Chapter IV (3)

In the religious metaphysics of the Hebrews, the Highest One is an abstraction; he is “without form or being,” “with no likeness with anything else.”[391] And even Philo calls the Creator, the _Logos_ who stands next God, “the SECOND God.” “The _second_ God who is his WISDOM.”[392] God is NOTHING, he is nameless, and therefore called _Ain-Soph_--the word _Ain_ meaning _nothing_.[393] But if, according to the older Jews, Jehovah is _the_ God, and He manifested Himself several times to Moses and the prophets, and the Christian Church anathematized the Gnostics who denied the fact--how comes it, then, that we read in the fourth gospel that “_No man hath seen God_ AT ANY TIME, but the _only-begotten_ Son ... he hath declared him?” The very words of the Gnostics, in spirit and substance. This sentence of St. John--or rather whoever wrote the gospel now bearing his name--floors all the Petrine arguments against Simon Magus, without appeal. The words are repeated and emphasized in chapter vi.: “_Not that any man hath seen the Father_, save he which is of God, he (Jesus) hath seen the Father” (46)--the very objection brought forward by Simon in the _Homilies_. These words prove that either the author of the fourth evangel had no idea of the existence of the _Homilies_, or that he was _not_ John, the friend and companion of Peter, whom he contradicts point-blank with this emphatic assertion. Be it as it may, this sentence, like many more that might be profitably cited, blends Christianity completely with the Oriental Gnosis, and hence with the KABALA.

While the doctrines, ethical code, and observances of the Christian religion were all appropriated from Brahmanism and Buddhism, its ceremonials, vestments, and pageantry were taken bodily from Lamaism. The Romish monastery and nunnery are almost servile copies of similar religious houses in Thibet and Mongolia, and interested explorers of Buddhist lands, when obliged to mention the unwelcome fact, have had no other alternative left them but, with an anachronism unsurpassed in recklessness, to charge the offense of plagiarism upon the religious system their own mother Church had despoiled. This makeshift has served its purpose and had its day. The time has at last come when this page of history must be written.