.

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325 ORIGIN OF THE MIRACULOUS-CONCEPTION MYTH.

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“they neither consent to Scripture nor tradition.”~~[#~~fn1591 ~~1591]~~ And why should we wonder at that, when even the commentators of the nineteenth century, with nothing but fragments of the Gnostic manuscripts to compare with the voluminous writings of their calumniators, have been enabled to detect fraud on nearly every page? How much more must the polished and learned Gnostics, with all their advantages of personal observation and knowledge of fact, have realized the stupendous scheme of fraud that was being consummated before their very eyes! Why should they accuse Celsus of maintaining that their religion was all based on the speculations of Plato, with the difference that his doctrines were far more pure and rational than theirs, when we find Sprengel, seventeen centuries later, writing the following?—“Not only did they (the Christians) think to discover the dogmas of Plato in the books of Moses, but, moreover, they fancied that, by introducing Platonism into Christianity, they would {{Style S-Italic|elevate the dignity of this religion and make it more popular among the nations.”~~[#~~fn1592 ~~1592]~~}}

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{{Style P-No indent|“they neither consent to Scripture nor tradition.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1591}} And why should we wonder at that, when even the commentators of the nineteenth century, with nothing but fragments of the Gnostic manuscripts to compare with the voluminous writings of their calumniators, have been enabled to detect fraud on nearly every page? How much more must the polished and learned Gnostics, with all their advantages of personal observation and knowledge of fact, have realized the stupendous scheme of fraud that was being consummated before their very eyes! Why should they accuse Celsus of maintaining that their religion was all based on the speculations of Plato, with the difference that his doctrines were far more pure and rational than theirs, when we find Sprengel, seventeen centuries later, writing the following?—“Not only did they (the Christians) think to discover the dogmas of Plato in the books of Moses, but, moreover, they fancied that, by introducing Platonism into Christianity, they would {{Style S-Italic|elevate the dignity of this religion and make it more popular among the nations.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1592}}}}}}

They introduced it so well, that not only was the Platonic philosophy selected as a basis for the trinity, but even the legends and mythical stories which had been current among the admirers of the great philosopher—as a time-honored custom required in the eyes of his posterity such an allegorical homage to every hero worthy of deification—were revamped and used by the Christians. Without going so far as India, did they not have a ready model for the “miraculous conception,” in the legend about Periktionè, Plato’s mother? In her case it was also maintained by popular tradition that she had immaculately conceived him, and that the god Apollo was his father. Even the annunciation by an angel to Joseph “in a dream,” the Christians copied from the message of Apollo to Ariston, Periktionè’s husband, that the child to be born from her was the offspring of that god. So, too, Romulus was said to be the son of Mars, by the virgin Rhea Sylvia.

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We have carefully looked over the works of such authors as Payne

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~~[#fn1591anc 1591]. ~~“Adv. Hær.,” iii., 2, § 2~~{{Style S-Italic|~~.}}

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1591}} “Adv. Hær.,” iii., 2, § 2.

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~~[#fn1592anc 1592]. ~~Sprengel: “Histoire de la Medecine.”

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1592}} Sprengel: “Histoire de la Medecine.”

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Knight, C. W. King, and Olshausen, which treat of our subject; we have reviewed the bulky volumes of Irenæus, Tertullian, Sozomen, Theodoret; and in none but those of Epiphanius have we found any accusation based upon direct evidence of an eye-witness. “They say;” “{{Style S-Italic|Some}} say;” “We have heard”—such are the general and indefinite terms used by the patristic accusers. Alone Epiphanius, whose works are invariably referred to in all such cases, seems to chuckle with delight whenever he couches a lance. We do not mean to take upon ourselves to defend the sects which inundated Europe at the eleventh century, and which brought to light the most wonderful creeds; we limit our defense merely to those Christian sects whose theories were usually grouped under the generic name of {{Style S-Italic|Gnosticism.}} These are those which appeared immediately after the alleged crucifixion, and lasted till they were nearly exterminated under the rigorous execution of the Constantinian law. The greatest guilt of these were their syncretistic views, for at no other period of the world’s history had truth a poorer prospect of triumph than in those days of forgery, lying, and deliberate falsification of facts.

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{{Style P-No indent|Knight, C. W. King, and Olshausen, which treat of our subject; we have reviewed the bulky volumes of Irenæus, Tertullian, Sozomen, Theodoret; and in none but those of Epiphanius have we found any accusation based upon direct evidence of an eye-witness. “They say;” “{{Style S-Italic|Some}} say;” “We have heard”—such are the general and indefinite terms used by the patristic accusers. Alone Epiphanius, whose works are invariably referred to in all such cases, seems to chuckle with delight whenever he couches a lance. We do not mean to take upon ourselves to defend the sects which inundated Europe at the eleventh century, and which brought to light the most wonderful creeds; we limit our defense merely to those Christian sects whose theories were usually grouped under the generic name of {{Style S-Italic|Gnosticism.}} These are those which appeared immediately after the alleged crucifixion, and lasted till they were nearly exterminated under the rigorous execution of the Constantinian law. The greatest guilt of these were their syncretistic views, for at no other period of the world’s history had truth a poorer prospect of triumph than in those days of forgery, lying, and deliberate falsification of facts.}}

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But before we are forced to believe the accusations, may we not be permitted to inquire into the historical characters of their accusers? Let us begin by asking, upon what ground does the Church of Rome build her claim of supremacy for her doctrines over those of the Gnostics? Apostolic succession, undoubtedly. The succession {{Style S-Italic|traditionally}} instituted by the direct Apostle Peter. But what if this prove a fiction? Clearly, the whole superstructure supported upon this one imaginary stilt would fall in a tremendous crash. And when we do inquire carefully, we find that we must take the word of Irenæus {{Style S-Italic|alone}} for it—of Irenæus, who did not furnish one single valid proof of the claim which he so audaciously advanced, and who resorted for that to endless forgeries. He gives authority neither for his dates nor his assertions. This Smyrniote worthy has not even the brutal but sincere faith of Tertullian, for he contradicts himself at every step, and supports his claims solely on acute sophistry. Though he was undoubtedly a man of the shrewdest intellect and great learning, he fears not, in some of his assertions and arguments, to even appear an idiot in the eyes of posterity, so long as he can “carry the situation.” Twitted and cornered at every step by his not less acute and learned adversaries, the Gnostics, he boldly shields himself behind blind faith, and in answer to their merciless logic falls upon imaginary tradition invented by himself. Reber wittily remarks: “As we read his misapplications of words and sentences, we would conclude that he was a lunatic if we did not know that he was something else.”~~[#~~fn1593 ~~1593]~~

+

But before we are forced to believe the accusations, may we not be permitted to inquire into the historical characters of their accusers? Let us begin by asking, upon what ground does the Church of Rome build her claim of supremacy for her doctrines over those of the Gnostics? Apostolic succession, undoubtedly. The succession {{Style S-Italic|traditionally}} instituted by the direct Apostle Peter. But what if this prove a fiction? Clearly, the whole superstructure supported upon this one imaginary stilt would fall in a tremendous crash. And when we do inquire carefully, we find that we must take the word of Irenæus {{Style S-Italic|alone}} for it—of Irenæus, who did not furnish one single valid proof of the claim which he so audaciously advanced, and who resorted for that to endless forgeries. He gives authority neither for his dates nor his assertions. This Smyrniote worthy has not even the brutal but sincere faith of Tertullian, for he contradicts himself at every step, and supports his claims solely on acute sophistry. Though he was undoubtedly a man of the shrewdest intellect and great learning, he fears not, in some of his assertions and arguments, to even appear an idiot in the eyes of posterity, so long as he can “carry the situation.” Twitted and cornered at every step by his not less acute and learned adversaries, the Gnostics, he boldly shields himself behind blind faith, and in answer to their merciless logic falls upon imaginary tradition invented by himself. Reber wittily remarks: “As we read his misapplications of words and sentences, we would conclude that he was a lunatic if we did not know that he was something else.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1593}}

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~~[#fn1593anc 1593]. ~~“Christ of Paul,” p. 188.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1593}} “Christ of Paul,” p. 188.

+

−

327 EUSEBIUS’ CONVICTED OF FALSIFICATION.

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−

So boldly mendacious does this “holy Father” prove himself in many instances, that he is even contradicted by Eusebius, more cautious if not more truthful than himself. He is driven to that necessity in the face of unimpeachable evidence. So, for instance, Irenæus asserts that Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, was a direct hearer of St. John;~~[#~~fn1594 ~~1594]~~ and Eusebius is compelled to show that Papias never pretended to such a claim, but simply stated that he had received his {{Style S-Italic|doctrine from those who had known John.~~[#~~fn1595 ~~1595]~~}}

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So boldly mendacious does this “holy Father” prove himself in many instances, that he is even contradicted by Eusebius, more cautious if not more truthful than himself. He is driven to that necessity in the face of unimpeachable evidence. So, for instance, Irenæus asserts that Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, was a direct hearer of St. John;{{Footnote mark|*|fn1594}} and Eusebius is compelled to show that Papias never pretended to such a claim, but simply stated that he had received his {{Style S-Italic|doctrine from those who had known John.{{Footnote mark|†|fn1595}}}}

In one point, the Gnostics had the best of Irenæus. They drove him, through mere fear of inconsistency, to the recognition of their kabalistic doctrine of atonement; unable to grasp it in its allegorical meaning, Irenæus presented, with Christian theology as we find it in its present state of “original sin {{Style S-Italic|versus Adam,” a doctrine which would have filled Peter with pious horror if he had been still alive.}}

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The next champion for the propagation of Apostolic Succession, is Eusebius himself. Is the word of this Armenian Father any better than that of Irenæus? Let us see what the most competent critics say of him. And before we turn to modern critics at all, we might remind the reader of the scurrilous terms in which Eusebius is attacked by George Syncellus, the Vice-Patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), for his audacious falsification of the Egyptian Chronology. The opinion of Socrates, an historian of the fifth century, is no more flattering. He fearlessly charges Eusebius with perverting historical dates, in order to please the Emperor Constantine. In his chronographic work, before proceeding to falsify the synchronistic tables {{Style S-Italic|himself,}} in order to impart to Scriptural chronology a more trustworthy appearance, Syncellus covers Eusebius with the choicest of monkish Billingsgate. {{Style S-Italic|Baron Bunsen has verified the justness if not justified the politeness of this abusive reprehension.}} His elaborate researches in the rectification of the {{Style S-Italic|Egyptian List of Chronology,}} by Manetho, led him to confess that throughout his work, the Bishop of Cæsarea “had undertaken, in a very {{Style S-Italic|unscrupulous}} and arbitrary spirit, to mutilate history.” “Eusebius,” he says, “is the originator of that systematic theory of synchronisms which has so often subsequently maimed and mutilated history in its procrustean bed.”~~[#~~fn1596 ~~1596]~~ To this the author of the {{Style S-Italic|Intellectual Development of Europe}} adds: “Among those who have been the most guilty of this offense, the name of the celebrated Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsarea . . . should be designated!”~~[#~~fn1597 ~~1597]~~

+

The next champion for the propagation of Apostolic Succession, is Eusebius himself. Is the word of this Armenian Father any better than that of Irenæus? Let us see what the most competent critics say of him. And before we turn to modern critics at all, we might remind the reader of the scurrilous terms in which Eusebius is attacked by George Syncellus, the Vice-Patriarch of Constantinople (eighth century), for his audacious falsification of the Egyptian Chronology. The opinion of Socrates, an historian of the fifth century, is no more flattering. He fearlessly charges Eusebius with perverting historical dates, in order to please the Emperor Constantine. In his chronographic work, before proceeding to falsify the synchronistic tables {{Style S-Italic|himself,}} in order to impart to Scriptural chronology a more trustworthy appearance, Syncellus covers Eusebius with the choicest of monkish Billingsgate. {{Style S-Italic|Baron Bunsen has verified the justness if not justified the politeness of this abusive reprehension.}} His elaborate researches in the rectification of the {{Style S-Italic|Egyptian List of Chronology,}} by Manetho, led him to confess that throughout his work, the Bishop of Cæsarea “had undertaken, in a very {{Style S-Italic|unscrupulous}} and arbitrary spirit, to mutilate history.” “Eusebius,” he says, “is the originator of that systematic theory of synchronisms which has so often subsequently maimed and mutilated history in its procrustean bed.”{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1596}} To this the author of the {{Style S-Italic|Intellectual Development of Europe}} adds: “Among those who have been the most guilty of this offense, the name of the celebrated Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsarea . . . should be designated!”{{Footnote mark|§|fn1597}}

It will not be amiss to remind the reader that it is the same Eusebius who is charged with the interpolation of the famous paragraph concerning

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~~[#fn1594anc 1594]. ~~“Adv. Hær.,” v. 33, § 4.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1594}} “Adv. Hær.,” v. 33, § 4.

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~~[#fn1595anc 1595]. ~~Eusebius: “Hist. Eccles.,” iii., p. 39.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1595}} Eusebius: “Hist. Eccles.,” iii., p. 39.

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~~[#fn1596anc 1596]. ~~Bunsen: “Egypt,” vol. i., p. 200.

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1596}} Bunsen: “Egypt,” vol. i., p. 200.

−

~~[#fn1597anc 1597]. ~~“Intellectual Development of Europe,” p. 147.

+

{{Footnote return|§|fn1597}} “Intellectual Development of Europe,” p. 147.

+

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328 ISIS UNVEILED.

+

−

Jesus,~~[#~~fn1598 ~~1598]~~ which was so miraculously found, in his time, in the writings of Josephus, the sentence in question having till that time remained perfectly unknown. Renan, in his {{Style S-Italic|Life of Jesus,}} expresses a contrary opinion. “I believe,” says he, “the passage respecting Jesus to be authentic. {{Style S-Italic|It is perfectly in the style of Josephus;}} and~~{{Style S-Italic|~~, if}} this historian had made mention of Jesus, it is {{Style S-Italic|thus}} that he must have spoken of him.”

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{{Style P-No indent|Jesus,{{Footnote mark|*|fn1598}} which was so miraculously found, in his time, in the writings of Josephus, the sentence in question having till that time remained perfectly unknown. Renan, in his {{Style S-Italic|Life of Jesus,}} expresses a contrary opinion. “I believe,” says he, “the passage respecting Jesus to be authentic. {{Style S-Italic|It is perfectly in the style of Josephus;}} and, ''if'' this historian had made mention of Jesus, it is {{Style S-Italic|thus}} that he must have spoken of him.”}}

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Begging this eminent scholar’s pardon, we must again contradict him. Laying aside his cautious “~~{{Style S-Italic|~~if}},” we will merely show that though the short paragraph may possibly be genuine, and “perfectly in the style of Josephus,” its several parentheses are most palpably later forgeries; and ~~{{Style S-Italic|“if”}}~~ Josephus had made any mention of Christ at all, it is {{Style S-Italic|not}} thus that he would “have spoken of him.” The whole paragraph consists of but a few lines, and reads: “At this time was {{Style S-Italic|Iasous,}} a ~~‘wise~~ man,’~~[#~~fn1599 ~~1599]~~ if, at least, {{Style S-Italic|it is right to call him a man!}} (ἄνδρα) for he was a doer of surprising works, and a teacher of such men as receive ‘the truths’ with pleasure. . . . {{Style S-Italic|This was the}} Anointed (!!). And, on an accusation by the first men among us, having been condemned by Pilate to the cross, they did not stop loving him who loved them. For {{Style S-Italic|he appeared to them on the third day alive,}} and the divine prophets having said these and many other wonderful things concerning him.”

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Begging this eminent scholar’s pardon, we must again contradict him. Laying aside his cautious “''if'',” we will merely show that though the short paragraph may possibly be genuine, and “perfectly in the style of Josephus,” its several parentheses are most palpably later forgeries; and “''if''” Josephus had made any mention of Christ at all, it is {{Style S-Italic|not}} thus that he would “have spoken of him.” The whole paragraph consists of but a few lines, and reads: “At this time was {{Style S-Italic|Iasous,}} a ‘{{Style S-Small capitals|wise man}},’{{Footnote mark|†|fn1599}} if, at least, {{Style S-Italic|it is right to call him a man!}} (ἄνδρα) for he was a doer of surprising works, and a teacher of such men as receive ‘the truths’ with pleasure. . . . {{Style S-Italic|This was the}} {{Style S-Small capitals|Anointed}} (!!). And, on an accusation by the first men among us, having been condemned by Pilate to the cross, they did not stop loving him who loved them. For {{Style S-Italic|he appeared to them on the third day alive,}} and the divine prophets having said these and many other wonderful things concerning him.”

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This paragraph (of sixteen lines in the original) has two unequivocal assertions and one qualification. The latter is expressed in the following sentence: “If, at least, it is right to call him a man.” The unequivocal assertions are contained in “This is the Anointed,” and in that Jesus “appeared to them {{Style S-Italic|on the third day alive.”}} History shows us Josephus as a thorough, uncompromising, stiff-necked, orthodox Jew, though he wrote for “the Pagans.” It is well to observe the false position in which these sentences would have placed a true-born Jew, if they had really emanated from him. Their “Messiah” was then and is still expected. The Messiah is the {{Style S-Italic|Anointed,}} and {{Style S-Italic|vice versa.}} And Josephus is made to admit that the “first men” among them have accused and crucified {{Style S-Italic|their}} Messiah and Anointed!! No need to comment any further upon such a preposterous incongruity,~~[#~~fn1600 ~~1600]~~ even though supported by so ripe a scholar as Renan.

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This paragraph (of sixteen lines in the original) has two unequivocal assertions and one qualification. The latter is expressed in the following sentence: “If, at least, it is right to call him a man.” The unequivocal assertions are contained in “This is the Anointed,” and in that Jesus “appeared to them {{Style S-Italic|on the third day alive.”}} History shows us Josephus as a thorough, uncompromising, stiff-necked, orthodox Jew, though he wrote for “the Pagans.” It is well to observe the false position in which these sentences would have placed a true-born Jew, if they had really emanated from him. Their “Messiah” was then and is still expected. The Messiah is the {{Style S-Italic|Anointed,}} and {{Style S-Italic|vice versa.}} And Josephus is made to admit that the “first men” among them have accused and crucified {{Style S-Italic|their}} Messiah and Anointed!! No need to comment any further upon such a preposterous incongruity,{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1600}} even though supported by so ripe a scholar as Renan.

As to that patristic fire-brand, Tertullian, whom des Mousseaux apotheosizes in company with his other demi-gods, he is regarded by Reuss, Baur, and Schweigler, in quite a different light. The untrustworthiness of statement and inaccuracy of Tertullian, says the author

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~~[#fn1598anc 1598]. ~~“Antiquities,” lib. xviii., cap. 3.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1598}} “Antiquities,” lib. xviii., cap. 3.

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~~[#fn1599anc 1599]. ~~Wise man always meant with the ancients a kabalist. It means astrologer and magician. “Israelite Indeed,” vol. iii., p. 206. Hakim is a physician.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1599}} Wise man always meant with the ancients a kabalist. It means astrologer and magician. “Israelite Indeed,” vol. iii., p. 206. Hakim is a physician.

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~~[#fn1600anc 1600]. ~~Dr. Lardner rejects it as spurious, and gives {{Style S-Italic|nine}} reasons for rejecting it.

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1600}} Dr. Lardner rejects it as spurious, and gives {{Style S-Italic|nine}} reasons for rejecting it.

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329 TERTULLIAN, THE PATRISTIC FIRE-BRAND.

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of {{Style S-Italic|Supernatural Religion,}} are often apparent. Reuss characterizes his Christianism as “{{Style S-Italic|âpre, insolent, brutal, ferrailleur.”}} It is without unction and without charity, sometimes even {{Style S-Italic|without loyalty,}} when he finds himself confronted with opposition. “If,” remarks this author, “in the second century all parties except certain Gnostics were intolerant, Tertullian was the most intolerant of all!”

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{{Style P-No indent|of {{Style S-Italic|Supernatural Religion,}} are often apparent. Reuss characterizes his Christianism as “{{Style S-Italic|âpre, insolent, brutal, ferrailleur.”}} It is without unction and without charity, sometimes even {{Style S-Italic|without loyalty,}} when he finds himself confronted with opposition. “If,” remarks this author, “in the second century all parties except certain Gnostics were intolerant, Tertullian was the most intolerant of all!”}}

The work begun by the early Fathers was achieved by the sophomorical Augustine. His supra-transcendental speculations on the Trinity; his imaginary dialogues with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the {{Style S-Italic|disclosures}} and covert allusions about his ex-brethren, the Manicheans, have led the world to load Gnosticism with opprobrium, and have thrown into a deep shadow the insulted majesty of the one God, worshipped in reverential silence by every “heathen.”

Line 638: Line 695:

{{Style S-Italic|And thus is it that the whole pyramid of Roman Catholic dogmas rests not upon Proof, but upon assumption.}} The Gnostics had cornered the Fathers too cleverly, and {{Style S-Italic|the only salvation of the latter was a resort to forgery.}} For nearly four centuries, the great historians nearly cotemporary with Jesus had not taken the slightest notice either of his life or death. Christians wondered at such an unaccountable omission of what the Church considered the greatest events in the world’s history. Eusebius saved the battle of the day. Such are the men who have slandered the Gnostics.

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The first and most unimportant sect we hear of is that of the {{Style S-Italic|Nicolaïtans,}} of whom John, in the {{Style S-Italic|Apocalypse,}} makes the voice in his vision say that he hates their doctrine.~~[#~~fn1601 ~~1601]~~ These Nicolaïtans were the followers, however, of Nicolas of Antioch, one of the “seven” chosen by the “twelve” to make distribution from the common fund to the proselytes at Jerusalem ({{Style S-Italic|Acts}} ii. 44, 45, vi. 1-5), hardly more than a few weeks, or perhaps months, after the Crucifixion;~~[#~~fn1602 ~~1602]~~ and a man “of honest report, {{Style S-Italic|full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom”}} (verse 3). Thus it would appear that the “Holy Ghost and wisdom” from on high, were no more a shield against the accusation of “hæresy” than though they had never overshadowed the “chosen ones” of the apostles.

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The first and most unimportant sect we hear of is that of the {{Style S-Italic|Nicolaïtans,}} of whom John, in the {{Style S-Italic|Apocalypse,}} makes the voice in his vision say that he hates their doctrine.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1601}} These Nicolaïtans were the followers, however, of Nicolas of Antioch, one of the “seven” chosen by the “twelve” to make distribution from the common fund to the proselytes at Jerusalem ({{Style S-Italic|Acts}} ii. 44, 45, vi. 1-5), hardly more than a few weeks, or perhaps months, after the Crucifixion;{{Footnote mark|†|fn1602}} and a man “of honest report, {{Style S-Italic|full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom”}} (verse 3). Thus it would appear that the “Holy Ghost and wisdom” from on high, were no more a shield against the accusation of “hæresy” than though they had never overshadowed the “chosen ones” of the apostles.

It would be but too easy to detect what kind of heresy it was that offended, even had we not other and more authentic sources of information in the kabalistic writings. The accusation and the precise nature of the “abomination” are stated in the second chapter of the book of {{Style S-Italic|Revelation,}} verses 14, 15. The sin was merely—{{Style S-Italic|marriage}}. John was a

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~~[#fn1601anc 1601]. ~~{{~~Style S-Italic~~|Revelation i and ii.}}

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1601}} Revelation i and ii.

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~~[#fn1602anc 1602]. ~~{{~~Style S-Italic~~|Philip, the first martyr, was one of the seven, and he was stoned about the year a.d. 34.}}

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1602}} Philip, the first martyr, was one of the seven, and he was stoned about the year a.d. 34.

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330 ISIS UNVEILED.

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−

“virgin;” several of the Fathers assert the fact on the authority of tradition. Even Paul, the most liberal and high-minded of them all, finds it difficult to reconcile the position of a married man with that of a faithful servant of God. There is also “a difference between a wife and a virgin.”~~[#~~fn1603 ~~1603]~~ The latter cares “for the things of the Lord,” and the former only for “how she may please her husband.” “If any man think that he behaveth uncomely towards his virgin . . . let them marry. Nevertheless, he that standeth steadfast in his heart, and hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed . . . that he will keep {{Style S-Italic|his virgin,}} doeth well.” So that he who marries “doeth well . . . but he that giveth her not in marriage {{Style S-Italic|doeth better.”}} “Art thou loosed from a wife?” he asks, “seek not a wife” (27). And remarking that according to his judgment, both will be happier if they do not marry, he adds, as a weighty conclusion: “And I think also that I have the spirit of God” (40). Far from this spirit of tolerance are the words of John. According to his vision there are “but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were {{Style S-Italic|redeemed}} from the earth,” and “these are they which were not defiled with women; for ~~{{Style S-Italic|~~they were virgins.”~~[#~~fn1604 ~~1604]~~}} This seems conclusive; for except Paul there is not one of these primitive {{Style S-Italic|Nazari,}} there “set apart” and vowed to God, who seemed to make a great difference between “sin” within the relationship of legal marriage, and the “abomination” of adultery.

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{{Style P-No indent|“virgin;” several of the Fathers assert the fact on the authority of tradition. Even Paul, the most liberal and high-minded of them all, finds it difficult to reconcile the position of a married man with that of a faithful servant of God. There is also “a difference between a wife and a virgin.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1603}} The latter cares “for the things of the Lord,” and the former only for “how she may please her husband.” “If any man think that he behaveth uncomely towards his virgin . . . let them marry. Nevertheless, he that standeth steadfast in his heart, and hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed . . . that he will keep {{Style S-Italic|his virgin,}} doeth well.” So that he who marries “doeth well . . . but he that giveth her not in marriage {{Style S-Italic|doeth better.”}} “Art thou loosed from a wife?” he asks, “seek not a wife” (27). And remarking that according to his judgment, both will be happier if they do not marry, he adds, as a weighty conclusion: “And I think also that I have the spirit of God” (40). Far from this spirit of tolerance are the words of John. According to his vision there are “but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were {{Style S-Italic|redeemed}} from the earth,” and “these are they which were not defiled with women; for ''they were virgins''.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1604}} This seems conclusive; for except Paul there is not one of these primitive {{Style S-Italic|Nazari,}} there “set apart” and vowed to God, who seemed to make a great difference between “sin” within the relationship of legal marriage, and the “abomination” of adultery.}}

With such views and such narrow-mindedness, it was but natural that these fanatics should have begun by casting this {{Style S-Italic|iniquity}} as a slur in the faces of brethren, and then “bearing on progressively” with their accusations. As we have already shown, it is only Epiphanius whom we find giving such minute details as to the Masonic “grips” and other signs of recognition among the Gnostics. He had once belonged to their number, and therefore it was easy for him to furnish particulars. Only how far the worthy Bishop is to be relied upon is a very grave question. One need fathom human nature but very superficially to find that there seldom was yet a traitor, a renegade, who, in a moment of danger turned “State’s evidence,” who would not lie as remorselessly as he betrayed. Men never forgive or relent toward those whom they injure. We hate our victims in proportion to the harm we do them. This is a truth as old as the world. On the other hand, it is preposterous to believe that such persons as the Gnostics, who, according to Gibbon, were the wealthiest, proudest, most polite, as well as the most learned “of the Christian name,” were guilty of the disgusting, libidinous actions of which Epiphanius delights to accuse them. Were they even like that “set of tatterde-

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~~[#fn1603anc 1603]. ~~I Corinthians, vii. 34.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1603}} I Corinthians, vii. 34.

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~~[#fn1604anc 1604]. ~~Revelation xiv. 3, 4.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1604}} Revelation xiv. 3, 4.

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331 ST. AUGUSTINE’S “HOLY KISSES” UNORTHODOX.

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malions, almost naked, with fierce looks,” that Lucian describes as Paul’s followers,~~[#~~fn1605 ~~1605]~~ we would hesitate to believe such an infamous story. How much less probable then that men who were Platonists, as well as Christians, should have ever been guilty of such preposterous rites.

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{{Style P-No indent|malions, almost naked, with fierce looks,” that Lucian describes as Paul’s followers,{{Footnote mark|*|fn1605}} we would hesitate to believe such an infamous story. How much less probable then that men who were Platonists, as well as Christians, should have ever been guilty of such preposterous rites.}}

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Payne Knight seems never to suspect the testimony of Epiphanius. He argues that “if we make allowance for the willing exaggerations of religious hatred, and consequent popular prejudice, the general conviction that these sectarians had rites and practices of a licentious character appears too strong to be entirely disregarded.” If he draws an honest line of demarcation between the Gnostics of the first three centuries and those mediæval sects whose doctrines “rather closely resembled modern communism,” we have nothing to say. Only, we would beg every critic to remember that if the Templars were accused of that most “abominable crime” of applying the “holy kiss” to the root of Baphomet’s tail,~~[#~~fn1606 ~~1606]~~ St. Augustine is also suspected, and on very good grounds, too, of having allowed his community to go somewhat astray from the primitive way of administering the “holy kiss” at the feast of the Eucharist. The holy Bishop seems quite too anxious as to certain details of the ladies’ toilet for the “kiss” to be of a strictly orthodox nature.~~[#~~fn1607 ~~1607]~~ Wherever there lurks a true and sincere religious feeling, there is no room for worldly details.

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Payne Knight seems never to suspect the testimony of Epiphanius. He argues that “if we make allowance for the willing exaggerations of religious hatred, and consequent popular prejudice, the general conviction that these sectarians had rites and practices of a licentious character appears too strong to be entirely disregarded.” If he draws an honest line of demarcation between the Gnostics of the first three centuries and those mediæval sects whose doctrines “rather closely resembled modern communism,” we have nothing to say. Only, we would beg every critic to remember that if the Templars were accused of that most “abominable crime” of applying the “holy kiss” to the root of Baphomet’s tail,{{Footnote mark|†|fn1606}} St. Augustine is also suspected, and on very good grounds, too, of having allowed his community to go somewhat astray from the primitive way of administering the “holy kiss” at the feast of the Eucharist. The holy Bishop seems quite too anxious as to certain details of the ladies’ toilet for the “kiss” to be of a strictly orthodox nature.{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1607}} Wherever there lurks a true and sincere religious feeling, there is no room for worldly details.

Considering the extraordinary dislike exhibited from the first by Christians to all manner of cleanliness, we cannot enough wonder at such a strange solicitude on the part of the holy Bishop for his female parishioners, unless, indeed, we have to excuse it on the ground of a lingering reminiscence of Manichean rites!

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It would be hard, indeed, to blame any writer for entertaining such suspicions of immorality as those above noticed, when the records of many historians are at hand to help us to make an impartial investigation. “Hæretics” are accused of crimes in which the Church has more or less openly indulged even down to the beginning of our century. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX. issued two bulls against the Stedingers “for various {{Style S-Italic|heathen}} and magical practices,”~~[#~~fn1608 ~~1608]~~ and the latter, as a matter of course, were exterminated in the name of Christ and his Holy Mother. In 1282 a parish priest of Inverkeithing, named John, performed rites on Easter day by far worse than “magical.” Collecting a crowd of young girls, he forced them to enter into “divine ecstasies” and Bacchanalian fury, dancing the

+

It would be hard, indeed, to blame any writer for entertaining such suspicions of immorality as those above noticed, when the records of many historians are at hand to help us to make an impartial investigation. “Hæretics” are accused of crimes in which the Church has more or less openly indulged even down to the beginning of our century. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX. issued two bulls against the Stedingers “for various {{Style S-Italic|heathen}} and magical practices,”{{Footnote mark|§|fn1608}} and the latter, as a matter of course, were exterminated in the name of Christ and his Holy Mother. In 1282 a parish priest of Inverkeithing, named John, performed rites on Easter day by far worse than “magical.” Collecting a crowd of young girls, he forced them to enter into “divine ecstasies” and Bacchanalian fury, dancing the

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~~[#fn1605anc 1605]. ~~Philopatris, in Taylor’s “Diegesis,” p. 376.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1605}} Philopatris, in Taylor’s “Diegesis,” p. 376.

−

~~[#fn1606anc 1606]. ~~King’s “Gnostics and their Remains.”

+

{{Footnote return|†|fn1606}} King’s “Gnostics and their Remains.”

−

~~[#fn1607anc 1607]. ~~“Aug. Serm.,” clii. See Payne Knight’s “Mystic Theology of the Ancients,” p. 107.

+

{{Footnote return|‡|fn1607}} “Aug. Serm.,” clii. See Payne Knight’s “Mystic Theology of the Ancients,” p. 107.

−

~~[#fn1608anc 1608]. ~~Baronius: “Annales Ecclesiastici,” t. xxi., p. 89.

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{{Footnote return|§|fn1608}} Baronius: “Annales Ecclesiastici,” t. xxi., p. 89.

+

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332 ISIS UNVEILED.

+

−

old Amazonian circle-dance around the figure of the heathen “god of the gardens.” Notwithstanding that upon the complaint of some of his parishioners he was cited before his bishop, he retained his benefice because he proved that {{Style S-Italic|such was the common usage of the country.~~[#~~fn1609 ~~1609]~~}} The Waldenses, those “earliest Protestants,” were accused of the most unnatural horrors; burned, butchered, and exterminated for calumnies heaped upon them by their accusers. Meanwhile the latter, in open triumph, forming their heathen processions of “Corpus Christi,” with emblems modelled on those of Baal-Peor and “Osiris,” and every city in Southern France carrying, in yearly processions on Easter days, loaves and cakes fashioned like the so-much-decried emblems of the Hindu Sivites and Vishnites, as late as 1825!~~[#~~fn1610 ~~1610]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|old Amazonian circle-dance around the figure of the heathen “god of the gardens.” Notwithstanding that upon the complaint of some of his parishioners he was cited before his bishop, he retained his benefice because he proved that {{Style S-Italic|such was the common usage of the country.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1609}}}} The Waldenses, those “earliest Protestants,” were accused of the most unnatural horrors; burned, butchered, and exterminated for calumnies heaped upon them by their accusers. Meanwhile the latter, in open triumph, forming their heathen processions of “Corpus Christi,” with emblems modelled on those of Baal-Peor and “Osiris,” and every city in Southern France carrying, in yearly processions on Easter days, loaves and cakes fashioned like the so-much-decried emblems of the Hindu Sivites and Vishnites, as late as 1825!{{Footnote mark|†|fn1610}}}}

Deprived of their old means for slandering Christian sects whose religious views differ from their own, it is now the turn of the “heathen,” Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese, to share with the ancient religions the honor of having cast in their teeth denunciations of their “libidinous religions.”

Line 684: Line 747:

In Polish Podolia there was some years ago, in a Roman Catholic Church, a statue of Christ, in black marble. It was reputed to perform miracles on certain days, such as having its hair and beard grow in the sight of the public, and indulging in other {{Style S-Italic|less}} innocent wonders. This show was finally prohibited by the Russian Government. When in 1585 the Protestants took Embrun (Department of the Upper Alps), they found in the churches of this town relics of such a character, that, as the Chronicle expresses it “old Huguenot soldiers were seen to blush, several weeks after, at the bare mention of the discovery.” In a corner of the Church of St. Fiacre, near Monceaux, in France, there was—and it still is there, if we mistake not—a seat called “the chair of St. Fiacre,”

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~~[#fn1609anc 1609]. ~~“Chron. de Lanercost,” ed. Stevenson, p. 109.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1609}} “Chron. de Lanercost,” ed. Stevenson, p. 109.

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~~[#fn1610anc 1610]. ~~Dulaure: “Histoire Abregee des Differents Cultes,” vol. ii., p. 285; Martezzi: “Paganié Christiani,” p. 78.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1610}} Dulaure: “Histoire Abregee des Differents Cultes,” vol. ii., p. 285; Martezzi: “Paganié Christiani,” p. 78.

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333 CHRISTIAN SLANDERS REFUTED.

+

−

which had the reputation of conferring fecundity upon barren women. A rock in the vicinity of Athens, not far from the so-called “Tomb of Socrates,” is said to be possessed of the same virtue. When, some twenty years since, the Queen Amelia, perhaps in a merry moment, was said to have tried the experiment, there was no end of most insulting abuse heaped upon her, by a Catholic Padre, on his way through Syra to some mission. The Queen, he declared, was a “superstitious heretic!” “an abominable witch!” “Jezebel using magic arts.” Much more the zealous missionary would doubtless have added, had he not found himself, right in the middle of his vituperations, landed in a pool of mud, outside the window. The virtuous elocutionist was forced to this unusual transit by the strong arm of a Greek officer, who happened to enter the room at the right moment.

+

{{Style P-No indent|which had the reputation of conferring fecundity upon barren women. A rock in the vicinity of Athens, not far from the so-called “Tomb of Socrates,” is said to be possessed of the same virtue. When, some twenty years since, the Queen Amelia, perhaps in a merry moment, was said to have tried the experiment, there was no end of most insulting abuse heaped upon her, by a Catholic Padre, on his way through Syra to some mission. The Queen, he declared, was a “superstitious heretic!” “an abominable witch!” “Jezebel using magic arts.” Much more the zealous missionary would doubtless have added, had he not found himself, right in the middle of his vituperations, landed in a pool of mud, outside the window. The virtuous elocutionist was forced to this unusual transit by the strong arm of a Greek officer, who happened to enter the room at the right moment.}}

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There never was a great religious reform that was not pure at the beginning. The first followers of Buddha, as well as the disciples of Jesus, were all men of the highest morality. The aversion felt by the reformers of all ages to vice under any shape, is proved in the cases of Sâkya-muni, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, St. Paul, Ammonius Sakkas. The great Gnostic leaders—if less successful—were not less virtuous in practice nor less morally pure. Marcion, Basilides,~~[#~~fn1611 ~~1611]~~ Valentinus, were renowned for their ascetic lives. The Nicolaitans, who, if they did not belong to the great body of the Ophites, were numbered among the small sects which were absorbed in it at the beginning of the second century, owe their origin, as we have shown, to Nicolas of Antioch, “a man of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.” How absurd the idea that such men would have instituted “libidinous rites.” As well accuse Jesus of having promoted the similar rites which we find practiced so extensively by the mediæval {{Style S-Italic|orthodox}} Christians behind the secure shelter of monastic walls.

+

There never was a great religious reform that was not pure at the beginning. The first followers of Buddha, as well as the disciples of Jesus, were all men of the highest morality. The aversion felt by the reformers of all ages to vice under any shape, is proved in the cases of Sâkya-muni, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, St. Paul, Ammonius Sakkas. The great Gnostic leaders—if less successful—were not less virtuous in practice nor less morally pure. Marcion, Basilides,{{Footnote mark|*|fn1611}} Valentinus, were renowned for their ascetic lives. The Nicolaitans, who, if they did not belong to the great body of the Ophites, were numbered among the small sects which were absorbed in it at the beginning of the second century, owe their origin, as we have shown, to Nicolas of Antioch, “a man of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.” How absurd the idea that such men would have instituted “libidinous rites.” As well accuse Jesus of having promoted the similar rites which we find practiced so extensively by the mediæval {{Style S-Italic|orthodox}} Christians behind the secure shelter of monastic walls.

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If, however, we are asked to credit such an accusation against the Gnostics, an accusation transferred with tenfold acrimony, centuries later, to the unfortunate heads of the Templars, why should we not believe the same of the orthodox Christians? Minucius Felix states that “the first Christians were accused by the world of inducing, during the ceremony of the “Perfect Passover,” each neophyte, on his admission, to plunge a knife into an infant concealed under a heap of flour; the body then serving for a banquet to the whole congregation. After they had become the dominant party, they (the Christians) transferred this charge to their own dissenters.”~~[#~~fn1612 ~~1612]~~

+

If, however, we are asked to credit such an accusation against the Gnostics, an accusation transferred with tenfold acrimony, centuries later, to the unfortunate heads of the Templars, why should we not believe the same of the orthodox Christians? Minucius Felix states that “the first Christians were accused by the world of inducing, during the ceremony of the “Perfect Passover,” each neophyte, on his admission, to plunge a knife into an infant concealed under a heap of flour; the body then serving for a banquet to the whole congregation. After they had become the dominant party, they (the Christians) transferred this charge to their own dissenters.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1612}}

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~~[#fn1611anc 1611]. ~~Basilides is termed by Tertullian a Platonist.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1611}} Basilides is termed by Tertullian a Platonist.

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~~[#fn1612anc 1612]. ~~C. W. King: “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 197, foot-note 1.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1612}} C. W. King: “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 197, foot-note 1.

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334 ISIS UNVEILED.

+

The real crime of heterodoxy is plainly stated by John in his {{Style S-Italic|Epistles}} and {{Style S-Italic|Gospel.}} “He that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh . . . is a deceiver and {{Style S-Italic|an antichrist”}} (2 {{Style S-Italic|Epistle}} 7). In his previous {{Style S-Italic|Epistle,}} he teaches his flock that there are {{Style S-Italic|two}} trinities (7, 8)—in short, the Nazarene system.

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The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. Each of these could claim representatives converted to the so-called {{Style S-Italic|orthodox}} body of Christians. And, as every newly-born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of votes, every sect colored the main substance with its own hue, till the moment when the emperor enforced this {{Style S-Italic|revealed}} olla-podrida, of which he evidently did not himself understand a word, upon an unwilling world as the {{Style S-Italic|religion of Christ.}} Wearied in the vain attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations, unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of an ideal conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of brutal force as represented by a Church backed up by Constantine. Since then, among the thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied from Paganism, the Church can claim but one invention as thoroughly original with her—namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one custom, that of the anathema. The Pagans rejected both with horror. “An execration is a fearful and grievous thing,” says Plutarch. “Wherefore, the priestess at Athens was commended for refusing to curse Alkibiades (for desecration of the Mysteries) when the people required her to do it; {{Style S-Italic|for,}} she said, {{Style S-Italic|that she was a priestess of prayers and not of curses.”~~[#~~fn1613 ~~1613]~~}}

+

The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. Each of these could claim representatives converted to the so-called {{Style S-Italic|orthodox}} body of Christians. And, as every newly-born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of votes, every sect colored the main substance with its own hue, till the moment when the emperor enforced this {{Style S-Italic|revealed}} olla-podrida, of which he evidently did not himself understand a word, upon an unwilling world as the {{Style S-Italic|religion of Christ.}} Wearied in the vain attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations, unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of an ideal conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of brutal force as represented by a Church backed up by Constantine. Since then, among the thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied from Paganism, the Church can claim but one invention as thoroughly original with her—namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one custom, that of the anathema. The Pagans rejected both with horror. “An execration is a fearful and grievous thing,” says Plutarch. “Wherefore, the priestess at Athens was commended for refusing to curse Alkibiades (for desecration of the Mysteries) when the people required her to do it; {{Style S-Italic|for,}} she said, {{Style S-Italic|that she was a priestess of prayers and not of curses.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1613}}}}

“Deep researches would show,” says Renan, “that nearly everything in Christianity is mere baggage brought from the Pagan Mysteries. The primitive Christian worship is nothing but a mystery. The whole interior police of the Church, the degrees of initiation, the command of silence, and a crowd of phrases in the ecclesiastical language, have no other origin. . . . The revolution which overthrew Paganism {{Style S-Italic|seems}} at first glance . . . an absolute rupture with the past . . . but {{Style S-Italic|the popular faith saved its most familiar symbols from shipwreck.}} Christianity introduced, at first, so little change into the habits of private and social life, that with great numbers in the fourth and fifth centuries it remains uncertain whether they were Pagans or Christians; many seem even to have pursued an irresolute course between the two worships.” Speaking further of {{Style S-Italic|Art}}, which formed an essential part of the ancient religion, he says that “{{Style S-Italic|it had to break with scarce one of its traditions}}. Primitive Christian art is

−

~~[#fn1613anc 1613]. ~~{{~~Style S-Italic~~|Plutarch: “Roman Questions,” p. 44.}}

+

{{Footnote return|*|fn1613}} Plutarch: “Roman Questions,” p. 44.

+

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335 JESUS TOTALLY UNKNOWN TO HIS CENTURY.

+

−

really nothing but Pagan art in its decay, or in its lower departments. The Good Shepherd of the catacombs in Rome is a copy from the Aristeus, or from the Apollo Nomius, which figure in the same posture on the Pagan sarcophagi, and still carries the flute of Pan in the midst of the four half-naked seasons. On the Christian tombs of the Cemetery of St. Calixtus, Orpheus charms the animals. Elsewhere, the Christ as Jupiter-Pluto, and Mary as Proserpina, receive the souls that Mercury, wearing the broad-brimmed hat and carrying in his hand the rod of the soul-guide ({{Style S-Italic|psychopompos),}} brings to them, in presence of the three fates. Pegasus, the symbol of the apotheosis; Psyche, the symbol of the immortal soul; Heaven, personified by an old man, the river Jordan; and Victory, figure on a host of Christian monuments.”

+

{{Style P-No indent|really nothing but Pagan art in its decay, or in its lower departments. The Good Shepherd of the catacombs in Rome is a copy from the Aristeus, or from the Apollo Nomius, which figure in the same posture on the Pagan sarcophagi, and still carries the flute of Pan in the midst of the four half-naked seasons. On the Christian tombs of the Cemetery of St. Calixtus, Orpheus charms the animals. Elsewhere, the Christ as Jupiter-Pluto, and Mary as Proserpina, receive the souls that Mercury, wearing the broad-brimmed hat and carrying in his hand the rod of the soul-guide ({{Style S-Italic|psychopompos),}} brings to them, in presence of the three fates. Pegasus, the symbol of the apotheosis; Psyche, the symbol of the immortal soul; Heaven, personified by an old man, the river Jordan; and Victory, figure on a host of Christian monuments.”}}

As we have elsewhere shown, the primitive Christian community was composed of small groups scattered about and organized in secret societies, with passwords, grips, and signs. To avoid the relentless persecutions of their enemies, they were obliged to seek safety and hold meetings in deserted catacombs, the fastnesses of mountains, and other safe retreats. Like disabilities were naturally encountered by each religious reform at its inception. From the very first appearance of Jesus and his twelve disciples, we see them congregating apart, having secure refuges in the wilderness, and among friends in Bethany, and elsewhere. Were Christianity not composed of “{{Style S-Italic|secret communities,”}} from the start, history would have more {{Style S-Italic|facts}} to record of its founder and disciples than it has.

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How little Jesus had impressed his personality upon his own century, is calculated to astound the inquirer. Renan shows that Philo, who died toward the year 50, and who was born many years earlier than Jesus, living all the while in Palestine while the “glad tidings” were being preached all over the country, according to the {{Style S-Italic|Gospels,}} had never heard of him! Josephus, the historian, who was born three or four years after the death of Jesus, mentions his execution in a short sentence, and even those few words were altered “by a {{Style S-Italic|Christian hand,”}} says the author of the {{Style S-Italic|Life of Jesus.}} Writing at the close of the first century, when Paul, the learned propagandist, is said to have founded so many churches, and Peter is alleged to have established the apostolic succession, which the Irenæo-Eusebian chronology shows to have already included three bishops of Rome,~~[#~~fn1614 ~~1614]~~ Josephus, the painstaking enumerator and careful historian of even the most unimportant sects, entirely ignores the existence of a Christian sect. Suetonius, secretary of Adrian, writing in the first quarter of the second century, knows so little of Jesus or his history as to say that the Emperor Claudius “banished all the Jews, who were continually

+

How little Jesus had impressed his personality upon his own century, is calculated to astound the inquirer. Renan shows that Philo, who died toward the year 50, and who was born many years earlier than Jesus, living all the while in Palestine while the “glad tidings” were being preached all over the country, according to the {{Style S-Italic|Gospels,}} had never heard of him! Josephus, the historian, who was born three or four years after the death of Jesus, mentions his execution in a short sentence, and even those few words were altered “by a {{Style S-Italic|Christian hand,”}} says the author of the {{Style S-Italic|Life of Jesus.}} Writing at the close of the first century, when Paul, the learned propagandist, is said to have founded so many churches, and Peter is alleged to have established the apostolic succession, which the Irenæo-Eusebian chronology shows to have already included three bishops of Rome,{{Footnote mark|*|fn1614}} Josephus, the painstaking enumerator and careful historian of even the most unimportant sects, entirely ignores the existence of a Christian sect. Suetonius, secretary of Adrian, writing in the first quarter of the second century, knows so little of Jesus or his history as to say that the Emperor Claudius “banished all the Jews, who were continually

−

~~[#fn1614anc 1614]. ~~Linus, Anacletus, and Clement.

+

{{Footnote return|*|fn1614}} Linus, Anacletus, and Clement.

+

−

336 ISIS UNVEILED.

+

−

making disturbances, at the instigation of one {{Style S-Italic|Crestus”}} meaning Christ, we must suppose.~~[#~~fn1615 ~~1615]~~ The Emperor Adrian himself, writing still later, was so little impressed with the tenets or importance of the new sect, that in a letter to Servianus he shows that he believes the Christians to be worshippers of Serapis.~~[#~~fn1616 ~~1616]~~ “In the second century,” says C. W. King, “the syncretistic sects that had sprung up in Alexandria, the very hot-bed of Gnosticism, found out in Serapis a prophetic type of Christ as the Lord and Creator of all, and Judge of the living and the dead.”~~[#~~fn1617 ~~1617]~~ Thus, while the “Pagan” philosophers had never viewed Serapis, or rather the abstract idea which was embodied in him, as otherwise than a representation of the Anima Mundi, the Christians anthropomorphized the “Son of God” and his “Father,” finding no better model for him than the idol of a Pagan myth! “There can be no doubt,” remarks the same author, “that the head of Serapis, marked, as the face is, by a grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the conventional portraits of the Saviour.”~~[#~~fn1618 ~~1618]~~

+

{{Style P-No indent|making disturbances, at the instigation of one {{Style S-Italic|Crestus”}} meaning Christ, we must suppose.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1615}} The Emperor Adrian himself, writing still later, was so little impressed with the tenets or importance of the new sect, that in a letter to Servianus he shows that he believes the Christians to be worshippers of Serapis.{{Footnote mark|†|fn1616}} “In the second century,” says C. W. King, “the syncretistic sects that had sprung up in Alexandria, the very hot-bed of Gnosticism, found out in Serapis a prophetic type of Christ as the Lord and Creator of all, and Judge of the living and the dead.”{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1617}} Thus, while the “Pagan” philosophers had never viewed Serapis, or rather the abstract idea which was embodied in him, as otherwise than a representation of the Anima Mundi, the Christians anthropomorphized the “Son of God” and his “Father,” finding no better model for him than the idol of a Pagan myth! “There can be no doubt,” remarks the same author, “that the head of Serapis, marked, as the face is, by a grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the conventional portraits of the Saviour.”{{Footnote mark|§|fn1618}}}}

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In the notes taken by a traveller—whose episode with the monks on Mount Athos we have mentioned elsewhere—we find that, during his early life, Jesus had frequent intercourse with the Essenes belonging to the Pythagorean school, and known as the Koinobi. We believe it rather hazardous on the part of Renan to assert so dogmatically, as he does, that Jesus “ignored the very name of Buddha, of Zoroaster, of Plato;” that he had never read a Greek nor a Buddhistic book, “although he had more than one element in him, which, unawares to himself, proceeded from Buddhism, Parsism, and the Greek wisdom.”~~[#~~fn1619 ~~1619]~~ This is conceding half a miracle, and allowing as much to chance and coincidence. It is an abuse of privilege, when an author, who claims to write historical facts, draws convenient deductions from hypothetical premises, and then calls it a biography—a {{Style S-Italic|Life}} of Jesus. No more than any other compiler of legends concerning the problematical history of the Nazarene prophet, has Renan one inch of secure foothold upon which to maintain himself; nor can any one else assert a claim to the contrary, except on inferential evidence. And yet, while Renan has not one solitary fact to show that Jesus had never studied the metaphysical tenets of Buddhism and Parsism, or heard of the philosophy of Plato, his oppo-

+

In the notes taken by a traveller—whose episode with the monks on Mount Athos we have mentioned elsewhere—we find that, during his early life, Jesus had frequent intercourse with the Essenes belonging to the Pythagorean school, and known as the Koinobi. We believe it rather hazardous on the part of Renan to assert so dogmatically, as he does, that Jesus “ignored the very name of Buddha, of Zoroaster, of Plato;” that he had never read a Greek nor a Buddhistic book, “although he had more than one element in him, which, unawares to himself, proceeded from Buddhism, Parsism, and the Greek wisdom.”{{Footnote mark|║|fn1619}} This is conceding half a miracle, and allowing as much to chance and coincidence. It is an abuse of privilege, when an author, who claims to write historical facts, draws convenient deductions from hypothetical premises, and then calls it a biography—a {{Style S-Italic|Life}} of Jesus. No more than any other compiler of legends concerning the problematical history of the Nazarene prophet, has Renan one inch of secure foothold upon which to maintain himself; nor can any one else assert a claim to the contrary, except on inferential evidence. And yet, while Renan has not one solitary fact to show that Jesus had never studied the metaphysical tenets of Buddhism and Parsism, or heard of the philosophy of Plato, his oppo-

−

~~[#fn1615anc 1615]. ~~“Life of Claudius,” sect. 25.

+

{{Footnote return|*|fn1615}} “Life of Claudius,” sect. 25.

−

~~[#fn1616anc 1616]. ~~“Vita Saturnini Vopiscus.”

+

{{Footnote return|†|fn1616}} “Vita Saturnini Vopiscus.”

−

~~[#fn1617anc 1617]. ~~“The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 68.

+

{{Footnote return|‡|fn1617}} “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 68.

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~~[#fn1618anc 1618]. ~~In Payne Knight’s “Ancient Art and Mythology,” Serapis is represented as wearing his hair long, “formally turned back and disposed in ringlets falling down upon his breast and shoulders like that of women. His whole person, too, is always enveloped in drapery reaching to his feet” (§ cxlv.). This is the conventional picture of Christ.

+

{{Footnote return|§|fn1618}} In Payne Knight’s “Ancient Art and Mythology,” Serapis is represented as wearing his hair long, “formally turned back and disposed in ringlets falling down upon his breast and shoulders like that of women. His whole person, too, is always enveloped in drapery reaching to his feet” (§ cxlv.). This is the conventional picture of Christ.

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~~[#fn1619anc 1619]. ~~“Vie de Jesus,” p. 405.

+

{{Footnote return|║|fn1619}} “Vie de Jesus,” p. 405.

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337 A POOR COMPLIMENT TO THE DEITY.

+

−

nents have the best reasons in the world to suspect the contrary. When they find that—1, all his sayings are in a Pythagorean spirit, when not {{Style S-Italic|verbatim}} repetitions; 2, his code of ethics is purely Buddhistic; 3, his mode of action and walk in life, Essenean; and 4, his mystical mode of expression, his parables, and his ways, those of an initiate, whether Grecian, Chaldean, or, Magian (for the “Perfect,” who spoke the {{Style S-Italic|hidden}} wisdom, were of the same school of archaic learning the world over), it is difficult to escape from the logical conclusion that he belonged to that same body of initiates. It is a poor compliment paid the Supreme, this forcing upon Him four gospels, in which, contradictory as they often are, there is not a single narrative, sentence, or peculiar expression, whose parallel may not be found in some older doctrine or philosophy. Surely, the Almighty—were it but to spare future generations their present perplexity—might have brought down with Him, at His {{Style S-Italic|first and only}} incarnation on earth, something original—something that would trace a distinct line of demarcation between Himself and the score or so of incarnate Pagan gods, who had been born of virgins, had all been saviours, and were either killed, or otherwise sacrificed themselves for humanity.

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{{Style P-No indent|nents have the best reasons in the world to suspect the contrary. When they find that—1, all his sayings are in a Pythagorean spirit, when not {{Style S-Italic|verbatim}} repetitions; 2, his code of ethics is purely Buddhistic; 3, his mode of action and walk in life, Essenean; and 4, his mystical mode of expression, his parables, and his ways, those of an initiate, whether Grecian, Chaldean, or, Magian (for the “Perfect,” who spoke the {{Style S-Italic|hidden}} wisdom, were of the same school of archaic learning the world over), it is difficult to escape from the logical conclusion that he belonged to that same body of initiates. It is a poor compliment paid the Supreme, this forcing upon Him four gospels, in which, contradictory as they often are, there is not a single narrative, sentence, or peculiar expression, whose parallel may not be found in some older doctrine or philosophy. Surely, the Almighty—were it but to spare future generations their present perplexity—might have brought down with Him, at His {{Style S-Italic|first and only}} incarnation on earth, something original—something that would trace a distinct line of demarcation between Himself and the score or so of incarnate Pagan gods, who had been born of virgins, had all been saviours, and were either killed, or otherwise sacrificed themselves for humanity.}}

Too much has already been conceded to the emotional side of the story. What the world needs is a less exalted, but more faithful view of a personage, in whose favor nearly half of Christendom has dethroned the Almighty. It is not the erudite, world-famous scholar, whom we question for what we find in his {{Style S-Italic|Vie de Jesus,}} nor is it one of his {{Style S-Italic|historical}} statements. We simply challenge a few unwarranted and untenable assertions that have found their way past the emotional narrator, into the otherwise beautiful pages of the work—a life built altogether on mere probabilities, and yet that of one who, if accepted as an historical personage, has far greater claims upon our love and veneration, fallible as he is with all his greatness, than if we figure him as an omnipotent God. It is but in the latter character that Jesus must be regarded by every reverential mind as a failure.

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After reading the following philosophical aphorisms, who can believe that Jesus and Paul had never read the Grecian and Indian philosophers?

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{| style="margin: 2em auto; border-spacing: 1em 0;"

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|- valign=top

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| <center>{{Style S-Small capitals|Sentences from Sextus, the Pythagorean, and other Heathen.}}</center>

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| <center>{{Style S-Small capitals|Verses from the New Testament}}.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1620}}</center>

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|- valign=top

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| 1. “Possess not treasures, but those things which no one can take from you.”

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| 1. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal” (''Matthew'' vi. 19).

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| 2. “It is better for a part of the body which contains purulent matter, and threatens to infect the whole, ''to be burnt'', than to continue so in ''another state'' (life).”

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| 2. “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter ''unto life'' maimed, than go to hell,” etc. (''Mark'' ix. 43).

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|- valign=top

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| 3. “You have in yourself something ''similar to God'', and therefore use yourself ''as the temple of God''.”

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| 3. “Know ye not ye are ''the temple of God'', and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 ''Corinthians'', iii. 16).

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|- valign=top

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| 4. “The greatest honor which can be paid to God, is to know and imitate his ''perfection''.”

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| 4. “That ye may be the children of your Father, which is in Heaven, be ye perfect even as your ''Father is perfect''” (''Matthew'' v. 45-48).

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|- valign=top

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| 5. “What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men” (''Analects of Confucius'', p. 76; See Max Muller’s ''The Works of Confucius'').

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| 5. “Do ye unto others as ye would that others should do to you.”

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| 6. “The moon shines even in the house of the wicked” (''Manu'').

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| 6. “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (''Matthew'' v. 45).

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| 7. “They who give, have things given to them; those who withhold, have things taken from them” (Ibid.).

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| 7. “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given . . . but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away” (''Matthew'' xiii. 12).

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|- valign=top

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| 8. “Purity of mind alone sees God” (Ibid.) — still a popular saying in India.

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| 8. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (''Matthew'' v. 8).

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|}

Plato did not conceal the fact that he derived his best philosophical doctrines from Pythagoras, and that himself was merely the first to reduce them to systematic order, occasionally interweaving with them metaphysical speculations of his own. But Pythagoras himself got his recondite doctrines, first from the descendants of Mochus, and later, from the Brahmans of India. He was also initiated into the Mysteries among the hierophants of Thebes, the Persian and Chaldean Magi. Thus, step by step do we trace the origin of most of our Christian doctrines to Middle Asia. Drop out from Christianity the personality of Jesus, so sublime, because of its unparalleled simplicity, and what remains? History and

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~~[#fn1620anc 1620]. ~~See “Pirke Aboth;” a Collection of Proverbs and Sentences of the old Jewish Teachers, in which many New Testament sayings are found.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1620}} See “Pirke Aboth;” a Collection of Proverbs and Sentences of the old Jewish Teachers, in which many New Testament sayings are found.

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339 THE MYTHICAL CHRIST COPIED FROM BUDDHA.

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comparative theology echo back the melancholy answer, “A crumbling skeleton formed of the oldest Pagan myths!”

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{{Style P-No indent|comparative theology echo back the melancholy answer, “A crumbling skeleton formed of the oldest Pagan myths!”}}

While the mythical birth and life of Jesus are a faithful copy of those of the Brahmanical Christna, his historical character of a religious reformer in Palestine is the true type of Buddha in India. In more than one respect their great resemblance in philanthropic and spiritual aspirations, as well as external circumstances is truly striking. Though the son of a king, while Jesus was but a carpenter, Buddha was not of the high Brahmanical caste by birth. Like Jesus, he felt dissatisfied with the dogmatic spirit of the religion of his country, the intolerance and hypocrisy of the priesthood, their outward show of devotion, and their useless ceremonials and prayers. As Buddha broke violently through the traditional laws and rules of the Brahmans, so did Jesus declare war against the Pharisees, and the proud Sadducees. What the Nazarene did as a consequence of his humble birth and position, Buddha did as a voluntary penance. He travelled about as a beggar; and—again like Jesus—later in life he sought by preference the companionship of publicans and sinners. Each aimed at a social as well as at a religious reform; and giving a death-blow to the old religions of his countries, each became the founder of a new one.

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“The reform of Buddha,” says Max Müller, “had originally much more of a social than of a religious character. The most important element of Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. {{Style S-Italic|That moral code is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known}} . . . and he whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.” Further, the lecturer adds that were it otherwise, “Buddha might have taught whatever philosophy he pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been a drop in the ocean of philosophic speculation by which India was deluged at all times.”~~[#~~fn1621 ~~1621]~~

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“The reform of Buddha,” says Max Müller, “had originally much more of a social than of a religious character. The most important element of Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. {{Style S-Italic|That moral code is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known}} . . . and he whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.” Further, the lecturer adds that were it otherwise, “Buddha might have taught whatever philosophy he pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been a drop in the ocean of philosophic speculation by which India was deluged at all times.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1621}}

The same with Jesus. While Philo, whom Renan calls Jesus’s elder brother, Hillel, Shammai, and Gamaliel, are hardly mentioned—Jesus has become a God! And still, pure and divine as was the moral code taught by Christ, it never could have borne comparison with that of Buddha, but for the tragedy of Calvary. That which helped forward the deification of Jesus was his dramatic death, the voluntary sacrifice of his life, alleged to have been made for the sake of mankind, and the later convenient dogma of the atonement, invented by the Christians. In

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~~[#fn1621anc 1621]. ~~“Buddhism,” p. 217.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1621}} “Buddhism,” p. 217.

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India, where life is valued as of no account, the crucifixion would have produced little effect, if any. In a country where—as all the Indianists are well aware—religious fanatics set themselves to dying by inches, in penances lasting for years; where the most fearful macerations are self-inflicted by fakirs; where young and delicate widows, in a spirit of bravado against the government, as much as out of religious fanaticism, mount the funeral pile with a smile on their face; where, to quote the words of the great lecturer, “Men in the prime of life throw themselves under the car of Juggernath, to be crushed to death by the idol they believe in; where the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his judge; where the philosopher who thinks he has learned all which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity, quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore of existence,”~~[#~~fn1622 ~~1622]~~ in such a country even a voluntary crucifixion would have passed unnoticed. In Judea, and even among braver nations than the Jews—the Romans and the Greeks—where every one clung more or less to life, and most people would have fought for it with desperation, the tragical end of the great Reformer was calculated to produce a profound impression. The names of even such minor heroes as Mutius Scævola, Horatius Cocles, the mother of the Gracchi, and others, have descended to posterity; and, during our school-days, as well as later in life, their histories have awakened our sympathy and commanded a reverential admiration. But, can we ever forget the scornful smile of certain Hindus, at Benares, when an English lady, the wife of a clergyman, tried to impress them with the greatness of the sacrifice of Jesus, in giving {{Style S-Italic|his}} life for us? Then, for the first time the idea struck us how much the pathos of the great drama of Calvary had to do with subsequent events in the foundation of Christianity. Even the imaginative Renan was moved by this feeling to write in the last chapter of his {{Style S-Italic|Vie de Jesus,}} a few pages of singular and sympathetic beauty.~~[#~~fn1623 ~~1623]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|India, where life is valued as of no account, the crucifixion would have produced little effect, if any. In a country where—as all the Indianists are well aware—religious fanatics set themselves to dying by inches, in penances lasting for years; where the most fearful macerations are self-inflicted by fakirs; where young and delicate widows, in a spirit of bravado against the government, as much as out of religious fanaticism, mount the funeral pile with a smile on their face; where, to quote the words of the great lecturer, “Men in the prime of life throw themselves under the car of Juggernath, to be crushed to death by the idol they believe in; where the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his judge; where the philosopher who thinks he has learned all which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity, quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore of existence,”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1622}} in such a country even a voluntary crucifixion would have passed unnoticed. In Judea, and even among braver nations than the Jews—the Romans and the Greeks—where every one clung more or less to life, and most people would have fought for it with desperation, the tragical end of the great Reformer was calculated to produce a profound impression. The names of even such minor heroes as Mutius Scævola, Horatius Cocles, the mother of the Gracchi, and others, have descended to posterity; and, during our school-days, as well as later in life, their histories have awakened our sympathy and commanded a reverential admiration. But, can we ever forget the scornful smile of certain Hindus, at Benares, when an English lady, the wife of a clergyman, tried to impress them with the greatness of the sacrifice of Jesus, in giving {{Style S-Italic|his}} life for us? Then, for the first time the idea struck us how much the pathos of the great drama of Calvary had to do with subsequent events in the foundation of Christianity. Even the imaginative Renan was moved by this feeling to write in the last chapter of his {{Style S-Italic|Vie de Jesus,}} a few pages of singular and sympathetic beauty.{{Footnote mark|†|fn1623}}}}

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~~[#fn1622anc 1622]. ~~Max Müller: “Christ and other Masters;” “Chips,” vol. i.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1622}} Max Müller: “Christ and other Masters;” “Chips,” vol. i.

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~~[#fn1623anc 1623]. ~~The “Life of Jesus” by Strauss, which Renan calls “~~{{Style S-Italic|~~un livre, commode, exact, spirituel et ~~consciencieux”}}~~ (a handy, exact, witty, and conscientious book), rude and iconoclastic as it is, is nevertheless in many ways preferable to the “Vie de Jesus,” of the French author. Laying aside the intrinsic and historical value of the two works—with which we have nothing to do, we now simply point to Renan’s distorted outline-sketch of Jesus. We cannot think what led Renan into such an erroneous delineation of character. Few of those who, while rejecting the divinity of the Nazarene prophet, still believe that he is no myth, can read the work without experiencing an uneasy, and even angry feeling at such a psychological mutilation. He makes of Jesus a sort of sentimental ninny, a theatrical simpleton, enamored of his own poetical divagations and speeches, wanting every one to adore him, and finally caught in the snares of his enemies. Such was not Jesus, the Jewish philanthropist, the adept and mystic of a school now forgotten by the Christians and the Church—if it ever was known to her; the hero, who preferred even to risk death, rather than withhold some truths which he believed would benefit humanity. We prefer Strauss who openly names him an impostor and a pretender, occasionally calling in doubt his very existence; but who at least spares him that ridiculous color of sentimentalism in which Renan paints him.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1623}} The “Life of Jesus” by Strauss, which Renan calls “''un livre, commode, exact, spirituel et consciencieux''” (a handy, exact, witty, and conscientious book), rude and iconoclastic as it is, is nevertheless in many ways preferable to the “Vie de Jesus,” of the French author. Laying aside the intrinsic and historical value of the two works—with which we have nothing to do, we now simply point to Renan’s distorted outline-sketch of Jesus. We cannot think what led Renan into such an erroneous delineation of character. Few of those who, while rejecting the divinity of the Nazarene prophet, still believe that he is no myth, can read the work without experiencing an uneasy, and even angry feeling at such a psychological mutilation. He makes of Jesus a sort of sentimental ninny, a theatrical simpleton, enamored of his own poetical divagations and speeches, wanting every one to adore him, and finally caught in the snares of his enemies. Such was not Jesus, the Jewish philanthropist, the adept and mystic of a school now forgotten by the Christians and the Church—if it ever was known to her; the hero, who preferred even to risk death, rather than withhold some truths which he believed would benefit humanity. We prefer Strauss who openly names him an impostor and a pretender, occasionally calling in doubt his very existence; but who at least spares him that ridiculous color of sentimentalism in which Renan paints him.

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341 BUDDHA, JESUS, AND APOLLONIUS COMPARED.

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Apollonius, a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, was, like him, an enthusiastic founder of a new spiritual school. Perhaps less metaphysical and more practical than Jesus, less tender and perfect in his nature, he nevertheless inculcated the same quintessence of spirituality, and the same high moral truths. His great mistake was to confine them too closely to the higher classes of society. While to the poor and the humble Jesus preached “Peace on earth and good will to men,” Apollonius was the friend of kings, and moved with the aristocracy. He was born among the latter, and himself a man of wealth, while the “Son of man,” representing the people, “had not where to lay his head;” nevertheless, the two “miracle-workers” exhibited striking similarity of purpose. Still earlier than Apollonius had appeared Simon Magus, called “the great Power of God.” His “miracles” are both more wonderful, more varied, and better attested than those either of the apostles or of the Galilean philosopher himself. Materialism denies the fact in both cases, but history affirms. Apollonius followed both; and how great and renowned were his miraculous works in comparison with those of the alleged founder of Christianity as the kabalists claim, we have history again, and Justin Martyr, to corroborate.~~[#~~fn1624 ~~1624]~~

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Apollonius, a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, was, like him, an enthusiastic founder of a new spiritual school. Perhaps less metaphysical and more practical than Jesus, less tender and perfect in his nature, he nevertheless inculcated the same quintessence of spirituality, and the same high moral truths. His great mistake was to confine them too closely to the higher classes of society. While to the poor and the humble Jesus preached “Peace on earth and good will to men,” Apollonius was the friend of kings, and moved with the aristocracy. He was born among the latter, and himself a man of wealth, while the “Son of man,” representing the people, “had not where to lay his head;” nevertheless, the two “miracle-workers” exhibited striking similarity of purpose. Still earlier than Apollonius had appeared Simon Magus, called “the great Power of God.” His “miracles” are both more wonderful, more varied, and better attested than those either of the apostles or of the Galilean philosopher himself. Materialism denies the fact in both cases, but history affirms. Apollonius followed both; and how great and renowned were his miraculous works in comparison with those of the alleged founder of Christianity as the kabalists claim, we have history again, and Justin Martyr, to corroborate.{{Footnote mark|*|fn1624}}

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Like Buddha and Jesus, Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy of all outward show of piety, all display of useless religious ceremonies and hypocrisy. If, like the Christian Saviour, the sage of Tyana had by preference sought the companionship of the poor and humble; and if instead of dying comfortably, at over one hundred years of age, he had been a voluntary martyr, proclaiming divine Truth from a cross,~~[#~~fn1625 ~~1625]~~ his

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Like Buddha and Jesus, Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy of all outward show of piety, all display of useless religious ceremonies and hypocrisy. If, like the Christian Saviour, the sage of Tyana had by preference sought the companionship of the poor and humble; and if instead of dying comfortably, at over one hundred years of age, he had been a voluntary martyr, proclaiming divine Truth from a cross,{{Footnote mark|†|fn1625}} his

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~~[#fn1624anc 1624]. ~~See Chap. iii., p. 97.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1624}} See Chap. iii., p. 97.

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~~[#fn1625anc 1625]. ~~In a recent work, called the “World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors” (by Mr. Kersey Graves) which attracted our notice by its title, we were indeed startled as we were forewarned on the title-page we should be by {{Style S-Italic|historical}} evidences to be found neither in history nor tradition. Apollonius, who is represented in it as one of these sixteen “saviours,” is shown by the author as finally “{{Style S-Italic|crucified}} . . . having risen from the dead . . . appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, and”—like Christ again—“convincing a {{Style S-Italic|Tommy}} (?) Didymus” by getting him to feel the print of the nails on his hands and feet (see note, p. 268). To begin with, neither Philostratus, the biographer of Apollonius, nor history says any such thing. Though the precise time of his death is unknown, no disciple of Apollonius ever said that he was either crucified, or appeared to them. So much for one “Saviour.” After that we are told that Gautama-Buddha, whose life and death have been so minutely described by several authorities, Barthelemy St. Hilaire included—was also “{{Style S-Italic|crucified}} by his enemies near the foot of the Nepal mountains” (see p. 107); while the Buddhist books, history, and scientific research tell us, through the lips of Max Müller and a host of Orientalists, that “Gautama-Buddha, (Sakya-muni) died near the Ganges. . . . He had nearly reached the city of Kusinagara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a forest, and while sitting under a sal tree he gave up the ghost” (Max Müller: “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 213). The references of Mr. Graves to Higgins and Sir W. Jones, in some of his hazardous speculations, prove nothing. Max Müller shows some antiquated authorities writing elaborate books “. . . in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality the Thoth of the Egyptians; that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. . . . Even Sir W. Jones . . . identified Buddha first with Odin and afterwards with Shishak.” We are in the nineteenth century, not in the eighteenth; and though to write books on the authority of the earliest Orientalists may in one sense be viewed as a mark of respect for old age, it is not always safe to try the experiment in our times. Hence this highly instructive volume lacks one important feature which would have made it still more interesting. The author should have added after Prometheus the “Roman,” and Alcides the {{Style S-Italic|Egyptian god}} (p. 266) a seventeenth “crucified Saviour” to the list, “Venus, god of the war,” introduced to an admiring world by Mr. Artemus Ward the “showman”!

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1625}} In a recent work, called the “World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors” (by Mr. Kersey Graves) which attracted our notice by its title, we were indeed startled as we were forewarned on the title-page we should be by {{Style S-Italic|historical}} evidences to be found neither in history nor tradition. Apollonius, who is represented in it as one of these sixteen “saviours,” is shown by the author as finally “{{Style S-Italic|crucified}} . . . having risen from the dead . . . appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, and”—like Christ again—“convincing a {{Style S-Italic|Tommy}} (?) Didymus” by getting him to feel the print of the nails on his hands and feet (see note, p. 268). To begin with, neither Philostratus, the biographer of Apollonius, nor history says any such thing. Though the precise time of his death is unknown, no disciple of Apollonius ever said that he was either crucified, or appeared to them. So much for one “Saviour.” After that we are told that Gautama-Buddha, whose life and death have been so minutely described by several authorities, Barthelemy St. Hilaire included—was also “{{Style S-Italic|crucified}} by his enemies near the foot of the Nepal mountains” (see p. 107); while the Buddhist books, history, and scientific research tell us, through the lips of Max Müller and a host of Orientalists, that “Gautama-Buddha, (Sakya-muni) died near the Ganges. . . . He had nearly reached the city of Kusinagara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a forest, and while sitting under a sal tree he gave up the ghost” (Max Müller: “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 213). The references of Mr. Graves to Higgins and Sir W. Jones, in some of his hazardous speculations, prove nothing. Max Müller shows some antiquated authorities writing elaborate books “. . . in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality the Thoth of the Egyptians; that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. . . . Even Sir W. Jones . . . identified Buddha first with Odin and afterwards with Shishak.” We are in the nineteenth century, not in the eighteenth; and though to write books on the authority of the earliest Orientalists may in one sense be viewed as a mark of respect for old age, it is not always safe to try the experiment in our times. Hence this highly instructive volume lacks one important feature which would have made it still more interesting. The author should have added after Prometheus the “Roman,” and Alcides the {{Style S-Italic|Egyptian god}} (p. 266) a seventeenth “crucified Saviour” to the list, “Venus, god of the war,” introduced to an admiring world by Mr. Artemus Ward the “showman”!

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blood might have proved as efficacious for the subsequent dissemination of spiritual doctrines as that of the Christian Messiah.

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{{Style P-No indent|blood might have proved as efficacious for the subsequent dissemination of spiritual doctrines as that of the Christian Messiah.}}

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The calumnies set afloat against Apollonius, were as numerous as they were false. So late as eighteen centuries after his death he was defamed by Bishop Douglas in his work against miracles. In this the Right Reverend bishop crushed himself against historical facts. If we study the question with a dispassionate mind, we will soon perceive that the ethics of Gautama-Buddha, Plato, Apollonius, Jesus, Ammonius Sakkas, and his disciples, were all based on the same mystic philosophy. That all worshipped one God, whether they considered Him as the “Father” of humanity, who lives in man as man lives in Him, or as the Incomprehensible Creative Principle; all led God-like lives. Ammonius, speaking of his philosophy, taught that their school dated from the days of Hermes, who brought his wisdom from India. It was the same mystical contemplation throughout, as that of the Yogin: the communion of the Brahman with his own luminous Self—the “Atman.” And this Hindu term is again kabalistic, {{Style S-Italic|par excellence.}} Who is “Self”? is asked in the {{Style S-Italic|Rig-Veda;}} “Self is the Lord of all things . . . all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahman itself is but Self,”~~[#~~fn1626 ~~1626]~~ is the answer. Says Idra Rabba: “All things are Himself, and Himself is {{Style S-Italic|concealed}} on every side.”~~[#~~fn1627 ~~1627]~~ The “Adam Kadmon of the kabalists contains in himself all the souls of the Israelites, and he is himself in every soul,” says the {{~~Style S-Italic~~|~~Sohar.[#~~fn1628 ~~1628]~~}} The groundwork of the Eclectic School was thus identical with the doctrines of the Yogin, the Hindu mys-

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The calumnies set afloat against Apollonius, were as numerous as they were false. So late as eighteen centuries after his death he was defamed by Bishop Douglas in his work against miracles. In this the Right Reverend bishop crushed himself against historical facts. If we study the question with a dispassionate mind, we will soon perceive that the ethics of Gautama-Buddha, Plato, Apollonius, Jesus, Ammonius Sakkas, and his disciples, were all based on the same mystic philosophy. That all worshipped one God, whether they considered Him as the “Father” of humanity, who lives in man as man lives in Him, or as the Incomprehensible Creative Principle; all led God-like lives. Ammonius, speaking of his philosophy, taught that their school dated from the days of Hermes, who brought his wisdom from India. It was the same mystical contemplation throughout, as that of the Yogin: the communion of the Brahman with his own luminous Self—the “Atman.” And this Hindu term is again kabalistic, {{Style S-Italic|par excellence.}} Who is “Self”? is asked in the {{Style S-Italic|Rig-Veda;}} “Self is the Lord of all things . . . all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahman itself is but Self,”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1626}} is the answer. Says Idra Rabba: “All things are Himself, and Himself is {{Style S-Italic|concealed}} on every side.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1627}} The “Adam Kadmon of the kabalists contains in himself all the souls of the Israelites, and he is himself in every soul,” says the ''Sohar''.{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1628}} The groundwork of the Eclectic School was thus identical with the doctrines of the Yogin, the Hindu mys-

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~~[#fn1626anc 1626]. ~~“Khandogya-upanishad,” viii., 3, 4; Max Müller: “Veda.”

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1626}} “Khandogya-upanishad,” viii., 3, 4; Max Müller: “Veda.”

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~~[#fn1627anc 1627]. ~~“Idra Rabba,” x., 117.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1627}} “Idra Rabba,” x., 117.

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~~[#fn1628anc 1628]. ~~Introd. in “Sohar,” pp. 305-312{{~~Style S-Italic|.~~}}

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1628}} Introd. in “Sohar,” pp. 305-312.

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343 LABOULAYE AND ST. HILAIRE ON THE TWO CHRISTS.

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tics, and the earlier Buddhism of the disciples of Gautama. And when Jesus assured his disciples that “the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because {{Style S-Italic|it seeth Him not,}} neither knoweth Him,” dwells {{Style S-Italic|with}} and {{Style S-Italic|in}} them, who “are in Him and He in them,”~~[#~~fn1629 ~~1629]~~ he but expounded the same tenet that we find running through every philosophy worthy of that name.

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{{Style P-No indent|tics, and the earlier Buddhism of the disciples of Gautama. And when Jesus assured his disciples that “the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because {{Style S-Italic|it seeth Him not,}} neither knoweth Him,” dwells {{Style S-Italic|with}} and {{Style S-Italic|in}} them, who “are in Him and He in them,”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1629}} he but expounded the same tenet that we find running through every philosophy worthy of that name.}}

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Laboulaye, the learned and skeptical French savant, does not believe a word of the miraculous portion of Buddha’s life; nevertheless, he has the candor to speak of Gautama as being {{Style S-Italic|only second to}} Christ in the great purity of his ethics and personal morality. For both of these opinions he is respectfully rebuked by des Mousseaux. Vexed at this scientific contradiction of his accusations of demonolatry against Gautama-Buddha, he assures his readers that “ce savant distingué n’a point etudié cette question.”~~[#~~fn1630 ~~1630]~~

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Laboulaye, the learned and skeptical French savant, does not believe a word of the miraculous portion of Buddha’s life; nevertheless, he has the candor to speak of Gautama as being {{Style S-Italic|only second to}} Christ in the great purity of his ethics and personal morality. For both of these opinions he is respectfully rebuked by des Mousseaux. Vexed at this scientific contradiction of his accusations of demonolatry against Gautama-Buddha, he assures his readers that “ce savant distingué n’a point etudié cette question.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1630}}

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“I do not hesitate to say,” remarks in his turn Barthelemy St. Hilaire, “that, except Christ alone, there is not among the founders of religions, a figure either more pure or more touching than that of Buddha. His life is spotless. His constant heroism equals his convictions. . . . He is the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches; his abnegation, his charity, his unalterable sweetness of disposition, do not fail him for one instant. He abandoned, at the age of twenty-nine, his father’s court to become a monk and a beggar . . . and when he dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who practiced virtue all his life, and who dies convinced of having found the truth.”~~[#~~fn1631 ~~1631]~~ This deserved panegyric is no stronger than the one which Laboulaye himself pronounced, and which occasioned des Mousseaux’s wrath. “It is more than difficult,” adds the former, “to understand how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high and approached so near the truth.”~~[#~~fn1632 ~~1632]~~ Curious that there should be so many lofty souls “not assisted by revelation”!

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“I do not hesitate to say,” remarks in his turn Barthelemy St. Hilaire, “that, except Christ alone, there is not among the founders of religions, a figure either more pure or more touching than that of Buddha. His life is spotless. His constant heroism equals his convictions. . . . He is the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches; his abnegation, his charity, his unalterable sweetness of disposition, do not fail him for one instant. He abandoned, at the age of twenty-nine, his father’s court to become a monk and a beggar . . . and when he dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who practiced virtue all his life, and who dies convinced of having found the truth.”{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1631}} This deserved panegyric is no stronger than the one which Laboulaye himself pronounced, and which occasioned des Mousseaux’s wrath. “It is more than difficult,” adds the former, “to understand how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high and approached so near the truth.”{{Footnote mark|§|fn1632}} Curious that there should be so many lofty souls “not assisted by revelation”!

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And why should any one feel surprised that Gautmna could die with philosophical serenity? As the kabalists justly say, “Death does not exist, and man never steps outside of universal life. Those whom we think dead live still in us, as we live in them. . . . The more one lives for his kind, the less need he fear to die.”~~[#~~fn1633 ~~1633]~~ And, we might add, that he who {{Style S-Italic|lives}} for humanity does even more than him who dies for it.

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And why should any one feel surprised that Gautmna could die with philosophical serenity? As the kabalists justly say, “Death does not exist, and man never steps outside of universal life. Those whom we think dead live still in us, as we live in them. . . . The more one lives for his kind, the less need he fear to die.”{{Footnote mark|║|fn1633}} And, we might add, that he who {{Style S-Italic|lives}} for humanity does even more than him who dies for it.

The {{Style S-Italic|Ineffable name,}} in the search for which so many kabalists—unacquainted with any Oriental or even European adept—vainly consume their knowledge and lives, dwells latent in the heart of every man. This

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~~[#fn1629anc 1629]. ~~John xiv.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1629}} John xiv.

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~~[#fn1630anc 1630]. ~~“Les Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” p. 74.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1630}} “Les Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” p. 74.

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~~[#fn1631anc 1631]. ~~Barthelemy St. Hilaire: “Le Buddha et sa Religion,” Paris, 1860.

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1631}} Barthelemy St. Hilaire: “Le Buddha et sa Religion,” Paris, 1860.

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~~[#fn1632anc 1632]. ~~“Journal des Debats,” Avril, 1853.

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{{Footnote return|§|fn1632}} “Journal des Debats,” Avril, 1853.

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~~[#fn1633anc 1633]. ~~“Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”

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{{Footnote return|║|fn1633}} “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”

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344 ISIS UNVEILED.

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mirific name which, according to the most ancient oracles, “rushes into the infinite worlds αχοιμητω σροφαλιγγι,” can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation, and through the “small voice” which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb, the mount of God. And “when Elijah heard it he wrapped his {{Style S-Italic|face in his mantle}} and stood in the entering of the cave. And behold there came ~~{{Style S-Italic|~~the}} voice.”

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{{Style P-No indent|mirific name which, according to the most ancient oracles, “rushes into the infinite worlds αχοιμητω σροφαλιγγι,” can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation, and through the “small voice” which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb, the mount of God. And “when Elijah heard it he wrapped his {{Style S-Italic|face in his mantle}} and stood in the entering of the cave. And behold there came ''the'' voice.”}}

When Apollonius of Tyana desired to hear the “small voice,” he used to wrap himself up entirely in a mantle of fine wool, on which he placed both his feet, after having performed certain magnetic passes, and pronounced not the “name” but an invocation well known to every adept. Then he drew the mantle over his head and face, and his translucid or astral spirit was free. On ordinary occasions he wore wool no more than the priests of the temples. The possession of the secret combination of the “name” gave the hierophant supreme power over every being, human or otherwise, inferior to himself in soul-strength. Hence, when Max Müller tells us of the Quichè “Hidden majesty which was never to be opened by human hands,” the kabalist perfectly understands what was meant by the expression, and is not at all surprised to hear even this most erudite philologist exclaim: “What it was we do not know!”

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We cannot too often repeat that it is only through the doctrines of the more ancient philosophies that the religion preached by Jesus may be understood. It is through Pythagoras, Confucius, and Plato, that we can comprehend the idea which underlies the term “Father” in the {{Style S-Italic|New Testament.}} Plato’s ideal of the Deity, whom he terms the one everlasting, invisible God, the Fashioner and Father of all things,~~[#~~fn1634 ~~1634] is rather the~~ “Father” of Jesus. It is this Divine Being of whom the Grecian sage says that He can neither be envious nor the originator of evil, for He can produce nothing but what is good and just,~~[#~~fn1635 ~~1635]~~ is certainly not the Mosaic Jehovah, the “{{Style S-Italic|jealous}} God,” but the God of Jesus, who “alone is good.” He extols His all-embracing, divine power,~~[#~~fn1636 ~~1636]~~ and His omnipotence, but at the same time intimates that, as He is unchangeable, He can never desire to change his laws, {{Style S-Italic|i.e}}., to extirpate evil from the world through a miracle.~~[#~~fn1637 ~~1637]~~ He is omniscient, and nothing escapes His watchful eye.~~[#~~fn1638 ~~1638]~~ His justice, which we find embodied in the law of compensation and retribution, will leave no crime without punishment, no virtue without its reward;~~[#~~fn1639 ~~1639]~~ and therefore he declares that the only way to honor God is to cultivate moral purity. He utterly rejects not only the anthropomorphic

+

We cannot too often repeat that it is only through the doctrines of the more ancient philosophies that the religion preached by Jesus may be understood. It is through Pythagoras, Confucius, and Plato, that we can comprehend the idea which underlies the term “Father” in the {{Style S-Italic|New Testament.}} Plato’s ideal of the Deity, whom he terms the one everlasting, invisible God, the Fashioner and Father of all things,{{Footnote mark|*|fn1634}} “Father” of Jesus. It is this Divine Being of whom the Grecian sage says that He can neither be envious nor the originator of evil, for He can produce nothing but what is good and just,{{Footnote mark|†|fn1635}} is certainly not the Mosaic Jehovah, the “{{Style S-Italic|jealous}} God,” but the God of Jesus, who “alone is good.” He extols His all-embracing, divine power,{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1636}} and His omnipotence, but at the same time intimates that, as He is unchangeable, He can never desire to change his laws, {{Style S-Italic|i.e}}., to extirpate evil from the world through a miracle.{{Footnote mark|§|fn1637}} He is omniscient, and nothing escapes His watchful eye.{{Footnote mark|║|fn1638}} His justice, which we find embodied in the law of compensation and retribution, will leave no crime without punishment, no virtue without its reward;{{Footnote mark|¶|fn1639}} and therefore he declares that the only way to honor God is to cultivate moral purity. He utterly rejects not only the anthropomorphic

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~~[#fn1634anc 1634]. ~~“Timæus;” “Tolit.,” 269, E.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1634}} “Timæus;” “Tolit.,” 269, E.

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~~[#fn1635anc 1635]. ~~“Timæus,” 29; “Phædrus,” 182, 247; “Repub.,” ii., 379, B.

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1635}} “Timæus,” 29; “Phædrus,” 182, 247; “Repub.,” ii., 379, B.

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~~[#fn1636anc 1636]. ~~“Laws,” iv., 715, E.; x., 901, C.

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1636}} “Laws,” iv., 715, E.; x., 901, C.

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~~[#fn1637anc 1637]. ~~“Repub.,” ii., 381; “Thæt.,” 176, A.

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{{Footnote return|§|fn1637}} “Repub.,” ii., 381; “Thæt.,” 176, A.

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~~[#fn1638anc 1638]. ~~“Laws,” x., 901, D.

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{{Footnote return|║|fn1638}} “Laws,” x., 901, D.

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~~[#fn1639anc 1639]. ~~“Laws,” iv., 716, A.; “Repub.,” x., 613, A.

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{{Footnote return|¶|fn1639}} “Laws,” iv., 716, A.; “Repub.,” x., 613, A.

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345 REWARD OF THE POOR ABBÉ HUC.

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idea that God could have a material body,~~[#~~fn1640 ~~1640]~~ but “rejects with disgust those fables which ascribe passions, quarrels, and crimes of all sorts to the minor gods.”~~[#~~fn1641 ~~1641]~~ He indignantly denies that God allows Himself to be propitiated, or rather bribed, by prayers and sacrifices.~~[#~~fn1642 ~~1642]~~

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{{Style P-No indent|idea that God could have a material body,{{Footnote mark|*|fn1640}} but “rejects with disgust those fables which ascribe passions, quarrels, and crimes of all sorts to the minor gods.”{{Footnote mark|†|fn1641}} He indignantly denies that God allows Himself to be propitiated, or rather bribed, by prayers and sacrifices.{{Footnote mark|‡|fn1642}}}}

The {{Style S-Italic|Ph}}æ{{Style S-Italic|drus}} of Plato displays all that man once was, and that which he may yet become again. “Before man’s spirit sank into sensuality and was embodied with it through the loss of his wings, he lived among the gods in the airy [spiritual] world where everything is true and pure.” In the {{Style S-Italic|Tim}}æ{{Style S-Italic|us}} he says that “there was a time when mankind did not perpetuate itself, but lived as pure spirits.” In the future world, says Jesus, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage,” but “live as the angels of God in Heaven.”

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The researches of Laboulaye, Anquetil Duperron, Colebrooke, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Max Müller, Spiegel, Burnouf, Wilson, and so many other linguists, have brought some of the truth to light. And now that the difficulties of the Sanscrit, the Thibetan, the Singhalese, the Zend, the Pehlevi, the Chinese, and even of the Burmese, are partially conquered, and the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas,}} and the {{Style S-Italic|Zend-Avesta,}} the Buddhist texts, and even Kapila’s {{Style S-Italic|Sutras}} are translated, a door is thrown wide open, which, once passed, must close forever behind any speculative or ignorant calumniators of the old religions. Even till the present time, the clergy have, to use the words of Max Müller—“generally appealed to the deviltries and orgies of heathen worship . . . but they have seldom, if ever, endeavored to discover the true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship which they call the work of the devil.”~~[#~~fn1643 ~~1643]~~ When we read the true history of Buddha and Buddhism, by Müller, and the enthusiastic opinions of both expressed by Barthelemy St. Hilaire, and Laboulaye; and when, finally, a Popish missionary, an eye-witness, and one who least of all can be accused of partiality to the Buddhists—the Abbé Huc, we mean—finds occasion for nothing but admiration for the high individual character of these “devil-worshippers;” we must consider Sakyâ-muni’s philosophy as something more than the religion of fetishism and atheism, which the Catholics would have us believe it. Huc was a missionary and it was his first duty to regard Buddhism as no better than an outgrowth of the worship of Satan. The poor Abbé was struck off the list of missionaries at Rome,~~[#~~fn1644 ~~1644]~~ after his

+

The researches of Laboulaye, Anquetil Duperron, Colebrooke, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Max Müller, Spiegel, Burnouf, Wilson, and so many other linguists, have brought some of the truth to light. And now that the difficulties of the Sanscrit, the Thibetan, the Singhalese, the Zend, the Pehlevi, the Chinese, and even of the Burmese, are partially conquered, and the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas,}} and the {{Style S-Italic|Zend-Avesta,}} the Buddhist texts, and even Kapila’s {{Style S-Italic|Sutras}} are translated, a door is thrown wide open, which, once passed, must close forever behind any speculative or ignorant calumniators of the old religions. Even till the present time, the clergy have, to use the words of Max Müller—“generally appealed to the deviltries and orgies of heathen worship . . . but they have seldom, if ever, endeavored to discover the true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship which they call the work of the devil.”{{Footnote mark|§|fn1643}} When we read the true history of Buddha and Buddhism, by Müller, and the enthusiastic opinions of both expressed by Barthelemy St. Hilaire, and Laboulaye; and when, finally, a Popish missionary, an eye-witness, and one who least of all can be accused of partiality to the Buddhists—the Abbé Huc, we mean—finds occasion for nothing but admiration for the high individual character of these “devil-worshippers;” we must consider Sakyâ-muni’s philosophy as something more than the religion of fetishism and atheism, which the Catholics would have us believe it. Huc was a missionary and it was his first duty to regard Buddhism as no better than an outgrowth of the worship of Satan. The poor Abbé was struck off the list of missionaries at Rome,{{Footnote mark|║|fn1644}} after his

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~~[#fn1640anc 1640]. ~~“Phædrus,” 246, C.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1640}} “Phædrus,” 246, C.

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~~[#fn1641anc 1641]. ~~E. Zeller: “Plato and the Old Academy.”

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{{Footnote return|†|fn1641}} E. Zeller: “Plato and the Old Academy.”

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~~[#fn1642anc 1642]. ~~“Laws,” x., 905, D.

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{{Footnote return|‡|fn1642}} “Laws,” x., 905, D.

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~~[#fn1643anc 1643]. ~~Max Müller: “Buddhism,” April, 1862.

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{{Footnote return|§|fn1643}} Max Müller: “Buddhism,” April, 1862.

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~~[#fn1644anc 1644]. ~~Of the Abbé Huc, Max Müller thus wrote in his “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 187: “The late Abbé Huc pointed out the similarities between the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such a {{Style S-Italic|naïveté}}, that, to his surprise, he found his delightful ‘Travels in Thibet’ placed on the ‘Index.’ ‘One cannot fail being struck,’ he writes, ‘with their great resemblance with the Catholicism. The bishop’s crosier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the round hat that the great lamas wear in travel . . . the mass, the double choir, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer with five chains to it, opening and shutting at will, the blessings of the lamas, who extend their right hands over the head of the faithful ones, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and retreats, the cultus of the Saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies, the holy water; such are the similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves.’ He might have added tonsure, relics, and the confessional.”

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{{Footnote return|║|fn1644}} Of the Abbé Huc, Max Müller thus wrote in his “Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., p. 187: “The late Abbé Huc pointed out the similarities between the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such a {{Style S-Italic|naïveté}}, that, to his surprise, he found his delightful ‘Travels in Thibet’ placed on the ‘Index.’ ‘One cannot fail being struck,’ he writes, ‘with their great resemblance with the Catholicism. The bishop’s crosier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the round hat that the great lamas wear in travel . . . the mass, the double choir, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer with five chains to it, opening and shutting at will, the blessings of the lamas, who extend their right hands over the head of the faithful ones, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and retreats, the cultus of the Saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies, the holy water; such are the similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves.’ He might have added tonsure, relics, and the confessional.”

+

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346 ISIS UNVEILED.

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book of travels was published. This illustrates how little we may expect to learn the truth about the religions of other people, through missionaries, when their accounts are first revised by the superior ecclesiastical authorities, and the former severely punished for telling the truth.

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{{Style P-No indent|book of travels was published. This illustrates how little we may expect to learn the truth about the religions of other people, through missionaries, when their accounts are first revised by the superior ecclesiastical authorities, and the former severely punished for telling the truth.}}

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When these men who have been and still are often termed “the obscene ascetics,” the devotees of different sects of India in short, generally termed “Yogi,” were asked by Marco Polo, “how it comes that they are not ashamed to go stark naked as they do?” they answered the inquirer of the thirteenth century as a missionary of the nineteenth was answered. “We go naked,” they say, “because naked we came into the world, and we desire to have nothing about us that is of this world. Moreover, we have no sin of the flesh to be conscious of, and therefore, we are not ashamed of our nakedness any more than you are to show your hand or your face. You who are conscious of the sins of the flesh, do well to have shame, and to cover your nakedness.”~~[#~~fn1645 ~~1645]~~

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When these men who have been and still are often termed “the obscene ascetics,” the devotees of different sects of India in short, generally termed “Yogi,” were asked by Marco Polo, “how it comes that they are not ashamed to go stark naked as they do?” they answered the inquirer of the thirteenth century as a missionary of the nineteenth was answered. “We go naked,” they say, “because naked we came into the world, and we desire to have nothing about us that is of this world. Moreover, we have no sin of the flesh to be conscious of, and therefore, we are not ashamed of our nakedness any more than you are to show your hand or your face. You who are conscious of the sins of the flesh, do well to have shame, and to cover your nakedness.”{{Footnote mark|*|fn1645}}

One could make a curious list of the excuses and explanations of the clergy to account for similarities daily discovered between Romanism and heathen religions. Yet the summary would invariably lead to one sweeping claim: The doctrines of Christianity were plagiarized by the Pagans the world over! Plato and his older Academy stole the ideas from the Christian revelation—said the Alexandrian Fathers!! The Brahmans and Manu borrowed from the Jesuit missionaries, and the {{Style S-Italic|Bhagaved-gita}} was the production of Father Calmet, who transformed Christ and John into Christna and Arjuna to fit the Hindu mind!! The trifling fact that Buddhism and Platonism both antedated Christianity, and the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas}} had already degenerated into Brahmanism before the days of Moses, makes no difference. The same with regard to Apollonius of Tyana. Although his thaumaturgical powers could not be denied in the face of the testimony of emperors, their courts, and the populations of several cities; and although few of these had ever heard of the Nazarene prophet whose “miracles” had been witnessed by a few apostles only, whose very individualities remain to this day a problem in history, yet Apollonius has to be accepted as the “monkey of Christ.”

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~~[#fn1645anc 1645]. ~~“Crawford’s Mission to Siam,” p. 182.

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{{Footnote return|*|fn1645}} “Crawford’s Mission to Siam,” p. 182.

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347 GARIBALDI’S OPINION OF PRIESTS.

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If of really pious, good, and honest men, many are yet found among the Catholic, Greek, and Protestant clergy, whose sincere faith has the best of their reasoning powers, and who having never been among heathen populations, are unjust only through ignorance, it is not so with the missionaries. The invariable subterfuge of the latter is to attribute to demonolatry the really Christ-like life of the Hindu and Buddhist ascetics and many of the lamas. Years of sojourn among “heathen” nations, in China, Tartary, Thibet, and Hindustan have furnished them with ample evidence how unjustly the so-called idolators have been slandered. The missionaries have not even the excuse of sincere faith to give the world that they mislead; and, with very few exceptions, one may boldly paraphrase the remark made by Garibaldi, and say that: “{{Style S-Italic|A priest knows himself to be an impostor, unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from boyhood.”}}

Pavel Malakhov

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