Chapter V (2)

It is in the Buddhistic representations of Mount Meru, called by the Burmese _Myé-nmo_, and by the Siamese _Sineru_, that we find one of the originals of the Adam Kadmon, Seir-Anpin, the “heavenly man,” and of all the Æons, Sephiroth, Powers, Dominions, Thrones, Virtues, and Dignities of the _Kabala_. Between two pillars, which are connected by an arch, the key-stone of the latter is represented by a _crescent_. This is the domain in which dwells the Supreme Wisdom of A’di Buddha, the Supreme and invisible Deity. Beneath this highest central point comes the circle of the direct emanation of the Unknown--the circle of Brahma with some Hindus, of the first _avatar_ of Buddha, according to others. This answers to Adam Kadmon and the ten Sephiroth. Nine of the emanations are encircled by the tenth, and occasionally represented by pagodas, each of which bears a name which expresses one of the chief attributes of the manifested Deity. Then below come the seven stages, or heavenly spheres, each sphere being encircled by a sea. These are the celestial mansions of the _devatas_, or gods, each losing somewhat in holiness and purity as it approaches the earth. Then comes Meru itself, formed of numberless circles within three large ones, typifying the trinity of man; and for one acquainted with the numerical value of the letters in biblical names, like that of the “Great Beast,” or that of Mithra μειθρας αβραξας, and others, it is an easy matter to establish the identity of the Meru-gods with the emanations or Sephiroth of the kabalists. Also the genii of the Nazarenes, with their special missions, are all found on this most ancient mythos, a most perfect representation of the symbolism of the “secret doctrine,” as taught in archaic ages.

King gives a few hints--though doubtless too insufficient to teach anything important, for they are based upon the calculations of Bishop Newton[459]--as to this mode of finding out mysteries in the value of letters. However, we find this great archæologist, who has devoted so much time and labor to the study of Gnostic gems, corroborating our assertion. He shows that the entire theory is Hindu, and points out that the durga, or female counterpart of each Asiatic god, is what the kabalists term active _Virtue_[460] in the celestial hierarchy, a term which the Christian Fathers adopted and repeated, without fully appreciating, and the meaning of which the later theology has utterly disfigured. But to return to Meru.

The whole is surrounded by the Maha Samut, or the great sea--the astral light and ether of the kabalists and scientists; and within the central circles appears “the likeness of a man.” He is the Achadoth of the Nazarenes, the twofold unity, or the androgyne man; the heavenly incarnation, and a perfect representation of Seir-Anpin (short-face), the son of _Arich Anpin_ (long-face).[461] This likeness is now represented in many lamaseries by Gautama-Buddha, the last of the incarnated avatars. Still lower, under the Meru, is the dwelling of the great Naga, who is called _Rajah Naga_, the king-serpent--the serpent of _Genesis_, the Gnostic Ophis--and the goddess of the earth, Bhumây Nari, or Yâma, who waits upon the great dragon, for she is Eve, “the mother of all that live.” Still lower is the eighth sphere, the infernal regions. The uppermost regions of Brahma are surrounded by the sun, moon, and planets, the seven stellars of the Nazarenes, and just as they are described in the _Codex_.

“The seven impostor-Dæmons who deceive the sons of Adam. The name of one is _Sol_; of another _Spiritus Venereus_, Astro; of the third _Nebu_, Mercurius _a false Messiah_; ... the name of a fourth is Sin _Luna_; the fifth is _Kiun_, Saturnus; the sixth, Bel-Zeus; the seventh, Nerig-_Mars_.”[462] Then there are “_Seven Lives_ procreated,” seven good Stellars, “which are from Cabar Zio, and are those bright ones who shine in their own form and splendor that pours from on high.... At the gate of the HOUSE OF LIFE the throne is fitly placed for the Lord of Splendor, and there are THREE habitations.”[463] The habitations of the _Trimurti_, the Hindu trinity, are placed beneath the key-stone--the golden crescent, in the representation of Meru. “And there was under his feet (of the God of Israel) as it were a paved work of a sapphire-stone” (_Exodus_ xxiv. 10). Under the crescent is the heaven of Brahma, all paved with sapphires. The paradise of Indra is resplendent with a thousand suns; that of Siva (Saturn), is in the northeast; his throne is formed of lapis-lazuli and the floor of heaven is of fervid gold. “When he sits on the throne he blazes with fire up to _the loins_.” At Hurdwar, during the fair, in which he is more than ever Mahadeva, the highest god, the attributes and emblems sacred to the Jewish “Lord God,” may be recognized one by one in those of Siva. The Binlang stone,[464] sacred to this Hindu deity, is an unhewn stone like the Beth-el, consecrated by the Patriarch Jacob, and set up by him “for a pillar,” and like the latter Binlang is _anointed_. We need hardly remind the student that the _linga_, the emblem sacred to Siva and whose temples are modelled after this form, is identical in shape, meaning, and purpose with the “pillars” set up by the several patriarchs to mark their adoration of the Lord God. In fact, one of these patriarchal lithoï might even now be carried in the Sivaitic processions of Calcutta, without its Hebrew derivation being suspected. The four arms of Siva are often represented with appendages like wings; he has _three_ eyes and a _fourth_ in the crescent, obtained by him at the churning of the ocean, as Pâncha Mukhti Siva has four heads.

In this god we recognize the description given by Ezekiel, in the first chapter of his book, of his vision, in which he beholds the “likeness of a man” in the four living creatures, who had “four faces, four wings,” who had one pair of “straight feet ... which sparkled like the color _of burnished_ brass ... and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.” It is the throne and heaven of Siva that the prophet describes in saying “... and there was the likeness of a throne as the appearance of a sapphire stone ... and I saw as the color of amber (gold) as the appearance of fire around about ... from his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire” (_Ezekiel_ i. 27). “And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace” (_Revelation_ i. 15). “As for their faces ... one had the face of a cherub, and the face of a lion ... they also had the face of _an ox_ and the face of an eagle” (_Ezekiel_ i. 10, x. 14). This _fourfold_ appearance which we find in the two _cherubims_ of gold on the two ends of the ark; these symbolic four _faces_ being adopted, moreover, later, one by each evangelist, as may be easily ascertained from the pictures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,[465] prefixed to their respective gospels in the Roman Vulgate and Greek _Bibles_.

“Taaut, the great god of the Phœnicians,” says Sanchoniathon, “to express the character of Saturn or Kronos, made his image having four eyes ... two before, two behind, open and closed, and four wings, two expanded, two folded. The eyes denote that the god sees in sleep, and sleeps in waking; the position of the wings that he flies in rest, and rests in flying.”

The identity of Saturn with Siva is corroborated still more when we consider the emblem of the latter, the _damara_, which is an hour-glass, to show the progress of time, represented by this god in his capacity of a destroyer. The bull Nardi, the _vehan_ of Siva and the most sacred emblem of this god, is reproduced in the Egyptian Apis; and in the bull created by Ormazd and killed by Ahriman. The religion of Zoroaster, all based upon the “secret doctrine,” is found held by the people of Eritene; it was the religion of the Persians when they conquered the Assyrians. From thence it is easy to trace the introduction of this emblem of LIFE represented by the Bull, in every religious system. The college of the Magians had accepted it with the change of dynasty;[466] Daniel is described as a Rabbi, the chief of the Babylonian astrologers and Magi;[467] therefore we see the Assyrian little bulls and the attributes of Siva reappearing under a hardly modified form in the cherubs of the Talmudistic Jews, as we have traced the bull Apis in the sphinxes or cherubs of the Mosaic Ark; and as we find it several thousand years later in the company of one of the Christian evangelists, Luke.

Whoever has lived in India long enough to acquaint himself even superficially with the native deities, must detect the similarity between Jehovah and other gods besides Siva. As Saturn, the latter was always held in great respect by the Talmudists. He was held in reverence by the Alexandrian kabalists as the direct inspirer of the law and the prophets; one of the names of Saturn was Israel, and we will show, in time, his identity in a certain way with Abram, which Movers and others hinted at long since. Thus it cannot be wondered at if Valentinus, Basilides, and the Ophite Gnostics placed the dwelling of their Ilda-Baoth, also a destroyer as well as a creator, in the planet Saturn; for it was he who gave the law in the wilderness and spoke through the prophets. If more proof should be required we will show it in the testimony of the canonical _Bible_ itself. In _Amos_ the “Lord” pours vials of wrath upon the people of Israel. He rejects their burnt-offerings and will not listen to their prayers, but inquires of Amos, “have ye offered unto _me_ sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?” “But ye have borne the tabernacles of your Moloch and _Chiun_ your images, the _star of your god_” (v. 25, 26). Who are Moloch and _Chiun_ but Baal--Saturn--Siva, and _Chiun_, Kivan, the same Saturn whose star the Israelites had made to themselves? There seems no escape in this case; all these deities are identical.

The same in the case of the numerous Logoï. While the Zoroastrian Sosiosh is framed on that of the tenth Brahmanical Avatar, and the fifth Buddha of the followers of Gautama; and we find the former, after having passed part and parcel into the kabalistic system of king Messiah, reflected in the Apostle Gabriel of the Nazarenes, and Æbel-Zivo, the Legatus, sent on earth by the Lord of Celsitude and Light; all of these--Hindu and Persian, Buddhist and Jewish, the Christos of the Gnostics and the Philonean Logos--are found combined in “the Word made flesh” of the fourth _Gospel_. Christianity includes all these systems, patched and arranged to meet the occasion. Do we take up the _Avesta_--we find there the dual system so prevalent in the Christian scheme. The struggle between Ahriman,[468] Darkness, and Ormazd, Light, has been going on in the world continually since the beginning of time. When the worst arrives and Ahriman will seem to have conquered the world and corrupted all mankind, _then will appear the Saviour_ of mankind, Sosiosh. He will come seated upon a white horse and followed by an army of good genii equally mounted on milk-white steeds.[469] And this we find faithfully copied in the _Revelation_: “I saw heaven opened, and beheld a _white horse_; and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true.... And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses” (_Revelation_ xix. 11, 14). Sosiosh himself is but a later Persian _permutation_ of the Hindu Vishnu. The figure of this god may be found unto this day representing him as the Saviour, the “Preserver” (the preserving spirit of God), in the temple of Rama. The picture shows him in his tenth incarnation--the _Kalki avatar_, which is yet to come--as an armed warrior mounted upon a white horse. Waving over his head the sword destruction, he holds in his other hand a discus, made up of rings encircled in one another, an emblem of the revolving cycles or great ages,[470] for Vishnu will thus appear but at the end of the _Kaliyug_, answering to the end of the world expected by our Adventists. “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword ... on his head were many crowns” (_Revelation_ xix. 12). Vishnu is often represented with several crowns superposed on his head. “And I saw an angel standing on the Sun” (17). The _white horse is the horse of the Sun_.[471] Sosiosh, the Persian Saviour, is also born of a virgin,[472] and at the end of days he will come as a Redeemer to regenerate the world, but he will be preceded by two prophets, who will come to announce him.[473] Hence the Jews who had Moses and Elias, are now waiting for the Messiah. “Then comes the general _resurrection_, when the good will immediately enter into this happy abode--the regenerated earth; and Ahriman and his angels (the devils),[474] and the wicked, be purified by immersion in a lake of molten metal.... Henceforward, all will enjoy unchangeable happiness, and, headed by Sosiosh, ever sing the praises of the Eternal One.”[475] The above is a perfect repetition of Vishnu in his tenth avatar, for he will then throw the wicked into the infernal abodes in which, after purifying themselves, they will be pardoned--even those devils which rebelled against Brahma, and were hurled into the bottomless pit by Siva,[476] as also the “blessed ones” will go to dwell with the gods, over the Mount Meru.

Having thus traced the similarity of views respecting the Logos, Metatron, and Mediator, as found in the _Kabala_ and the _Codex_ of the Christian Nazarenes and Gnostics, the reader is prepared to appreciate the audacity of the Patristic scheme to reduce a purely metaphysical figure into concrete form, and make it appear as if the finger of prophecy had from time immemorial been pointing down the vista of ages to Jesus as the coming Messiah. A theomythos intended to symbolize the coming day, near the close of the great cycle, when the “glad tidings” from heaven should proclaim the universal brotherhood and common faith of humanity, the day of regeneration--was violently distorted into an accomplished fact.

“Why callest thou me good? there is none good but _one, that is God_,” says Jesus. Is this the language of a God? of the second person in the Trinity, who is identical with the First? And if this Messiah, or Holy Ghost of the Gnostic and Pagan Trinities, had come in his person, what did he mean by distinguishing between himself the “Son of man,” and the Holy Ghost? “And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven,” he says.[477] And how account for the marvellous identity of this very language, with the precepts enunciated, centuries before, by the Kabalists and the “Pagan” initiates? The following are a few instances out of many.

“No one of the gods, no man or Lord, can be good, but _only God alone_,” says Hermes.[478]

“To be a good man is impossible, God alone possesses this privilege,” repeats Plato, with a slight variation.[479]

Six centuries before Christ, the Chinese philosopher Confucius said that his doctrine was simple and easy to comprehend (_Lûn-yù_, chap. 5, § 15). To which one of his disciples added: “The doctrine of our Master consists in having an invariable correctness of heart, and in doing toward others as we would that they should do to us.”[480]

“Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles,”[481] exclaims Peter, long after the scene of Calvary. “There was a _man_ sent from God, whose name was John,”[482] says the fourth _Gospel_, thus placing the Baptist on an equality with Jesus. John the Baptist, in one of the most solemn acts of his life, that of baptizing Christ, thinks not that he is going to baptize _a God_, but uses the word man. “This is he of whom I said, after me cometh _a man_.”[483] Speaking of himself, Jesus says, “You seek to kill _me, a man_ that hath told you the truth, which _I have heard of God_.”[484] Even the blind man of Jerusalem, healed by the great thaumaturgist, full of gratitude and admiration for his benefactor, in narrating the miracle does not call Jesus God, but simply says, “... _a man_ that is called Jesus, made clay.”[485]

We do not close the list for lack of other instances and proofs, but simply because what we now say has been repeated and demonstrated by others, many times before us. But there is no more incurable evil than blind and unreasoning fanaticism. Few are the men who, like Dr. Priestley, have the courage to write, “We find nothing like divinity ascribed to Christ before Justin Martyr (A.D. 141), who, from being a philosopher, became a Christian.”[486]

Mahomet appeared nearly six hundred years[487] after the presumed deicide. The Græco-Roman world was still convulsed with religious dissensions, withstanding all the past imperial edicts and forcible Christianization. While the Council of Trent was disputing about the _Vulgate_, the unity of God quietly superseded the trinity, and soon the Mahometans outnumbered the Christians. Why? Because their prophet never sought to identify himself with Allah. Otherwise, it is safe to say, he would not have lived to see his religion flourish. Till the present day Mahometanism has made and is now making more proselytes than Christianity. Buddha Siddhârtha came as a simple mortal, centuries before Christ. The religious ethics of this faith are now found to far exceed in moral beauty anything ever dreamed of by the Tertullians and Augustines.

The true spirit of Christianity can alone be fully found in Buddhism; partially, it shows itself in other “heathen” religions. Buddha never made of himself a god, nor was he deified by his followers. The Buddhists are now known to far outnumber Christians; they are enumerated at nearly 500,000,000. While cases of conversion among Buddhists, Brahmanists, Mahometans, and Jews become so rare as to show how sterile are the attempts of our missionaries, atheism and materialism spread their gangrenous ulcers and gnaw every day deeper at the very heart of Christianity. There are no atheists among heathen populations, and those few among the Buddhists and Brahmans who have become infected with materialism may always be found to belong to large cities densely thronged with Europeans, and only among educated classes. Truly says Bishop Kidder: “Were a wise man to choose his religion from those who profess it, perhaps Christianity would be the last religion he would choose!”

In an able little pamphlet from the pen of the popular lecturer, J. M. Peebles, M.D., the author quotes, from the London _Athenæum_, an article in which are described the welfare and civilization of the inhabitants of Yarkand and Kashgar, “who seem virtuous and happy.” “Gracious Heavens!” fervently exclaims the honest author, who himself was once a Universalist clergyman, “Grant to keep Christian missionaries _away_ from ‘happy’ and heathen Tartary!”[488]

From the earliest days of Christianity, when Paul upbraided the _Church_ of Corinth for a crime “as is not so much as named among the Gentiles--that one should have his father’s wife;” and for their making a pretext of the “Lord’s Supper” for _debauch_ and drunkenness (_1 Corinthians_, v. 1), the profession of the name of Christ has ever been more a pretext than the evidence of holy feeling. However, a correct form of this verse is: “Everywhere the lewd practice among you is heard about, such a lewd practice as is nowhere among the heathen nations--even the having or marrying of the father’s wife.” The Persian influence would seem to be indicated in this language. The practice existed “nowhere among the nations,” except in Persia, where it was esteemed especially meritorious. Hence, too, the Jewish stories of Abraham marrying his sister, Nahor, his niece, Amram his father’s sister, and Judah his son’s widow, whose children appear to have been legitimate. The Aryan tribes esteemed endogamic marriages, while the Tartars and all barbarous nations required all alliances to be exagamous.

There was but one apostle of Jesus worthy of that name, and that was Paul. However disfigured were his _Epistles_ by dogmatic hands before being admitted into the Canon, his conception of the great and divine figure of the philosopher who died for his idea can still be traced in his addresses to the various Gentile nations. Only, he who would understand him better yet must study the Philonean _Logos_ reflecting now and then the Hindu _Sabda_ (logos) of the Mimansa school.

As to the other apostles, those whose names are prefixed to the _Gospels_--we cannot well believe in their veracity when we find them attributing to their Master miracles surrounded by circumstances, recorded, if not in the oldest books of India, at least in such as antedated Christianity, and in the very phraseology of the traditions. Who, in his days of simple and blind credulity, but marvelled at the touching narrative given in the _Gospels according to Mark_ and _Luke_ of the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus? Who has ever doubted its originality? And yet the story is copied entirely from the _Hari-Purana_, and is recorded among the miracles attributed to Christna. We translate it from the French version:

“The King Angashuna caused the betrothal of his daughter, the beautiful Kalavatti, with the young son of Vamadeva, the powerful King of Antarvédi, named Govinda, to be celebrated with great pomp.

“But as Kalavatti was amusing herself in the groves with her companions, she was stung by a serpent and died. Angashuna tore his clothes, covered himself with ashes, and cursed the day when he was born.

“Suddenly, a great rumor spread through the palace, and the following cries were heard, a thousand times repeated: ‘_Pacya pitaram; pacya gurum!_’ ‘The Father, the Master!’ Then Christna approached, smiling, leaning on the arm of Ardjuna.... ‘Master!’ cried Angashuna, casting himself at his feet, and sprinkling them with his tears, ‘See my poor daughter!’ and he showed him the body of Kalavatti, stretched upon a mat....

“‘Why do you weep?’ replied Christna, in a gentle voice. ‘_Do you not see that she is sleeping?_ Listen to the sound of her breathing, like the sigh of the night wind which rustles the leaves of the trees. See, her cheeks resuming their color, her eyes, whose lids tremble as if they were about to open; her lips quiver as if about to speak; she is sleeping, I tell you; and hold! see, she moves, _Kalavatti! Rise and walk!_’

“Hardly had Christna spoken, when the breathing, warmth, movement, and life returned little by little, into the corpse, and the young girl, obeying the injunction of the demi-god, rose from her couch and rejoined her companions. But the crowd marvelled and cried out: ‘This is a god, since death is no more for him than sleep?’”[489]

All such parables are enforced upon Christians, with the addition of dogmas which, in their extraordinary character, leave far behind them the wildest conceptions of heathenism. The Christians, in order to believe in a Deity, have found it necessary to kill their God, that they themselves should live!

And now, the Supreme, unknown one, the Father of grace and mercy, and his celestial hierarchy are managed by the Church as though they were so many theatrical stars and supernumeraries under salary! Six centuries before the Christian era, Xenophones had disposed of such anthropomorphism by an immortal satire, recorded and preserved by Clement of Alexandria:

“There is one God Supreme ...
Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten
With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members;
So if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man’s fashion,
And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead
Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,
Each kind the Divine with its own form and nature endowing.”[490]

And hear Vyasa--the poet-pantheist of India, who, for all the scientists can prove, may have lived, as Jacolliot has it, some fifteen thousand years ago--discoursing on Maya, the illusion of the senses:

“All religious dogmas only serve to obscure the intelligence of man.... Worship of divinities, under the allegories of which is hidden respect for natural laws, drives away truth to the profit of the basest superstitions” (_Vyasa Maya_).

It was given to Christianity to paint us God Almighty after the model of the kabalistic abstraction of the “Ancient of Days.” From old frescos on cathedral ceilings; Catholic missals, and other icons and images, we now find him depicted by the poetic brush of Gustave Doré. The awful, unknown majesty of Him, whom no “heathen” dared to reproduce in concrete form, is figuring in our own century in _Doré’s Illustrated Bible_. Treading upon clouds that float in mid-air, darkness and chaos behind him and the world beneath his feet, a majestic old man stands, his left hand gathering his flowing robes about him, and his right raised in the gesture of command. He has spoken the Word, and from his towering person streams an effulgence of Light--the Shekinah. As a poetic conception, the composition does honor to the artist, but does it honor God? Better, the chaos behind Him, than the figure itself; for there, at least, we have a solemn mystery. For our part, we prefer the silence of the ancient heathens. With such a gross, anthropomorphic, and, as we conceive, blasphemous representation of the First Cause, who can feel surprised at any iconographic extravagance in the representation of the Christian Christ, the apostles, and the putative Saints? With the Catholics St. Peter becomes quite naturally the janitor of Heaven, and sits at the door of the celestial kingdom--a ticket-taker to the Trinity!

In a religious disturbance which recently occurred in one of the Spanish-American provinces, there were found upon the bodies of some of the killed, passports signed by the Bishop of the Diocese and addressed to St. Peter; bidding him “_admit the bearer as a true son of the Church_.” It was subsequently ascertained that these unique documents were issued by the Catholic prelate just before his deluded parishioners went into the fight at the instigation of their priests.

In their immoderate desire to find evidence for the authenticity of the _New Testament_, the best men, the most erudite scholars even among Protestant divines, but too often fall into deplorable traps. We cannot believe that such a learned commentator as Canon Westcott could have left himself in ignorance as to Talmudistic and purely kabalistic writings. How then is it that we find him quoting, with such serene assurance as presenting “striking analogies to the _Gospel of St. John_,” passages from the work of _The Pastor of Hermas_, which are complete sentences from the kabalistic literature? “The view which Hermas gives of Christ’s nature and work is no less harmonious with apostolic doctrine, and it offers striking analogies to the _Gospel of St. John_.... He (Jesus) is a rock higher than the mountains, able to hold the whole world, ancient, and yet having a new gate!... He is older than creation, so that he took counsel with the Father about the creation which he made.... No one shall enter in unto him otherwise than by his Son.”[491]

Now while--as the author of _Supernatural Religion_ well proves--there is nothing in this which looks like a corroboration of the doctrine taught in the fourth gospel, he omits to state that nearly everything expressed by the pseudo-Hermas in relation to his parabolic conversation with the “Lord” is a plain quotation, with repeated variations, from the _Sohar_ and other kabalistic books. We may as well compare, so as to leave the reader in no difficulty to judge for himself.

“God,” says Hermas, “planted the vineyard, that is, He created the people and gave them to His Son; and the Son ... himself cleansed their sins, etc.;” _i.e._, the Son washed them in his blood, in commemoration of which Christians drink wine at the communion. In the _Kabala_ it is shown that the Aged of the Aged, or “_Long-Face_,” plants a vineyard, the latter typifying mankind; and a vine, meaning Life. The Spirit of “_King_ Messiah” is, therefore, shown as washing his garments in _the wine_ from above, from the creation of the world.[492] Adam, or A-Dam is “blood.” The life of the flesh is in the blood (nephesh--soul), _Leviticus_ xvii. And Adam-Kadmon is the Only-Begotten. Noah also plants a vineyard--the allegorical hot-bed of future humanity. As a consequence of the adoption of the same allegory, we find it reproduced in the Nazarene _Codex_. Seven vines are procreated, which spring from Iukabar Ziva, and Ferho (or Parcha) Raba waters them.[493] When the blessed will ascend among the creatures of Light, they shall see Iavar-Zivo, _Lord of_ LIFE, and the First VINE![494] These kabalistic metaphora are thus naturally repeated in the _Gospel according to John_ (xv. 1): “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.” In _Genesis_ (xlix.), the dying Jacob is made to say, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah (the lion’s whelp), nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh (Siloh) comes.... Binding his colt unto _the vine_, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine, he washed his garments _in wine_, and his clothes _in the blood of grapes_.” Shiloh is “King Messiah,” as well as the Shiloh in Ephraim, which was to be made the capital and the place of the sanctuary. In _The Targum of Onkelos_, the Babylonian, the words of Jacob read: “Until the _King Messiah_ shall come.” The prophecy has failed in the Christian as well as in the kabalistico-Jewish sense. The sceptre has departed from Judah, whether the Messiah has already or will come, unless we believe, with the kabalists, that Moses was the first Messiah, who transferred his soul to Joshua--Jesus.[495]

Says Hermas: “And, in the middle of the plain, he showed me a great _white_ rock, which had risen out of the plain, and the rock was higher than the mountains, rectangular, so as to be able to hold the whole world; but that rock was old, having a gate hewn out of it, and the hewing out of the gate seemed to me to be recent.” In the _Sohar_, we find: “To 40,000 superior worlds the _white_ of the skull of His Head (of the most Sacred Ancient _in absconditus_) is extended.[496]... When _Seir_ (the first reflection and image of his Father, the Ancient of the Ancient) will, through the mystery of the seventy names of Metatron, descend into Iezirah (the third world), he will open a new gate.... The Spiritus Decisorius will cut and divide the garment (Shekinah) into two parts.[497]... At the coming of King Messiah, from the sacred cubical stone of the Temple a _white light_ will be arising during forty days. This will expand, until _it encloses the whole world_.... At that time King Messiah will allow himself to be revealed, and will be seen coming out of the gate of the garden of Odan (Eden). ‘He will be revealed in the land Galil.’[498]... When ‘he has made satisfaction for the sins of Israel, he will lead them on through a _new gate_ to the seat of judgment.’[499] At the _Gate of the House of Life_, the throne is prepared for the Lord of Splendor.”[500]

Further on, the commentator introduces the following quotation: “This _rock_ and this _gate_ are the Son of God. ‘How, Lord,’ I said, ‘is the rock old and the gate new?’ ‘Listen,’ He said, ‘and understand, thou ignorant man. The _Son of God is older than all of his creation_, so that he was a Councillor with the Father in His works of creation; and for this is he old.’”[501]

Now, these two assertions are not only purely kabalistic, without even so much as a change of expression, but Brahmanical and Pagan likewise. “_Vidi virum excellentem cœli terræque conditore natu majorem._... I have seen the most excellent (superior) MAN, who is older by birth than the maker of heaven and earth,” says the kabalistic _Codex_.[502] The Eleusinian Dionysus, whose particular name was _Iacchos_ (Iaccho, Iahoh)[503]--the God from whom the liberation of souls was expected--was considered older than the Demiurge. At the mysteries of the Anthesteria at the lakes (the Limnæ), after the usual baptism by purification of water, the _Mystæ_ were made to pass through to another door (gate), and one particularly for that purpose, which was called “the gate of Dionysus,” and that of “the _purified_.”

In the _Sohar_, the kabalists are told that the work-master, the Demiurge, said to the Lord: “Let us make man after our image.”[504] In the original texts of the first chapter of _Genesis_, it stands: “And the _Elohim_ (translated as the Supreme God), who are the highest gods or powers, said: Let us make man in _our_ (?) image, after _our_ likeness.” In the _Vedas_, Brahma holds counsel with Parabrahma, as to the best mode to proceed to create the world.

Canon Westcott, quoting Hermas, shows him asking: “And why is the gate _new_, Lord? I said. ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘he was manifested at the last of the days of the dispensation; for this cause the gate was made new, in order that they who shall be saved might enter by it into the Kingdom of God.’”[505] There are two peculiarities worthy of note in this passage. To begin with, it attributes to “the Lord” a false statement of the same character as that so emphasized by the Apostle John; and which brought, at a later period, the whole of the orthodox Christians, who accepted the apostolic allegories as literal, to such inconvenient straits. Jesus, as Messiah, was _not_ manifested at the last of the days; for the latter are yet to come, notwithstanding a number of divinely-inspired prophecies, followed by disappointed hopes, as a result, to testify to his immediate coming. The belief that the “last times” had come, was natural, when once the coming of King Messiah had been acknowledged. The second peculiarity is found in the fact that the _prophecy_ could have been accepted at all, when even its approximate determination is a direct contradiction of Mark, who makes Jesus distinctly state that neither the angels, nor the Son himself, know of that day or that hour.[506] We might add that, as the belief undeniably originated with the _Apocalypse_, it ought to be a self-evident proof that it belonged to the calculations peculiar to the kabalists and the Pagan sanctuaries. It was the secret computation of a cycle, which, according to their reckoning, was ending toward the latter part of the first century. It may also be held as a corroborative proof, that the _Gospel according to Mark_, as well as that ascribed to _John_, and the _Apocalypse_, were written by men, of whom neither was sufficiently acquainted with the other. The Logos was first definitely called _petra_ (rock) by Philo; the word, moreover, as we have shown elsewhere, means, in Chaldaic and Phœnician, “interpreter.” Justin Martyr calls him, throughout his works, “angel,” and makes a clear distinction between the Logos and God the Creator. “The Word of God is His Son ... and he is also called Angel and Apostle, for he declares whatever we ought to know (interprets), and is sent to declare whatever is disclosed.”[507]

“Adan Inferior is distributed into its own paths, into thirty-two sides of paths, yet it is not known to any one but _Seir_. But no one knows the SUPERIOR ADAN nor His paths, except that Long Face”--the Supreme God.[508] Seir is the Nazarene “genius,” who is called Æbel Zivo; and Gabriel Legatus--also “Apostle Gabriel.”[509] The Nazarenes held with the kabalists that even the Messiah who was to come did not know the “_Superior_ Adan,” the concealed Deity; no one except the _Supreme_ God; thus showing that above the Supreme Intelligible Deity, there is one still more secret and unrevealed. Seir-Anpin is the third God, while “Logos,” according to Philo Judæus, is the second one.[510] This is distinctly shown in the _Codex_. The false Messiah shall say: “I am Deus, son of Deus; my Father sent me here.... I am the first _Legate_, I am Æbel Zivo, I am come from on high! But distrust him; for he will not be Æbel Zivo. Æbel Zivo will not permit himself to be seen in this age.”[511] Hence the belief of some Gnostics that it was not Æbel Zivo (Archangel Gabriel) who “_overshadowed_” Mary, but Ilda-Baoth, who formed the _material body_ of Jesus; _Christos_ uniting himself with him only at the moment of baptism in the Jordan.

Can we doubt Nork’s assertion that “the Bereshith Rabba, the oldest part of the Midrash Rabboth, _was known to the Church Fathers in a Greek translation_?”[512]

But if, on the one hand, they were sufficiently acquainted with the different religious systems of their neighbors to have enabled them to build a new religion alleged to be distinct from all others, their ignorance of the _Old Testament_ itself, let alone the more complicated questions of Grecian metaphysics, is now found to have been deplorable. “So, for instance, in _Matthew_ xxvii. 9 f., the passage from _Zechariah_ xi. 12, 13, is attributed to Jeremiah,” says the author of _Supernatural Religion_. “In _Mark_ i. 2, a quotation from _Malachi_ iii. 1, is ascribed to Isaiah. In _1 Corinthians_, ii. 9, a passage is quoted as _Holy Scripture_, which is not found in the _Old Testament_ at all, but which is taken, as Origen and Jerome state, from an apocryphal work, _The Revelation of Elias_ (Origen: _Tract._ xxxv.), and the passage is similarly quoted by the so-called _Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians_ (xxxiv.)”. How reliable are the pious Fathers in their explanations of divers heresies may be illustrated in the case of Epiphanius, who mistook the Pythagorean sacred Tetrad, called in the Valentinian _Gnosis_, Kol-Arbas, for a _heretic leader_.[513] What with the involuntary blunders, and deliberate falsifications of the teachings of those who differed in views with them; the canonization of the mythological Aura Placida (gentle breeze), into a pair of Christian martyrs--St. Aura and St. Placida;[514] the deification of a _spear_ and a _cloak_, under the names of SS. Longimus and Amphibolus;[515] and the Patristic quotations from prophets, of what was never in those prophets at all; one may well ask in blank amazement whether the so-called religion of Christ has ever been other than an incoherent dream, since the death of the Great Master.

So malicious do we find the holy Fathers in their unrelenting persecution of pretended “_hæresies_,”[516] that we see them telling, without hesitation the most preposterous untruths, and inventing entire narratives, the better to impress their own otherwise unsupported arguments upon ignorance. If the mistake in relation to the tetrad had at first originated as a simple consequence of an unpremeditated blunder of Hippolytus, the explanations of Epiphanius and others who fell into the same absurd error[517] have a less innocent look. When Hippolytus gravely denounces the great heresy of the Tetrad, Kol-Arbas, and states that the imaginary Gnostic leader is, “Kalorbasus, who endeavors to explain religion by measures and numbers,”[518] we may simply smile. But when Epiphanius, with abundant indignation, elaborates upon the theme, “which is Heresy XV.,” and pretending to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject, adds: “A certain Heracleon follows after Colorbasus, which is Heresy XVI.,”[519] then he lays himself open to the charge of deliberate falsification.

If this zealous _Christian_ can boast so unblushingly of having caused “_by his information_ seventy women, even of rank, to be sent into exile, _through the seductions of some_ in whose number he had himself been drawn into joining their sect,” he has left us a fair standard by which to judge him. C. W. King remarks, very aptly, on this point, that “it may reasonably be suspected that this worthy renegade had in this case saved himself from the fate of his fellow-religionists by turning evidence against them, on the opening of the persecution.”[520]

And thus, one by one, perished the Gnostics, the only heirs to whose share had fallen a few stray crumbs of the unadulterated truth of primitive Christianity. All was confusion and turmoil during these first centuries, till the moment when all these contradictory dogmas were finally forced upon the Christian world, and examination was forbidden. For long ages it was made a sacrilege, punishable with severe penalties, often death, to seek to comprehend that which the Church had so conveniently elevated to the rank of _divine_ mystery. But since biblical critics have taken upon themselves to “set the house in order,” the cases have become reversed. Pagan creditors now come from every part of the globe to claim their own, and Christian theology begins to be suspected of complete bankruptcy. Such is the sad result of the fanaticism of the “orthodox” sects, who, to borrow an expression of the author of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” never were, like the Gnostics, “the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy of the Christian name.” And, if not all of them “smelt garlic,” as Renan will have it, on the other hand, none of these Christian saints have ever shrunk from spilling their neighbor’s blood, if the views of the latter did not agree with their own.

And so all our philosophers were swept away by the ignorant and superstitious masses. The Philaletheians, the lovers of truth, and their eclectic school, perished; and there, where the young Hypatia had taught the highest philosophical doctrines; and where Ammonius Saccas had explained that “the _whole which Christ had in view_ was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom of the ancients--to reduce within bounds the universally prevailing dominion of superstition ... and to exterminate the various errors that had found their way into the different popular religions”[521]--there, we say, freely raved the οι πολλοι of Christianity. No more precepts from the mouth of the “God-taught philosopher,” but others expounded by the incarnation of a most cruel, fiendish superstition.

“If thy father,” wrote St. Jerome, “lies down across thy threshold, if thy mother uncovers to thine eyes the bosom which suckled thee, trample on thy father’s lifeless body, trample on thy mother’s bosom, and, with eyes unmoistened and dry, fly to the Lord who calleth thee!!”

This sentence is equalled, if not outrivalled, by this other, pronounced in a like spirit. It emanates from another father of the early Church, the eloquent Tertullian, who hopes to see all the “philosophers” in the gehenna fire of Hell. “What shall be the magnitude of that scene!... How shall I laugh! How shall I rejoice! How shall I triumph when I see so many illustrious kings who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter, their god, in the lowest darkness of hell! Then shall the soldiers who have persecuted the name of Christ burn in more cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints!”[522]

These murderous expressions illustrate the spirit of Christianity till this day. But do they illustrate the teachings of Christ? By no means. As Eliphas Levi says, “The God in the name of whom we would trample on our mother’s bosom we must see in the hereafter, a hell gaping widely at his feet, and an exterminating sword in his hand.... Moloch burned children but a few seconds; it was reserved to the disciples of a god who is alleged to have died to redeem humanity on the cross, to create a new Moloch whose burning stake is eternal!”[523]

That this spirit of true Christian love has safely crossed nineteen centuries and rages now in America, is fully instanced in the case of the rabid Moody, the revivalist, who exclaims: “I have a son, and no one but God knows how I love him; but I would see those beautiful eyes dug out of his head to-night, rather than see him grow up to manhood and go down to the grave without Christ and without hope!!”

To this an American paper, of Chicago, very justly responds: “This is the spirit of the inquisition, which we are told is dead. If Moody in his zeal would ‘dig out’ the eyes of his darling son, to what lengths may he not go with the sons of others, whom he may love less? It is the spirit of Loyola, gibbering in the nineteenth century, and prevented from lighting the fagot flame and heating red-hot the instruments of torture only by the arm of law.”