M. Peebles, M.D., the author quotes, from the London Aihenaum^ an

article in which are described the welfare and civilization of the inhabi- tants of Yarkand and Kashgar, **who seem virtuous and happy." "Gracious Heavens!" fervently exclaims the honest author, who him- self was once a Universalist clergyman, " Grant to keep Christian mis- sionaries away from * happy ' and heathen Tartary ! *' *
From the earliest days of Christianity, when Paul upbraided the Church of Corinth for a crime " as is not so much as named among the Gentiles — that one should have his father's wife ; " and for their mak- ing a pretext of the ** Lord's Supper " for debauch and drunkenness (i Corinthians^ v. i), the profession of the name of Christ has ever been more a pretext than the evidence of holy feeling. However, a correct form of this verse is ; ** Everywhere the lewd practice among you is heard about, such a lewd practice as is nowhere among the heathen nations — even the having or marrying of the father's wife. • The Per- sian influence would seem to be indicated in this language. The prac- tice existed "nowhere among the nations," except in Persia, where it was esteemed especially meritorious. Hence, too, the Jewish stories of Abraham marrying his sister, Nahor, his niece, Amrani his father's sister, and Judah his son's widow, whose children appear to have been legiti- mate. The Aryan tribes esteemed endogamic marriages, while the Tartars and all barbarous nations required all alliances to be exagamous.
♦J. M. Peebles: " Jesus— Man, Myth, or God?"
THE RAISING OF KALAVATTI. 241
There was but one apostle of Jesus worthy of that name, and that was Paul. However disfigured were his Epistles by dogmatic hands before being admitted into the Canon, his conception of the great and divine figure of the philosopher who died for his idea can still be traced in his addresses to the various Gentile nations. Only, he who would understand him better yet must study the Philonean Logos reflecting now and then the Hindu Sabda (logos) of the Mimansa school.
As to the other apostles, those whose names are prefixed to the GoS' pels — we cannot well believe in their veracity when we find them attrib- uting to their Master miracles surrounded by circumstances, recorded, if not in the oldest books of India, at least in such as antedated Chris- tianity, and in the very phraseology of the traditions. Who, in his days of simple and blind credulity, but marvelled at the touching narrative given in the Gospels according to Mark and Luke of the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus ? Who has ever doubted its originality ? And yet the story is copied entirely from the Hari-Purana, and is recorded among the miracles attributed to Christna. We translate it from the French version :
" The King Angashuna caused the betrothal of his daughter, the beautiful Kalavatti, with the young son of Vamadeva, the powerful King of Antarvedi, named Govinda, to be celebrated with great pomp.
" But as Kalavatti was amusing herself in the groves with her com- panions, she was stung by a serpent and died. Angashuna tore his clothes, covered himself with ashes, and cursed the day when he was born.
" Suddenly, a great rumor spread through the palace, and the following cries were heard, a thousand times repeated : ^ Pacya pitaram ; pacya gurum ! ' * The Father, the Master ! ' Then Christna approached, smiling, leaning on the arm of Ardjuna. ... * Master ! ' cried Angashuna, casting himself at his feet, and sprinkling them with his tears, * See my poor daughter ! ' and he showed him the body of Kalavatti, stretched upon a mat. . . .
" * Why do you weep ? ' replied Christna, in a gentle voice. * Do you not see that she is sleeping ? Listen to the sound of her breathing, like the sigh of the night wind which rustles the leaves of the trees. See, her cheeks resuming their color, her eyes, whose lids tremble as if they were about to open ; her lips quiver as if about to speak ; she is sleeping, I tell you ; and hold ! see, she moves, Kalavatti / Rise and walk I '
" Hardly had Christna spoken, when the breathing, warmth, move- ment, and life returned little by little, into the corpse, and the young girl, obeying the injunction of the demi-god, rose from her couch and 16
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rejoined her companions. But the crowd marvelled and cried out : ' This is a god, since death is no more for him than sleep ? ' " ♦
All such parables are enforced upon Christians, with the addition of dogmas which, in their extraordinary character, leave far behind them the wildest conceptions of heathenism. The Christians, in order to believe in a Deity, have found it necessary to kill their God, that they them- selves should live !
And now, the Supreme, unknown one, the Father of grace and mercy, and his celestial hierarchy are managed by the Church as though they were so many theatrical stars and supernumeraries under salary ! Six centuries before the Christian era, Xenophones had disposed of such anthropomorphism by an immortal satire, recorded and preserved by Clement of Alexandria :
" There i« one God Supreme
Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature ; But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members ; So if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man's fashion, And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen. Each kind the Divine with its own form and nature endowing." f
And hear Vyasa — the poet-pantheist of India, who, for all the scientists can prove, may have lived, as Jacolliot has it, some fifteen thousand years ago — discoursing on Maya, the illusion of the senses :
'* All religious dogmas only serve to obscure the intelligence of man. . . . Worship of divinities, under the allegories of which is hidden respect for natural laws, drives away truth to the profit of the basest superstitions " ( pyasa Maya).
It wis given to Christianity to paint us God Almighty after the model of the kabalistic abstraction of the "Ancient of Days." From old frescos on cathedral ceilings ; Catholic missals, and other icons and images, we now find him depicted by the poetic brush of Gustave Dor6. The awful, unknown majesty of Him, whom no ** heathen *' dared to reproduce in concrete form, is figuring in our own century in Dor^s Illustrated Bible, Treading uj>on clouds that float in mid-air, darkness and chaos behind him and the world beneath his feet, a majestic old man stands, his left hand gathering his flowing robes about him, and his right raised in the gesture of command. He has spoken the Word, and
♦ Translated from the ** Hari-Purana," by Jacolliot : «* Christna, et Ic Christ.*^ f Clement : " Al. Strom./' v. 14, §110; translation given in *' Supernatural Reli- gion," voL i, p. 77.
EPISCOPAL PASSPORTS TO HEAVEN. 243
from his towering person streams an effulgence of Light — the Shekinah. As a poetic conception, the composition does honor to tlie artist, but does it honor God ? Better, the chaos beliind Him, than the figure itself; for there, at least, we have a solemn myster)'. For our part, we prefer the silence of the ancient heathens. With such a gross, anthropo- morphic, and, as we conceive, blasphemous representation of the First Cause, who can feel surprised at any iconographic extravagance in the rep- resentation of the Christian Christ, the apostles, and the putative Saints ? With the Catholics St. Peter becomes quite naturally the janitor of Heaven, and sits at the door of the celestial kingdom — a ticket-taker to the Trinity !
In a religious disturbance which recently occurred in one of the Spanish- American provinces, there were found upon the bodies of som>e of the killed, passports signed by the Bishop of the Diocese and addressed to St. Peter ; bidding him " admit the bearer as a true son of the Church,'^ It was subsequently ascertained that these unique docu- ments were issued by the Catholic prelate just before his deluded parishioners went into the fight at the instigation of their priests.
In their immoderate desire to find evidence for the authenticity of the N'eiv Testament, the best men, the most erudite scholars even among Protestant divines, but too often fall into deplorable traps. We cannot believe that such a learned commentator as Canon Westcott could have left himself in ignorance as to Talmudistic and purely kabalistic writings. How then is it that we find him quoting, with such serene assurance as presenting " striking analogies to the Gospel of St. John,* passages from the work of The Pastor of Hermas^ which are complete sentences from the kabalistic literature? "The view which Hermas gives of Christ's nature and work is no less harmonious with apostolic doctrine, and it offers striking analogies to the Gospel of St, John. . . . He (Jesus) is a rock higher than the mountains, able to hold thei whole world, ancient, and yet having a new gate ! . . . He is older than creation, so that he took counsel with the Father about the creation which he made. . . . No one shall enter in unto him otherwise than by his Son." *
Now while — as the author of Supernatural Religion well proves — there
♦This work, '* The Pastor of Hermas," is no longer extant, but appears only in the " Stichometry " of Nicephorus ; it is now considered an apocrypha. But, in the days of Irenacus it was quote.l as Holy Scripture (see *'Sup. Religion/* vol. i., p. 257) by the Fathers, held to be divinely inspire.l. and publicly read in the churches (Irenaeus : *' Adv. Haer.," iv., 20). When TertuUian became a Montanist he rejected it, after haviug arf^r/
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is nothing in this which looks like a corroboration of the doctrine taught in the fourth gospel, he omits to state that nearly everything expressed by the pseudo-Hermas in relation to his parabolic conversation with the ** Lord " is a plain quotation, with repeated variations, from the Sohar and other kabalistic books. We may as well compare, so as to leave the reader in no difficulty to judge for himself.
" God," says Hernias, '* planted the vineyard, that is, He created the people and gave them to His Son ; and the Son . . . himself cleansed their sins, etc. ; " i. c, the Son washed them in his blood, in commemo- ration of which Christians drink wine at the communion. In the Kabala it is shown that the Aged of the Aged, or ^^ Long-Face^' plants a vine- yard, the latter typifying mankind ; and a vine, meaning Life. The Spirit of " King Messiah " is, therefore, shown as washing his garments in the wine from above, from the creation of the world. * Adam, or A-Dam is " blood." The life of the flesh is in the blood (nephesh — soul), Leviticus xvii. And Adam-Kadmon is the Only-Begotten. Noah also plants a vineyard — the allegorical hot-bed of future humanity. As a con- sequence of the adoption of the same allegory, we find it reproduced in the Nazarene Codex, Seven vines are procreated, which spring from lukabar Ziva, and Ferho (or Parcha) Raba waters them, f When the blessed will ascend among the creatures of Light, they shall see lavar- Zivo, Lord of Life, and the First Vine ! J These kabalistic metaphora are thus naturally repeated in the Gospel according to John (xv. i) : "I am the tnie vine, and my Father is the husbandman." In Genesis (xlix.), the dying Jacob is made to say, ** The sceptre shall not depart from Judah (the lion's whelp), nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh (Siloh) comes. . . . Binding his colt unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine, he washed his garments in 7enne, and his clothes in the blood of grapes^ Shiloh is " King Messiah," as well as the Shiloh in Ephraun, which was to be made the capital and the place of the sanc- tuary. In The Targum of Onkelos, the Babylonian, the words of Jacob read : "Until the King Messiah shall come." The prophecy has failed in the Christian as well as in the kabalistico-Jewish sense. The sceptre has departed from Judah, whether the Messiah has already or will come, unless we believe, with the kabalists, that Moses was the first Messiah, who transferred his soul to Joshua — Jesus. §
Says Hermas : " And, in the middle of the plain, he showed rae a. great white rock, which had risen out of the plain, and the rock was
♦ ** Sohar," xl, p. la f "Codex Nazaraeus," toL iii., pp. 60,61.
X Ibid., Tol. ii., p. 281 ; vol. Hi., p. 59.
§ We must remind the reader, in this connection, that Joshua and Jesus are one and the same name. In the Slavonian Bibles Joshua reads — lessus (or Jesus), Navim,
THE COMING OF KING MESSIAH. 245
higher than the mountains, rectangular, so as to be able to hold the whole world ; but that rock was old, having a gate hewn out of it, and the hew- ing out of the gate seemed to me to be recent." Jn the Sohar^ we find : " To 40,000 superior worlds the white of the skull of His Head (of the most Sacred Ancient in absconditus) is extended. * . . . When Siir (the first reflection and image of his Father, the Ancient of the An- cient) will, through the mystery of the seventy names of Metatron, de- scend into lezirah (the third world), he will open a new gate. . . . The Spiritus Decisorius will cut and divide the garment (Shekinah) into two parts, f ... At the coming of King Messiah, from the sacred cubical stone of the Temple a white light will be arising during forty days. This will expand, until /"/ encloses the whole world, ... At that time King Messiah will allow himself to be revealed, and will be seen coming out of the gate of the garden of Odan (Eden). * He will be revealed in the land Galil.'^ . . . When 'he has made satisfaction for the sins of Israel, he will lead them on through a new gate to the seat of judg- ment.* § At the Gate of the House of Life, the throne is prepared for the Lord of Splendor." ||
Further on, the commentator introduces the following quotation : " This rock and this gcUe are the Son of God. * How, Lord,' I said, * is the rock old and the gate new ? ' * Listen,* He said, * and understand, thou ignorant man. The Son of God is older tlian all of his creation, so that he was a Councillor with the Father in His works of creation ; and for this is he old.* *' IT
Now, these two assertions are not only purely kabalistic, without even so much as a change of expression, but Brahmanical and Pagan likewise. " Vidi virum excellentem cceli terraque conditore natu majorem. ... I have seen the most excellent (superior) man, who is older by birth than the maker of heaven and earth," says the kabalistic Codex, ** The Eleusinian Dionysus, whose particular name was lacchos (laccho, lahoh) ff — the God from whom the liberation of souls was expected — was con- sidered older than the Demiurge. At the mysteries of the Anthesteria at the lakes (the Limnae), after the usual baptism by purification of water, the Mysta were made to pass through to another door (gate), and one
♦ " Idra Rabba," vol. iii., § 41 ; the ** Sohar."
f ** Kabbala Denudata," vol. il, p. 230; the **Book of the Babylonian Compan- ions," p. 35.
X " Sohar Ex.," p. 11.
§ " Midrash Hashirim ; " " Rabbi Akaba ; " *' Midrash Kohcleth," vol. ii., p. 45.
i " Codex Nazaiaeus," vol. iil, p. 60. T *' On the Canon," p. 178 ff.
*• Vol. ii., p. 57 ; Norberg*s **Onomasticon ; " ** Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 103.
ft ** Preller," vol. I, p. 484 ; K. O. Muller : " History of Greek Literature," p. 338; "Movers," p. 553.
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particularly for that purpose, which was called '* the gate of Dionysus," and that of " \ht purified:'
In the Sohar^ the kabalists are told that the work-master, the Demi- urge, said to the Lord : " Let us make man after our image." * In the original texts of the first chapter of Genesis, it stands : " And the Elohim (translated as the Supreme God), who are the highest gods or powers, said : Let us make man in our (?) image, after our likeness." In the Vedas, Brahma holds counsel \vith Parabrahma, as to the best mode to proceed to create the world.
Canon Westcott, quoting Hermas, shows him asking : ** And why is the gate new^ Lord ? I said. * Because,* he replied, * he was manifested at the last of the days of the dispensation ; for this cause the gate was made new, in order that they who shall be saved might enter by it into the Kingdom of God.' " f There are two peculiarities worthy of note in this passage. To begin with, it attributes to " the Lord " a false state raent of the same character as that so emphasized by the Apostle John , and which brought, at a later period, the whole of the orthodox Chris- tians, who accepted the apostolic allegories as literal, to such inconve- nient straits. Jesus, as Messiah, was not manifested at the last of the days ; for the latter are yet to come, notwithstanding a number of divinely- inspired prophecies, followed by disappointed hopes, as a result, to tes- tify to his immediate coming. The belief that the " last times " had come, was natural, when once the coming of King Messiah had been acknowl- edged. The second peculiarity is found in the fact that the prophecy could have been accepted at all, when even its approximate determination is a direct contradiction of Mark, who makes Jesus distinctly state that neither the angels, nor the Son himself, know of that day or that hour. J We might add that, as the belief undeniably originated with the Apocalypse, it ought to be a self-evident proof that it belonged to the calculations peculiar to the kabalists and the Pagan sanctuaries. It was the secret computation of a cycle, which, according to their reckoning, was ending toward the latter part of the first century. It may also be held as a corroborative proof, that the Gospel according to Mark, as well as that ascribed to John, and the Apocalypse^ were written by men, of whom neither was sufficiently acquainted with the other. The Logos was first definitely called petra (rock) by Philo ; the word, moreover, as we have shown elsewhere, means, in Chaldaic and Phccnician, " inter- preter." Justin Martyr calls him, throughout his works, "angel," and makes a clear distinction between the Logos and God the Creator.
♦ **Sohar," vol. I, fol. 25.
f ** Simil.," vol. ix., p. 12 ; " Supernatural Religion," voL L, p. 257.
{ Mark xiii. 32.
WHO WAS GABRIEL LEGATUS. 247
"The Word of God is His Son . . . and he is also called Angel and Apostle, for he- declares whatever we ought to know (interprets), and ift sent to declare whatever is disclosed." *
" Adan Inferior is distributed into its own paths, into thirty-two sides of paths, yet it is not known to any one but SHr, But no one knows the Superior Adan nor His paths, except that Long Face " — the Supreme God. f Seir is the Nazarene " genius," who is called JEh^l Zivo ; and Gabriel Legatus — also " Apostle Gabriel." J The Nazarenes held with the kabalists that even the Messiah who was to come did not know the " Superior Adan," the concealed Deity ; no one except the Supreme God ; thus showing that above the Supreme Intelligible Deity, there is one still more secret and unrevealed. Seir-Anpin is the third God, while " Logos," according to Philo Judaeus, is the second one. § This is distinctly shown in the Codex. ** The false Messiah shall say : ** 1 am Deus, son of Deus ; my Father sent me here. ... I am the first Legate, I am Mb^X Zivo, I am come from on high ! But distrust him ; for he will not be -^bel Zivo. Mh^X Zivo will not permit himself to be seen in this age." || Hence the belief of some Gnostics that it was not JEh^X Zivo (Archangel Gdbn^X) ytho ^^ overshadowed '^ Mary, but Ilda- Baoth, who formed the material body of Jesus ; Christos uniting himself with him only at the moment of baptism in the Jordan.
Can we doubt Nork's assertion that ** the Bereshith Rabba, the oldest part of the Midrash Rabboth, was known to the Church Fathers in a Greek translation / " ^f
But if, on the one hand, they were sufficiently acquainted with the different religious systems of their neighbors to have enabled them to build a new religion alleged to be distinct from all others, their ignor- ance of the Old Testament itself, let alone the more complicated ques- tions of Grecian metaphysics, is now found to have been deplorable. "So, for instance, in Matthew xxvii. 9 f., the passage from Zechariah xi. 12, 13, is attributed to Jeremiah," says the author of Supernatu- ral Religion, "In Mark i. 2, a quotation from Malachi iii. i, is as-
♦ ** Apolog.," vol. I, p. 63. f " Idra Rabba," x., p. 177.
X ** Codex Nazaraeus," vol. i., p. 23.
§ Philo says that the Logos is the interpreter of the highest God, and argues, " that he must be the God of us imperfect beings *' (** Leg. AUeg.," iii., § 73). Accord- ing to his opinion man was not made in the likeness of the most High God, the Father of all, but in that of the second God who is his word — Logos" (Philo : '* Fragments," I ; ex. Euseb. "Praepar. Evang.," vil, 13).
I ** Codex Nazaraeus," p. 57 ; *' Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 59.
^ " Hundert und ein Frage," p. xvii.; Dunlap: **Sod, the Son of the Man," p. 87 ; the author, who quotes Nork, says that parts of the "Midrashim" and the ^* Tar« gum" of Onkelos, antedate the **New Testament."
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cribed to Isaiah. In i Corinthians, ii. 9, a passage is quoted as Holy Scripture, which is not found in the Old Testament at all, but which is taken, as Origen and Jerome state, from an apocryphal work. The Rev- elation of Elias (Origen : Tract, xxxv.), and the passage is similarly quoted by the so-called Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (xxxiv.). How reliable are the pious Fathers in tlieir explanations of divers here- sies may be illustrated in the case of Epiphanius, who mistook the Pythagorean sacred Tetrad, called in the Valentinian Gnosis, Kol-Arbas, for a heretic leader. * What with the involuntary blunders, and deliber- ate falsifications of the teachings of those who differed in views with them ; the canonization of the mythological Aura Placida (gentle breeze), into a pair of Christian martyrs — St. Aura and St. Placida ; f the deification of a spear and a cloak, under the names of SS. Longimus and Amphibolus ; J and the Patristic quotations from prophets, of what was never in those prophets at all ; one may well ask in blank amaze- ment whether the so-called religion of Christ has ever been other than an incoherent dream, since the death of the Great Master.
So malicious do we find the holy Fathers in their unrelenting perse- aition of pretended " haresies,'' § that we see them telling, without hesi- tation the most preposterous untruths, and inventing entire narratives, the better to impress their own otherwise unsupported arguments n\yon ignorance. If the mistake in relation to the tetrad had at first origin- ated as a simple consequence of an unpremeditated blunder of Hippo- lytus, the explanations of Epiphanius and others who fell into the same absurd error J have a less innocent look. When Hippolytus gravely denounces the great heresy of the Tetrad, Kol-Arbas, and states that the imaginary Gnostic leader is, ** Kalorbasus, who endeavors to explain
♦ Writing upon Ptolemseus and Heracleon, the author of** Supernatural Religion *' (voL ii., p. 217) says that ** the inaccuracy of the Fathers keeps pace with their want of critical judgment," and then proceeds to illustrate this particularly ridiculous blunder committed by Epiphanius, in common with Hippolytus, Tertullian, and PhilostriusL ** Mistaking a passage of Iremeus, * Adv. Hoer.,* i., p. 14, regarding the Sacreil Tetrad (Kol-Arbas), Hippolytus supposes Irenasus to refer to another heretic leader." He at once treats the Tetrad as such a leader named ** Colarbasus," and after dealing (vu, 4) with the doctrines of Secundus, and Ptolemseus, and Heracleon, he proposes, § 5, to show, ** what are the opinions held by Marcus and Colarbastis^^ these two being, according to him, the successors of the school of Valentinus (cf. Bunsen : ** Hippolytus, U. S. Zeit.," p. 54 f. ; ** Ref. Omn. Haer.," iv., § 13).
f See Godf. Higgins : ** Anacalypsis."
% Inman : ** Ancient Pagan and Modem Christian S)rmbolism," p. 84.
g Meaning — holding up of different views.
\ **Thi5 absurd mistake," remarks the author of ** Supernatural Religion," voL il, p. 218, ** shows how little these writers knew of the Gnostics of whom theywrote^ and how the one ignorantly follows the other.**
SELF-CONFESSED INFAMY OF EPIPHANIUS. 249
religion by measures and numbers,** * we may simply smile. But when Epiphanius, with abundant indignation, elaborates upon the theme, " which is Heresy XV.," and pretending to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject, adds : " A certain Heracleon follows after Colorbasus, which is Heresy XVI.,*' f then he lays himself open to the charge of deliberate falsification.
If this zealous Christian can boast so unblushingly of having caused " by his information seventy women, even of rank, to be sent into exile, through the seductions of some in whose number he had himself been drawn into joining their sect,*' he has left us a fair standard by which to judge him. C. W. King remarks, very aptly, on this point, that "it may reasonably be suspected that this worthy renegade had in this case saved himself from the fate of his fellow-religionists by turning evidence against them, on the opening of the persecution.*' J
And thus, one by one, perished the Gnostics, the only heirs to whose share had fallen a few stray crumbs of the unadulterated truth of primitive Christianity. All was confusion and turmoil during these first centuries, till the moment when all these contradictory dogmas were finally forced upon the Christian world, and examination was forbidden. For long ages it was made a sacrilege, punishable with severe penalties, often death, to seek to comprehend that which the Church had so conveniently elevated to the rank of divine mystery. But since biblical critics have taken upon themselves to " set the house in order,** the cases have become reversed. Pagan creditors now come from every part of the globe to claim their own, and Christian theology begins to be suspected of complete bank- ruptcy. Such is the sad result of the fanaticism of the " orthodox ** sects, who, to borrow an expression of the author of " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,** never were, like the Gnostics, ** the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy of the Christian name.** And, if not all of them " smelt garlic,** as Renan will have it, on the other hand, none of these Christian saints have ever shrunk from spilling their neighbor's blood, if the views of the latter did not agree with their own.
And so all our philosophers were swept away by the ignorant and superstitious masses. The Philalctheians, the lovers of truth, and their eclectic school, perished ; and there, where the young Hypatia had taught the highest philosophical doctrines ; and where Ammonius Saccas had explained that " the whole which Christ had in view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom of the ancients — to reduce
♦ '' Ref. Omn. Hxr.," iv., § 13.
f Epiph. : ** Haer.," xxxvi., § I, p. 262 (quoted in ** Supernatural Religion"). Volkmar's *'Die Colorabasus-giiosis " in Niedner's **Zcitschr. Hist. Theol." \ *« Gnostics and their Remains," p. 182 f., note 3.
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within bounds the universally prevailing dominion of superstition . . . and to extenninate the various errors that had found their way into the different popular religions " * — there, we say, freely raved the ot ttoXXoi of Christianity. No more precepts from the mouth of the " God-taught philosopher," but others expounded by the incarnation of a most cruel, fiendish superstition.
" If thy father," wrote St. Jerome, " lies down across thy threshold, if thy mother uncovers to thine eyes the bosom which suckled thee, trample on thy father's lifeless body, trample on thy mother's bosom, and, with eyes unmoistened and dry, fly to the Lord who calleth thee ! ! "
This sentence is equalled, if not outrivalled, by this other, pronounced in a like spirit. It emanates from another father of the early Church, the eloquent Tertullian, who hopes to see all the "philosophers" in the gehenna fire of Hell. "What shall be the magnitude of that scene ! . . . How shall I laugh ! How shall I rejoice ! How shall I triumph when I see so many illustrious kings who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter, their god, in the lowest darkness of hell ! Then shall the soldiers who have persecuted the name of Christ burn in more cniel fire than any they had kindled for the saints ! " f
These murderous expressions illustrate the spirit of Christianity till this day. But do they illustrate the teachings of Christ ? By no means. As Eliphas Levi says, " The God in the name of whom we would trample on our mother's bosom we must see in the hereafter, a hell gaping widely at his feet, and an exterminating sword in his hand. . . . Moloch burned children but a few seconds ; it was reserved to the disciples of a god who is alleged to have died to redeem humanity on the cross, to create a new Moloch whose burning stake is eternal ! " J
That this spirit of true Christian love has safely crossed nineteen cen- turies and rages now in America, is fully instanced in the case of the rabid Moody, the revivalist, who exclaims : " I have a son, and no one but God knows how I love him ; but I would see those beautiful eyes dug out of his head to-night, rather than see him grow up to manhood and go down to the grave without Christ and without hope ! ! "
To this an American paper, of Chicago, very justly responds : "This is the spirit of the inquisition, which we are told is dead. If Moody in his zeal would ' dig out ' the eyes of his darling son, to what lengths may he not go with the sons of others, whom he may love less ? It is the spirit of Loyola, gibbering in the nineteenth century, and prevented from lighting the fagot flame and heating red-hot the instruments of torture only by the arm of law."
* Mosheim. f Tertullian: '^Despectse,** ch. xxx.
X Moaheim : " Eccles. Hist.,** c v., § $.