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Searchable Full Text of Esoteric
Christianity or The Lesser Mysteries by Annie Besant
The
Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
Esoteric Christianity
Or The Lesser Mysteries
by
Annie Besant
[SECOND EDITION]
The Theosophical Publishing Society.
LONDON AND BENARES.
1905.
In proceeding to the contemplation of the mysteries of
knowledge,
we shall
adhere to the celebrated and venerable rule of tradition,
commencing from the origin of the universe,
setting forth those
points of
physical contemplation which are necessary to be
premised,
and removing whatever can be an obstacle on the way; so
that the
ear may be prepared for the reception of the tradition of
the Gnosis,
the ground being cleared of weeds and fitted for the
planting of
the vineyard; for there is a conflict before the
conflict,
and mysteries before the mysteries.--_S. Clement of
Alexandria._
Let the
specimen suffice to those who have ears. For it is not
required to
unfold the mystery, but only to indicate what is
sufficient.--_Ibid._
He that
hath ears to hear, let him hear.--_S. Matthew._
FOREWORD.
The object of this book is to suggest certain lines of
thought as to
the deep truths underlying Christianity, truths
generally overlooked,
and only too often denied. The generous wish to share
with all what is
precious, to spread broadcast priceless truths, to
shut out none from
the illumination of true knowledge, has resulted in a
zeal without
discretion that has vulgarised Christianity, and has
presented its
teachings in a form that often repels the heart and
alienates the
intellect. The command to "preach the Gospel to
every
creature"[1]--though admittedly of doubtful
authenticity--has been
interpreted as forbidding the teaching of the Gnosis
to a few, and has
apparently erased the less popular saying of the same
Great Teacher:
"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,
neither cast ye your
pearls before swine."[2]
This spurious sentimentality--which refuses to
recognise the obvious
inequalities of intelligence and morality, and thereby
reduces the
teaching of the highly developed to the level
attainable by the least
evolved, sacrificing the higher to the lower in a way
that injures
both--had no place in the virile common sense of the
early Christians.
S. Clement of Alexandria says quite bluntly, after
alluding to the
Mysteries: "Even now I fear, as it is said, 'to
cast the pearls before
swine, lest they tread them underfoot, and turn and
rend us.' For it is
difficult to exhibit the really pure and transparent
words respecting
the true Light to swinish and untrained
hearers."[3]
If true knowledge, the Gnosis, is again to form a part
of Christian
teachings, it can only be under the old restrictions,
and the idea of
levelling down to the capacities of the least
developed must be
definitely surrendered. Only by teaching above the
grasp of the little
evolved can the way be opened up for a restoration of
arcane knowledge,
and the study of the Lesser Mysteries must precede
that of the Greater.
The Greater will never be published through the
printing-press; they can
only be given by Teacher to pupil, "from mouth to
ear." But the Lesser
Mysteries, the partial unveiling of deep truths, can
even now be
restored, and such a volume as the present is intended
to outline these,
and to show the _nature_ of the teachings which have
to be mastered.
Where only hints are given, quiet meditation on the
truths hinted at
will cause their outlines to become visible, and the
clearer light
obtained by continued meditation will gradually show
them more fully.
For meditation quiets the lower mind, ever engaged in
thinking about
external objects, and when the lower mind is tranquil
then only can it
be illuminated by the Spirit. Knowledge of spiritual
truths must be thus
obtained, from within and not from without, from the
divine Spirit whose
temple we are[4] and not from an external Teacher.
These things are
"spiritually discerned" by that divine
indwelling Spirit, that "mind of
Christ," whereof speaks the Great Apostle,[5] and
that inner light is
shed upon the lower mind.
This is the way of the Divine Wisdom, the true
THEOSOPHY. It is not, as
some think, a diluted version of Hinduism, or
Buddhism, or Taoism, or of
any special religion. It is Esoteric Christianity as
truly as it is
Esoteric Buddhism, and belongs equally to all
religions, exclusively to
none. This is the source of the suggestions made in
this little volume,
for the helping of those who seek the Light--that
"true Light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the
world,"[6] though most have not
yet opened their eyes to it. It does not bring the
Light. It only says:
"Behold the Light!" For thus have we heard. It
appeals only to the few
who hunger for more than the exoteric teachings give
them. For those who
are fully satisfied with the exoteric teachings, it is
not intended; for
why should bread be forced on those who are not
hungry? For those who
hunger, may it prove bread, and not a stone.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
FOREWORD vii.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff,
Wales, UK. CF24-DL
CHAPTER I.
THE HIDDEN
SIDE OF RELIGIONS 1
CHAPTER II.
THE HIDDEN
SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY 36
CHAPTER III.
THE HIDDEN
SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY 69
(_concluded_)
CHAPTER IV.
THE HISTORICAL
JESUS 120
CHAPTER V.
THE MYTHIC
CHRIST 145
CHAPTER VI.
THE MYSTIC
CHRIST 170
CHAPTER VII.
THE
ATONEMENT
193
CHAPTER VIII.
RESURRECTION
AND ASCENSION 231
CHAPTER IX.
THE
TRINITY 253
CHAPTER X.
PRAYER 276
CHAPTER XI.
THE
FORGIVENESS OF SINS
301
CHAPTER XII.
SACRAMENTS 324
CHAPTER XIII.
SACRAMENTS
(_continued_) 346
CHAPTER XIV.
REVELATION 369
AFTERWORD 386
INDEX 388
ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITY.
-------
CHAPTER I.
THE HIDDEN SIDE OF RELIGIONS.
Many, perhaps most, who see the title of this book
will at once traverse
it, and will deny that there is anything valuable
which can be rightly
described as "Esoteric Christianity." There
is a wide-spread, and withal
a popular, idea that there is no such thing as an
occult teaching in
connection with Christianity, and that "The
Mysteries," whether Lesser
or Greater, were a purely Pagan institution. The very
name of "The
Mysteries of Jesus," so familiar in the ears of
the Christians of the
first centuries, would come with a shock of surprise
on those of their
modern successors, and, if spoken as denoting a
special and definite
institution in the Early Church, would cause a smile
of incredulity. It
has actually been made a matter of boast that
Christianity has no
secrets, that whatever it has to say it says to all,
and whatever it has
to teach it teaches to all. Its truths are supposed to
be so simple,
that "a way-faring man, though a fool, may not
err therein," and the
"simple Gospel" has become a stock phrase.
It is necessary, therefore, to prove clearly that in
the Early Church,
at least, Christianity was no whit behind other great
religions in
possessing a hidden side, and that it guarded, as a
priceless treasure,
the secrets revealed only to a select few in its
Mysteries. But ere
doing this it will be well to consider the whole
question of this hidden
side of religions, and to see why such a side must
exist if a religion
is to be strong and stable; for thus its existence in
Christianity will
appear as a foregone conclusion, and the references to
it in the
writings of the Christian Fathers will appear simple
and natural instead
of surprising and unintelligible. As a historical
fact, the existence
of this esotericism is demonstrable; but it may also
be shown that
intellectually it is a necessity.
The first question we have to answer is: What is the
object of
religions? They are given to the world by men wiser
than the masses of
the people on whom they are bestowed, and are intended
to quicken human
evolution. In order to do this effectively they must
reach individuals
and influence them. Now all men are not at the same
level of evolution,
but evolution might be figured as a rising gradient,
with men stationed
on it at every point. The most highly evolved are far
above the least
evolved, both in intelligence and character; the
capacity alike to
understand and to act varies at every stage. It is,
therefore, useless
to give to all the same religious teaching; that which
would help the
intellectual man would be entirely unintelligible to
the stupid, while
that which would throw the saint into ecstasy would
leave the criminal
untouched. If, on the other hand, the teaching be
suitable to help the
unintelligent, it is intolerably crude and jejune to
the philosopher,
while that which redeems the criminal is utterly
useless to the saint.
Yet all the types need religion, so that each may
reach upward to a life
higher than that which he is leading, and no type or
grade should be
sacrificed to any other. Religion must be as graduated
as evolution,
else it fails in its object.
Next comes the question: In what way do religions seek
to quicken human
evolution? Religions seek to evolve the moral and
intellectual natures,
and to aid the spiritual nature to unfold itself. Regarding
man as a
complex being, they seek to meet him at every point of
his constitution,
and therefore to bring messages suitable for each,
teachings adequate to
the most diverse human needs. Teachings must therefore
be adapted to
each mind and heart to which they are addressed. If a
religion does not
reach and master the intelligence, if it does not
purify and inspire the
emotions, it has failed in its object, so far as the
person addressed is
concerned.
Not only does it thus direct itself to the intelligence
and the
emotions, but it seeks, as said, to stimulate the
unfoldment of the
spiritual nature. It answers to that inner impulse
which exists in
humanity, and which is ever pushing the race onwards.
For deeply within
the heart of all--often overlaid by transitory
conditions, often
submerged under pressing interests and
anxieties--there exists a
continual seeking after God. "As the hart panteth
after the
water-brooks, so panteth"[7] humanity after God.
The search is sometimes
checked for a space, and the yearning seems to
disappear. Phases recur
in civilisation and in thought, wherein this cry of
the human Spirit for
the divine--seeking its source as water seeks its
level, to borrow a
simile from Giordano Bruno--this yearning of the human
Spirit for that
which is akin to it in the universe, of the part for
the whole, seems to
be stilled, to have vanished; none the less does that
yearning reappear,
and once more the same cry rings out from the Spirit.
Trampled on for a
time, apparently destroyed, though the tendency may
be, it rises again
and again with inextinguishable persistence, it
repeats itself again
and again, no matter how often it is silenced; and it
thus proves itself
to be an inherent tendency in human nature, an
ineradicable constituent
thereof. Those who declare triumphantly, "Lo! it
is dead!" find it
facing them again with undiminished vitality. Those
who build without
allowing for it find their well-constructed edifices
riven as by an
earthquake. Those who hold it to be outgrown find the
wildest
superstitions succeed its denial. So much is it an
integral part of
humanity, that man _will_ have some answer to his
questionings; rather
an answer that is false, than none. If he cannot find
religious truth,
he will take religious error rather than no religion,
and will accept
the crudest and most incongruous ideals rather than
admit that the ideal
is non-existent.
Religion, then, meets this craving, and taking hold of
the constituent
in human nature that gives rise to it, trains it,
strengthens it,
purifies it and guides it towards its proper
ending--the union of the
human Spirit with the divine, so "that God may be
all in all."[8]
The next question which meets us in our enquiry is:
What is the source
of religions? To this question two answers have been
given in modern
times--that of the Comparative Mythologists and that
of the Comparative
Religionists. Both base their answers on a common
basis of admitted
facts. Research has indisputably proved that the
religions of the world
are markedly similar in their main teachings, in their
possession of
Founders who display superhuman powers and
extraordinary moral
elevation, in their ethical precepts, in their use of
means to come into
touch with invisible worlds, and in the symbols by
which they express
their leading beliefs. This similarity, amounting in
many cases to
identity, proves--according to both the above
schools--a common origin.
But on the nature of this common origin the two
schools are at issue.
The Comparative Mythologists contend that the common
origin is the
common ignorance, and that the loftiest religious
doctrines are simply
refined expressions of the crude and barbarous guesses
of savages, of
primitive men, regarding themselves and their
surroundings. Animism,
fetishism, nature-worship, sun-worship--these are the
constituents of
the primeval mud out of which has grown the splendid
lily of religion. A
Krishna, a Buddha, a Lao-tze, a Jesus, are the highly
civilised
but lineal descendants of the whirling medicine-man of
the savage. God
is a composite photograph of the innumerable Gods who
are the
personifications of the forces of nature. And so
forth. It is all summed
up in the phrase: Religions are branches from a common
trunk--human
ignorance.
The Comparative Religionists consider, on the other
hand, that all
religions originate from the teachings of Divine Men,
who give out to
the different nations of the world, from time to time,
such parts of the
fundamental verities of religion as the people are
capable of receiving,
teaching ever the same morality, inculcating the use
of similar means,
employing the same significant symbols. The savage
religions--animism
and the rest--are degenerations, the results of
decadence, distorted and
dwarfed descendants of true religious beliefs.
Sun-worship and pure
forms of nature-worship were, in their day, noble
religions, highly
allegorical but full of profound truth and knowledge.
The great
Teachers--it is alleged by Hindus, Buddhists, and by
some Comparative
Religionists, such as Theosophists--form an enduring
Brotherhood of men
who have risen beyond humanity, who appear at certain
periods to
enlighten the world, and who are the spiritual
guardians of the human
race. This view may be summed up in the phrase:
"Religions are branches
from a common trunk--Divine Wisdom."
This Divine Wisdom is spoken of as the Wisdom, the
Gnosis, the
Theosophia, and some, in different ages of the world,
have so desired to
emphasise their belief in this unity of religions,
that they have
preferred the eclectic name of Theosophist to any
narrower designation.
The relative value of the contentions of these two
opposed schools must
be judged by the cogency of the evidence put forth by
each. The
appearance of a degenerate form of a noble idea may
closely resemble
that of a refined product of a coarse idea, and the
only method of
deciding between degeneration and evolution would be
the examination, if
possible, of intermediate and remote ancestors. The
evidence brought
forward by believers in the Wisdom is of this kind.
They allege: that
the Founders of religions, judged by the records of
their teachings,
were far above the level of average humanity; that the
Scriptures of
religions contain moral precepts, sublime ideals,
poetical aspirations,
profound philosophical statements, which are not even
approached in
beauty and elevation by later writings in the same
religions--that is,
that the old is higher than the new, instead of the
new being higher
than the old; that no case can be shown of the
refining and improving
process alleged to be the source of current religions,
whereas many
cases of degeneracy from pure teachings can be
adduced; that even among
savages, if their religions be carefully studied, many
traces of lofty
ideas can be found, ideas which are obviously above
the productive
capacity of the savages themselves.
This last idea has been worked out by Mr. Andrew Lang,
who--judging by
his book on _The Making of Religion_--should be
classed as a Comparative
Religionist rather than as a Comparative Mythologist.
He points to the
existence of a common tradition, which, he alleges,
cannot have been
evolved by the savages for themselves, being men whose
ordinary beliefs
are of the crudest kind and whose minds are little
developed. He shows,
under crude beliefs and degraded views, lofty traditions
of a sublime
character, touching the nature of the Divine Being and
His relations
with men. The deities who are worshipped are, for the
most part, the
veriest devils, but behind, beyond all these, there is
a dim but
glorious over-arching Presence, seldom or never named,
but whispered of
as source of all, as power and love and goodness, too
tender to awaken
terror, too good to require supplication. Such ideas
manifestly cannot
have been conceived by the savages among whom they are
found, and they
remain as eloquent witnesses of the revelations made
by some great
Teacher--dim tradition of whom is generally also
discoverable--who was
a Son of the Wisdom, and imparted some of its
teachings in a long
bye-gone age.
The reason, and, indeed, the justification, of the
view taken by the
Comparative Mythologists is patent. They found in
every direction low
forms of religious belief, existing among savage
tribes. These were seen
to accompany general lack of civilisation. Regarding
civilised men as
evolving from uncivilised, what more natural than to
regard civilised
religion as evolving from uncivilised? It is the first
obvious idea.
Only later and deeper study can show that the savages
of to-day are not
our ancestral types, but are the degenerated
offsprings of great
civilised stocks of the past, and that man in his
infancy was not left
to grow up untrained, but was nursed and educated by
his elders, from
whom he received his first guidance alike in religion
and civilisation.
This view is being substantiated by such facts as
those dwelt on by
Lang, and will presently raise the question, "Who
were these elders, of
whom traditions are everywhere found?"
Still pursuing our enquiry, we come next to the
question: To what people
were religions given? And here we come at once to the
difficulty with
which every Founder of a religion must deal, that
already spoken of as
bearing on the primary object of religion itself, the
quickening of
human evolution, with its corollary that all grades of
evolving humanity
must be considered by Him. Men are at every stage of
evolution, from the
most barbarous to the most developed; men are found of
lofty
intelligence, but also of the most unevolved
mentality; in one place
there is a highly developed and complex civilisation,
in another a crude
and simple polity. Even within any given civilisation
we find the most
varied types--the most ignorant and the most educated,
the most
thoughtful and the most careless, the most spiritual
and the most
brutal; yet each one of these types must be reached,
and each must be
helped in the place where he is. If evolution be true,
this difficulty
is inevitable, and must be faced and overcome by the
divine Teacher,
else will His work be a failure. If man is evolving as
all around him
is evolving, these differences of development, these
varied grades of
intelligence, must be a characteristic of humanity
everywhere, and must
be provided for in each of the religions of the world.
We are thus brought face to face with the position
that we cannot have
one and the same religious teaching even for a single
nation, still less
for a single civilisation, or for the whole world. If
there be but one
teaching, a large number of those to whom it is
addressed will entirely
escape its influence. If it be made suitable for those
whose
intelligence is limited, whose morality is elementary,
whose perceptions
are obtuse, so that it may help and train them, and
thus enable them to
evolve, it will be a religion utterly unsuitable for
those men, living
in the same nation, forming part of the same
civilisation, who have keen
and delicate moral perceptions, bright and subtle
intelligence, and
evolving spirituality. But if, on the other hand, this
latter class is
to be helped, if intelligence is to be given a
philosophy that it can
regard as admirable, if delicate moral perceptions are
to be still
further refined, if the dawning spiritual nature is to
be enabled to
develope into the perfect day, then the religion will
be so spiritual,
so intellectual, and so moral, that when it is preached
to the former
class it will not touch their minds or their hearts,
it will be to them
a string of meaningless phrases, incapable of arousing
their latent
intelligence, or of giving them any motive for conduct
which will help
them to grow into a purer morality.
Looking, then, at these facts concerning religion,
considering its
object, its means, its origin, the nature and varying
needs of the
people to whom it is addressed, recognising the
evolution of spiritual,
intellectual, and moral faculties in man, and the need
of each man for
such training as is suitable for the stage of
evolution at which he has
arrived, we are led to the absolute necessity of a
varied and graduated
religious teaching, such as will meet these different
needs and help
each man in his own place.
There is yet another reason why esoteric teaching is
desirable with
respect to a certain class of truths. It is eminently
the fact in
regard to this class that "knowledge is
power." The public promulgation
of a philosophy profoundly intellectual, sufficient to
train an already
highly developed intellect, and to draw the allegiance
of a lofty mind,
cannot injure any. It can be preached without
hesitation, for it does
not attract the ignorant, who turn away from it as
dry, stiff, and
uninteresting. But there are teachings which deal with
the constitution
of nature, explain recondite laws, and throw light on
hidden processes,
the knowledge of which gives control over natural
energies, and enables
its possessor to direct these energies to certain ends,
as a chemist
deals with the production of chemical compounds. Such
knowledge may be
very useful to highly developed men, and may much
increase their power
of serving the race. But if this knowledge were
published to the world,
it might and would be misused, just as the knowledge
of subtle poisons
was misused in the Middle Ages by the Borgias and by
others. It would
pass into the hands of people of strong intellect, but
of unregulated
desires, men moved by separative instincts, seeking
the gain of their
separate selves and careless of the common good. They
would be attracted
by the idea of gaining powers which would raise them
above the general
level, and place ordinary humanity at their mercy, and
would rush to
acquire the knowledge which exalts its possessors to a
superhuman rank.
They would, by its possession, become yet more selfish
and confirmed in
their separateness, their pride would be nourished and
their sense of
aloofness intensified, and thus they would inevitably
be driven along
the road which leads to diabolism, the Left Hand Path,
whose goal is
isolation and not union. And they would not only
themselves suffer in
their inner nature, but they would also become a
menace to Society,
already suffering sufficiently at the hands of men
whose intellect is
more evolved than their conscience. Hence arises the
necessity of
withholding certain teachings from those who, morally,
are as yet
unfitted to receive them; and this necessity presses
on every Teacher
who is able to impart such knowledge. He desires to
give it to those
who will use the powers it confers for the general
good, for quickening
human evolution; but he equally desires to be no party
to giving it to
those who would use it for their own aggrandisement at
the cost of
others.
Nor is this a matter of theory only, according to the
Occult Records,
which give the details of the events alluded to in
Genesis vi. _et seq._
This knowledge was, in those ancient times and on the
continent of
Atlantis, given without any rigid conditions as to the
moral elevation,
purity, and unselfishness of the candidates. Those who
were
intellectually qualified were taught, just as men are
taught ordinary
science in modern days. The publicity now so
imperiously demanded was
then given, with the result that men became giants in
knowledge but also
giants in evil, till the earth groaned under her
oppressors and the cry
of a trampled humanity rang through the worlds. Then
came the
destruction of Atlantis, the whelming of that vast
continent beneath the
waters of the ocean, some particulars of which are
given in the Hebrew
Scriptures in the story of the Noachian deluge, and in
the Hindu
Scriptures of the further East in the story of
Vaivasvata Manu.
Since that experience of the danger of allowing
unpurified hands to
grasp the knowledge which is power, the great Teachers
have imposed
rigid conditions as regards purity, unselfishness, and
self-control on
all candidates for such instruction. They distinctly
refuse to impart
knowledge of this kind to any who will not consent to a
rigid
discipline, intended to eliminate separateness of
feeling and interest.
They measure the moral strength of the candidate even
more than his
intellectual development, for the teaching itself will
develope the
intellect while it puts a strain on the moral nature.
Far better that
the Great Ones should be assailed by the ignorant for
Their supposed
selfishness in withholding knowledge, than that They
should precipitate
the world into another Atlantean catastrophe.
So much of theory we lay down as bearing on the
necessity of a hidden
side in all religions. When from theory we turn to
facts, we naturally
ask: Has this hidden side existed in the past, forming
a part of the
religions of the world? The answer must be an
immediate and unhesitating
affirmative; every great religion has claimed to
possess a hidden
teaching, and has declared that it is the repository
of theoretical
mystic, and further of practical mystic, or occult,
knowledge. The
mystic explanation of popular teaching was public, and
expounded the
latter as an allegory, giving to crude and irrational
statements and
stories a meaning which the intellect could accept.
Behind this
theoretical mysticism, as it was behind the popular,
there existed
further the practical mysticism, a hidden spiritual teaching,
which was
only imparted under definite conditions, conditions
known and published,
that must be fulfilled by every candidate. S. Clement
of Alexandria
mentions this division of the Mysteries. After
purification, he says,
"are the Minor Mysteries, which have some
foundation of instruction and
of preliminary preparation for what is to come after;
and the Great
Mysteries, in which nothing remains to be learned of
the universe, but
only to contemplate and comprehend nature and
things."[9]
This position cannot be controverted as regards the
ancient religions.
The Mysteries of Egypt were the glory of that ancient
land, and the
noblest sons of Greece, such as Plato, went to Sais
and to Thebes to be
initiated by Egyptian Teachers of Wisdom. The Mithraic
Mysteries of the
Persians, the Orphic and Bacchic Mysteries and the
later Eleusinian
semi-Mysteries of the Greeks, the Mysteries of
Samothrace, Scythia,
Chaldea, are familiar in name, at least, as household
words. Even in the
extremely diluted form of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
their value is most
highly praised by the most eminent men of Greece, as
Pindar, Sophocles,
Isocrates, Plutarch, and Plato. Especially were they
regarded as useful
with regard to _post-mortem_ existence, as the
Initiated learned that
which ensured his future happiness. Sopater further
alleged that
Initiation established a kinship of the soul with the
divine Nature, and
in the exoteric Hymn to Demeter covert references are
made to the holy
child, Iacchus, and to his death and resurrection, as
dealt with in the
Mysteries.[10]
From Iamblichus, the great theurgist of the third and
fourth centuries
A.D., much may be learned as to the object of the
Mysteries. Theurgy was
magic, "the last part of the sacerdotal
science,"[11] and was practised
in the Greater Mysteries, to evoke the appearance of
superior Beings.
The theory on which these Mysteries were based may be
very briefly thus
stated: There is ONE, prior to all beings, immovable,
abiding in the
solitude of His own unity. From THAT arises the
Supreme God, the
Self-begotten, the Good, the Source of all things, the
Root, the God of
Gods, the First Cause, unfolding Himself into
Light.[12] From Him
springs the Intelligible World, or ideal universe, the
Universal Mind,
the _Nous_ and the incorporeal or intelligible Gods
belong to this.
From this the World-Soul, to which belong the
"divine intellectual forms
which are present with the visible bodies of the
Gods."[13] Then come
various hierarchies of superhuman beings, Archangels,
Archons (Rulers)
or Cosmocratores, Angels, Daimons, &c. Man is a
being of a lower order,
allied to these in his nature, and is capable of
knowing them; this
knowledge was achieved in the Mysteries, and it led to
union with
God.[14] In the Mysteries these doctrines are expounded,
"the
progression from, and the regression of all things to,
the One, and the
entire domination of the One,"[15] and, further,
these different Beings
were evoked, and appeared, sometimes to teach,
sometimes, by Their mere
presence, to elevate and purify. "The Gods,"
says Iamblichus, "being
benevolent and propitious, impart their light to
theurgists in unenvying
abundance, calling upwards their souls to themselves,
procuring them a
union with themselves, and accustoming them, while
they are yet in body,
to be separated from bodies, and to be led round to
their eternal and
intelligible principle."[16] For "the soul
having a twofold life, one
being in conjunction with body, but the other being
separate from all
body,"[17] it is most necessary to learn to separate
it from the body,
that thus it may unite itself with the Gods by its
intellectual and
divine part, and learn the genuine principles of
knowledge, and the
truths of the intelligible world.[18] "The
presence of the Gods, indeed,
imparts to us health of body, virtue of soul, purity
of intellect, and,
in one word, elevates everything in us to its proper
nature. It exhibits
that which is not body as body to the eyes of the
soul, through those of
the body."[19] When the Gods appear, the soul
receives "a liberation
from the passions, a transcendent perfection, and an
energy entirely
more excellent, and participates of divine love and an
immense joy."[20]
By this we gain a divine life, and are rendered in
reality divine.[21]
The culminating point of the Mysteries was when the
Initiate became a
God, whether by union with a divine Being outside
himself, or by the
realisation of the divine Self within him. This was
termed ecstasy, and
was a state of what the Indian Yogi would term high
Samadhi, the gross
body being entranced and the freed soul effecting its
own union with the
Great One. This "ecstasy is not a faculty
properly so called, it is a
state of the soul, which transforms it in such a way
that it then
perceives what was previously hidden from it. The state
will not be
permanent until our union with God is irrevocable;
here, in earth life,
ecstasy is but a flash.... Man can cease to become
man, and become God;
but man cannot be God and man at the same
time."[22] Plotinus states
that he had reached this state "but three times
as yet."
So also Proclus taught that the one salvation of the
soul was to return
to her intellectual form, and thus escape from the
"circle of
generation, from abundant wanderings," and reach
true Being, "to the
uniform and simple energy of the period of sameness,
instead of the
abundantly wandering motion of the period which is
characterised by
difference." This is the life sought by those
initiated by Orpheus into
the Mysteries of Bacchus and Proserpine, and this is
the result of the
practice of the purificatory, or cathartic,
virtues.[23]
These virtues were necessary for the Greater
Mysteries, as they
concerned the purifying of the subtle body, in which
the soul worked
when out of the gross body. The political or practical
virtues belonged
to man's ordinary life, and were required to some
extent before he could
be a candidate even for such a School as is described
below. Then came
the cathartic virtues, by which the subtle body, that
of the emotions
and lower mind, was purified; thirdly the
intellectual, belonging to the
Augoeides, or the light-form of the intellect;
fourthly the
contemplative, or paradigmatic, by which union with
God was realised.
Porphyry writes: "He who energises according to
the practical virtues is
a worthy man; but he who energises according to the
purifying virtues is
an angelic man, or is also a good daimon. He who
energises according to
the intellectual virtues alone is a God; but he who
energises according
to the paradigmatic virtues is the Father of the
Gods."[24]
Much instruction was also given in the Mysteries by
the archangelic and
other hierarchies, and Pythagoras, the great teacher
who was initiated
in India, and who gave "the knowledge of things
that are" to his pledged
disciples, is said to have possessed such a knowledge
of music that he
could use it for the controlling of men's wildest
passions, and the
illuminating of their minds. Of this, instances are
given by Iamblichus
in his _Life of Pythagoras_. It seems probable that
the title of
Theodidaktos, given to Ammonius Saccas, the master of
Plotinus, referred
less to the sublimity of his teachings than to this
divine instruction
received by him in the Mysteries.
Some of the symbols used are explained by
Iamblichus,[25] who bids
Porphyry remove from his thought the image of the
thing symbolised and
reach its intellectual meaning. Thus "mire"
meant everything that was
bodily and material; the "God sitting above the
lotus" signified that
God transcended both the mire and the intellect,
symbolised by the
lotus, and was established in Himself, being seated.
If "sailing in a
ship," His rule over the world was pictured. And
so on.[26] On this use
of symbols Proclus remarks that "the Orphic
method aimed at revealing
divine things by means of symbols, a method common to
all writers of
divine lore."[27]
The Pythagorean School in Magna Graecia was closed at
the end of the
sixth century B.C., owing to the persecution of the
civil power, but
other communities existed, keeping up the sacred
tradition.[28] Mead
states that Plato intellectualised it, in order to
protect it from an
increasing profanation, and the Eleusinian rites
preserved some of its
forms, having lost its substance. The Neo-Platonists
inherited from
Pythagoras and Plato, and their works should be studied
by those who
would realise something of the grandeur and the beauty
preserved for
the world in the Mysteries.
The Pythagorean School itself may serve as a type of
the discipline
enforced. On this Mead gives many interesting
details,[29] and remarks:
"The authors of antiquity are agreed that this
discipline had succeeded
in producing the highest examples, not only of the
purest chastity and
sentiment, but also a simplicity of manners, a
delicacy, and a taste for
serious pursuits which was unparalleled. This is
admitted even by
Christian writers." The School had outer
disciples, leading the family
and social life, and the above quotation refers to
these. In the inner
School were three degrees--the first of Hearers, who
studied for two
years in silence, doing their best to master the
teachings; the second
degree was of Mathematici, wherein were taught
geometry and music, the
nature of number, form, colour, and sound; the third
degree was of
Physici, who mastered cosmogony and metaphysics. This
led up to the true
Mysteries. Candidates for the School must be "of
an unblemished
reputation and of a contented disposition."
The close identity between the methods and aims
pursued in these various
Mysteries and those of Yoga in India is patent to the
most superficial
observer. It is not, however, necessary to suppose
that the nations of
antiquity drew from India; all alike drew from the one
source, the Grand
Lodge of Central Asia, which sent out its Initiates to
every land. They
all taught the same doctrines, and pursued the same
methods, leading to
the same ends. But there was much intercommunication
between the
Initiates of all nations, and there was a common
language and a common
symbolism. Thus Pythagoras journeyed among the
Indians, and received in
India a high Initiation, and Apollonius of Tyana later
followed in his
steps. Quite Indian in phrase as well as thought were
the dying words of
Plotinus: "Now I seek to lead back the Self
within me to the
All-self."[30]
Among the Hindus the duty of teaching the supreme knowledge
only to the
worthy was strictly insisted on. "The deepest
mystery of the end of
knowledge ... is not to be declared to one who is not
a son or a pupil,
and who is not tranquil in mind."[31] So again,
after a sketch of Yoga
we read: "Stand up! awake! having found the Great
Ones, listen! The road
is as difficult to tread as the sharp edge of a razor.
Thus say the
wise."[32] The Teacher is needed, for written
teaching alone does not
suffice. The "end of knowledge" is to know
God--not only to believe; to
become one with God--not only to worship afar off. Man
must know the
reality of the divine Existence, and then know--not
only vaguely believe
and hope--that his own innermost Self is one with God,
and that the aim
of life is to realise that unity. Unless religion can
guide a man to
that realisation, it is but "as sounding brass or
a tinkling
cymbal."[33]
So also it was asserted that man should learn to leave
the gross body:
"Let a man with firmness separate it [the soul]
from his own body, as a
grass-stalk from its sheath."[34] And it was
written! "In the golden
highest sheath dwells the stainless, changeless
Brahman; It is the
radiant white Light of lights, known to the knowers of
the Self."[35]
"When the seer sees the golden-coloured Creator,
the Lord, the Spirit,
whose womb is Brahman, then, having thrown away merit
and demerit,
stainless, the wise one reaches the highest
union."[36]
Nor were the Hebrews without their secret knowledge
and their Schools of
Initiation. The company of prophets at Naioth presided
over by
Samuel[37] formed such a School, and the oral teaching
was handed down
by them. Similar Schools existed at Bethel and
Jericho,[38] and in
Cruden's _Concordance_[39] there is the following
interesting note: "The
Schools or Colleges of the prophets are the first
[schools] of which we
have any account in Scripture; where the children of
the prophets, that
is, their disciples, lived in the exercises of a
retired and austere
life, in study and meditation, and reading of the law
of God.... These
Schools, or Societies, of the prophets were succeeded
by the
Synagogues." The _Kabbala_, which contains the
semi-public teaching, is,
as it now stands, a modern compilation, part of it
being the work of
Rabbi Moses de Leon, who died A.D. 1305. It consists
of five books,
Bahir, Zohar, Sepher Sephiroth, Sepher Yetzirah, and
Asch Metzareth, and
is asserted to have been transmitted orally from very
ancient times--as
antiquity is reckoned historically. Dr. Wynn Westcott
says that "Hebrew
tradition assigns the oldest parts of the Zohar to a
date antecedent to
the building of the second Temple;" and Rabbi
Simeon ben Jochai is said
to have written down some of it in the first century
A.D. The Sepher
Yetzirah is spoken of by Saadjah Gaon, who died A.D.
940, as "very
ancient."[40] Some portions of the ancient oral
teaching have been
incorporated in the _Kabbala_ as it now stands, but
the true archaic
wisdom of the Hebrews remains in the guardianship of a
few of the true
sons of Israel.
Brief as is this outline, it is sufficient to show the
existence of a
hidden side in the religions of the world outside
Christianity, and we
may now examine the question whether Christianity was
an exception to
this universal rule.
-------
CHAPTER II.
THE HIDDEN SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY.
_(a)_ THE TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURES.
Having seen that the religions of the past claimed
with one voice to
have a hidden side, to be custodians of
"Mysteries," and that this claim
was endorsed by the seeking of initiation by the
greatest men, we must
now ascertain whether Christianity stands outside this
circle of
religions, and alone is without a Gnosis, offering to
the world only a
simple faith and not a profound knowledge. Were it so,
it would indeed
be a sad and lamentable fact, proving Christianity to
be intended for a
class only, and not for all types of human beings. But
that it is not
so, we shall be able to prove beyond the possibility
of rational doubt.
And that proof is the thing which Christendom at this
time most sorely
needs, for the very flower of Christendom is perishing
for lack of
knowledge. If the esoteric teaching can be
re-established and win
patient and earnest students, it will not be long
before the occult is
also restored. Disciples of the Lesser Mysteries will
become candidates
for the Greater, and with the regaining of knowledge
will come again the
authority of teaching. And truly the need is great.
For, looking at the
world around us, we find that religion in the West is
suffering from the
very difficulty that theoretically we should expect to
find.
Christianity, having lost its mystic and esoteric
teaching, is losing
its hold on a large number of the more highly
educated, and the partial
revival during the past few years is co-incident with
the
re-introduction of some mystic teaching. It is patent
to every student
of the closing forty years of the last century, that
crowds of
thoughtful and moral people have slipped away from the
churches, because
the teachings they received there outraged their
intelligence and
shocked their moral sense. It is idle to pretend that
the wide-spread
agnosticism of this period had its root either in lack
of morality or in
deliberate crookedness of mind. Everyone who carefully
studies the
phenomena presented will admit that men of strong
intellect have been
driven out of Christianity by the crudity of the
religious ideas set
before them, the contradictions in the authoritative
teachings, the
views as to God, man, and the universe that no trained
intelligence
could possibly admit. Nor can it be said that any kind
of moral
degradation lay at the root of the revolt against the
dogmas of the
Church. The rebels were not too bad for their
religion; on the contrary,
it was the religion that was too bad for them. The
rebellion against
popular Christianity was due to the awakening and the
growth of
conscience; it was the conscience that revolted, as
well as the
intelligence, against teachings dishonouring to God
and man alike, that
represented God as a tyrant, and man as essentially
evil, gaining
salvation by slavish submission.
The reason for this revolt lay in the gradual descent
of Christian
teaching into so-called simplicity, so that the most
ignorant might be
able to grasp it. Protestant religionists asserted
loudly that nothing
ought to be preached save that which every one could
grasp, that the
glory of the Gospel lay in its simplicity, and that
the child and the
unlearned ought to be able to understand and apply it
to life. True
enough, if by this it were meant that there are some
religious truths
that all can grasp, and that a religion fails if it
leaves the lowest,
the most ignorant, the most dull, outside the pale of
its elevating
influence. But false, utterly false, if by this it be
meant that
religion has no truths that the ignorant cannot
understand, that it is
so poor and limited a thing that it has nothing to
teach which is above
the thought of the unintelligent or above the moral
purview of the
degraded. False, fatally false, if such be the
meaning; for as that view
spreads, occupying the pulpits and being sounded in
the churches, many
noble men and women, whose hearts are half-broken as
they sever the
links that bind them to their early faith, withdraw
from the churches,
and leave their places to be filled by the
hypocritical and the
ignorant. They pass either into a state of passive
agnosticism, or--if
they be young and enthusiastic--into a condition of
active aggression,
not believing that that can be the highest which
outrages alike
intellect and conscience, and preferring the honesty
of open unbelief to
the drugging of the intellect and the conscience at
the bidding of an
authority in which they recognise nothing that is
divine.
In thus studying the thought of our time we see that
the question of a
hidden teaching in connection with Christianity becomes
of vital
importance. Is Christianity to survive as _the_
religion of the West? Is
it to live through the centuries of the future, and to
continue to play
a part in moulding the thought of the evolving western
races? If it is
to live, it must regain the knowledge it has lost, and
again have its
mystic and its occult teachings; it must again stand
forth as an
authoritative teacher of spiritual verities, clothed
with the only
authority worth anything, the authority of knowledge.
If these teachings
be regained, their influence will soon be seen in
wider and deeper
views of truth; dogmas, which now seem like mere
shells and fetters,
shall again be seen to be partial presentments of
fundamental realities.
First, Esoteric Christianity will reappear in the
"Holy Place," in the
Temple, so that all who are capable of receiving it
may follow its lines
of published thought; and secondly, Occult
Christianity will again
descend into the Adytum, dwelling behind the Veil
which guards the "Holy
of Holies," into which only the Initiate may
enter. Then again will
occult teaching be within the reach of those who
qualify themselves to
receive it, according to the ancient rules, those who
are willing in
modern days to meet the ancient demands, made on all
those who would
fain know the reality and truth of spiritual things.
Once again we turn our eyes to history, to see whether
Christianity was
unique among religions in having no inner teaching, or
whether it
resembled all others in possessing this hidden
treasure. Such a question
is a matter of evidence, not of theory, and must be
decided by the
authority of the existing documents and not by the
mere _ipse dixit_ of
modern Christians.
As a matter of fact both the "New Testament"
and the writings of the
early Church make the same declarations as to the
possession by the
Church of such teachings, and we learn from these the
fact of the
existence of Mysteries--called the Mysteries of Jesus,
or the Mystery of
the Kingdom--the conditions imposed on candidates,
something of the
general nature of the teachings given, and other
details. Certain
passages in the "New Testament" would remain
entirely obscure, if it
were not for the light thrown on them by the definite
statements of the
Fathers and Bishops of the Church, but in that light
they became clear
and intelligible.
It would indeed have been strange had it been
otherwise when we consider
the lines of religious thought which influenced
primitive Christianity.
Allied to the Hebrews, the Persians, and the Greeks,
tinged by the older
faiths of India, deeply coloured by Syrian and
Egyptian thought, this
later branch of the great religious stem could not do
other than again
re-affirm the ancient traditions, and place in the
grasp of western
races the full treasure of the ancient teaching.
"The faith once
delivered to the saints" would indeed have been
shorn of its chief value
if, when delivered to the West, the pearl of esoteric
teaching had been
withheld.
The first evidence to be examined is that of the
"New Testament." For
our purpose we may put aside all the vexed questions
of different
readings and different authors, that can only be
decided by scholars.
Critical scholarship has much to say on the age of
MSS., on the
authenticity of documents, and so on. But we need not
concern ourselves
with these. We may accept the canonical Scriptures, as
showing what was
believed in the early Church as to the teaching of the
Christ and of His
immediate followers, and see what they say as to the
existence of a
secret teaching given only to the few. Having seen the
words put into
the mouth of Jesus Himself, and regarded by the Church
as of supreme
authority, we will look at the writings of the great
apostle S. Paul;
then we will consider the statements made by those who
inherited the
apostolic tradition and guided the Church during the
first centuries
A.D. Along this unbroken line of tradition and written
testimony the
proposition that Christianity had a hidden side can be
established. We
shall further find that the Lesser Mysteries of mystic
interpretation
can be traced through the centuries to the beginning
of the 19th
century, and that though there were no Schools of
Mysticism recognised
as preparatory to Initiation, after the disappearance
of the Mysteries,
yet great Mystics, from time to time, reached the
lower stages of
exstasy, by their own sustained efforts, aided
doubtless by invisible
Teachers.
The words of the Master Himself are clear and
definite, and were, as we
shall see, quoted by Origen as referring to the secret
teaching
preserved in the Church. "And when he was alone,
they that were about
Him with the twelve asked of Him the parable. And He
said unto them,
'Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the
kingdom of God, but
unto them that are without, all these things are done
in parables.'" And
later: "With many such parables spake He the word
unto them, as they
were able to hear it. But without a parable spake He
not unto them; and
when they were alone He expounded all things to His
disciples."[41] Mark
the significant words, "when they were
alone," and the phrase, "them
that are without." So also in the version of S.
Matthew: "Jesus sent the
multitude away, and went into the house; and His
disciples came unto
Him." These teachings given "in the
house," the innermost meanings of
His instructions, were alleged to be handed on from
teacher to teacher.
The Gospel gives, it will be noted, the allegorical
mystic explanation,
that which we have called The Lesser Mysteries, but
the deeper meaning
was said to be given only to the Initiates.
Again, Jesus tells even His apostles: "I have yet
many things to say to
you, but ye cannot bear them now."[42] Some of
them were probably said
after His death, when He was seen of His disciples,
"speaking of the
things pertaining to the kingdom of God."[43]
None of these have been
publicly recorded, but who can believe that they were
neglected or
forgotten, and were not handed down as a priceless
possession? There was
a tradition in the Church that He visited His apostles
for a
considerable period after His death, for the sake of
giving them
instruction--a fact that will be referred to
later--and in the famous
Gnostic treatise, the _Pistis Sophia_, we read:
"It came to pass, when
Jesus had risen from the dead, that He passed eleven
years speaking with
His disciples and instructing them."[44] Then
there is the phrase, which
many would fain soften and explain away: "Give
not that which is holy to
the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before
swine"[45]--a precept which
is of general application indeed, but was considered
by the early
Church to refer to the secret teachings. It should be
remembered that
the words had not the same harshness of sound in the
ancient days as
they have now; for the words "dogs"--like
"the vulgar," "the
profane"--was applied by those within a certain
circle to all who were
outside its pale, whether by a society or association,
or by a
nation--as by the Jews to all Gentiles.[46] It was
sometimes used to
designate those who were outside the circle of
Initiates, and we find it
employed in that sense in the early Church; those who,
not having been
initiated into the Mysteries, were regarded as being
outside "the
kingdom of God," or "the spiritual
Israel," had this name applied to
them.
There were several names, exclusive of the term
"The Mystery," or "The
Mysteries," used to designate the sacred circle
of the Initiates or
connected with Initiation: "The Kingdom,"
"The Kingdom of God," "The
Kingdom of Heaven," "The Narrow Path,"
"The Strait Gate," "The
Perfect," "The Saved," "Life
Eternal," "Life," "The Second Birth," "A
Little One," "A Little Child." The
meaning is made plain by the use of
these words in early Christian writings, and in some
cases even outside
the Christian pale. Thus the term, "The
Perfect," was used by the
Essenes, who had three orders in their communities:
the Neophytes, the
Brethren, and the Perfect--the latter being Initiates;
and it is
employed generally in that sense in old writings.
"The Little Child" was
the ordinary name for a candidate just initiated,
_i.e._, who had just
taken his "second birth."
When we know this use, many obscure and otherwise
harsh passages become
intelligible. "Then said one unto Him: Lord, are
there few that be
saved? And He said unto them: Strive to enter in at
the strait gate; for
many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall
not be able."[47]
If this be applied in the ordinary Protestant way to
salvation from
everlasting hell-fire, the statement becomes
incredible, shocking. No
Saviour of the world can be supposed to assert that
many will seek to
avoid hell and enter heaven, but will not be able to
do so. But as
applied to the narrow gateway of Initiation and to
salvation from
rebirth, it is perfectly true and natural. So again:
"Enter ye in at the
strait gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way
that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat;
because strait is
the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto
life; and few there be
that find it."[48] The warning which immediately
follows against the
false prophets, the teachers of the dark Mysteries, is
most apposite in
this connection. No student can miss the familiar ring
of these words
used in this same sense in other writings. The
"ancient narrow way" is
familiar to all; the path "difficult to tread as
the sharp edge of a
razor,"[49] already mentioned; the going
"from death to death" of those
who follow the flower-strewn path of desires, who do
not know God; for
those men only become immortal and escape from the
wide mouth of death,
from ever repeated destruction, who have quitted all
desires.[50] The
allusion to death is, of course, to the repeated
births of the soul into
gross material existence, regarded always as
"death" compared to the
"life" of the higher and subtler worlds.
This "Strait Gate" was the gateway of
Initiation, and through it a
candidate entered "The Kingdom." And it ever
has been, and must be, true
that only a few can enter that gateway, though
myriads--an exceedingly
"great multitude, which no man could
number,"[51] not a few--enter into
the happiness of the heaven-world. So also spoke
another great Teacher,
nearly three thousand years earlier: "Among
thousands of men scarce one
striveth for perfection; of the successful strivers
scarce one knoweth
me in essence."[52] For the Initiates are few in
each generation, the
flower of humanity; but no gloomy sentence of
everlasting woe is
pronounced in this statement on the vast majority of
the human race.
The saved are, as Proclus taught,[53] those who escape
from the circle
of generation, within which humanity is bound.
In this connection we may recall the story of the
young man who came to
Jesus, and, addressing Him as "Good Master,"
asked how he might win
eternal life--the well-recognised liberation from
rebirth by knowledge
of God.[54] His first answer was the regular exoteric
precept: "Keep the
commandments." But when the young man answered:
"All these things have I
kept from my youth up;" then, to that conscience
free from all knowledge
of transgression, came the answer of the true Teacher:
"If thou wilt be
perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow
me." "If thou wilt be
perfect," be a member of the Kingdom, poverty and
obedience must be
embraced. And then to His own disciples Jesus explains
that a rich man
can hardly enter the Kingdom of Heaven, such entrance
being more
difficult than for a camel to pass through the eye of
a needle; with men
such entrance could not be, with God all things were
possible.[55] Only
God in man can pass that barrier.
This text has been variously explained away, it being
obviously
impossible to take it in its surface meaning, that a
rich man cannot
enter a post-mortem state of happiness. Into that
state the rich man may
enter as well as the poor, and the universal practice
of Christians
shows that they do not for one moment believe that
riches imperil their
happiness after death. But if the real meaning of the
Kingdom of Heaven
be taken, we have the expression of a simple and
direct fact. For that
knowledge of God which is Eternal Life[56] cannot be
gained till
everything earthly is surrendered, cannot be learned
until everything
has been sacrificed. The man must give up not only
earthly wealth, which
henceforth may only pass through his hands as steward,
but he must give
up his inner wealth as well, so far as he holds it as
his own against
the world; until he is stripped naked he cannot pass
the narrow gateway.
Such has ever been a condition of Initiation, and
"poverty, obedience,
chastity," has been the vow of the candidate.
The "second birth" is another
well-recognised term for Initiation; even
now in India the higher castes are called
"twice-born," and the ceremony
that makes them twice-born is a ceremony of
Initiation--mere husk truly,
in these modern days, but the "pattern of things
in the heavens."[57]
When Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, He states that
"Except a man be
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,"
and this birth is spoken
of as that "of water and the Spirit;"[58]
this is the first Initiation;
a later one is that of "the Holy Ghost and
fire,"[59] the baptism of the
Initiate in his manhood, as the first is that of
birth, which welcomes
him as "the Little Child" entering the
Kingdom.[60] How thoroughly this
imagery was familiar among the mystic of the Jews is
shown by the
surprise evinced by Jesus when Nicodemus stumbled over
His mystic
phraseology: "Art thou a master of Israel, and
knowest not these
things?"[61]
Another precept of Jesus which remains as "a hard
saying" to his
followers is: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as
your Father which is in
heaven is perfect."[62] The ordinary Christian
knows that he cannot
possibly obey this command; full of ordinary human
frailties and
weaknesses, how can he become perfect as God is perfect?
Seeing the
impossibility of the achievement set before him, he
quietly puts it
aside, and thinks no more about it. But seen as the
crowning effort of
many lives of steady improvement, as the triumph of
the God within us
over the lower nature, it comes within calculable
distance, and we
recall the words of Porphyry, how the man who achieves
"the paradigmatic
virtues is the Father of the Gods,"[63] and that
in the Mysteries these
virtues were acquired.
S. Paul follows in the footsteps of his Master, and speaks
in exactly
the same sense, but, as might be expected from his
organising work in
the Church, with greater explicitness and clearness.
The student should
read with attention chapters ii. and iii., and verse 1
of chapter iv. of
the First Epistle to the Corinthians, remembering, as
he reads, that the
words are addressed to baptised and communicant
members of the Church,
full members from the modern standpoint, although
described as babes and
carnal by the Apostle. They were not catechumens or
neophytes, but men
and women who were in complete possession of all the
privileges and
responsibilities of Church membership, recognised by
the Apostle as
being separate from the world, and expected not to
behave as men of the
world. They were, in fact, in possession of all that
the modern Church
gives to its members. Let us summarise the Apostle's
words:
"I came to you bearing the divine testimony, not
alluring you with human
wisdom but with the power of the Spirit. Truly 'we
speak wisdom among
them that are perfect,' but it is no human wisdom. 'We
speak the wisdom
of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God
ordained before
the world' began, and which none even of the princes
of this world know.
The things of that wisdom are beyond men's thinking,
'but God hath
revealed them unto us by his Spirit ... the deep
things of God,' 'which
the Holy Ghost teacheth.'[64] These are spiritual
things, to be
discerned only by the spiritual man, in whom is the
mind of Christ. 'And
I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto
spiritual, but as unto
carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.... Ye were not
able to bear it,
neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal.'
'As a wise
master-builder[65] I have laid the foundation,' and
'ye are the temple
of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.' 'Let a
man so account
of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of
the Mysteries of
God.'"
Can any one read this passage--and all that has been
done in the summary
is to bring out the salient points--without
recognising the fact that
the Apostle possessed a divine wisdom given in the
Mysteries, that his
Corinthian followers were not yet able to receive? And
note the
recurring technical terms: the "wisdom," the
"wisdom of God in a
mystery," the "hidden wisdom," known
only to the "spiritual" man, spoken
of only among the "perfect," wisdom from
which the non-"spiritual," the
"babes in Christ," the "carnal,"
were excluded, known to the "wise
master-builder," the "steward of the
Mysteries of God."
Again and again he refers to these Mysteries. Writing
to the Ephesian
Christians he says that "by revelation," by
the unveiling, had been
"made known unto me the Mystery," and hence
his "knowledge in the
Mystery of Christ"; all might know of the
"fellowship of the
Mystery."[66] Of this Mystery, he repeated to the
Colossians, he was
"made a minister," "the Mystery which
hath been hid from ages and from
generations, but now is made manifest to His
saints"; not to the world,
nor even to Christians, but only to the Holy Ones. To
them was unveiled
"the glory of this Mystery"; and what was
it? "Christ _in you_"--a
significant phrase, which we shall see, in a moment,
belonged to the
life of the Initiate; thus ultimately must every man
learn the wisdom,
and become "perfect in Christ Jesus."[67]
These Colossians he bids pray
"that God would open to us a door of utterance,
to speak the mystery of
Christ,"[68] a passage to which S. Clement refers
as one in which the
apostle "clearly reveals that knowledge belongs
not to all."[69] So
also he writes to his loved Timothy, bidding him
select his deacons from
those who hold "the Mystery of the faith in a
pure conscience," that
great "Mystery of Godliness," that he had
learned,[70] knowledge of
which was necessary for the teachers of the Church.
Now S. Timothy holds an important position, as
representing the next
generation of Christian teachers. He was a pupil of S.
Paul, and was
appointed by him to guide and rule a portion of the
Church. He had been,
we learn, initiated into the Mysteries by S. Paul himself,
and reference
is made to this, the technical phrases once more
serving as a clue.
"This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy,
according to the
prophecies which went before on thee,"[71] the
solemn benediction of the
Initiator, who admitted the candidate; but not alone
was the Initiator
present: "Neglect not the gift that is in thee,
which was given thee by
prophecy, by the laying on of the hands of the
Presbytery,"[72] of the
Elder Brothers. And he reminds him to lay hold of that
"eternal life,
whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a
good profession
before many witnesses"[73]--the vow of the new
Initiate, pledged in the
presence of the Elder Brothers, and of the assembly of
Initiates. The
knowledge then given was the sacred charge of which S.
Paul cries out so
forcibly: "O Timothy, keep that which is
committed to thy
trust"[74]--not the knowledge commonly possessed
by Christians, as to
which no special obligation lay upon S. Timothy, but
the sacred deposit
committed to his trust as an Initiate, and essential
to the welfare of
the Church. S. Paul later recurs again to this, laying
stress on the
supreme importance of the matter in a way that would
be exaggerated had
the knowledge been the common property of Christian
men: "Hold fast the
form of sound words which thou hast heard of me....
That good thing
which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost
which dwelleth in
us"[75]--as serious an adjuration as human lips
could frame. Further,
it was his duty to provide for the due transmission of
this sacred
deposit, that it might be handed on to the future, and
the Church might
never be left without teachers: "The things that
thou hast heard of me
among many witnesses"--the sacred oral teachings
given in the assembly
of Initiates, who bore witness to the accuracy of the
transmission--"the
same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to
teach others
also."[76]
The knowledge--or, if the phrase be preferred, the
supposition--that the
Church possessed these hidden teachings throws a flood
of light on the
scattered remarks made by S. Paul about himself, and
when they are
gathered together, we have an outline of the evolution
of the Initiate.
S. Paul asserts that though he was already among the
perfect, the
initiated--for he says: "Let us, therefore, as
many as be perfect, be
thus minded"--he had not yet
"attained," was indeed not yet wholly
"perfect," for he had not yet won Christ, he
had not yet reached the
"high calling of God in Christ," "the
power of His resurrection, and
the fellowship of His sufferings, being made
conformable unto His
death;" and he was striving, he says, "if by
any means I might attain
unto the resurrection of the dead."[77] For this
was the Initiation that
liberated, that made the Initiate the Perfect Master,
the Risen Christ,
freeing Him finally from the "dead," from
the humanity within the circle
of generation, from the bonds that fettered the soul
to gross matter.
Here again we have a number of technical terms, and
even the surface
reader should realise that the "resurrection of
the dead" here spoken of
cannot be the ordinary resurrection of the modern
Christian, supposed to
be inevitable for all men, and therefore obviously not
requiring any
special struggle on the part of any one to attain to
it. In fact the
very word "attain" would be out of place in
referring to a universal and
inevitable human experience. S. Paul could not avoid
_that_
resurrection, according to the modern Christian view.
What then was the
resurrection to attain which he was making such
strenuous efforts? Once
more the only answer comes from the Mysteries. In them
the Initiate
approaching the Initiation that liberated from the
cycle of rebirth, the
circle of generation, was called "the suffering
Christ;" he shared the
sufferings of the Saviour of the world, was crucified
mystically, "made
conformable to His death," and then attained the
resurrection, the
fellowship of the glorified Christ, and, after, that
death had over him
no power.[78] This was "the prize" towards
which the great Apostle was
pressing, and he urged "as many as be
perfect," _not the ordinary
believer_, thus also to strive. Let them not be
content with what they
had gained, but still press onwards.
This resemblance of the Initiate to the Christ is,
indeed, the very
groundwork of the Greater Mysteries, as we shall see
more in detail when
we study "The Mystical Christ." The Initiate
was no longer to look on
Christ as outside himself: "Though we have known
Christ after the
flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no
more."[79]
The ordinary believer had "put on Christ;"
"as many of you as have been
baptised into Christ have put on Christ."[80]
Then they were the "babes
in Christ" to whom reference has already been
made, and Christ was the
Saviour to whom they looked for help, knowing Him
"after the flesh." But
when they had conquered the lower nature and were no
longer "carnal,"
then they were to enter on a higher path, and were
themselves to become
Christ. This which he himself had already reached, was
the longing of
the Apostle for his followers: "My little
children, of whom I travail in
birth again until Christ be formed _in you_."[81]
Already he was their
spiritual father, having "begotten you through
the gospel."[82] But now
"again" he was as a parent, as their mother
to bring them to the second
birth. Then the infant Christ, the Holy Child, was
born in the soul,
"the hidden man of the heart;"[83] the
Initiate thus became that
"Little Child"; henceforth he was to live
out in his own person the life
of the Christ, until he became the "perfect
man," growing "unto the
measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ."[84] Then he, as S. Paul
was doing, filled up the sufferings of Christ in his
own flesh,[85] and
always bore "about in the body the dying of the
Lord Jesus,"[86] so that
he could truly say: "I am crucified with Christ:
nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."[87] Thus was
the Apostle himself
suffering; thus he describes himself. And when the
struggle is over, how
different is the calm tone of triumph from the strained
effort of the
earlier years: "I am now ready to be offered, and
the time of my
departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I
have finished my
course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is
laid up for me a
crown of righteousness."[88] This was the crown
given to "him that
overcometh," of whom it is said by the ascended
Christ: "I will make him
a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go no
more out."[89] For
after the "Resurrection" the Initiate has
become the Perfect Man, the
Master, and He goes out no more from the Temple, but
from it serves and
guides the worlds.
It may be well to point out, ere closing this chapter,
that S. Paul
himself sanctions the use of the theoretical mystic
teaching in
explaining the historical events recorded in the
Scriptures. The history
therein written is not regarded by him as a mere
record of facts, which
occurred on the physical plane. A true mystic, he saw
in the physical
events the shadows of the universal truths ever
unfolding in higher and
inner worlds, and knew that the events selected for
preservation in
occult writings were such as were typical, the
explanation of which
would subserve human instruction. Thus he takes the
story of Abraham,
Sarai, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac, and saying,
"which things are an
allegory," he proceeds to give the mystical
interpretation.[90]
Referring to the escape of the Israelites from Egypt,
he speaks of the
Red Sea as a baptism, of the manna and the water as
spiritual meat and
spiritual drink, of the rock from which the water
flowed as Christ.[91]
He sees the great mystery of the union of Christ and
His Church in the
human relation of husband and wife, and speaks of
Christians as the
flesh and the bones of the body of Christ.[92] The
writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews allegorises the whole Jewish system of
worship. In the
Temple he sees a pattern of the heavenly Temple, in
the High Priest he
sees Christ, in the sacrifices the offering of the
spotless Son; the
priests of the Temple are but "the example and
shadow of heavenly
things," of the heavenly priesthood serving in
"the true tabernacle." A
most elaborate allegory is thus worked out in chapters
iii.-x., and the
writer alleges that the Holy Ghost thus signified the
deeper meaning;
all was "a figure for the time."
In this view of the sacred writings, it is not alleged
that the events
recorded did not take place, but only that their
physical happening was
a matter of minor importance. And such explanation is
the unveiling of
the Lesser Mysteries, the mystic teaching which is
permitted to be given
to the world. It is not, as many think, a mere play of
the imagination,
but is the outcome of a true intuition, seeing the
patterns in the
heavens, and not only the shadows cast by them on the
screen of earthly
time.
-------
CHAPTER III.
THE HIDDEN SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY(_concluded_).
(_(b)_) THE TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH.
While it may be that some would be willing to admit
the possession by
the Apostles and their immediate successors of a
deeper knowledge of
spiritual things than was current among the masses of
the believers
around them, few will probably be willing to take the
next step, and,
leaving that charmed circle, accept as the depository
of their sacred
learning the Mysteries of the Early Church. Yet we
have S. Paul
providing for the transmission of the unwritten
teaching, himself
initiating S. Timothy, and instructing S. Timothy to
initiate others in
his turn, who should again hand it on to yet others.
We thus see the
provision of four successive generations of teachers,
spoken of in the
Scriptures themselves, and these would far more than
overlap the writers
of the Early Church, who bear witness to the existence
of the Mysteries.
For among these are pupils of the Apostles themselves,
though the most
definite statements belong to those removed from the
Apostles by one
intermediate teacher. Now, as soon as we begin to
study the writings of
the Early Church, we are met by the facts that there
are allusions which
are only intelligible by the existence of the
Mysteries, and then
statements that the Mysteries are existing. This
might, of course, have
been expected, seeing the point at which the New
Testament leaves the
matter, but it is satisfactory to find the facts
answer to the
expectation.
The first witnesses are those called the Apostolic
Fathers, the
disciples of the Apostles; but very little of their
writings, and that
disputed, remains. Not being written controversially,
the statements are
not as categorical as those of the later writers.
Their letters are for
the encouragement of the believers. Polycarp, Bishop
of Smyrna, and
fellow-disciple with Ignatius of S. John,[93]
expresses a hope that his
correspondents are "well versed in the sacred
Scriptures and that
nothing is hid from you; but to me this privilege is
not yet
granted"[94]--writing, apparently, before
reaching full Initiation.
Barnabas speaks of communicating "some portion of
what I have myself
received,"[95] and after expounding the Law
mystically, declares that
"we then, rightly understanding His commandments,
explain them as the
Lord intended."[96] Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch,
a disciple of S.
John,[97] speaks of himself as "not yet perfect
in Jesus Christ. For I
now begin to be a disciple, and I speak to you as my
fellow-disciples,"[98] and he speaks of them as
"initiated into the
mysteries of the Gospel with Paul, the holy, the
martyred."[99] Again
he says: "Might I not write to you things more
full of mystery? But I
fear to do so, lest I should inflict injury on you who
are but babes.
Pardon me in this respect, lest, as not being able to
receive their
weighty import, ye should be strangled by them. For
even I, though I am
bound [for Christ] and am able to understand heavenly
things, the
angelic orders, and the different sorts of angels and
hosts, the
distinction between powers and dominions, and the
diversities between
thrones and authorities, the mightiness of the aeons,
and the
pre-eminence of the cherubim and seraphim, the
sublimity of the Spirit,
the kingdom of the Lord, and above all the
incomparable majesty of
Almighty God--though I am acquainted with these
things, yet am I not
therefore by any means perfect, nor am I such a
disciple as Paul or
Peter."[100] This passage is interesting, as
indicating that the
organisation of the celestial hierarchies was one of
the subjects in
which instruction was given in the Mysteries. Again he
speaks of the
High Priest, the Hierophant, "to whom the holy of
holies has been
committed, and who alone has been entrusted with the
secrets of
God."[101]
We come next to S. Clement of Alexandria and his pupil
Origen, the two
writers of the second and third centuries who tell us
most about the
Mysteries in the Early Church; though the general
atmosphere is full of
mystic allusions, these two are clear and categorical
in their
statements that the Mysteries were a recognised
institution.
Now S. Clement was a disciple of Pantaenus, and he
speaks of him and of
two others, said to be probably Tatian and Theodotus,
as "preserving the
tradition of the blessed doctrine derived directly
from the holy
Apostles, Peter, James, John, and Paul,"[102] his
link with the Apostles
themselves consisting thus of only one intermediary.
He was the head of
the Catechetical School of Alexandria in A.D. 189, and
died about A.D.
220. Origen, born about A.D. 185, was his pupil, and
he is, perhaps,
the most learned of the Fathers, and a man of the
rarest moral beauty.
These are the witnesses from whom we receive the most
important
testimony as to the existence of definite Mysteries in
the Early Church.
The _Stromata_, or Miscellanies, of S. Clement are our
source of
information about the Mysteries in his time. He
himself speaks of these
writings as a "miscellany of Gnostic notes,
according to the true
philosophy,"[103] and also describes them as
memoranda of the teachings
he had himself received from Pantaenus. The passage is
instructive: "The
Lord ... allowed us to communicate of those divine
Mysteries, and of
that holy light, to those who are able to receive
them. He did not
certainly disclose to the many what did not belong to
the many; but to
the few to whom He knew that they belonged, who were
capable of
receiving and being moulded according to them. But
secret things are
entrusted to speech, not to writing, as is the case
with God. And if
one say[104] that it is written, 'There is nothing
secret which shall
not be revealed, nor hidden which shall not be
disclosed,' let him also
hear from us, that to him who hears secretly, even
what is secret shall
be manifested. This is what was predicted by this
oracle. And to him who
is able secretly to observe what is delivered to him,
that which is
veiled shall be disclosed as truth; and what is hidden
to the many shall
appear manifest to the few.... The Mysteries are
delivered mystically,
that what is spoken may be in the mouth of the
speaker; rather not in
his voice, but in his understanding.... The writing of
these memoranda
of mine, I well know, is weak when compared with that
spirit, full of
grace, which I was privileged to hear. But it will be
an image to recall
the archetype to him who was struck with the
Thyrsus." The Thyrsus, we
may here interject, was the wand borne by Initiates,
and candidates were
touched with it during the ceremony of Initiation. It
had a mystic
significance, symbolising the spinal cord and the pineal
gland in the
Lesser Mysteries, and a Rod, known to Occultists, in
the Greater. To
say, therefore, "to him who was struck with the
Thyrsus" was exactly the
same as to say, "to him who was initiated in the
Mysteries." Clement
proceeds: "We profess not to explain secret
things sufficiently--far
from it--but only to recall them to memory, whether we
have forgot
aught, or whether for the purpose of not forgetting.
Many things, I well
know, have escaped us, through length of time, that
have dropped away
unwritten.... There are then some things of which we
have no
recollection; for the power that was in the blessed
men was great." A
frequent experience of those taught by the Great Ones,
for Their
presence stimulates and renders active powers which
are normally latent,
and which the pupil, unassisted, cannot evoke.
"There are also some
things which remained unnoted long, which have now
escaped; and others
which are effaced, having faded away in the mind
itself, since such a
task is not easy to those not experienced; these I
revive in my
commentaries. Some things I purposely omit, in the
exercise of a wise
selection, afraid to write what I guarded against
speaking; not
grudging--for that were wrong--but fearing for my
readers, lest they
should stumble by taking them in a wrong sense; and,
as the proverb
says, we should be found 'reaching a sword to a
child.' For it is
impossible that what has been written should not
escape [become known],
although remaining unpublished by me. But being always
revolved, using
the one only voice, that of writing, they answer
nothing to him that
makes enquiries beyond what is written; for they
require of necessity
the aid of some one, either of him who wrote, or of
some one else who
has walked in his footsteps. Some things my treatise
will hint; on some
it will linger; some it will merely mention. It will
try to speak
imperceptibly, to exhibit secretly, and to demonstrate
silently."[105]
This passage, if it stood alone, would suffice to
establish the
existence of a secret teaching in the Early Church.
But it stands by no
means alone. In Chapter xii. of this same Book I.,
headed, "The
Mysteries of the Faith not to be divulged to
all," Clement declares
that, since others than the wise may see his work,
"it is requisite,
therefore, to hide in a Mystery the wisdom spoken,
which the Son of God
taught." Purified tongue of the speaker, purified
ears of the hearer,
these were necessary. "Such were the impediments
in the way of my
writing. And even now I fear, as it is said, 'to cast
the pearls before
swine, lest they tread them under foot and turn and
rend us.' For it is
difficult to exhibit the really pure and transparent
words respecting
the true light, to swinish and untrained hearers. For
scarcely could
anything which they could hear be more ludicrous than
these to the
multitude; nor any subjects on the other hand more
admirable or more
inspiring to those of noble nature. But the wise do
not utter with their
mouth what they reason in council. 'But what ye hear
in the ear,' said
the Lord, 'proclaim upon the houses'; bidding them
receive the secret
traditions of the true knowledge, and expound them
aloft and
conspicuously; and as we have heard in the ear, so to
deliver them to
whom it is requisite; but not enjoining us to
communicate to all without
distinction, what is said to them in parables. But
there is only a
delineation in the memoranda, which have the truth
sown sparse and
broadcast, that it may escape the notice of those who
pick up seeds like
jackdaws; but when they find a good husbandman, each
one of them will
germinate and will produce corn."
Clement might have added that to "proclaim upon
the houses" was to
proclaim or expound in the assembly of the Perfect,
the Initiated, and
by no means to shout aloud to the man in the street.
Again he says that those who are "still blind and
dumb, not having
understanding, or the undazzled and keen vision of the
contemplative
soul ... must stand outside of the divine choir....
Wherefore, in
accordance with the method of concealment, the truly
sacred Word, truly
divine and most necessary for us, deposited in the
shrine of truth, was
by the Egyptians indicated by what were called among
them _adyta_, and
by the Hebrews by the veil. Only the consecrated ...
were allowed access
to them. For Plato also thought it not lawful for 'the
impure to touch
the pure.' Thence the prophecies and oracles are
spoken in enigmas, and
the Mysteries are not exhibited incontinently to all
and sundry, but
only after certain purifications and previous
instructions."[106] He
then descants at great length on Symbols, expounding
Pythagorean,
Hebrew, Egyptian,[107] and then remarks that the
ignorant and unlearned
man fails in understanding them. "But the Gnostic
apprehends. Now then
it is not wished that all things should be exposed
indiscriminately to
all and sundry, or the benefits of wisdom communicated
to those who have
not even in a dream been purified in soul (for it is
not allowed to hand
to every chance comer what has been procured with such
laborious
efforts); nor are the Mysteries of the Word to be
expounded to the
profane." The Pythagoreans and Plato, Zeno, and
Aristotle had exoteric
and esoteric teachings. The philosophers established
the Mysteries, for
"was it not more beneficial for the holy and
blessed contemplation of
realities to be concealed?"[108] The Apostles
also approved of "veiling
the Mysteries of the Faith," "for there is
an instruction to the
perfect," alluded to in Colossians i. 9-11 and
25-27. "So that, on the
one hand, then, there are the Mysteries which were hid
till the time of
the Apostles, and were delivered by them as they
received from the Lord,
and, concealed in the Old Testament, were manifested
to the saints. And,
on the other hand, there is 'the riches of the glory
of the mystery in
the Gentiles,' which is faith and hope in Christ;
which in another place
he has called the 'foundation.'" He quotes S.
Paul to show that this
"knowledge belongs not to all," and says,
referring to Heb. v. and vi.,
that "there were certainly among the Hebrews,
some things delivered
unwritten;" and then refers to S. Barnabas, who
speaks of God, "who has
put into our hearts wisdom and the understanding of
His secrets," and
says that "it is but for few to comprehend these
things," as showing a
"trace of Gnostic tradition." "Wherefore
instruction, which reveals
hidden things, is called illumination, as it is the
teacher only who
uncovers the lid of the ark."[109] Further
referring to S. Paul, he
comments on his remark to the Romans that he will
"come in the fulness
of the blessing of Christ,"[110] and says that he
thus designates "the
spiritual gift and the Gnostic interpretation, while
being present he
desires to impart to them present as 'the fulness of
Christ, according
to the revelation of the Mystery sealed in the ages of
eternity, but now
manifested by the prophetic Scriptures'[111].... But
only to a few of
them is shown what those things are which are
contained in the Mystery.
Rightly, then, Plato, in the epistles, treating of
God, says: 'We must
speak in enigmas; that should the tablet come by any
mischance on its
leaves either by sea or land, he who reads may remain
ignorant.'"[112]
After much examination of Greek writers, and an
investigation into
philosophy, S. Clement declares that the Gnosis
"imparted and revealed
by the Son of God, is wisdom.... And the Gnosis itself
is that which has
descended by transmission to a few, having been
imparted unwritten by
the Apostles."[113] A very long exposition of the
life of the Gnostic,
the Initiate, is given, and S. Clement concludes it by
saying: "Let the
specimen suffice to those who have ears. For it is not
required to
unfold the mystery, but only to indicate what is
sufficient for those
who are partakers in knowledge to bring it to
mind."[114]
Regarding Scripture as consisting of allegories and
symbols, and as
hiding the sense in order to stimulate enquiry and to
preserve the
ignorant from danger.[115] S. Clement naturally
confined the higher
instruction to the learned. "Our Gnostic will be
deeply learned,"[116]
he says. "Now the Gnostic must be
erudite."[117] Those who had acquired
readiness by previous training could master the deeper
knowledge, for
though "a man can be a believer without learning,
so also we assert that
it is impossible for a man without learning to comprehend
the things
which are declared in the faith."[118] "Some
who think themselves
naturally gifted, do not wish to touch either
philosophy or logic; nay
more, they do not wish to learn natural science. They
demand bare faith
alone.... So also I call him truly learned who brings
everything to bear
on the truth--so that, from geometry, and music, and
grammar, and
philosophy itself, culling what is useful, he guards
the faith against
assault.... How necessary is it for him who desires to
be partaker of
the power of God, to treat of intellectual subjects by
philosophising."[119] "The Gnostic avails
himself of branches of
learning as auxiliary preparatory
exercises."[120] So far was S.
Clement from thinking that the teaching of
Christianity should be
measured by the ignorance of the unlearned. "He
who is conversant with
all kinds of wisdom will be pre-eminently a
Gnostic."[121] Thus while he
welcomed the ignorant and the sinner, and found in the
Gospel what was
suited to their needs, he considered that only the learned
and the pure
were fit candidates for the Mysteries. "The
Apostle, in
contradistinction to Gnostic perfection, calls the
common faith _the
foundation_, and sometimes _milk_,"[122] but on
that foundation the
edifice of the Gnosis was to be raised, and the food
of men was to
succeed that of babes. There is nothing of harshness
nor of contempt in
the distinction he draws, but only a calm and wise
recognition of the
facts.
Even the well-prepared candidate, the learned and
trained pupil, could
only hope to advance step by step in the profound
truths unveiled in the
Mysteries. This appears clearly in his comments on the
vision of
Hermas, in which he also throws out some hints on
methods of reading
occult works. "Did not the Power also, that
appeared to Hermas in the
Vision, in the form of the Church, give for
transcription the book which
she wished to be made known to the elect? And this, he
says, he
transcribed to the letter, without finding how to
complete the
syllables. And this signified that the Scripture is
clear to all, when
taken according to base reading; and that this is the
faith which
occupies the place of the rudiments. Wherefore also
the figurative
expression is employed, 'reading according to the
letter,' while we
understand that the gnostic unfolding of Scriptures,
when faith has
already reached an advanced state, is likened to
reading according to
the syllables.... Now that the Saviour has taught the
Apostles the
unwritten rendering of the written (scriptures) has
been handed down
also to us, inscribed by the power of God on hearts
new, according to
the renovation of the book. Thus those of highest
repute among the
Greeks dedicate the fruit of the pomegranate to
Hermes, who they say is
speech, on account of its interpretation. For speech
conceals much....
That it is therefore not only to those who read simply
that the
acquisition of the truth is so difficult, but that not
even to those
whose prerogative the knowledge of the truth is, is
the contemplation of
it vouchsafed all at once, the history of Moses
teaches; until
accustomed to gaze, as the Hebrews on the glory of
Moses, and the
prophets of Israel on the visions of angels, so we
also become able to
look the splendours of truth in the face."[123]
Yet more references might be given, but these should
suffice to
establish the fact that S. Clement knew of, had been
initiated into, and
wrote for the benefit of those who had also been
initiated into, the
Mysteries in the Church.
The next witness is his pupil Origen, that most
shining light of
learning, courage, sanctity, devotion, meekness, and
zeal, whose works
remain as mines of gold wherein the student may dig
for the treasures of
wisdom.
In his famous controversy with Celsus attacks were
made on Christianity
which drew out a defence of the Christian position in
which frequent
references were made to the secret teachings.[124]
Celsus had alleged, as a matter of attack, that
Christianity was a
secret system, and Origen traverses this by saying
that while certain
doctrines were secret, many others were public, and
that this system of
exoteric and esoteric teachings, adopted in
Christianity, was also in
general use among philosophers. The reader should
note, in the following
passage, the distinction drawn between the
resurrection of Jesus,
regarded in a historical light, and the "mystery
of the resurrection."
"Moreover, since he [Celsus] frequently calls the
Christian doctrine a
secret system [of belief], we must confute him on this
point also, since
almost the entire world is better acquainted with what
Christians preach
than with the favourite opinions of philosophers. For
who is ignorant
of the statement that Jesus was born of a virgin, and
that He was
crucified, and that His resurrection is an article of
faith among many,
and that a general judgment is announced to come, in
which the wicked
are to be punished according to their deserts, and the
righteous to be
duly rewarded? And yet the Mystery of the
resurrection, not being
understood, is made a subject of ridicule among
unbelievers. In these
circumstances, to speak of the Christian doctrine as a
_secret_ system,
is altogether absurd. But that there should be certain
doctrines, not
made known to the multitude, which are [revealed]
after the exoteric
ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity
alone, but
also of philosophic systems, in which certain truths
are exoteric and
others esoteric. Some of the hearers of Pythagoras
were content with his
_ipse dixit_; while others were taught in secret those
doctrines which
were not deemed fit to be communicated to profane and
insufficiently
prepared ears. Moreover, all the Mysteries that are
celebrated
everywhere throughout Greece and barbarous countries,
although held in
secret, have no discredit thrown upon them, so that it
is in vain he
endeavours to calumniate the secret doctrines of
Christianity, seeing
that he does not correctly understand its
nature."[125]
It is impossible to deny that, in this important
passage, Origen
distinctly places the Christian Mysteries in the same
category as those
of the Pagan world, and claims that what is not
regarded as a discredit
to other religions should not form a subject of attack
when found in
Christianity.
Still writing against Celsus, he declares that the
secret teachings of
Jesus were preserved in the Church, and refers
specifically to the
explanations that He gave to His disciples of His
parables, in answering
Celsus' comparison of "the inner Mysteries of the
Church of God" with
the Egyptian worship of animals. "I have not yet
spoken of the
observance of all that is written in the Gospels, each
one of which
contains much doctrine difficult to be understood, not
merely by the
multitude, but even by certain of the more
intelligent, including a
very profound explanation of the parables which Jesus
delivered to
'those without,' while reserving the exhibition of
their full meaning
for those who had passed beyond the stage of exoteric
teaching, and who
came to Him privately in the house. And when he comes
to understand it,
he will admire the reason why some are said to be
'without,' and others
'in the house.'"[126]
And he refers guardedly to the "mountain"
which Jesus ascended, from
which he came down again to help "those who were
unable to follow Him
whither His disciples went." The allusion is to
"the Mountain of
Initiation," a well-known mystical phrase, as
Moses also made the
Tabernacle after the pattern "showed thee in the
mount."[127] Origen
refers to it again later, saying that Jesus showed
himself to be very
different in his real appearance when on the
"Mountain," from what those
saw who could not "follow Him on high."[128]
So also, in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,
Chap, xv., dealing
with the episode of the Syro-Phoenician woman, Origen
remarks: "And
perhaps, also, of the words of Jesus there are some
loaves which it is
possible to give to the more rational, as to children,
only; and others
as it were crumbs from the great house and table of
the well-born, which
may be used by some souls like dogs."
Celsus complaining that sinners were brought into the
Church, Origen
answers that the Church had medicine for those that
were sick, but also
the study and the knowledge of divine things for those
who were in
health. Sinners were taught not to sin, and only when
it was seen that
progress had been made, and men were "purified by
the Word," "then and
not before do we invite them to participation in our
Mysteries. For we
speak wisdom among them that are perfect."[129]
Sinners came to be
healed: "For there are in the divinity of the
Word some helps towards
the cure of those who are sick.... Others, again,
which to the pure in
soul and body exhibit the 'revelation of the Mystery,
which was kept
secret since the world began, but now is made manifest
by the Scriptures
of the prophets,' and 'by the appearing of our Lord
Jesus Christ,' which
'appearing' is manifested to each one of those who are
perfect, and
which enlightens the reason in the true knowledge of
things."[130] Such
appearances of divine Beings took place, we have seen,
in the Pagan
Mysteries, and those of the Church had equally
glorious visitants. "God
the Word," he says, "was sent as a physician
to sinners, but as a
Teacher of Divine Mysteries to those who are already
pure, and who sin
no more."[131] "Wisdom will not enter into
the soul of a base man, nor
dwell in a body that is involved in sin;" hence
these higher teachings
are given only to those who are "athletes in
piety and in every virtue."
Christians did not admit the impure to this knowledge,
but said:
"Whoever has clean hands, and, therefore, lifts
up holy hands to God ...
let him come to us ... whoever is pure not only from
all defilement,
but from what are regarded as lesser transgressions,
let him be boldly
initiated in the Mysteries of Jesus, which properly
are made known only
to the holy and the pure." Hence also, ere the
ceremony of Initiation
began, he who acts as Initiator, according to the
precepts of Jesus, the
Hierophant, made the significant proclamation "to
those who have been
purified in heart: He, whose soul has, for a long
time, been conscious
of no evil, especially since he yielded himself to the
healing of the
Word, let such a one hear the doctrines which were
spoken in private by
Jesus to His genuine disciples." This was the
opening of the "initiating
those who were already purified into the sacred
Mysteries."[132] Such
only might learn the realities of the unseen worlds,
and might enter
into the sacred precincts where, as of old, angels
were the teachers,
and where knowledge was given by sight and not only by
words. It is
impossible not to be struck with the different tone of
these Christians
from that of their modern successors. With them
perfect purity of life,
the practice of virtue, the fulfilling of the divine
Law in every detail
of outer conduct, the perfection of righteousness,
were--as with the
Pagans--only the beginning of the way instead of the
end. Nowadays
religion is considered to have gloriously accomplished
its object when
it has made the Saint; then, it was to the Saints that
it devoted its
highest energies, and, taking the pure in heart, it
led them to the
Beatific Vision.
The same fact of secret teaching comes out again, when
Origen is
discussing the arguments of Celsus as to the wisdom of
retaining
ancestral customs, based on the belief that "the
various quarters of the
earth were from the beginning allotted to different
superintending
Spirits, and were thus distributed among certain
governing Powers, and
in this way the administration of the world is carried
on."[133]
Origen having animadverted on the deductions of
Celsus, proceeds: "But
as we think it likely that some of those who are
accustomed to deeper
investigation will fall in with this treatise, let us
venture to lay
down some considerations of a profounder kind,
conveying a mystical and
secret view respecting the original distribution of
the various quarters
of the earth among different superintending
Spirits."[134] He says that
Celsus has misunderstood the deeper reasons relating
to the arrangement
of terrestrial affairs, some of which are even touched
upon in Grecian
history. Then he quotes Deut. xxxii. 8-9: "When
the Most High divided
the nations, when he dispersed the sons of Adam, He
set the bounds of
the people according to the number of the Angels of
God; and the Lord's
portion was his people Jacob, and Israel the cord of
his inheritance."
This is the wording of the Septuagint, not that of the
English
authorised version, but it is very suggestive of the
title the "Lord"
being regarded as that of the Ruling Angel of the Jews
only, and not of
the "Most High," _i.e._ God. This view has
disappeared, from ignorance,
and hence the impropriety of many of the statements
referring to the
"Lord," when they are transferred to the
"Most High," _e.g._ Judges i.
19.
Origen then relates the history of the Tower of Babel,
and continues:
"But on these subjects much, and that of a
mystical kind, might be said;
in keeping with which is the following: 'It is good to
keep close the
secret of a king,' Tobit xii. 7, in order that the
doctrine of the
entrance of souls into bodies (not, however, that of
the transmigration
from one body into another) may not be thrown before
the common
understanding, nor what is holy given to the dogs, nor
pearls be cast
before swine. For such a procedure would be impious,
being equivalent to
a betrayal of the mysterious declarations of God's
wisdom.... It is
sufficient, however, to represent in the style of a
historic narrative
what is intended to convey a secret meaning in the
garb of history, that
those who have the capacity may work out for
themselves all that relates
to the subject."[135] He then expounds more fully
the Tower of Babel
story, and writes: "Now, in the next place, if
any one has the capacity
let him understand that in what assumes the form of
history, and which
contains some things that are literally true, while
yet it conveys a
deeper meaning...."[136]
After endeavouring to show that the "Lord"
was more powerful than the
other superintending Spirits of the different quarters
of the earth, and
that he sent his people forth to be punished by living
under the
dominion of the other powers, and afterwards reclaimed
them with all of
the less favoured nations who could be drawn in,
Origen concludes by
saying: "As we have previously observed, these
remarks are to be
understood as being made by us with a concealed
meaning, by way of
pointing out the mistakes of those who assert
..."[137] as did Celsus.
After remarking that "the object of Christianity
is that we should
become wise,"[138] Origen proceeds: "If you
come to the books written
after the time of Jesus, you will find that those
multitudes of
believers who hear the parables are, as it were,
'without,' and worthy
only of exoteric doctrines, while the disciples learn
in private the
explanation of the parables. For, privately, to His
own disciples did
Jesus open up all things, esteeming above the
multitudes those who
desired to know His wisdom. And He promises to those
who believe on Him
to send them wise men and scribes.... And Paul also in
the catalogue of
'Charismata' bestowed by God, placed first 'the Word
of wisdom,' and
second, as being inferior to it, 'the word of
knowledge,' but third, and
lower down, 'faith.' And because he regarded 'the
Word' as higher than
miraculous powers, he for that reason places 'workings
of miracles' and
'gifts of healings' in a lower place than gifts of the
Word."[139]
The Gospel truly helped the ignorant, "but it is
no hindrance to the
knowledge of God, but an assistance, to have been
educated, and to have
studied the best opinions, and to be wise."[140]
As for the
unintelligent, "I endeavour to improve such also
to the best of my
ability, although I would not desire to build up the
Christian community
out of such materials. For I seek in preference those
who are more
clever and acute, because they are able to comprehend
the meaning of the
hard sayings."[141] Here we have plainly stated
the ancient Christian
idea, entirely at one with the considerations
submitted in Chapter I. of
this book. There is room for the ignorant in
Christianity, but it is not
intended _only_ for them, and has deep teachings for
the "clever and
acute."
It is for these that he takes much pains to show that
the Jewish and
Christian Scriptures have hidden meanings, veiled
under stories the
outer meaning of which repels them as absurd, alluding
to the serpent
and the tree of life, and "the other statements
which follow, which
might of themselves lead a candid reader to see that
all these things
had, not inappropriately, an allegorical
meaning."[142] Many chapters
are devoted to these allegorical and mystical
meanings, hidden beneath
the words of the Old and New Testaments, and he
alleges that Moses, like
the Egyptians, gave histories with concealed
meanings.[143] "He who
deals candidly with histories"--this is Origen's
general canon of
interpretation--"and would wish to keep himself
also from being imposed
on by them, will exercise his judgment as to what
statements he will
give his assent to, and what he will accept
figuratively, seeking to
discover the meaning of the authors of such
inventions, and from what
statements he will withhold his beliefs, as having
been written for the
gratification of certain individuals. And we have said
this by way of
anticipation respecting the whole history related in
the Gospels
concerning Jesus."[144] A great part of his
Fourth Book is taken up with
illustrations of the mystical explanations of the
Scripture stories, and
anyone who wishes to pursue the subject can read
through it.
In the _De Principiis_, Origen gives it as the
received teaching of the
Church "that the Scriptures were written by the
Spirit of God, and have
a meaning, not only such as is apparent at first
sight, but also
another, which escapes the notice of most. For those
[words] which are
written are the forms of certain Mysteries, and the
images of divine
things. Respecting which there is one opinion
throughout the whole
Church, that the whole law is indeed spiritual; but
that the spiritual
meaning which the law conveys is not known to all, but
to those only on
whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the
word of wisdom and
knowledge."[145] Those who remember what has
already been quoted will
see in the "Word of wisdom" and "the
word of knowledge" the two typical
mystical instructions, the spiritual and the
intellectual.
In the Fourth Book of _De Principiis_, Origen explains
at length his
views on the interpretation of Scripture. It has a
"body," which is the
"common and historical sense"; a
"soul," a figurative meaning to be
discovered by the exercise of the intellect; and a
"spirit," an inner
and divine sense, to be known only by those who have
"the mind of
Christ." He considers that incongruous and
impossible things are
introduced into the history to arouse an intelligent
reader, and compel
him to search for a deeper explanation, while simple
people would read
on without appreciating the difficulties.[146]
Cardinal Newman, in his _Arians of the Fourth
Century_, has some
interesting remarks on the _Disciplina Arcani_, but,
with the
deeply-rooted ingrained scepticism of the nineteenth
century, he cannot
believe to the full in the "riches of the glory
of the Mystery," or
probably never for a moment conceived the possibility
of the existence
of such splendid realities. Yet he was a believer in
Jesus, and the
words of the promise of Jesus were clear and definite:
"I will not leave
you comfortless; I will come to you. Yet a little
while, and the world
seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye
shall live also. At
that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye
in me, and I in
you."[147] The promise was amply redeemed, for He
came to them and
taught them in His Mysteries; therein they saw Him,
though the world saw
Him no more, and they knew the Christ as in them, and
their life as
Christ's.
Cardinal Newman recognises a secret tradition, handed
down from the
Apostles, but he considers that it consisted of
Christian doctrines,
later divulged, forgetting that those who were told
that they were not
yet fit to receive it were not heathen, nor even
catechumens under
instruction, but full communicating members of the
Christian Church.
Thus he states that this secret tradition was later
"authoritatively
divulged and perpetuated in the form of symbols,"
and was embodied "in
the creeds of the early Councils."[148] But as the
doctrines in the
creeds are to be found clearly stated in the Gospels
and Epistles, this
position is wholly untenable, all these having been
already divulged to
the world at large; and in all of them the members of
the Church were
certainly thoroughly instructed. The repeated
statements as to secrecy
become meaningless if thus explained. The Cardinal,
however, says that
whatever "has not been thus authenticated,
whether it was prophetical
information or comment on the past dispensations, is,
from the
circumstances of the case, lost to the
Church."[149] That is very
probably, in fact certainly, true, so far as the
Church is concerned,
but it is none the less recoverable.
Commenting on Irenaeus, who in his work _Against
Heresies_ lays much
stress on the existence of an Apostolic Tradition in
the Church, the
Cardinal writes: "He then proceeds to speak of
the clearness and cogency
of the traditions preserved in the Church, as
containing that true
wisdom of the perfect, of which S. Paul speaks, and to
which the
Gnostics pretended. And, indeed, without formal proofs
of the existence
and the authority in primitive times of an Apostolic
Tradition, it is
plain that there must have been such a tradition,
granting that the
Apostles conversed, and their friends had memories,
like other men. It
is quite inconceivable that they should not have been
led to arrange
the series of revealed doctrines more systematically
than they record
them in Scripture, as soon as their converts became
exposed to the
attacks and misrepresentations of heretics; unless
they were forbidden
to do so, a supposition which cannot be maintained.
Their statements
thus occasioned would be preserved as a matter of
course; together with
those other secret but less important truths, to which
S. Paul seems to
allude, and which the early writers more or less
acknowledge, whether
concerning the types of the Jewish Church, or the
prospective fortunes
of the Christian. And such recollections of
apostolical teaching would
evidently be binding on the faith of those who were
instructed in them;
unless it can be supposed that, though coming from
inspired teachers,
they were not of divine origin."[150] In a part
of the section dealing
with the allegorising method, he writes in reference
to the sacrifice of
Isaac, &c., as "typical of the New Testament
revelation": "In
corroboration of this remark, let it be observed, that
there seems to
have been[151] in the Church a traditionary
explanation of these
historical types, derived from the Apostles, but kept
among the secret
doctrines, as being dangerous to the majority of
hearers; and certainly
S. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, affords us an
instance of such a
tradition, both as existing and as secret (even though
it be shown to be
of Jewish origin), when, first checking himself and
questioning his
brethren's faith, he communicates, not without
hesitation, the
evangelical scope of the account of Melchisedec, as
introduced into the
book of Genesis."[152]
The social and political convulsions that accompanied
its dying now
began to torture the vast frame of the Roman Empire,
and even the
Christians were caught up in the whirlpool of selfish
warring interests.
We still find scattered references to special
knowledge imparted to the
leaders and teachers of the Church, knowledge of the
heavenly
hierarchies, instructions given by angels, and so on.
But the lack of
suitable pupils caused the Mysteries to be withdrawn
as an institution
publicly known to exist, and teaching was given more
and more secretly
to those rarer and rarer souls, who by learning,
purity, and devotion
showed themselves capable of receiving it. No longer
were schools to be
found wherein the preliminary teachings were given,
and with the
disappearance of these the "door was shut."
Two streams may nevertheless be tracked through
Christendom, streams
which had as their source the vanished Mysteries. One
was the stream of
mystic learning, flowing from the Wisdom, the Gnosis,
imparted in the
Mysteries; the other was the stream of mystic
contemplation, equally
part of the Gnosis, leading to the exstasy, to
spiritual vision. This
latter, however, divorced from knowledge, rarely
attained the true
exstasis, and tended either to run riot in the lower
regions of the
invisible worlds, or to lose itself amid a variegated
crowd of subtle
superphysical forms, visible as objective appearances
to the inner
vision--prematurely forced by fastings, vigils, and
strained
attention--but mostly born of the thoughts and
emotions of the seer.
Even when the forms observed were not externalised
thoughts, they were
seen through a distorting atmosphere of preconceived
ideas and beliefs,
and were thus rendered largely unreliable. None the
less, some of the
visions were verily of heavenly things, and Jesus
truly appeared from
time to time to His devoted lovers, and angels would
sometimes brighten
with their presence the cell of monk and nun, the
solitude of rapt
devotee and patient seeker after God. To deny the
possibility of such
experiences would be to strike at the very root of
that "which has been
most surely believed" in all religions, and is
known to all
Occultists--the intercommunication between Spirits
veiled in flesh and
those clad in subtler vestures, the touching of mind
with mind across
the barriers of matter, the unfolding of the Divinity
in man, the sure
knowledge of a life beyond the gates of death.
Glancing down the centuries we find no time in which
Christendom was
left wholly devoid of mysteries. "It was probably
about the end of the
5th century, just as ancient philosophy was dying out
in the Schools of
Athens, that the speculative philosophy of
neo-Platonism made a definite
lodgment in Christian thought through the literary
forgeries of the
Pseudo-Dionysius. The doctrines of Christianity were
by that time so
firmly established that the Church could look upon a
symbolical or
mystical interpretation of them without anxiety. The
author of the
_Theologica Mystica_ and the other works ascribed to
the Areopagite
proceeds, therefore, to develop the doctrines of
Proclus with very
little modification into a system of esoteric
Christianity. God is the
nameless and supra-essential One, elevated above
goodness itself. Hence
'negative theology,' which ascends from the creature
to God by dropping
one after another every determinate predicate, leads
us nearest to the
truth. The return to God is the consummation of all
things and the goal
indicated by Christian teaching. The same doctrines
were preached with
more of churchly fervour by Maximus the Confessor
(580-622). Maximus
represents almost the last speculative activity of the
Greek Church, but
the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysian writing was
transmitted to the
West in the ninth century by Erigena, in whose
speculative spirit both
the scholasticism and the mysticism of the Middle Ages
have their rise.
Erigena translated Dionysius into Latin along with the
commentaries of
Maximus, and his system is essentially based upon
theirs. The negative
theology is adopted, and God is stated to be
predicateless Being, above
all categories, and therefore not improperly called
Nothing [_query_,
No-Thing]. Out of this Nothing or incomprehensible
essence the world of
ideas or primordial causes is eternally created. This
is the Word or Son
of God, in whom all things exist, so far as they have
substantial
existence. All existence is a theophany, and as God is
the beginning of
all things, so also is He the end. Erigena teaches the
restitution of
all things under the form of the Dionysian _adunatio_
or _deificatio_.
These are the permanent outlines of what may be called
the philosophy
of mysticism in Christian times, and it is remarkable
with how little
variation they are repeated from age to
age."[153]
In the eleventh century Bernard of Clairvaux (A.D.
1091-1153) and Hugo
of S. Victor carry on the mystic tradition, with
Richard of S. Victor in
the following century, and S. Bonaventura the Seraphic
Doctor, and the
great S. Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1227-1274) in the
thirteenth. Thomas
Aquinas dominates the Europe of the Middle Ages, by
his force of
character no less than by his learning and piety. He
asserts
"Revelation" as one source of knowledge,
Scripture and tradition being
the two channels in which it runs, and the influence,
seen in his
writings, of the Pseudo-Dionysius links him to the
Neo-Platonists. The
second source is Reason, and here the channels are the
Platonic
philosophy and the methods of Aristotle--the latter an
alliance that did
Christianity no good, for Aristotle became an obstacle
to the advance of
the higher thought, as was made manifest in the struggles
of Giordano
Bruno, the Pythagorean. Thomas Aquinas was canonised
in A.D. 1323, and
the great Dominican remains as a type of the union of
theology and
philosophy--the aim of his life. These belong to the
great Church of
western Europe, vindicating her claim to be regarded
as the transmitter
of the holy torch of mystic learning. Around her there
also sprang up
many sects, deemed heretical, yet containing true
traditions of the
sacred secret learning, the Cathari and many others,
persecuted by a
Church jealous of her authority, and fearing lest the
holy pearls should
pass into profane custody. In this century also S.
Elizabeth of Hungary
shines out with sweetness and purity, while Eckhart
(A.D. 1260-1329)
proves himself a worthy inheritor of the Alexandrian
Schools. Eckhart
taught that "The Godhead is the absolute Essence
(Wesen), unknowable not
only by man but also by Itself; It is darkness and
absolute
indeterminateness, _Nicht_ in contrast to _Icht_, or
definite and
knowable existence. Yet It is the potentiality of all
things, and Its
nature is, in a triadic process, to come to
consciousness of Itself as
the triune God. Creation is not a temporal act, but an
eternal
necessity, of the divine nature. I am as necessary to
God, Eckhart is
fond of saying, as God is necessary to me. In my
knowledge and love God
knows and loves Himself."[154]
Eckhart is followed, in the fourteenth century, by
John Tauler, and
Nicolas of Basel, "the Friend of God in the
Oberland." From these sprang
up the Society of the Friends of God, true mystics and
followers of the
old tradition. Mead remarks that Thomas Aquinas,
Tauler, and Eckhart
followed the Pseudo-Dionysius, who followed Plotinus,
Iamblichus, and
Proclus, who in turn followed Plato and
Pythagoras.[155] So linked
together are the followers of the Wisdom in all ages.
It was probably a
"Friend" who was the author of _Die Deutsche
Theologie_, a book of
mystical devotion, which had the curious fortune of
being approved by
Staupitz, the Vicar-General of the Augustinian Order,
who recommended it
to Luther, and by Luther himself, who published it
A.D. 1516, as a book
which should rank immediately after the _Bible_ and
the writings of S.
Augustine of Hippo. Another "Friend" was
Ruysbroeck, to whose influence
with Groot was due the founding of the Brethren of the
Common Lot or
Common Life--a Society that must remain ever
memorable, as it numbered
among its members that prince of mystics, Thomas a
Kempis (A.D.
1380-1471), the author of the immortal _Imitation of
Christ_.
In the fifteenth century the more purely intellectual
side of mysticism
comes out more strongly than the exstatic--so dominant
in these
societies of the fourteenth--and we have Cardinal
Nicolas of Cusa, with
Giordano Bruno, the martyred knight-errant of
philosophy, and
Paracelsus, the much slandered scientist, who drew his
knowledge
directly from the original eastern fountain, instead
of through Greek
channels.
The sixteenth century saw the birth of Jacob Boehme
(A.D. 1575-1624), the
"inspired cobbler," an Initiate in obscuration
truly, sorely persecuted
by unenlightened men; and then too came S. Teresa, the
much-oppressed
and suffering Spanish mystic; and S. John of the
Cross, a burning flame
of intense devotion; and S. Francois de Sales. Wise
was Rome in
canonising these, wiser than the Reformation that
persecuted Boehme, but
the spirit of the Reformation was ever intensely
anti-mystical, and
wherever its breath hath passed the fair flowers of
mysticism have
withered as under the sirocco.
Rome, however, who, though she canonised Teresa dead,
had sorely harried
her while living--did ill with Mme. de Guyon (A.D.
1648-1717), a true
mystic, and with Miguel de Molinos (1627-1696), worthy
to sit near S.
John of the Cross, who carried on in the seventeenth
century the high
devotion of the mystic, turned into a peculiarly
passive form--the
Quietist.
In this same century arose the school of Platonists in
Cambridge, of
whom Henry More (A.D. 1614-1687) may serve as salient
example; also
Thomas Vaughan, and Robert Fludd the Rosicrucian; and
there is formed
also the Philadelphian Society, and we see William Law
(A.D. 1686-1761)
active in the eighteenth century, and overlapping S.
Martin (A.D.
1743-1803), whose writings have fascinated so many
nineteenth century
students.[156]
Nor should we omit Christian Rosenkreutz (d. A.D.
1484), whose mystic
Society of the Rosy Cross, appearing in 1614, held
true knowledge, and
whose spirit was reborn in the "Comte de S.
Germain," the mysterious
figure that appears and disappears through the gloom,
lit by lurid
flashes, of the closing eighteenth century. Mystics
too were some of the
Quakers, the much-persecuted sect of Friends, seeking
the illumination
of the Inner Light, and listening ever for the Inner
Voice. And many
another mystic was there, "of whom the world was
not worthy," like the
wholly delightful and wise Mother Juliana of Norwich,
of the fourteenth
century, jewels of Christendom, too little known, but
justifying
Christianity to the world.
Yet, as we salute reverently these Children of the
Light, scattered over
the centuries, we are forced to recognise in them the
absence of that
union of acute intellect and high devotion which were
welded together by
the training of the Mysteries, and while we marvel
that they soared so
high, we cannot but wish that their rare gifts had
been developed under
that magnificent _disciplina arcani_.
Alphonse Louis Constant, better known under his
pseudonym, Eliphas Levi,
has put rather well the loss of the Mysteries, and the
need for their
re-institution. "A great misfortune befell
Christianity. The betrayal of
the Mysteries by the false Gnostics--for the Gnostics,
that is, _those
who know_, were the Initiates of primitive
Christianity--caused the
Gnosis to be rejected, and alienated the Church from
the supreme truths
of the Kabbala, which contain all the secrets of
transcendental
theology.... Let the most absolute science, let the
highest reason,
become once more the patrimony of the leaders of the
people; let the
sacerdotal art and the royal art take the double
sceptre of antique
initiations, and the social world will once more issue
from its chaos.
Burn the holy images no longer; demolish the temples
no more; temples
and images are necessary for men; but drive the
hirelings from the house
of prayer; let the blind be no longer leaders of the
blind, reconstruct
the hierarchy of intelligence and holiness, and
recognise only those who
know as the teachers of those who believe."[157]
Will the Churches of to-day again take up the mystic
teaching, the
Lesser Mysteries, and so prepare their children for
the re-establishment
of the Greater Mysteries, again drawing down the
Angels as Teachers, and
having as Hierophant the Divine Master, Jesus? On the
answer to that
question depends the future of Christianity.
-------
CHAPTER IV.
THE HISTORICAL CHRIST.
We have already spoken, in the first chapter, on the
identities existing
in all the religions of the world, and we have seen
that out of a study
of these identities in beliefs, symbolisms, rites,
ceremonies,
histories, and commemorative festivals, has arisen a
modern school which
relates the whole of these to a common source in human
ignorance, and in
a primitive explanation of natural phenomena. From
these identities have
been drawn weapons for the stabbing of each religion in
turn, and the
most effective attacks on Christianity and on the
historical existence
of its Founder have been armed from this source. On
entering now on the
study of the life of the Christ, of the rites of
Christianity, its
sacraments, its doctrines, it would be fatal to ignore
the facts
marshalled by Comparative Mythologists. Rightly
understood, they may be
made serviceable instead of mischievous. We have seen
that the Apostles
and their successors dealt very freely with the Old
Testament as having
an allegorical and mystic sense far more important
than the historical,
though by no means negating it, and that they did not
scruple to teach
the instructed believer that some of the stories that
were apparently
historical were really purely allegorical. Nowhere,
perhaps, is it more
necessary to understand this than when we are studying
the story of
Jesus, surnamed the Christ, for when we do not
disentangle the
intertwisted threads, and see where symbols have been
taken as events,
allegories as histories, we lose most of the
instructiveness of the
narrative and much of its rarest beauty. We cannot too
much insist on
the fact that Christianity gains, it does not lose,
when knowledge is
added to faith and virtue, according to the apostolic
injunction.[158]
Men fear that Christianity will be weakened when
reason studies it, and
that it is "dangerous" to admit that events
thought to be historical
have the deeper significance of the mythical or
mystical meaning. It is,
on the contrary, strengthened, and the student finds,
with joy, that the
pearl of great price shines with a purer, clearer
lustre when the
coating of ignorance is removed and its many colours
are seen.
There are two schools of thought at the present time,
bitterly opposed
to each other, who dispute over the story of the great
Hebrew Teacher.
According to one school there is nothing at all in the
accounts of His
life save myths and legends--myths and legends that
were given as
explanations of certain natural phenomena, survivals
of a pictorial way
of teaching certain facts of nature, of impressing on
the minds of the
uneducated certain grand classifications of natural
events that were
important in themselves, and that lent themselves to
moral instruction.
Those who endorse this view form a well-defined school
to which belong
many men of high education and strong intelligence,
and round them
gather crowds of the less instructed, who emphasise
with crude
vehemence the more destructive elements in their
pronouncements. This
school is opposed by that of the believers in orthodox
Christianity, who
declare that the whole story of Jesus is history,
unadulterated by
legend or myth. They maintain that this history is
nothing more than the
history of the life of a man born some nineteen
centuries ago in
Palestine, who passed through all the experiences set
down in the
Gospels, and they deny that the story has any
significance beyond that
of a divine and human life. These two schools stand in
direct
antagonism, one asserting that everything is legend,
the other declaring
that everything is history. Between them lie many
phases of opinion
generally labelled "freethinking," which
regard the life-story as partly
legendary and partly historical, but offer no definite
and rational
method of interpretation, no adequate explanation of
the complex whole.
And we also find, within the limits of the Christian
Church, a large and
ever-increasing number of faithful and devout
Christians of refined
intelligence, men and women who are earnest in their
faith and
religious in their aspirations, but who see in the
Gospel story more
than the history of a single divine Man. They
allege--defending their
position from the received Scriptures--that the story
of the Christ has
a deeper and more significant meaning than lies on the
surface; while
they maintain the historical character of Jesus, they
at the same time
declare that THE CHRIST is more than the man Jesus,
and has a mystical
meaning. In support of this contention they point to
such phrases as
that used by S. Paul: "My little children, of
whom I travail in birth
again again until Christ be formed in you";[159]
here S. Paul obviously
cannot refer to a historical Jesus, but to some
forthputting from the
human soul which is to him the shaping of Christ
therein. Again the same
teacher declares that though he had known Christ after
the flesh yet
from henceforth he would know him thus no more;[160]
obviously implying
that while he recognised the Christ of the
flesh--Jesus--there was a
higher view to which he had attained which threw into
the shade the
historical Christ. This is the view which many are
seeking in our own
days, and--faced by the facts of Comparative Religion,
puzzled by the
contradictions of the Gospels, confused by problems
they cannot solve so
long as they are tied down to the mere surface
meanings of their
Scripture--they cry despairingly that the letter
killeth while the
spirit giveth life, and seek to trace some deep and
wide significance in
a story which is as old as the religions of the world,
and has always
served as the very centre and life of every religion
in which it has
reappeared. These struggling thinkers, too unrelated
and indefinite to
be spoken of as forming a school, seem to stretch out
a hand on one side
to those who think that all is legend, asking them to
accept a
historical basis; on the other side they say to their
fellow Christians
that there is a growing danger lest, in clinging to a
literal and unique
meaning, which cannot be defended before the
increasing knowledge of the
day, the spiritual meaning should be entirely lost.
There is a danger of
losing "the story of the Christ," with that
thought of the Christ which
has been the support and inspiration of millions of
noble lives in East
and West, though the Christ be called by other names
and worshipped
under other forms; a danger lest the pearl of great
price should escape
from our hold, and man be left the poorer for
evermore.
What is needed, in order that this danger may be
averted, is to
disentangle the different threads in the story of the
Christ, and to lay
them side by side--the thread of history, the thread
of legend, the
thread of mysticism. These have been intertwined into
a single strand,
to the great loss of the thoughtful, and in
disentangling them we shall
find that the story becomes more, not less, valuable
as knowledge is
added to it, and that here, as in all that is
basically of the truth,
the brighter the light thrown upon it the greater the
beauty that is
revealed.
We will study first the historical Christ; secondly,
the mythic Christ;
thirdly, the mystic Christ. And we shall find that
elements drawn from
all these make up the Jesus Christ of the Churches.
They all enter into
the composition of the grandiose and pathetic Figure
which dominates the
thoughts and the emotions of Christendom, the Man of
Sorrows, the
Saviour, the Lover and Lord of Men.
THE HISTORICAL CHRIST, OR JESUS THE HEALER AND
TEACHER.
The thread of the life-story of Jesus is one which may
be disentangled
from those with which it is intertwined without any
great difficulty. We
may fairly here aid our study by reference to those
records of the past
which experts can reverify for themselves, and from
which certain
details regarding the Hebrew Teacher have been given
to the world by H.
P. Blavatsky and by others who are experts in occult
investigation. Now
in the minds of many there is apt to arise a challenge
when this word
"expert" is used in connection with
occultism. Yet it only means a
person who by special study, by special training, has
accumulated a
special kind of knowledge, and has developed powers
that enable him to
give an opinion founded on his own individual
knowledge of the subject
with which he is dealing. Just as we speak of Huxley
as an expert in
biology, as we speak of a Senior Wrangler as an expert
in mathematics,
or of Lyell as an expert in geology, so we may fairly
call a man an
expert in occultism who has first mastered
intellectually certain
fundamental theories of the constitution of man and
the universe, and
secondly has developed within himself the powers that
are latent in
everyone--and are capable of being developed by those
who give
themselves to appropriate studies--capacities which
enable him to
examine for himself the more obscure processes of
nature. As a man may
be born with a mathematical faculty, and by training
that faculty year
after year may immensely increase his mathematical
capacity, so may a
man be born with certain faculties within him,
faculties belonging to
the Soul, which he can develop by training and by
discipline. When,
having developed those faculties, he applies them to
the study of the
invisible world, such a man becomes an expert in
Occult Science, and
such a man can at his will reverify the records to
which I have
referred. Such reverification is as much out of the
reach of the
ordinary person as a mathematical book written in the
symbols of the
higher mathematics is out of the reach of those who
are untrained in
mathematical science. There is nothing exclusive in
the knowledge save
as every science is exclusive; those who are born with
a faculty, and
train the faculty, can master its appropriate science,
while those who
start in life without any faculty, or those who do not
develop it if
they have it, must be content to remain in ignorance.
These are the
rules everywhere of the obtaining of knowledge, in
Occultism as in every
other science.
The occult records partly endorse the story told in
the Gospels, and
partly do not endorse it; they show us the life, and
thus enable us to
disentangle it from the myths which are intertwined therewith.
The child whose Jewish name has been turned into that
of Jesus was born
in Palestine B.C. 105, during the consulate of Publius
Rutilius Rufus
and Gnaeus Mallius Maximus. His parents were well-born
though poor, and
he was educated in a knowledge of the Hebrew
Scriptures. His fervent
devotion and a gravity beyond his years led his
parents to dedicate him
to the religious and ascetic life, and soon after a
visit to Jerusalem,
in which the extraordinary intelligence and eagerness
for knowledge of
the youth were shown in his seeking of the doctors in
the Temple, he was
sent to be trained in an Essene community in the
southern Judaean desert.
When he had reached the age of nineteen he went on to
the Essene
monastery near Mount Serbal, a monastery which was
much visited by
learned men travelling from Persia and India to Egypt,
and where a
magnificent library of occult works--many of them
Indian of the
Trans-Himalayan regions--had been established. From
this seat of mystic
learning he proceeded later to Egypt. He had been
fully instructed in
the secret teachings which were the real fount of life
among the
Essenes, and was initiated in Egypt as a disciple of
that one sublime
Lodge from which every great religion has its Founder.
For Egypt has
remained one of the world-centres of the true
Mysteries, whereof all
semi-public Mysteries are the faint and far-off
reflections. The
Mysteries spoken of in history as Egyptian were the
shadows of the true
things "in the Mount," and there the young
Hebrew received the solemn
consecration which prepared him for the Royal
Priesthood he was later to
attain. So superhumanly pure and so full of devotion
was he, that in his
gracious manhood he stood out pre-eminently from the
severe and somewhat
fanatical ascetics among whom he had been trained,
shedding on the stern
Jews around him the fragrance of a gentle and tender
wisdom, as a
rose-tree strangely planted in a desert would shed its
sweetness on the
barrenness around. The fair and stately grace of his
white purity was
round him as a radiant moonlit halo, and his words,
though few, were
ever sweet and loving, winning even the most harsh to
a temporary
gentleness, and the most rigid to a passing softness.
Thus he lived
through nine-and-twenty years of mortal life, growing
from grace to
grace.
This superhuman purity and devotion fitted the man
Jesus, the disciple,
to become the temple of a loftier Power, of a mighty,
indwelling
Presence. The time had come for one of those Divine
manifestations which
from age to age are made for the helping of humanity,
when a new impulse
is needed to quicken the spiritual evolution of
mankind, when a new
civilisation is about to dawn. The world of the West
was then in the
womb of time, ready for the birth, and the Teutonic
sub-race was to
catch the sceptre of empire falling from the failing
hands of Rome. Ere
it started on its journey a World-Saviour must appear,
to stand in
blessing beside the cradle of the infant Hercules.
A mighty "Son of God" was to take flesh upon
earth, a supreme Teacher,
"full of grace and truth"--[161] One in whom
the Divine Wisdom abode in
fullest measure, who was verily "the Word"
incarnate, Light and Life in
outpouring richness, a very Fountain of the Waters of
Life. Lord of
Compassion and of Wisdom--such was His name--and from
His dwelling in
the Secret Places He came forth into the world of men.
For Him was needed an earthly tabernacle, a human
form, the body of a
man, and who so fit to yield his body in glad and
willing service to One
before whom Angels and men bow down in lowliest
reverence, as this
Hebrew of the Hebrews, this purest and noblest of
"the Perfect," whose
spotless body and stainless mind offered the best that
humanity could
bring? The man Jesus yielded himself a willing
sacrifice, "offered
himself without spot" to the Lord of Love, who
took unto Himself that
pure form as tabernacle, and dwelt therein for three
years of mortal
life.
This epoch is marked in the traditions embodied in the
Gospels as that
of the Baptism of Jesus, when the Spirit was seen
"descending from
heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him,"[162]
and a celestial voice
proclaimed Him as the beloved Son, to whom men should
give ear. Truly
was He the beloved Son in whom the Father was
well-pleased,[163] and
from that time forward "Jesus began to
preach,"[164] and was that
wondrous mystery, "God manifest in the
flesh"[165]--not unique in that
He was God, for: "Is it not written in your law,
I said, Ye are Gods? If
he called them Gods, unto whom the word of God came,
and the scripture
cannot be broken; say ye of Him, whom the Father hath
sanctified and
sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said,
I am the Son of
God?"[166] Truly all men are Gods, in respect to
the Spirit within them,
but not in all is the Godhead manifested, as in that
well-beloved Son of
the Most High.
To that manifested Presence the name of "the
Christ" may rightly be
given, and it was He who lived and moved in the form
of the man Jesus
over the hills and plains of Palestine, teaching,
healing diseases, and
gathering round Him as disciples a few of the more
advanced souls. The
rare charm of His royal love, outpouring from Him as
rays from a sun,
drew round Him the suffering, the weary, and the
oppressed, and the
subtly tender magic of His gentle wisdom purified, ennobled,
and
sweetened the lives that came into contact with His
own. By parable and
luminous imagery He taught the uninstructed crowds who
pressed around
Him, and, using the powers of the free Spirit, He
healed many a disease
by word or touch, reinforcing the magnetic energies
belonging to His
pure body with the compelling force of His inner life.
Rejected by His
Essene brethren among whom He first laboured--whose
arguments against
His purposed life of loving labour are summarised in
the story of the
temptation--because he carried to the people the
spiritual wisdom that
they regarded as their proudest and most secret
treasure, and because
His all-embracing love drew within its circle the
outcast and the
degraded--ever loving in the lowest as in the highest
the Divine
Self--He saw gathering round Him all too quickly the
dark clouds of
hatred and suspicion. The teachers and rulers of His
nation soon came to
eye Him with jealousy and anger; His spirituality was
a constant
reproach to their materialism, His power a constant,
though silent,
exposure of their weakness. Three years had scarcely
passed since His
baptism when the gathering storm outbroke, and the
human body of Jesus
paid the penalty for enshrining the glorious Presence
of a Teacher more
than man.
The little band of chosen disciples whom He had
selected as repositories
of His teachings were thus deprived of their Master's
physical presence
ere they had assimilated His instructions, but they
were souls of high
and advanced type, ready to learn the Wisdom, and fit
to hand it on to
lesser men. Most receptive of all was that
"disciple whom Jesus loved,"
young, eager, and fervid, profoundly devoted to his
Master, and sharing
His spirit of all-embracing love. He represented,
through the century
that followed the physical departure of the Christ,
the spirit of mystic
devotion that sought the exstasis, the vision of and
the union with the
Divine, while the later great Apostle, S. Paul,
represented the wisdom
side of the Mysteries.
The Master did not forget His promise to come to them
after the world
had lost sight of Him,[167] and for something over
fifty years He
visited them in His subtle spiritual body, continuing
the teachings He
had begun while with them, and training them in a
knowledge of occult
truths. They lived together, for the most part, in a
retired spot on the
outskirts of Judaea, attracting no attention among the
many apparently
similar communities of the time, studying the profound
truths He taught
them and acquiring "the gifts of the
Spirit."
These inner instructions, commenced during His
physical life among them
and carried on after He had left the body, formed the
basis of the
"Mysteries of Jesus," which we have seen in
early Church History, and
gave the inner life which was the nucleus round which
gathered the
heterogeneous materials which formed ecclesiastical
Christianity.
In the remarkable fragment called the _Pistis Sophia_,
we have a
document of the greatest interest bearing on the
hidden teaching,
written by the famous Valentinus. In this it is said
that during the
eleven years immediately after His death Jesus
instructed His disciples
so far as "the regions of the first statutes
only, and up to the regions
of the first mystery, the mystery within the
veil."[168] They had not so
far learned the distribution of the angelic orders, of
part whereof
Ignatius speaks.[169] Then Jesus, being "in the
Mount" with His
disciples, and having received His mystic Vesture, the
knowledge of all
the regions and the Words of Power which unlocked
them, taught His
disciples further, promising: "I will perfect you
in every perfection,
from the mysteries of the interior to the mysteries of
the exterior: I
will fill you with the Spirit, so that ye shall be
called spiritual,
perfect in all perfections."[170] And He taught
them of Sophia, the
Wisdom, and of her fall into matter in her attempt to
rise unto the
Highest, and of her cries to the Light in which she
had trusted, and of
the sending of Jesus to redeem her from chaos, and of
her crowning with
His light, and leading forth from bondage. And He told
them further of
the highest Mystery the ineffable, the simplest and
clearest of all,
though the highest, to be known by him alone who
utterly renounced the
world;[171] by that knowledge men became Christs for
such "men are
myself, and I am these men," for Christ is that
highest Mystery.[172]
Knowing that, men are "transformed into pure
light and are brought into
the light."[173] And He performed for them the
great ceremony of
Initiation, the baptism "which leadeth to the
region of truth and into
the region of light," and bade them celebrate it
for others who were
worthy: "But hide ye this mystery, give it not
unto every man, but unto
him [only] who shall do all things which I have said
unto you in my
commandments."[174]
Thereafter, being fully instructed, the apostles went
forth to preach,
ever aided by their Master.
Moreover these same disciples and their earliest
colleagues wrote down
from memory all the public sayings and parables of the
Master that they
had heard, and collected with great eagerness any
reports they could
find, writing down these also, and circulating them
all among those who
gradually attached themselves to their small
community. Various
collections were made, any member writing down what he
himself
remembered, and adding selections from the accounts of
others. The inner
teachings, given by the Christ to His chosen ones,
were not written
down, but were taught orally to those deemed worthy to
receive them, to
students who formed small communities for leading a
retired life, and
remained in touch with the central body.
The historical Christ, then, is a glorious Being
belonging to the great
spiritual hierarchy that guides the spiritual
evolution of humanity, who
used for some three years the human body of the
disciple Jesus; who
spent the last of these three years in public teaching
throughout Judaea
and Samaria; who was a healer of diseases and
performed other remarkable
occult works; who gathered round Him a small band of
disciples whom He
instructed in the deeper truths of the spiritual life;
who drew men to
Him by the singular love and tenderness and the rich
wisdom that
breathed from His Person; and who was finally put to
death for
blasphemy, for teaching the inherent Divinity of
Himself and of all men.
He came to give a new impulse of spiritual life to the
world; to
re-issue the inner teachings affecting spiritual life;
to mark out again
the narrow ancient way; to proclaim the existence of
the "Kingdom of
Heaven," of the Initiation which admits to that
knowledge of God which
is eternal life; and to admit a few to that Kingdom
who should be able
to teach others. Round this glorious Figure gathered
the myths which
united Him to the long array of His predecessors, the
myths telling in
allegory the story of all such lives, as they
symbolise the work of the
Logos in the Kosmos and the higher evolution of the
individual human
soul.
But it must not be supposed that the work of the
Christ for His
followers was over after He had established the
Mysteries, or was
confined to rare appearances therein. That Mighty One
who had used the
body of Jesus as His vehicle, and whose guardian care
extends over the
whole spiritual evolution of the fifth race of
humanity, gave into the
strong hands of the holy disciple who had surrendered
to Him his body
the care of the infant Church. Perfecting his human
evolution, Jesus
became one of the Masters of Wisdom, and took
Christianity under His
special charge, ever seeking to guide it to the right
lines, to protect,
to guard and nourish it. He was the Hierophant in the
Christian
Mysteries, the direct Teacher of the Initiates. His
the inspiration that
kept alight the Gnosis in the Church, until the
superincumbent mass of
ignorance became so great that even His breath could
not fan the flame
sufficiently to prevent its extinguishment. His the
patient labour which
strengthened soul after soul to endure through the
darkness, and cherish
within itself the spark of mystic longing, the thirst
to find the Hidden
God. His the steady inpouring of truth into every
brain ready to
receive it, so that hand stretched out to hand across
the centuries and
passed on the torch of knowledge, which thus was never
extinguished. His
the Form which stood beside the rack and in the flames
of the burning
pile, cheering His confessors and His martyrs,
soothing the anguish of
their pains, and filling their hearts with His peace.
His the impulse
which spoke in the thunder of Savonarola, which guided
the calm wisdom
of Erasmus, which inspired the deep ethics of the God-intoxicated
Spinoza. His the energy which impelled Roger Bacon,
Galileo, and
Paracelsus in their searchings into nature. His the
beauty that allured
Fra Angelica and Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, that
inspired the genius
of Michelangelo, that shone before the eyes of
Murillo, and that gave
the power that raised the marvels of the world, the
Duomo of Milan, the
San Marco of Venice, the Cathedral of Florence. His
the melody that
breathed in the masses of Mozart, the sonatas of
Beethoven, the
oratorios of Handel, the fugues of Bach, the austere
splendour of
Brahms. His the Presence that cheered the solitary
mystics, the hunted
occultists, the patient seekers after truth. By
persuasion and by
menace, by the eloquence of a S. Francis and by the
gibes of a Voltaire,
by the sweet submission of a Thomas a Kempis, and the
rough virility of
a Luther, He sought to instruct and awaken, to win
into holiness or to
scourge from evil. Through the long centuries He has
striven and
laboured, and, with all the mighty burden of the
Churches to carry, He
has never left uncared for or unsolaced one human
heart that cried to
Him for help. And now He is striving to turn to the
benefit of
Christendom part of the great flood of the Wisdom
poured out for the
refreshing of the world, and He is seeking through the
Churches for some
who have ears to hear the Wisdom, and who will answer
to His appeal for
messengers to carry it to His flock: "Here am I;
send me."
-------
CHAPTER V.
THE MYTHIC CHRIST.
We have already seen the use that is made of
Comparative Mythology
against Religion, and some of its most destructive
attacks have been
levelled against the Christ. His birth of a Virgin at
"Christmas," the
slaughter of the Innocents, His wonder-working and His
teachings, His
crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension--all these
events in the story
of His life are pointed to in the stories of other
lives, and His
historical existence is challenged on the strength of
these identities.
So far as the wonder-working and the teachings are
concerned, we may
briefly dismiss these first with the acknowledgment
that most great
Teachers have wrought works which, on the physical
plane, appear as
miracles in the sight of their contemporaries, but are
known by
occultists to be done by the exercise of powers possessed
by all
Initiates above a certain grade. The teachings He gave
may also be
acknowledged to be non-original; but where the student
of Comparative
Mythology thinks that he has proved that none is
divinely inspired, when
he shows that similar moral teachings fell from the
lips of Manu, from
the lips of the Buddha, from the lips of Jesus, the
occultist says that
certainly Jesus must have repeated the teachings of
His predecessors,
since He was a messenger from the same Lodge. The
profound verities
touching the divine and the human Spirit were as much
truths twenty
thousand years before Jesus was born in Palestine as
after He was born;
and to say that the world was left without such
teaching, and that man
was left in moral darkness from his beginnings to twenty
centuries ago,
is to say that there was a humanity without a Teacher,
children without
a Father, human souls crying for light into a darkness
that gave them no
answer--a conception as blasphemous of God as it is
desperate for man, a
conception contradicted by the appearance of every
Sage, by the mighty
literature, by the noble lives, in the thousands of
ages ere the Christ
came forth.
Recognising then in Jesus the great Master of the
West, the leading
Messenger of the Lodge to the western world, we must
face the difficulty
which has made havoc of this belief in the minds of
many: Why are the
festivals that commemorate events in the life of Jesus
found in
pre-Christian religions, and in them commemorate
identical events in the
lives of other Teachers?
Comparative Mythology, which has drawn public
attention to this question
in modern times, may be said to be about a century
old, dating from the
appearance of Dulaure's _Histoire Abregee de differens
Cultes_, of
Dupuis' _Origine de tous les Cultes_, of Moor's _Hindu
Pantheon_, and of
Godfrey Higgins' _Anacalypsis_. These works were
followed by a shoal of
others, growing more scientific and rigid in their
collection and
comparison of facts, until it has become impossible
for any educated
person to even challenge the identities and
similarities existing in
every direction. Christians are not to be found, in
these days, who are
prepared to contend that Christian symbols, rites, and
ceremonies are
unique--except, indeed, among the ignorant. There we
still behold
simplicity of belief hand-in-hand with ignorance of
facts; but outside
this class we do not find even the most devout
Christians alleging that
Christianity has not very much in common with faiths
older than itself.
But it is well known that in the first centuries
"after Christ" these
likenesses were on all hands admitted, and that modern
Comparative
Mythology is only repeating with great precision that
which was
universally recognised in the Early Church. Justin
Martyr, for instance,
crowds his pages with references to the religions of
his time, and if a
modern assailant of Christianity would cite a number
of cases in which
Christian teachings are identical with those of elder
religions, he can
find no better guides than the apologists of the
second century. They
quote Pagan teachings, stories, and symbols, pleading
that the very
identity of the Christian with these should prevent
the off-hand
rejection of the latter as in themselves incredible. A
curious reason
is, indeed, given for this identity, one that will
scarcely find many
adherents in modern days. Says Justin Martyr:
"Those who hand down the
myths which the poets have made adduce no proof to the
youths who learn
them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have
been uttered by the
influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead
astray the human
race. For having heard it proclaimed through the
prophets that the
Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men
were to be punished
by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of
Jupiter, under the
impression that they would be able to produce in men
the idea that the
things which were said with regard to Christ were mere
marvellous tales,
like the things which were said by the poets."
"And the devils, indeed,
having heard this washing published by the prophet,
instigated those who
enter their temples, and are about to approach them
with libations and
burnt offerings, also to sprinkle themselves; and they
cause them also
to wash themselves entirely as they depart."
"Which [the Lord's Supper]
the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of
Mithras, commanding
the same thing to be done."[175] "For I
myself, when I discovered the
wicked disguise which the evil spirits had thrown
around the divine
doctrines of the Christians, to turn aside others from
joining them,
laughed."[176]
These identities were thus regarded as the work of
devils, copies of the
Christian originals, largely circulated in the
pre-Christian world with
the object of prejudicing the reception of the truth
when it came. There
is a certain difficulty in accepting the earlier
statements as copies
and the later as originals, but without disputing with
Justin Martyr
whether the copies preceded the original or the
original the copies, we
may be content to accept his testimony as to the
existence of these
identities between the faith flourishing in the Roman
empire of his
time and the new religion he was engaged in defending.
Tertullian speaks equally plainly, stating the
objection made in his
days also to Christianity, that "the nations who
are strangers to all
understanding of spiritual powers, ascribe to their
idols the imbuing of
waters with the self-same efficacy." "So
they do," he answers quite
frankly, "but these cheat themselves with waters
that are widowed. For
washing is the channel through which they are
initiated into some sacred
rites of some notorious Isis or Mithra; and the Gods
themselves they
honour by washings.... At the Apollinarian and
Eleusinian games they
are baptised; and they presume that the effect of
their doing that is
the regeneration and the remission of the penalties
due to their
perjuries. Which fact, being acknowledged, we
recognise here also the
zeal of the devil rivalling the things of God, while
we find him too
practising baptism in his subjects."[177]
To solve the difficulty of these identities we must
study the Mythic
Christ, the Christ of the solar myths or legends,
these myths being the
pictorial forms in which certain profound truths were
given to the
world.
Now a "myth" is by no means what most people
imagine it to be--a mere
fanciful story erected on a basis of fact, or even
altogether apart from
fact. A myth is far truer than a history, for a
history only gives a
story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of
the substances
that cast the shadows. As above so below; and _first_
above and _then_
below. There are certain great principles according to
which our system
is built; there are certain laws by which these
principles are worked
out in detail; there are certain Beings who embody the
principles and
whose activities are the laws; there are hosts of
inferior beings who
act as vehicles for these activities, as agents, as
instruments; there
are the Egos of men intermingled with all these,
performing their share
of the great kosmic drama. These multifarious workers
in the invisible
worlds cast their shadows on physical matter, and
these shadows are
"things"--the bodies, the objects, that make
up the physical universe.
These shadows give but a poor idea of the objects that
cast them, just
as what we call shadows down here give but a poor idea
of the objects
that cast them; they are mere outlines, with blank
darkness in lieu of
details, and have only length and breadth, no depth.
History is an account, very imperfect and often
distorted, of the dance
of these shadows in the shadow-world of physical
matter. Anyone who has
seen a clever Shadow-Play, and has compared what goes
on behind the
screen on which the shadows are cast with the
movements of the shadows
on the screen, may have a vivid idea of the illusory
nature of the
shadow-actions, and may draw therefrom several not
misleading
analogies.[178]
Myth is an account of the movements of those who cast
the shadows; and
the language in which the account is given is what is
called the
language of symbols. Just as here we have words which
stand for
things--as the word "table" is a symbol for
a recognised article of a
certain kind--so do symbols stand for objects on
higher planes. They are
a pictorial alphabet, used by all myth-writers, and
each has its
recognised meaning. A symbol is used to signify a
certain object just as
words are used down here to distinguish one thing from
another, and so a
knowledge of symbols is necessary for the reading of a
myth. For the
original tellers of great myths are ever Initiates,
who are accustomed
to use the symbolic language, and who, of course, use
symbols in their
fixed and accepted meanings.
A symbol has a chief meaning, and then various
subsidiary meanings
related to that chief meaning. For instance, the Sun
is the symbol of
the Logos; that is its chief or primary significance.
But it stands also
for an incarnation of the Logos, or for any of the
great Messengers who
represent Him for the time, as an ambassador
represents his King. High
Initiates who are sent on special missions to
incarnate among men and
live with them for a time as Rulers or Teachers, would
be designated by
the symbol of the Sun; for though it is not their
symbol in an
individual sense, it is theirs in virtue of their
office.
All those who are signified by this symbol have
certain characteristics,
pass through certain situations, perform certain
activities, during
their lives on earth. The Sun is the physical shadow,
or body, as it is
called, of the Logos; hence its yearly course in
nature reflects His
activity, in the partial way in which a shadow
represents the activity
of the object that casts it. The Logos, "the Son
of God," descending
into matter, has as shadow the annual course of the
Sun, and the
Sun-Myth tells it. Hence, again, an incarnation of the
Logos, or one of
His high ambassadors, will also represent that
activity, shadow-like, in
His body as a man. Thus will necessarily arise
identities in the
life-histories of these ambassadors. In fact, the
absence of such
identities would at once point out that the person
concerned was not a
full ambassador, and that his mission was of a lower
order.
The Solar Myth, then, is a story which primarily
representing the
activity of the Logos, or Word, in the kosmos,
secondarily embodies the
life of one who is an incarnation of the Logos, or is
one of His
ambassadors. The Hero of the myth is usually
represented as a God, or
Demi-God, and his life, as will be understood by what
has been said
above, must be outlined by the course of the Sun, as
the shadow of the
Logos. The part of the course lived out during the
human life is that
which falls between the winter solstice and the
reaching of the zenith
in summer. The Hero is born at the winter solstice,
dies at the spring
equinox, and, conquering death, rises into mid-heaven.
The following remarks are interesting in this
connection, though looking
at myth in a more general way, as an allegory,
picturing inner truths:
"Alfred de Vigny has said that legend is
frequently more true than
history, because legend recounts not acts which are
often incomplete
and abortive, but the genius itself of great men and
great nations. It
is pre-eminently to the Gospel that this beautiful
thought is
applicable, for the Gospel is not merely the narration
of what has been;
it is the sublime narration of what is and what always
will be. Ever
will the Saviour of the world be adored by the kings
of intelligence,
represented by the Magi; ever will He multiply the
eucharistic bread, to
nourish and comfort our souls; ever, when we invoke
Him in the night and
the tempest, will He come to us walking on the waters,
ever will He
stretch forth His hand and make us pass over the
crests of the billows;
ever will He cure our distempers and give back light
to our eyes; ever
will He appear to His faithful, luminous and
transfigured upon Tabor,
interpreting the law of Moses and moderating the zeal
of Elias."[179]
We shall find that myths are very closely related to
the Mysteries, for
part of the Mysteries consisted in showing living
pictures of the
occurrences in the higher worlds that became embodied
in myths. In fact
in the Pseudo-Mysteries, mutilated fragments of the
living pictures of
the true Mysteries were represented by actors who
acted out a drama, and
many secondary myths are these dramas put into words.
The broad outlines of the story of the Sun-God are
very clear, the
eventful life of the Sun-God being spanned within the
first six months
of the solar year, the other six being employed in the
general
protecting and preserving. He is always born at the
winter solstice,
after the shortest day in the year, at the midnight of
the 24th of
December, when the sign Virgo is rising above the
horizon; born as this
sign is rising, he is born always of a virgin, and she
remains a virgin
after she has given birth to her Sun-Child, as the
celestial Virgo
remains unchanged and unsullied when the Sun comes
forth from her in the
heavens. Weak, feeble as an infant is he, born when
the days are
shortest and the nights are longest--we are on the
north of the
equatorial line--surrounded with perils in his
infancy, and the reign of
the darkness far longer than his in his early days.
But he lives
through all the threatening dangers, and the day
lengthens towards the
spring equinox, till the time comes for the crossing
over, the
crucifixion, the date varying with each year. The
Sun-God is sometimes
found sculptured within the circle of the horizon,
with the head and
feet touching the circle at north and south, and the
outstretched hands
at east and west--"He was crucified." After
this he rises triumphantly
and ascends into heaven, and ripens the corn and the
grape, giving his
very life to them to make their substance and through
them to his
worshippers. The God who is born at the dawning of
December 25th is ever
crucified at the spring equinox, and ever gives his
life as food to his
worshippers--these are among the most salient marks of
the Sun-God. The
fixity of the birth-date and the variableness of the
death-date are full
of significance, when we remember that the one is a
fixed and the other
a variable solar position. "Easter" is a
movable event, calculated by
the relative positions of sun and moon, an impossible
way of fixing year
by year the anniversary of a historical event, but a
very natural and
indeed inevitable way of calculating a solar festival.
These changing
dates do not point to the history of a man, but to the
Hero of a solar