HPB-IU v.2 ch.7: Difference between revisions

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).

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

{{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.  

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.”

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.”

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.

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

[#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.

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

329 TERTULLIAN, THE PATRISTIC FIRE-BRAND.

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 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.

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

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

330 ISIS UNVEILED.

“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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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]}

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

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

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.

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.

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]}

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

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

334 ISIS UNVEILED.

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]}}}

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

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.”

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

[#fn1614anc 1614]. 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]}

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-

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

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

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

[#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.

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

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.

338 ISIS UNVEILED.

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

339 THE MYTHICAL CHRIST COPIED FROM BUDDHA.

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

“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]}

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

340 ISIS UNVEIILED.

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]}

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

[#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.

341 BUDDHA, JESUS, AND APOLLONIUS COMPARED.

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]}

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

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

[#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”!

342 ISIS UNVEILED.

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

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-

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

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

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

343 LABOULAYE AND ST. HILAIRE ON THE TWO CHRISTS.

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.

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]}

“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”!

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.

[#fn1629anc 1629]. John xiv.

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

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

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

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

344 ISIS UNVEILED.

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

345 REWARD OF THE POOR ABBÉ HUC.

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]}

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

[#fn1640anc 1640]. “Phædrus,” 246, C.

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

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

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

[#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.”

346 ISIS UNVEILED.

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.

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]}

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

347 GARIBALDI’S OPINION OF PRIESTS.