[569] The vertical line being the male principle, and the horizontal the female, out of the union of the two at the intersection point is formed the CROSS; the oldest symbol in the Egyptian history of gods. It is the key of Heaven in the rosy fingers of Neith, the celestial virgin, who opens the gate at dawn for the exit of her first-begotten, the radiant sun. It is the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical cross of the high-grade Masons. We find this symbol ornamenting the tee of the umbrella-shaped oldest pagodas in Thibet, China, and India, as we find it in the hand of Isis, in the shape of the “handled cross.” In one of the Chaitya caves, at Ajunta, it surmounts the three umbrellas in stone, and forms the centre of the vault.

[570] “When this world had emerged from obscurity, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetable germ which at first animated the plants; from the plants, life passed through the fantastic organisms which were born in the ilus (boue) of the waters; then through a series of forms and different animals, it at length reached man” (“Manu,” book i.; and “Bhagavatta”).

Manu is a convertible type, which can by no means be explained as a personage. Manu means sometimes humanity, sometimes man. The Manu who emanated from the uncreated Swayambhuva is, without doubt, the type of Adam Kadmon. The Manu who is progenitor of the other six Manus is evidently identical with the Rishis, or seven primeval sages who are the forefathers of the post-diluvian races. He is—as we shall show in Chapter VIII.—Noah, and his six sons, or subsequent generations are the originals of the post-diluvian and mythical patriarchs of the Bible.

[571] Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.”

[572] See Vol. I., chap. i., pp. 33, 34, of this work.

[573] “Sepher Jezireh,” chap. i., Mishna ixth.

[574] Ibid.

[575] “Sohar,” i., 2 a.

[576] “Sepher Jezireh,” Mishna ix., 10.

[577] It is interesting to recall Hebrews i. 7, in connection with this passage. “Who maketh his angels (messengers) spirits, and his ministers (servants, those who minister) a flame of fire.” The resemblance is too striking for us to avoid the conclusion that the author of “Hebrews” was as familiar with the “Kabala” as adepts usually are.

[578] “The Sons of God;” “The India of the Brahmans,” p. 230.

[579] May it not be that Hanoumā is the representative of that link of beings half-man, half-monkeys, which, according to the theories of Messrs. Hovelacque and Schleicher, were arrested in their development, and fell, so to say, into a retrogressive evolution?

[580] The Primal or Ultimate Essence has no name in India. It is indicated sometimes as “That” and “This.” “This (universe) was not originally anything. There was neither heaven, nor earth, nor atmosphere. That being non-existent resolved ‘Let me be.’” (Original Sanscrit Text.) Dr. Muir, vol. v., p. 366.

[581] Coleman’s “Hindu Mythology.”

[582] The siege and subsequent surrender of Lanca (Isle of Ceylon) to Rama is placed by the Hindu chronology—based upon the Zodiac—at 7,500 to 8,000 years B.C., and the following or eighth incarnation of Vishnu at 4,800 B.C. (from the book of the Historical Zodiacs of the Brahmans).

[583] A Hanoverian scientist has recently published a work entitled Ueber die Auflösung der Arten dinck Natürliche Jucht Wahl, in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he maintains that it is the ape which has evolved from man. That, in the beginning, mankind were, morally and physically, the types and prototypes of our present race and of human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conceptions. This is a purely Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and kabalistic philosophy. His book is copiously illustrated with diagrams, tables, etc. He says that the gradual debasement and degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout the ethnological transformations down to our times. And, as one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual present, it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a body as our physical scientists should end as simia rather than as seraphs.

[584] “De Bel. Jud.,” vol. ii., p. 12.

[585] “De Somniio,” p. 455 d.

[586] “Sohar,” vol. ii., p. 96.

[587] “Mishna;” “Aboth,” vol. iv., p. 29; Mackenzie’s “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 413.

[588] “Sohar,” vol. iii, p. 61 b.

[589] Ibid., vol. i., p. 65 b.

[590] Hermetic work.

[591] “Dhamma-pada,” slokas 276 et seq.

[592] Neander: “History of the Church,” vol. i., p. 817.

[593] It is from the highest Zion that Maitree-Buddha, the Saviour to come, will descend on earth; and it is also from Zion that comes the Christian Deliverer (see Romans xi. 26).

[594] 1 Corinth. ii. 6, 7, 8.

[595] “Lotus de la Bonne Loi,” p. 806.

[596] “Du Bouddhisme,” 95.

[597] Philippians iii. 11-14.

[598] “The Mahâvansa,” vol. i., Introduction.

[599] The Five Articles of Faith.

[600] Not only did the Buddhist missionaries make their way to the Mesopotamian Valley, but they even went so far west as Ireland. The Rev. Dr. Lundy, in his work on “Monumental Christianity,” referring to an Irish Round Tower, observes: “Henry O’Brien explains this Round Tower Crucifixion as that of Buddha; the animals as the elephant and the bull, sacred to Buddha, and into which his soul entered after death; the two figures standing beside the cross as Buddha’s virgin mother, and Kama his favorite disciple. The whole picture bears a close likeness to the Crucifixion, in the cemetery of Pope Julius, except the animals, which are conclusive proof that it cannot be Christian. It came ultimately from the far East to Ireland, with the Phœnician colonists, who erected the Round Towers as symbols of the life-giving and preserving power of man and nature, and how that universal life is produced through suffering and death.”

When a Protestant clergyman is thus forced to confess the pre-Christian existence of the crucifix in Ireland, its Buddhistic character, and the penetration of the missionaries of that faith even to that then remote portion of the earth, we need not wonder that in the minds of the Nazarean contemporaries of Jesus and their descendants, he should not have been associated with that universally known emblem in the character of a Redeemer.

In noticing this admission of Dr. Lundy, Mr. Charles Sotheran remarked, in a lecture before the American Philological Society, that both legends and archæological remains unite in proving beyond question “that Ireland, like every other nation, once listened to the propagandists of Siddhârtha-Buddha.”

[601] “The religion of multiplied baptisms, the scion of the still existent sect named the ‘Christians of St. John,’ or Mendæans, whom the Arabs call el-Mogtasila and Baptists. The Aramean verb seba, origin of the name Sabian, is a synonym of βαπτιζω” (Renan: “Vie de Jesus”).

[602] Foh-Tchou, literally, in Chinese, meaning Buddha’s lord, or the teacher of the doctrines of Buddha—Foh.

[603] This mountain is situated southwest of China, almost between China and Thibet.

[604] Sol, being situated, on the diagram, exactly in the centre of the solar system (of which the Ophites appear to have been cognizant)—hence, under the direct vertical ray of the Higher Spiritual Sun—showers his brightness on all other planets.

[605] Speaking of Venus, Placidus, the astrologer, always maintained that “her bluish lustre denotes heat.” As to Mercury, it was a strange fancy of the Ophites to represent him as a spirit of water, when astrologically considered he is as “a cold, dry, earthy, and melancholy star.”

[606] The name which Norberg translates, in his Onomasticon to the “Codex Nazaræus,” as Ferho, stands, in the original, Parcha Rabba. In the “Life of Manes,” given by Epiphanius, in his “Hær.,” lxvi., is mentioned a certain priest of Mithras, a friend of the great Hæresiarch Manes, named Parchus.

[607] Its description is found in one of the magic books of the Egyptian King Nechepsos, and its use prescribed on green jasper stones, as a potent amulet. Galen mentions it in his work, “De Simp. Med.,” c. ix.

[608] Consider those two diametrically-opposed doctrines—the Catholic and the Protestant; the one preached by Paul, the semi-Platonist, and the other by James, the orthodox Talmudist.

[609] The material, bad side of Sophia-Achamoth, who emanates from herself Ilda-Baoth and his six sons.

[610] See Norberg’s translation of “Codex Nazaræus,” Preface. This proves once more the identification of Jesus with Gautama-Buddha, in the minds of the Nazarene Gnostics, as Nebu or Mercury is the planet sacred to the Buddhas.

[611] Nous, the designation given by Anaxagoras to the Supreme Deity, was taken from Egypt, where he was styled Nout.

[612] By very few though, for the creators of the material universe were always considered as subordinate deities to the Most High God.

[613] Lydus, 1. c., Ledrenus, 1. c.

[614] “Erân das Land zwischen dem Indus und Tigris.”

[615] Asi means, moreover, “Thou art,” in Sanscrit, and also “sword,” “Asi,” without the accent on the first vowel.

[616] Professor A. Wilder.

[617] These sacred anagrams were called “Zeruph.”

[618] “Book of Numbers, or Book of the Keys.”

[619] The “Jezira,” or book of the creation, was written by Rabbi Akiba, who was the teacher and instructor of Simeon Ben Iochai, who was called the prince of the kabalists, and wrote the “Sohar.” Franck asserts that “Jezira” was written one century B.C. (“Die Kabbala,” 65), but other and as competent judges make it far older. At all events, it is now proved that Simeon Ben Iochai lived before the second destruction of the temple.

[620] “Jezira,” p. 8.

[621] Ibid. See the constancy with which Ezekiel sticks in his vision to the “wheels” of the “living creatures” (ch. 1., passim).

[622] He was an Alexandrian Neo-platonic under the first of the Ptolemies.

[623] “Chips,” vol. i.

[624] See Max Müller’s “Our Figures.”

[625] Ibid.

[626] See King’s “Gnostics and their Remains,” plate xiii.

[627] “Vita Pythagor.”

[628] 608 B.C.

[629] This city was built 332 B.C.

[630] “Metaph.,” vii. F.

[631] See drawings from the Temple of Rama, Coleman’s “Mythology of the Hindus.” New York: J. W. Bouton, Publisher.

[632] See Hargrave Jennings: “Rosicrucians,” p. 252.

[633] K. O. Müller: “History of Greek Literature,” p. 283; “Movers,” pp. 547-553; Dunlap: “Sod, the Mysteries of Adoni,” p. 21.

[634] See “Universal History,” vol. v., p. 301.

[635] “Spirit. Hist.,” pp. 64, 67, 78.

[636] “Sod, the Mysteries of Adoni,” p. 21.

[637] See Leviticus xvi. 8, 10, and other verses relating to the biblical goat in the original texts.

[638] “Sagra Scrittura,” and “Paralipomeni.”

[639] Article “Goat,” p. 257.

[640] “Types of Mankind,” p. 600; “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia.”

[641] “Ecclesiastical History,” vol. i., pp. 381, 382. Read the whole quotations to appreciate the doctrine in full.

[642] “Anacalypsis.”

[643] Quoted in the “Seers of the Ages,” by J. M. Peebles.

[644] We hold to the idea—which becomes self-evident when the Zoroastrian imbroglio is considered—that there were, even in the days of Darius, two distinct sacerdotal castes of Magi: the initiated and those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites only. We see the same in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Belonging to every temple there were attached the “hierophants” of the inner sanctuary, and the secular clergy who were not even instructed in the Mysteries. It is against the absurdities and superstitions of the latter that Darius revolted, and “crushed them,” for the inscription of his tomb shows that he was a “hierophant” and a Magian himself. It is also but the exoteric rites of this class of Magi which descended to posterity, for the great secresy in which were preserved the “Mysteries” of the true Chaldean Magi was never violated, however much guess-work may have been expended on them.

[645] xxiii., 6.

[646] “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 185.

[647] These are truths which cannot fail to impress themselves upon the minds of earnest thinkers. While the Ebionites, Nazarites, Hemerobaptists, Lampseans, Sabians, and the many other earliest sects which wavered later between the varying dogmatisms suggested to them by the esoteric and misunderstood parables of the Nazarene teacher, whom they justly regarded as a prophet, there were men, for whose names we would vainly search history, who preserved the secret doctrines of Jesus as pure and unadulterated as they had been received. And still, even all these above-mentioned and conflicting sects were far more orthodox in their Christianity, or rather Christism, than the Churches of Constantine and Rome. “It was a strange fate that befell these unfortunate people” (the Ebionites), says Lord Amberley, “when, overwhelmed by the flood of heathenism that had swept into the Church, they were condemned as heretics. Yet, there is no evidence that they had ever swerved from the doctrines of Jesus, or of the disciples who knew him in his lifetime.... Jesus himself was circumcised ... reverenced the temple at Jerusalem as ‘a house of prayer for all nations.’... But the torrent of progress swept past the Ebionites, and left them stranded on the shore” (“An Analysis of Religious Beliefs,” by Viscount Amberley, vol. i., p. 446).

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

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

[650] The Okhal (from the Arabic akl—intelligence or wisdom) are the initiated, or wise men of this sect. They hold, in their mysteries, the same position as the hierophant of old, in the Eleusinian and others.

[651] This is the doctrine of the Gnostics who held Christos to be the personal immortal Spirit of man.

[652] The ten Messiahs or avatars remind again of the five Buddhistic and ten Brahmanical avatars of Buddha and Christna.

[653] See, farther on, a letter from an “Initiate.”

[654] In this column the first numbers are those given in the article on the Druzes in the “New American Cyclopædia” (Appleton’s), vol. vi., p. 631. The numbers in parentheses show the sequence in which the commandments would stand were they given correctly.

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

[656] This commandment does not exist in the Lebanon teaching.

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

[658] “Mount Lebanon,” vol. 3. London, 1853.

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

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

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

[662] John x. 34, 35.

[663] 2 Corinthians, vi. 16.

[664] Jacolliot: “Voyage au Pays des Éléphants.”

[665] Buddhist chief priests at Ceylon.

[666] Samenaïra is one who studies to obtain the high office of a Oepasampala. He is a disciple and is looked upon as a son by the chief priest. We suspect that the Catholic seminarist must look to the Buddhists for the parentage of his title.

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

[668] We were told that there were nearly 20,000 of such books.

[669] Lepsius: “Königsbuch,” b. ii, tal. i. dyn. 5, h. p. In 1 Peter ii. 3, Jesus is called “the Lord Crestos.”

[670] Mackenzie: “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 207.

[671] “Adv. Hær.,” iii., 2, § 2.

[672] Sprengel: “Histoire de la Médecine.”

[673] “Christ of Paul,” p. 188.

[674] “Adv. Hær.,” v. 33, § 4.

[675] Eusebius: “Hist. Eccles.,” iii., p. 39.

[676] Bunsen: “Egypt,” vol. i, p. 200.

[677] “Internal Development of Europe,” p. 147.

[678] “Antiquities,” lib. xviii., cap. 3.

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

[680] Dr. Lardner rejects it as spurious, and gives nine reasons for rejecting it.

[681] Revelation i. and ii.

[682] Philip, the first martyr, was one of the seven, and he was stoned about the year A.D. 34.

[683] 1 Corinthians, vii. 34.

[684] Revelation xiv. 3, 4.

[685] Philopatris, in Taylor’s “Diegesis,” p. 376.

[686] King’s “Gnostics and their Remains.”

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

[688] Baronius: “Annales Ecclesiastici,” t. xxi., p. 89.

[689] “Chron. de Lanercost,” ed. Stevenson, p. 109.

[690] Dulaure: “Histoire Abregée des Différens Cultes,” vol. ii., p. 285; Martezzi “Pagani é Christiani,” p. 78.

[691] Basilides is termed by Tertullian a Platonist.

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

[693] Plutarch: “Roman Questions,” p. 44.

[694] Linus, Anacletus, and Clement.

[695] “Life of Claudius,” sect. 25.

[696] “Vita Saturnini Vopiscus.”

[697] “The Gnostics and their Remains,” p. 68.

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

[699] “Vie de Jesus,” p. 405.

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

[701] “Buddhism,” p. 217.

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

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

[704] See Chap. iii., p. 97.

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

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

[707] “Idra Rabba,” x., 117.

[708] Introd. in “Sohar,” pp. 305-312.

[709] John xiv.

[710] “Les Hauts Phénomènes de la Magie,” p. 74.

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

[712] “Journal des Débats,” Avril, 1853.

[713] “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.”

[714] “Timæus;” “Polit.,” 269, E.

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

[716] “Laws,” iv., 715, E.; x., 901, C.

[717] “Repub.,” ii., 381; “Thæt.,” 176, A.

[718] “Laws,” x., 901, D.

[719] “Laws,” iv., 716, A.; “Repub.,” x., 613, A.

[720] “Phædrus,” 246, C.

[721] E. Zeller: “Plato and the Old Academy.”

[722] “Laws,” x., 905, D.

[723] Max Müller: “Buddhism,” April, 1862.

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

[725] “Crawford’s Mission to Siam,” p. 182.

[726] Many are the marvels recorded as having taken place at his death, or we should rather say his translation; for he did not die as others do, but having suddenly disappeared, while a dazzling light filled the cavern with glory, his body was again seen upon its subsidence. When this heavenly light gave place to the habitual semi-darkness of the gloomy cave—then only, says Ginsburg, “the disciples of Israel perceived that the lamp of Israel was extinguished.” His biographers tell us that there were voices heard from Heaven during the preparation for his funeral and at his interment. When the coffin was lowered down into the deep cave excavated for it, a flame broke out from it, and a voice mighty and majestic pronounced these words in the air: “This is he who caused the earth to quake, and the kingdoms to shake!”

[727] Plot: “Natural History of Staffordshire.” Published in 1666.

[728] “Die Kabbala,” 75; “Sod,” vol. ii.

[729] “Die Kabbala,” 47.

[730] He relates how Rabbi Eleazar, in the presence of Vespasian and his officers, expelled demons from several men by merely applying to the nose of the demoniac one of the number of roots recommended by King Solomon! The distinguished historian assures us that the Rabbi drew out the devils through the nostrils of the patients in the name of Solomon and by the power of the incantations composed by the king-kabalist. Josephus: “Antiquities,” VIII., ii., 5.

[731] There are unconscious miracles produced sometimes, which, like the phenomena now called “Spiritual,” are caused through natural cosmic powers, mesmerism, electricity, and the invisible beings who are always at work around us, whether they be human or elementary spirits.

[732] It dates from 1540; and in 1555 a general outcry was raised against them in some parts of Portugal, Spain, and other countries.

[733] Extracts from this “Arrêt” were compiled into a work in 4 vols., 12mo., which appeared at Paris, in 1762, and was known as “Extraits des Assertions, etc.” In a work entitled “Réponse aux Assertions,” an attempt was made by the Jesuits to throw discredit upon the facts collected by the Commissioners of the French Parliament in 1762, as for the most part malicious fabrications. “To ascertain the validity of this impeachment,” says the author of “The Principles of the Jesuits,” “the libraries of the two universities of the British Museum and of Sion College have been searched for the authors cited; and in every instance where the volume was found, the correctness of the citation established.”

[734] “Theologiæ Moralis,” Tomus iv., Lugduni, 1663.

[735] Tom. iv., lib. xxviii., sect. 1, de Præcept I., c. 20, n. 184.

[736] Ibid., sect. 2, de Præcept I., Probl. 113, n. 586.

[737] Richard Arsdekin, “Theologia Tripartita,” Coloniæ, 1744, Tom. ii., Pars. ii., Tr. 5, c. 1, § 2, n. 4.

[738] “Theologia Moralis nunc pluribus partibus aucta, à R. P. Claudio Lacroix, Societatis Jesu.” Coloniæ, 1757 (Ed. Mus. Brit.).

[739] Tom. ii., lib. iii., Pars. 1, Fr. 1, c. 1, dub. 2, resol. viii. What a pity that the counsel for the defense had not bethought them to cite this orthodox legalization of “cheating by palmistry or otherwise,” at the recent religio-scientific prosecution of the medium Slade, in London.

[740] Niccolini: “History of the Jesuits.”

[741] “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 369.

[742] Imago: “Primi Sæculi Societatis Jesu,” lib. 1., c. 3., p. 64.

[743] Anthony Escobar: “Universæ Theologiæ Moralis receptiore, absque lite sententiæ,” etc., Tomus i., Lugduni, 1652 (Ed. Bibl. Acad. Cant.). “Idem sentio, e breve illud tempus ad unius horæ spatium traho. Religiosus itaque habitum demittens assignato hoc temporis interstitio, non incurrit excommunicationem, etiamsi dimittat non solùm ex causâ, turpi, scilicet fornicandi, aut clàm aliquid abripiendi, set etiam ut incognitus ineat lupanar.” Probl. 44, n. 213.

[744] Pars. 11, Tra. 2, c. 31.

[745] See “The Principles of the Jesuits, Developed in a Collection of Extracts from their own Authors.” London, 1839.

[746] From the Pastoral of the Archbishop of Cambrai.

[747] See “Jerusalem Talmud, Synhedrin,” c. 7, etc.

[748] “Franck,” pp. 55, 56.

[749] Charles Antony Casnedi: “Crisis Theologica,” Ulyssipone, 1711. Tome i., Disp. 6, Sect. 2, § 1, n. 59.

[750] Ibid.

[751] Ibid., § 2, n. 78.

[752] Ibid., Sect. 5, § 1, n. 165.

[753] “Thesis propugnata in regio Soc. Jes. Collegio celeberrimæ Academiæ Cadomensis, die Veneris, 30 Jan., 1693.” Cadomi, 1693.

[754] Michelet and Quinet of the College of France: “The Jesuits.”

[755] Champollion: “Hermes Trismegistus,” xxvii.

[756] “De Cultu Adorationis Libri Tres.,” Lib. iii., Disp. i., c. 2.

[757] Ibid.

[758] “Egypt’s Place in Universal History,” vol. v., p. 94.

[759] Ibid., vol. v., p. 129.

[760] “And God created ... every nephesh (life) that moveth” (Gen. i. 21), meaning animals; and (Genesis ii. 7) it is said: “And man became a nephesh” (living soul); which shows that the word nephesh was indifferently applied to immortal man and to mortal beast. “And surely your blood of your nepheshim (lives) will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man” (Gen. ix. 5). “Escape for nepheshe” (escape for thy life is translated) (Gen. xix. 17). “Let us not kill him,” reads the English version (Gen. xxxvii. 21). “Let us not kill his nephesh,” is the Hebrew text. “Nephesh for nephesh,” says Leviticus (xvii. 8). “He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.” “He that smiteth the nephesh of a man” (Levit. xxiv. 17); and from verse 18 and following it reads: “And he that killeth a beast (nephesh) shall make it good.... Beast for beast,” whereas the original text has it “nephesh for nephesh.”

1 Kings i. 12; ii. 23; iii. 11; xix. 2, 3, all have nephesh for life and soul. “Then shall thy nepheshah for (his) nepheshu,” explains the prophet in 1 Kings xx. 39.

Truly, unless we read the “Old Testament” kabalistically and comprehend the hidden meaning thereof, it is very little we can learn from it as regards the soul’s immortality. The common people among Hebrews had not the slighest idea of soul and spirit, and made no difference between life, blood, and soul, calling the latter the “breath of life.” And King James’s translators have made such a jumble of it that no one but a kabalist can restore the Bible to its original form.