-----====ooo000ooo====-----
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.
"Cecy est un livre de bonne Foy." MONTAIGNE.
VOL. II : THEOLOGY.
VOL. I
: SCIENCE
NEW YORK :
J. W. BOUTON , 706 BROADWAY .
LONDON : BERNARD QUARITCH .
1877 .
WERE it possible, we would keep this work out of the hands of many Christians whom its perusal would not benefit, and for whom it was not written. We allude to those whose faith in their respective churches is pure and sincere, and those whose sinless lives reflect the glorious example of that Prophet of Nazareth, by whose mouth the spirit of truth spake loudly to humanity. Such there have been at all times. History preserves the names of many as heroes, philosophers, philanthropists, martyrs, and holy men and women; but how many more have lived and died, unknown but to their intimate acquaintance, unblessed but by their humble beneficiaries! These have ennobled Christianity, but would have shed the same lustre upon any other faith they might have professed for they were higher than their creed. The benevolence of Peter Cooper and Elizabeth Thompson, of America, who are not orthodox Christians, is no less Christ-like than that of the Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts, of England, who is one. And yet, in comparison with the millions who have been accounted Christians, such have always formed a small minority. They are to be found at this day, in pulpit and pew, in palace and cottage; but the increasing materialism, worldliness and hypocrisy are fast diminishing their proportionate number. Their charity, and simple, child-like faith in the infallibility of their Bible, their dogmas, and their clergy, bring into full activity all the virtues
that are implanted in our common nature. We have personally known such God-fearing priests and clergymen, and we have always avoided debate with them, lest we might be guilty of the cruelty of hurting their feelings; nor would we rob a single layman of his blind confidence, if it alone made possible for him holy living and serene dying.
An analysis of religious beliefs in general, this volume is in particular directed against theological Christianity, the chief opponent of free thought. It contains not one word against the pure teachings of Jesus, but unsparingly denounces their debasement into pernicious ecclesiastical systems that are ruinous to man's faith in his immortality and his God, and subversive of all moral restraint.
We cast our gauntlet at the dogmatic theologians who would enslave both history and science; and especially at the Vatican, whose despotic pretensions have become hateful to the greater portion of enlightened Christendom. The clergy apart, none but the logician, the investigator, the dauntless explorer should meddle with books like this. Such delvers after truth have the courage of their opinions.
PREFACE
. . . . . . . .
iv
Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson and Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
THE "INFALLIBILITY" OF MODERN RELIGION.
Church statistics . . . 1
Catholic "miracles" and spiritualistic "phenomena" . . . 4
Christian and Pagan beliefs compared . . . 10
Magic and sorcery practised by Christian clergy . . . 20
Comparative theology a new science . . . 25
Eastern traditions as to Alexandrian Library . . . 27
Roman pontiffs imitators of the Hindu Brahm-βtma . . . 30
Christian dogmas derived from heathen philosophy . . . 33
Doctrine of the Trinity of Pagan origin . . . 45
Disputes between Gnostics and Church Fathers . . . 51
Bloody records of Christianity . . . 53
Sorceries of Catherine of
Medicis . . . 55
Occult arts practised by the clergy . . . 59
Witch-burnings and auto-da-fe of little children . . . 62
Lying Catholic saints . . . 74
Pretensions of missionaries in India and China . . . 79
Sacrilegious tricks of Catholic clergy . . . 82
Paul a kabalist . . . 91
Peter not the founder of Roman church . . . 91
Strict lives of Pagan hierophants . . . 98
High character of ancient "mysteries" . . . 101
Jacolliot's account of Hindu
fakirs . . . 103
Christian symbolism derived from Phallic worship . . . 109
Hindu doctrine of the Pitris . . . 114
Brahminic spirit-communion ... 115
Dangers of untrained mediumship . . . 117
Resemblance between early
Christianity and Buddhism . . . 123
Peter never in Rome . . . 124
Meanings of "Nazar" and "Nazarene" . . . 129
Baptism a derived right . . . 134
Is Zoroaster a generic name? . . . 141
Pythagorean teachings of Jesus . . . 147
The Apocalypse kabalistic . . . 147
Jesus considered an adept by some Pagan philosophers and early Christians . . .
150
Doctrine of permutation . . . 152
The meaning of God-Incarnate . . . 153
Dogmas of the Gnostics . . . 155
Ideas of Marcion, the "heresiarch" . . . 159
Precepts of Manu . . . 163
Jehovah identical with Bacchus . . . 165
Discrepancies in the Pentateuch
. . . 167
Indian, Chaldean and Ophite systems compared . . . 170
Who were the first Christians? . . . 178
Christos and Sophia-Achamoth . . . 183
Secret doctrine taught by Jesus . . . 191
Jesus never claimed to be God . . . 193
New Testament narratives and Hindu legends . . . 199
Antiquity of the "Logos" and "Christ" . . . 205
Comparative Virgin-worship . . . 209
En-Soph and the Sephiroth . . .
212
The primitive wisdom-religion . . . 216
The book of Genesis a compilation of Old World legends . . . 217
The Trinity of the Kabala . . . 222
Gnostic and Nazarene systems
contrasted with Hindu myths . . . 225
Kabalism in the book of Ezekiel . . . 232
Story of the resurrection of Jairus's daughter found in the history of Christna
. . . 241
Untrustworthy teachings of the early Fathers . . . 248
Their persecuting spirit . . . 249
Decisions of Nicean Council, how
arrived at . . . 251
Murder of Hypatia . . . 252
Origin of the fish-symbol of Vishnu . . . 256
Kabalistic doctrine of the Cosmogony . . . 264
Diagrams of Hindu and Chaldeo-Jewish systems . . . 265
Ten mythical Avatars of Vishnu . . . 274
Trinity of man taught by Paul . . . 281
Socrates and Plato on soul and spirit . . . 283
True Buddhism, what it is . . . 288
Nazareans, Ophites, and modern
Druzes . . . 291
Etymology of IAO . . . 298
"Hermetic Brothers" of Egypt . . . 307
True meaning of Nirvana . . . 319
The Jayna sect . . . 321
Christians and Chrestians . . . 323
The Gnostics and their detractors . . . 325
Buddha, Jesus, and Apollonius of Tyana . . . 341
The Sohar and Rabbi
Simeon . . . 348
The Order of Jesuits and its relation to some of the Masonic orders . . . 352
Crimes permitted to its members . . . 355
Principles of Jesuitry compared with those of Pagan moralists . . . 364
Trinity of man in Egyptian Book of the Dead . . . 367
Freemasonry no longer esoteric . . . 372
Persecution of Templars by the Church . . . 381
Secret Masonic ciphers . . . 395
Jehovah not the "Ineffable Name" . . . 398
The age of philosophy produced
no atheists . . . 530
The legends of three Saviours . . . 537
Christian doctrine of the Atonement illogical . . . 542
Cause of the failure of missionaries to convert Buddhists and Brahmanists . . .
553
Neither Buddha nor Jesus left written records . . . 559
The grandest mysteries of religion in the Bagaved-gita . . . 562
The meaning of regeneration explained in the Satapa-Brβhmana . . . 565
The sacrifice of blood interpreted . . . 566
Demoralization of British India by Christian missionaries . . . 573
The Bible less authenticated than any other sacred book . . . 577
Knowledge of chemistry and physics displayed by Indian jugglers . . . 583
The phenomenon of the so-called spirit-hand . . . 594
Difference between mediums and adepts . . . 595
Interview of an English ambassador with a reincarnated Buddha . . . 598
Flight of a lamas astral body related by Abbι Huc . . . 604
Schools of magic in Buddhist lamaseries . . . 609
The unknown race of Hindu Todas . . . 613
Will-power of fakirs and yogis . . . 617
Taming of wild beasts by fakirs . . . 622
Evocation of a living spirit by a Shaman, witnessed by the writer . . . 626
Sorcery by the breath of a Jesuit Father . . . 633
Why the study of magic is almost impracticable in Europe . . . 635
Conclusion . . . 635
PART TWO. RELIGION
CHAPTER I.
"Yea, the time cometh, that whomsoever killeth you, will think that he doeth God service." Gospel according to John, xvi. 2.
"Let him be ANATHEMA
. . .
who shall say that human Sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of
freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions even when
opposed to revealed doctrines." Ecumenical Council of 1870.
"GLOUC. The Church! Where is it?" King Henry VI., Act i., Sc. 1.
IN the United States of America, sixty thousand (60,428) men are paid salaries to teach the Science of God and His relations to His creatures.
These men contract to impart to
us the knowledge which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of our
Creator; His laws and government; the doctrines we are to believe and the duties
we are to practice. Five thousand (5,141) of them,* with the prospect of
1273 theological students to help them in time, teach this science according to
a formula prescribed by the Bishop of Rome, to five million people. Fifty-five
thousand (55,287) local and travelling ministers, representing fifteen different
denominations, each contradicting the other upon more or less vital
theololical questions, instruct, in their respective doctrines, thirty-three
million (33,500,000) other persons. Many of these teach according to the canons
of the cis-Atlantic branch of an establishment which acknowledges a daughter of
the late Duke of Kent as its spiritual
* These figures are copied from the "Religious Statistics of the United
States for the year 1871."
These are: The Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians,
Northern Methodists, Southern Methodists, Methodists various,
Northern Presbyterians, Southern Presbyterians, United
Presbyterians, United Brethren, Brethren in Christ, Reformed Dutch, Reformed
German, Reformed Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians.
head. There are many hundred thousand Jews; some thousands of Orientals of all kinds; and a very few who belong to the Greek Church. A man at Salt Lake City, with nineteen wives and more than one hundred children and grandchildren, is the supreme spiritual ruler over ninety thousand people, who believe that he is in frequent intercourse with the gods for the Mormons are Polytheists as well as Polygamists, and their chief god is represented as living in a planet they call Colob.
The God of the Unitarians is a bachelor; the Deity of the Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, and the other orthodox Protestant sects a spouseless Father with one Son, who is identical with Himself. In the attempt to outvie each other in the erection of their sixty-two thousand and odd churches, prayer-houses, and meeting-halls, in which to teach these conflicting theological doctrines, $354,485,581 have been spent. The value of the Protestant parsonages alone, in which are sheltered the disputants and their families, is roughly calculated to approximate $54,115,297. Sixteen million (16,179,387) dollars, are, moreover, contributed every year for current expenses of the Protestant denominations only. One Presbyterian church in New York cost a round million; a Catholic altar alone, one-fourth as much!
We will not mention the multitude of smaller sects, communities, and extravagantly original little heresies in this country which spring up one year to die out the next, like so many spores of fungi after a rainy day. We will not even stop to consider the alleged millions of Spiritualists; for the majority lack the courage to break away from their respective religious denominations. These are the back-door Nicodemuses.
And now, with Pilate, let us inquire, What is truth? Where is it to be searched for amid this multitude of warring sects? Each claims to be based upon divine revelation, and each to have the keys of the celestial gates. Is either in possession of this rare truth? Or, must we exclaim with the Buddhist philosopher, "There is but one truth on earth, and it is unchangeable: and this is that there is no truth on it!"
Though we have no disposition whatever to trench upon the ground that has been so exhaustively gleaned by those learned scholars who have shown that every Christian dogma has its origin in a heathen rite, still the facts which they have exhumed, since the enfranchisement of science, will lose nothing by repetition. Besides, we propose to examine these facts from a different and perhaps rather novel point of view: that of the old philosophies as esoterically understood. These we have barely glanced at in our first volume. We will use them as the standard by which to compare Christian dogmas and miracles with the doctrines and phenomena of ancient magic, and the modern "New Dispensation," as Spiritualism is called by its votaries. Since the materialists deny the phenom-
ena without investigation, and since the theologians in admitting them offer us the poor choice of two palpable absurdities the Devil and miracles we can lose little by applying to the theurgists, and they may actually help us to throw a great light upon a very dark subject.
Professor A. Butlerof, of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, remarks in a recent pamphlet, entitled Mediumistic Manifestations, as follows: "Let the facts (of modern spiritualism) belong if you will to the number of those which were more or less known by the ancients; let them be identical with those which in the dark ages gave importance to the office of Egyptian priest or Roman augur; let them even furnish the basis of the sorcery of our Siberian Shaman; . . . let them be all these, and, if they are real facts, it is no business of ours. All the facts in nature belong to science, and every addition to the store of science enriches instead of impoverishing her. If humanity has once admitted a truth, and then in the blindness of self-conceit denied it, to return to its realization is a step forward and not backward."
Since the day that modern science gave what may be considered the death-blow to dogmatic theology, by assuming the ground that religion was full of mystery, and mystery is unscientific, the mental state of the educated class has presented a curious aspect. Society seems from that time to have been ever balancing itself upon one leg, on an unseen tight-rope stretched from our visible universe into the invisible one; uncertain whether the end hooked on faith in the latter might not suddenly break, and hurl it into final annihilation.
The great body of nominal Christians may be divided into three unequal portions: materialists, spiritualists, and Christians proper. The materialists and spiritualists make common cause against the hierarchical pretensions of the clergy; who, in retaliation, denounce both with equal acerbity. The materialists are as little in harmony as the Christian sects themselves the Comtists, or, as they call themselves, the positivists, being despised and hated to the last degree by the schools of thinkers, one of which Maudsley honorably represents in England. Positivism, be it remembered, is that "religion" of the future about whose founder even Huxley has made himself wrathful in his famous lecture, The Physical Basis of Life; and Maudsley felt obliged, in behalf of modern science, to express himself thus: "It is no wonder that scientific men should be anxious to disclaim Comte as their law-giver, and to protest against such a king being set up to reign over them. Not conscious of any personal obligation to his writings conscious how much, in some respects, he has misrepresented the spirit and pretensions of science they repudiate the allegiance which his enthusiastic disciples would force upon them, and which popular opinion is fast coming to think a natural one. They do
well in thus making a timely assertion of independence; for if it be not done soon, it will soon be too late to be done well." * When a materialistic doctrine is repudiated so strongly by two such materialists as Huxley and Maudsley, then we must think indeed that it is absurdity itself.
Among Christians there is nothing but dissension. Their various churches represent every degree of religious belief, from the omnivorous credulity of blind faith to a condescending and high-toned deference to the Deity which thinly masks an evident conviction of their own deific wisdom. All these sects believe more or less in the immortality of the soul. Some admit the intercourse between the two worlds as a fact; some entertain the opinion as a sentiment; some positively deny it; and only a few maintain an attitude of attention and expectancy.
Impatient of restraint, longing for the return of the dark ages, the Romish Church frowns at the diabolical manifestations, and indicates what she would do to their champions had she but the power of old. Were it not for the self-evident fact that she herself is placed by science on trial, and that she is handcuffed, she would be ready at a moment's notice to repeat in the nineteenth century the revolting scenes of former days. As to the Protestant clergy, so furious is their common hatred toward spiritualism, that as a secular paper very truly remarks: "They seem willing to undermine the public faith in all the spiritual phenomena of the past, as recorded in the Bible, if they can only see the pestilent modern heresy stabbed to the heart."
Summoning back the
long-forgotten memories of the Mosaic laws, the Romish Church claims the
monopoly of miracles, and of the right to sit in judgment over them, as being
the sole heir thereto by direct inheritance. The Old Testament, exiled
by Colenso, his predecessors and contemporaries, is recalled from its
banishment. The prophets, whom his Holiness the Pope condescends at last to
place, if not on the same level with himself, at least at a less respectful
distance, are dusted and cleaned. The memory of all the diabolical
abracadabra is evoked anew. The blasphemous horrors perpetrated by
Paganism, its
* H. Maudsley: "Body and Mind."
"Boston Sunday Herald," November 5, 1876.
See the self-glorification of the present Pope in the work entitled,
"Speeches of Pope Pius IX." by Don Pascale de Franciscis; and
the famous pamphlet of that name by the Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone. The latter
quotes from the work named the following sentence pronounced by the Pope: "My
wish is that all governments should know that I am speaking in this strain. . .
. And I have the right to speak, even more than Nathan the
prophet to David the king, and a great deal more than St.
Ambrose had to Theodosius"!!
phallic worship, thaumaturgical wonders wrought by Satan, human sacrifices, incantations, witchcraft, magic, and sorcery are recalled and DEMONISM is confronted with spiritualism for mutual recognition and identification. Our modern demonologists conveniently overlook a few insignificant details, among which is the undeniable presence of heathen phallism in the Christian symbols. A strong spiritual element of this worship may be easily demonstrated in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mother of God; and a physical element equally proved in the fetish-worship of the holy limbs of Sts. Cosmo and Damiano, at Isernia, near Naples; a successful traffic in which ex-voto in wax was carried on by the clergy, annually, until barely a half century ago.*
We find it rather unwise on the part of Catholic writers to pour out their vials of wrath in such sentences as these: "In a multitude of pagodas, the phallic stone, ever and always assuming, like the Grecian batylos, the brutally indecent form of the lingham . . . the Maha Deva." Before casting slurs on a symbol whose profound metaphysical meaning is too much for the modern champions of that religion of sensualism par excellence, Roman Catholicism, to grasp, they are in duty bound to destroy their oldest churches, and change the form of the cupolas of their own temples. The Mahody of Elephanta, the Round Tower of Bhangulpore, the minarets of Islam either rounded or pointed are the originals of the Campanile column of San Marco, at Venice, of the Rochester Cathedral, and of the modern Duomo of Milan. All of these steeples, turrets, domes, and Christian temples, are the reproductions of the primitive idea of the lithos, the upright phallus. "The western tower of St. Paul's Cathedral, London," says the author of The Rosicrucians, "is one of the double lithoi placed always in front of every temple, Christian as well as heathen." Moreover, in all Christian Churches, "particularly in Protestant churches, where they figure most conspicuously, the two tables of stone of the Mosaic Dispensation are placed over the altar, side by side, as a united stone, the tops of which are rounded.. . . The right stone is masculine, the left feminine." Therefore neither Catholics nor Protestants have a right to talk of the "indecent forms" of heathen monuments so long as they ornament their own churches with the symbols of the Lingham and Yoni, and even write the laws of their God upon them.
Another detail not redounding
very particularly to the honor of the Christian clergy might be recalled in the
word Inquisition. The torrents
* See King's "Gnostics," and other works.
Des Mousseaux: "La Magie au
XIXme Siθcle,"
chap. i.
Hargrave Jennings: "The Rosicrucians," pp. 228-241.
of human blood shed by this Christian institution, and the number of its human sacrifices, are unparalleled in the annals of Paganism. Another still more prominent feature in which the clergy surpassed their masters, the "heathen," is sorcery. Certainly in no Pagan temple was black magic, in its real and true sense, more practiced than in the Vatican. While strongly supporting exorcism as an important source of revenue, they neglected magic as little as the ancient heathen. It is easy to prove that the sortilegium, or sorcery, was widely practiced among the clergy and monks so late as the last century, and is practiced occasionally even now.
Anathematizing every manifestation of occult nature outside the precincts of the Church, the clergy notwithstanding proofs to the contrary call it "the work of Satan," "the snares of the fallen angels," who "rush in and out from the bottomless pit," mentioned by John in his kabalistic Revelation, "from whence arises a smoke as the smoke of a great furnace." "Intoxicated by its fumes, around this pit are daily gathering millions of Spiritualists, to worship at 'the Abyss of Baal.' " *
More than ever arrogant, stubborn, and despotic, now that she has been nearly upset by modern research, not daring to interfere with the powerful champions of science, the Latin Church revenges herself upon the unpopular phenomena. A despot without a victim, is a word void of sense; a power which neglects to assert itself through outward, well-calculated effects, risks being doubted in the end. The Church has no intention to fall into the oblivion of the ancient myths, or to suffer her authority to be too closely questioned. Hence she pursues, as well as the times permit, her traditional policy. Lamenting the enforced extinction of her ally, the Holy Inquisition, she makes a virtue of necessity. The only victims now within reach are the Spiritists of France. Recent events have shown that the meek spouse of Christ never disdains to retaliate on helpless victims.
Having successfully performed her part of Deus-ex-Machina from
behind the French Bench, which has not scrupled to disgrace itself for her, the
Church of Rome sets to work and shows in the year 1876 what she can do. From the
whirling tables and dancing pencils of profane Spiritualism, the Christian world
is warned to turn to the divine "miracles" of Lourdes. Meanwhile, the
ecclesiastical authorities utilize their time in arranging for other more easy
triumphs, calculated to scare the superstitious out of their senses. So, acting
under orders, the clergy hurl dramatic, if not very impressive anathemas from
every Catholic diocese; threaten right and left; excommunicate and curse. Per-
* Des Mousseaux: "Hauts Phιnomenes de la Magie."
ceiving, finally, that her thunderbolts directed even against crowned heads fall about as harmlessly as the Jupiterean lightnings of Offenbach's Calchas, Rome turns about in powerless fury against the victimized proteges of the Emperor of Russia the unfortunate Bulgarians and Servians. Undisturbed by evidence and sarcasm, unbaffled by proof, "the lamb of the Vatican" impartially divides his wrath between the liberals of Italy, "the impious whose breath has the stench of the sepulchre," * the "schismatic Russian Sarmates," and the heretics and spiritualists, "who worship at the bottomless pit where the great Dragon lies in wait."
Mr. Gladstone went to the trouble of making a catalogue of what he terms the "flowers of speech," disseminated through these Papal discourses. Let us cull a few of the chosen terms used by this vicegerent of Him who said that, "whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire." They are selected from authentic discourses. Those who oppose the Pope are "wolves, Pharisees, thieves, liars, hypocrites, dropsical children of Satan, sons of perdition, of sin, and corruption, satellites of Satan in human flesh, monsters of hell, demons incarnate, stinking corpses, men issued from the pits of hell, traitors and Judases led by the spirit of hell; children of the deepest pits of hell," etc., etc.; the whole piously collected and published by Don Pasquale di Franciscis, whom Gladstone has, with perfect propriety, termed, "an accomplished professor of flunkeyism in things spiritual."
Since his Holiness the Pope has such a rich vocabulary of invectives at his
command, why wonder that the Bishop of Toulouse did not scruple to utter the
most undignified falsehoods about the Protestants and Spiritualists of America
people doubly odious to a Catholic in his address to his diocese: "Nothing,"
he remarks, "is more common in an era of unbelief than to see a false
revelation substitute itself for the true one, and minds neglect the
teachings of the Holy Church, to devote themselves to the study of divination
and the occult sciences." With a fine episcopal contempt for statistics, and
strangely confounding in his memory the audiences of the revivalists, Moody and
Sankey, and the patrons of darkened seance-rooms, he utters the unwarranted and
fallacious assertion that "it has been proven that Spiritualism, in the United
States, has caused one-sixth of all the cases of suicide and insanity." He says
that it is not possible that the spirits "teach either an exact science, because
they are lying demons, or a useful science, because the character
* Don Pasquale di Franciscis: "Discorsi del Sommo Pontefice Pio
IX.,"
Part i., p. 340.
"Speeches of Pius IX.," p. 14. Am. Edition.
of the word of Satan, like Satan himself, is sterile." He warns his dear collaborateurs, that "the writings in favor of Spiritualism are under the ban"; and he advises them to let it be known that "to frequent spiritual circles with the intention of accepting the doctrine, is to apostatize from the Holy Church, and assume the risk of excommunication"; finally, says he, "Publish the fact that the teaching of no spirit should prevail against that of the pulpit of Peter, which is the teaching of the Spirit of God Himself"!!
Aware of the many false teachings attributed by the Roman Church to the Creator, we prefer disbelieving the latter assertion. The famous Catholic theologian, Tillemont, assures us in his work that "all the illustrious Pagans are condemned to the eternal torments of hell, because they lived before the time of Jesus, and, therefore, could not be benefited by the redemption"!! He also assures us that the Virgin Mary personally testified to this truth over her own signature in a letter to a saint. Therefore, this is also a revelation "the Spirit of God Himself" teaching such charitable doctrines.
We have also read with great advantage the topographical descriptions of Hell and Purgatory in the celebrated treatise under that name by a Jesuit, the Cardinal Bellarmin. A critic found that the author, who gives the description from a divine vision with which he was favored, "appears to possess all the knowledge of a land-measurer" about the secret tracts and formidable divisions of the "bottomless pit." Justin Martyr having actually committed to paper the heretical thought that after all Socrates might not be altogether fixed in hell, his Benedictine editor criticises this too benevolent father very severely. Whoever doubts the Christian charity of the Church of Rome in this direction is invited to peruse the Censure of the Sorbonne, on Marmontel's Belisarius. The odium theologicum blazes in it on the dark sky of orthodox theology like an aurora borealis the precursor of God's wrath, according to the teaching of certain mediζval divines.
We have attempted in the first part of this work to show, by historical examples, how completely men of science have deserved the stinging sarcasm of the late Professor de Morgan, who remarked of them that "they wear the priest's cast-off garb, dyed to escape detection." The Christian clergy are, in like manner, attired in the cast-off garb of the heathen priesthood; acting diametrically in opposition to their God's moral precepts, but nevertheless, sitting in judgment over the whole world.
When dying on the cross, the martyred Man of Sorrows forgave his enemies. His last words were a prayer in their behalf. He taught his disciples to curse not, but to bless, even their foes. But the heirs of
St. Peter, the self-constituted representatives on earth of that same meek Jesus, unhesitatingly curse whoever resists their despotic will. Besides, was not the "Son" long since crowded by them into the background? They make their obeisance only to the Dowager Mother, for according to their teaching again through "the direct Spirit of God," she alone acts as a mediatrix. The cumenical Council of 1870 embodied the teaching into a dogma, to disbelieve which is to be doomed forever to the 'bottomless pit.' The work of Don Pasquale di Franciscis is positive on that point; for he tells us that, as the Queen of Heaven owes to the present Pope "the finest gem in her coronet," since he has conferred on her the unexpected honor of becoming suddenly immaculate, there is nothing she cannot obtain from her Son for "her Church." *
Some years ago, certain travellers saw in Barri, Italy, a statue of the Madonna, arrayed in a flounced pink skirt over a swelling crinoline! Pious pilgrims who may be anxious to examine the regulation wardrobe of their God's mother may do so by going to Southern Italy, Spain, and Catholic North and South America. The Madonna of Barri must still be there between two vineyards and a locanda (gin-shop). When last seen, a half-successful attempt had been made to clothe the infant Jesus; they had covered his legs with a pair of dirty, scollop-edged pantaloons. An English traveller having presented the "Mediatrix" with a green silk parasol, the grateful population of the contadini, accompanied by the village-priest, went in procession to the spot. They managed to stick the sunshade, opened, between the infant's back and the arm of the Virgin which embraced him. The scene and ceremony were both solemn and highly refreshing to our religious feelings. For there stood the image of the goddess in its niche, surrounded with a row of ever-burning lamps, the flames of which, flickering in the breeze, infect God's pure air with an offensive smell of olive oil. The Mother and Son truly represent the two most conspicuous idols of Monotheistic Christianity!
For a companion to the idol of the poor contadini of Barri, go to the
rich city of Rio Janeiro. In the Church of the Duomo del Candelaria, in a long
hall running along one side of the church, there might be seen, a few years ago,
another Madonna. Along the walls of the hall there is a line of saints, each
standing on a contribution-box, which thus forms a fit pedestal. In the centre
of this line, under a gorgeously rich canopy of blue silk, is exhibited the
Virgin Mary leaning on the arm of Christ. "Our Lady" is arrayed in a very
dιcolletι blue satin dress with short
* Vide "Speeches of Pope Pius
IX.," by Don Pasq. di Franciscis;
Gladstone's pamphlet on this book; Draper's "Conflict between Religion and
Science," and others.
sleeves, showing, to great advantage, a snow-white, exquisitely-moulded neck, shoulders, and arms. The skirt equally of blue satin with an overskirt of rich lace and gauze puffs, is as short as that of a ballet-dancer; hardly reaching the knee, it exhibits a pair of finely-shaped legs covered with flesh colored silk tights, and blue satin French boots with very high red heels! The blonde hair of this "Mother of God" is arranged in the latest fashion, with a voluminous chignon and curls. As she leans on her Son's arm, her face is lovingly turned toward her Only-Begotten, whose dress and attitude are equally worthy of admiration. Christ wears an evening dress-coat, with swallow-tail, black trousers, and low cut white vest; varnished boots, and white kid gloves, over one of which sparkles a rich diamond ring, worth many thousands we must suppose a precious Brazilian jewel. Above this body of a modern Portuguese dandy, is a head with the hair parted in the middle; a sad and solemn face, and eyes whose patient look seems to reflect all the bitterness of this last insult flung at the majesty of the Crucified. *
The Egyptian Isis was also represented as a Virgin Mother by her devotees, and as holding her infant son, Horus, in her arms. In some statues and basso-relievos, when she appears alone she is either completely nude or veiled from head to foot. But in the Mysteries, in common with nearly every other goddess, she is entirely veiled from head to foot, as a symbol of a mother's chastity. It would not do us any harm were we to borrow from the ancients some of the poetic sentiment in their religions, and the innate veneration they entertained for their symbols.
It is but fair to say at once that the last of the true Christians died with the last of the direct apostles. Max Mόller forcibly asks: "How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be? unless he may show that, like all other religions, Christianity too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the middle ages, and that the Christianity of the middle ages was not that of the early Councils; that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and that what has been said by Christ, that alone was well said?"
Thus we may infer that the only
characteristic difference between modern Christianity and the old heathen faiths
is the belief of the former in a personal devil and in hell. "The Aryan nations
had no devil," says Max Mόller. "Pluto, though of a sombre character, was a very
* The fact is given to us by an eye-witness who has visited the church
several times; a Roman Catholic, who felt perfectly
horrified, as he
expressed it.
Referring to the seed planted by Jesus and his Apostles.
"Chips," vol. i., p. 26, Preface.
respectable personage; and Loki (the Scandinavian), though a mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German Goddess, Hell, too, like Proserpine, had once seen better days. Thus, when the Germans were indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Seth, Satan or Diabolus, they treated him in the most good-humored way."
The same may be said of hell. Hades was quite a different place from our region of eternal damnation, and might be termed rather an intermediate state of purification. Neither does the Scandinavian Hel or Hela, imply either a state or a place of punishment; for when Frigga, the grief-stricken mother of Bal-dur, the white god, who died and found himself in the dark abodes of the shadows (Hades) sent Hermod, a son of Thor, in quest of her beloved child, the messenger found him in the inexorable region alas! but still comfortably seated on a rock, and reading a book.* The Norse kingdom of the dead is moreover situated in the higher latitudes of the Polar regions; it is a cold and cheerless abode, and neither the gelid halls of Hela, nor the occupation of Baldur present the least similitude to the blazing hell of eternal fire and the miserable "damned" sinners with which the Church so generously peoples it. No more is it the Egyptian Amenthes, the region of judgment and purification; nor the Onderah the abyss of darkness of the Hindus; for even the fallen angels hurled into it by Siva, are allowed by Parabrahma to consider it as an intermediate state, in which an opportunity is afforded them to prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their wretched condition. The Gehenna of the New Testament was a locality outside the walls of Jerusalem; and in mentioning it, Jesus used but an ordinary metaphor. Whence then came the dreary dogma of hell, that Archimedean lever of Christian theology, with which they have succeeded to hold in subjection the numberless millions of Christians for nineteen centuries? Assuredly not from the Jewish Scriptures, and we appeal for corroboration to any well-informed Hebrew scholar.
The only designation of something approaching hell in the Bible is Gehenna or Hinnom, a valley near Jerusalem, where was situated Tophet, a place where a fire was perpetually kept for sanitary purposes. The prophet Jeremiah informs us that the Israelites used to sacrifice their children to Moloch-Hercules on that spot; and later we find Christians quietly replacing this divinity by their god of mercy, whose wrath will not be appeased, unless the Church sacrifices to him her unbaptized children and sinning sons on the altar of "eternal damnation"!
Whence then did the divine learn
so well the conditions of hell, as
* Mallet: "Northern Antiquities."
12
ISIS UNVEILED.
to actually divide its torments into two kinds, the pna damni and pζnζ sensus, the former being the privation of the beatific vision; the latter the eternal pains in a lake of fire and brimstone? If they answer us that it is in the Apocalypse (xx. 10), we are prepared to demonstrate whence the theologist John himself derived the idea, "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are and shall be tormented for ever and ever," he says. Laying aside the esoteric interpretation that the "devil" or tempting demon meant our own earthly body, which after death will surely dissolve in the fiery or ethereal elements,* the word "eternal" by which our theologians interpret the words "for ever and ever" does not exist in the Hebrew language, either as a word or meaning. There is no Hebrew word which properly expresses eternity; ~lw[ oulam, according to Le Clerc, only imports a time whose beginning or end is not known. While showing that this word does not mean infinite duration, and that in the Old Testament the word forever only signifies a long time, Archbishop Tillotson has completely perverted its sense with respect to the idea of hell-torments. According to his doctrine, when Sodom and Gomorrah are said to be suffering "eternal fire," we must understand it only in the sense of that fire not being extinguished till both cities were entirely consumed. But, as to hell-fire the words must be understood in the strictest sense of infinite duration. Such is the decree of the learned divine. For the duration of the punishment of the wicked must be proportionate to the eternal happiness of the righteous. So he says, "These (speaking of the wicked) shall go away eiί kovlasin aiw'nion into eternal punishment; but the righteous eiί zwhn aiwniun into life eternal."
The Reverend T. Surnden, commenting on the speculations of his
predecessors, fills a whole volume with unanswerable arguments, tending to show
that the locality of Hell is in the sun. We suspect that the reverend
speculator had read the Apocalypse in bed, and had the nightmare in
consequence. There are two verses in the Revelation of John reading
thus: "And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun, and power was
given him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and
blasphemed the name of God." This is simply Pythagorean and kabalistic
allegory. The idea is new neither with the above-mentioned author nor with John.
Pythagoras placed the "sphere of purification in the sun," which sun, with its
sphere, he moreover
* Ether is both pure and impure fire. The composition of
the latter comprises all its visible forms, such as the "correlation of forces"
heat, flame, electricity, etc. The former is the Spirit of Fire. The
difference is purely alchemical.
See "Inquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell," by Rev. T. Surnden.
Revelation xvi. 8-9.
locates in the middle of the universe,* the allegory having a double meaning: 1. Symbolically, the central, spiritual sun, the Supreme Deity. Arrived at this region every soul becomes purified of its sins, and unites itself forever with its spirit, having previously suffered throughout all the lower spheres. 2. By placing the sphere of visible fire in the middle of the universe, he simply taught the heliocentric system which appertained to the Mysteries, and was imparted only in the higher degree of initiation. John gives to his Word a purely kabalistic significance, which no "Fathers," except those who had belonged to the Neo-platonic school, were able to comprehend. Origen understood it well, having been a pupil of Ammonius Saccas; therefore we see him bravely denying the perpetuity of hell-torments. He maintains that not only men, but even devils (by which term he meant disembodied human sinners), after a certain duration of punishment shall be pardoned and finally restored to heaven. In consequence of this and other such heresies Origen was, as a matter of course, exiled.
Many have been the learned and truly-inspired speculations as to the locality of hell. The most popular were those which placed it in the centre of the earth. At a certain time, however, skeptical doubts which disturbed the placidity of faith in this highly-refreshing doctrine arose in consequence of the meddling scientists of those days. As a Mr. Swinden in our own century observes, the theory was inadmissible because of two objections: 1st, that a fund of fuel or sulphur sufficient to maintain so furious and constant a fire could not be there supposed; and, 2d, that it must want the nitrous particles in the air to sustain and keep it alive. "And how," says he, "can a fire be eternal, when, by degrees, the whole substance of the earth must be consumed thereby?"
The skeptical gentleman had evidently forgotten that centuries ago St. Augustine solved the difficulty. Have we not the word of this learned divine that hell, nevertheless, is in the centre of the earth, for "God supplies the central fire with air by a miracle"? The argument is unanswerable, and so we will not seek to upset it.
The Christians were the first to
make the existence of Satan a dogma of the Church. And once that she had
established it, she had to struggle for over 1,700 years for the repression of a
mysterious force which it was her policy to make appear of diabolical origin.
Unfortunately, in manifesting itself, this force invariably tends to upset such
a belief by the ridiculous discrepancy it presents between the alleged cause and
the effects. If the clergy have not over-estimated the real power of
* Aristotle mentions Pythagoreans who placed the sphere of fire in the sun,
and named it Jupiter's Prison.
See "De Coelo," lib.
ii.
"De Civit. Dei," I, xxi., c. 17.
"Demonologia and Hell," p. 289.
the "Arch-Enemy of God," it must
be confessed that he takes mighty precautions against being recognized as the
"Prince of Darkness" who aims at our souls. If modern "spirits" are devils at
all, as preached by the clergy, then they can only be those "poor" or "stupid
devils" whom Max Mόller describes as appearing so often in the German and
Norwegian tales.
Notwithstanding this, the clergy fear above all to be forced to relinquish
this hold on humanity. They are not willing to let us judge of the tree by its
fruits, for that might sometimes force them into dangerous dilemmas. They
refuse, likewise, to admit, with unprejudiced people, that the phenomena of
Spiritualism has unquestionably spiritualized and reclaimed from evil courses
many an indomitable atheist and skeptic. But, as they confess themselves, what
is the use in a Pope, if there is no Devil?
And so Rome sends her ablest advocates and preachers to the rescue of those
perishing in "the bottomless pit." Rome employs her cleverest writers for this
purpose albeit they all indignantly deny the accusation and in the preface
to every book put forth by the prolific des Mousseaux, the French Tertullian of
our century, we find undeniable proofs of the fact. Among other certificates of
ecclesiastical approval, every volume is ornamented with the text of a certain
original letter addressed to the very pious author by the world-known Father
Ventura de Raulica, of Rome. Few are those who have not heard this famous name.
It is the name of one of the chief pillars of the Latin Church, the ex-General
of the Order of the Theatins, Consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Rites,
Examiner of Bishops, and of the Roman Clergy, etc., etc., etc. This strikingly
characteristic document will remain to astonish future generations by its spirit
of unsophisticated demonolatry and unblushing sincerity. We translate a fragment
verbatim, and by thus helping its circulation hope to merit the blessings of
Mother Church: *
"MONSIEUR AND EXCELLENT
FRIEND:
"The greatest victory of Satan was gained on that day when he succeeded in
making himself denied.
"To demonstrate the existence of Satan, is to reλstablish one of the fundamental dogmas of the Church, which serve as a basis for Christianity, and, without which, Satan would be but a name. . .
"Magic, mesmerism, magnetism, somnambulism, spiritualism, spiritism, hypnotism . . . are only other names for SATANISM.
"To bring out such a truth
and show it in its proper light, is to unmask the enemy; it is to unveil the
immense danger of certain practices, reputed innocent; it is to deserve
well in the eyes of humanity and of religion.
"FATHER
VENTURA DE RAULICA."
* "Les Hauts Phenomenes de la Magie," p. v., Preface.
Amen!
This is an unexpected honor indeed, for our American "controls" in general, and the innocent "Indian guides" in particular. To be thus introduced in Rome as princes of the Empire of Eblis, is more than they could ever hope for in other lands.
Without in the least suspecting that she was working for the future welfare of her enemies the spiritualists and spiritists the Church, some twenty years since, in tolerating des Mousseaux and de Mirville as the biographers of the Devil, and giving her approbation thereto, tacitly confessed the literary copartnership.
M. the Chevalier Gougenot des Mousseaux, and his friend and collaborateur, the Marquis Eudes de Mirville, to judge by their long titles, must be aristocrats pur sang, and they are, moreover, writers of no small erudition and talent. Were they to show themselves a little more parsimonious of double points of exclamation following every vituperation, and invective against Satan and his worshippers, their style would be faultless. As it is, the crusade against the enemy of mankind was fierce, and lasted for over twenty years.
What with the Catholics piling up their psychological phenomena to prove the existence of a personal devil, and the Count de Gasparin, an ancient minister of Louis Philippe, collecting volumes of other facts to prove the contrary, the spiritists of France have contracted an everlasting debt of gratitude toward the disputants. The existence of an unseen spiritual universe peopled with invisible beings has now been demonstrated beyond question. Ransacking the oldest libraries, they have distilled from the historical records the quintessence of evidence. All epochs, from the Homeric ages down to the present day, have supplied their choicest materials to these indefatigable authors. In trying to prove the authenticity of the miracles wrought by Satan in the days preceding the Christian era, as well as throughout the middle ages, they have simply laid a firm foundation for a study of the phenomena in our modern times.
Though an ardent, uncompromising enthusiast, des Mousseaux unwittingly transforms himself into the tempting demon, or as he is fond of calling the Devil the "serpent of Genesis." In his desire to demonstrate in every manifestation the presence of the Evil One, he only succeeds in demonstrating that Spiritualism and magic are no new things in the world, but very ancient twin-brothers, whose origin must be sought for in the earliest infancy of ancient India, Chaldea, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece.
He proves the existence of "spirits," whether these be angels or devils, with such a clearness of argument and logic, and such an amount
of evidence, historical, irrefutable, and strictly authenticated, that little is left for spiritualist authors who may come after him. How unfortunate that the scientists, who believe neither in devil nor spirit, are more than likely to ridicule M. des Mousseaux's books without reading them, for they really contain so many facts of profound scientific interest!
But what can we expect in our own age of unbelief, when we find Plato, over twenty-two centuries ago, complaining of the same? "Me, too," says he, in his Euthyphron, "when I say anything in the public assembly concerning divine things, and predict to them what is going to happen, they ridicule as mad; and although nothing that I have predicted has proved untrue, yet they envy all such men as we are. However, we ought not to heed, but pursue our own way."
The literary resources of the Vatican and other Catholic repositories of learning must have been freely placed at the disposal of these modern authors. When one has such treasures at hand original manuscripts, papyri, and books pillaged from the richest heathen libraries; old treatises on magic and alchemy; and records of all the trials for witchcraft, and sentences for the same to rack, stake, and torture, it is mighty easy to write volumes of accusations against the Devil. We affirm on good grounds that there are hundreds of the most valuable works on the occult sciences, which are sentenced to eternal concealment from the public, but are attentively read and studied by the privileged who have access to the Vatican Library. The laws of nature are the same for heathen sorcerer as for Catholic saint; and a "miracle" may be produced as well by one as by the other, without the slightest intervention of God or devil.
Hardly had the manifestations begun to attract attention in Europe, than the clergy commenced their outcry that their traditional enemy had reappeared under another name, and "divine miracles" also began to be heard of in isolated instances. First they were confined to humble individuals, some of whom claimed to have them produced through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, saints and angels; others according to the clergy began to suffer from obsession and possession; for the Devil must have his share of fame as well as the Deity. Finding that, notwithstanding the warning, the independent, or so-called spiritual phenomena went on increasing and multiplying, and that these manifestations threatened to upset the carefully-constructed dogmas of the Church, the world was suddenly startled by extraordinary intelligence. In 1864, a whole community became possessed of the Devil. Morzine, and the awful stories of its demoniacs; Valleyres, and the narratives of its well-authenticated exhibitions of sorcery; and those of the Presbytere de Cideville curdled the blood in Catholic veins.
Strange to say, the question has been asked over and over again,
why the "divine" miracles and most of the obsessions are so strictly confined to Roman Catholic dioceses and countries? Why is it that since the Reformation there has been scarcely one single divine "miracle" in a Protestant land? Of course, the answer we must expect from Catholics is, that the latter are peopled by heretics, and abandoned by God. Then why are there no more Church-miracles in Russia, a country whose religion differs from the Roman Catholic faith but in external forms of rites, its fundamental dogmas being identically the same, except as to the emanation of the Holy Ghost? Russia has her accepted saints and thaumaturgical relics, and miracle-working images. The St. Mitrophaniy of Voroneg is an authenticated miracle-worker, but his miracles are limited to healing; and though hundreds upon hundreds have been healed through faith, and though the old cathedral is full of magnetic effluvia, and whole generations will go on believing in his power, and some persons will always be healed, still no such miracles are heard of in Russia as the Madonna-walking, and Madonna letter-writing, and statue-talking of Catholic countries. Why is this so? Simply because the emperors have strictly forbidden that sort of thing. The Czar, Peter the Great, stopped every spurious "divine" miracle with one frown of his mighty brow. He declared he would have no false miracles played by the holy icones (images of saints), and they disappeared forever.*
There are cases on record of
isolated and independent phenomena exhibited by certain images in the last
century; the latest was the bleeding of the cheek of an image of the Virgin,
when a soldier of Napoleon cut her face in two. This miracle, alleged to have
happened in 1812, in the days of the invasion by the "grand army," was the final
farewell.
* Dr. Stanley: "Lectures on the Eastern Church," p. 407.
In the government of Tambov, a gentleman, a rich landed proprietor, had
a curious case happen in his family during the Hungarian campaign of 1848. His
only and much-beloved nephew, whom, having no children, he had adopted as a son,
was in the Russian army. The elderly couple had a portrait of his a
water-color painting constantly, during the meals, placed on the table in
front of the young man's usual seat. One evening as the family, with some
friends, were at their early tea, the glass over the portrait, without any one
touching it, was shattered to atoms with a loud explosion. As the aunt of the
young soldier caught the picture in her hand she saw the forehead and head
besmeared with blood. The guests, in order to quiet her, attributed the blood to
her having cut her fingers with the broken glass. But, examine as they would,
they could not find the vestige of a cut on her fingers, and no one had touched
the picture but herself. Alarmed at her state of excitement the husband,
pretending to examine the portrait more closely, cut his finger on purpose, and
then tried to assure her that it was his blood and that, in the first
excitement, he had touched the frame without any one remarking it. All was in
vain, the old lady felt sure that Dimitry was killed. She began to have masses
said for him daily at the village church, and arrayed the whole household in
deep mourning. Several weeks later, an official communication was received from
the colonel of the regiment, stating that their nephew was killed by a fragment
of a shell which had carried off the upper part of his head.
18 ISIS UNVEILED.
But since then, although the three successive emperors have been pious men, their will has been respected, and the images and saints have remained quiet, and hardly been spoken of except as connected with religious worship. In Poland, a land of furious ultramontanism, there were, at different times, desperate attempts at miracle-doing. They died at birth, however, for the argus-eyed police were there; a Catholic miracle in Poland, made public by the priests, generally meaning political revolution, bloodshed, and war.
Is it then, not permissible to at least suspect that if, in one country divine miracles may be arrested by civil and military law, and in another they never occur, we must search for the explanation of the two facts in some natural cause, instead of attributing them to either god or devil? In our opinion if it is worth anything the whole secret may be accounted for as follows. In Russia, the clergy know better than to bewilder their parishes, whose piety is sincere and faith strong without miracles; they know that nothing is better calculated than the latter to sow seeds of distrust, doubt, and finally of skepticism which leads directly to atheism. Moreover the climate is less propitious, and the magnetism of the average population too positive, too healthy, to call forth independent phenomena; and fraud would not answer. On the other hand, neither in Protestant Germany, nor England, nor yet in America, since the days of the Reformation, has the clergy had access to any of the Vatican secret libraries. Hence they are all but poor hands at the magic of Albertus Magnus.
As for America being overflowed
with sensitives and mediums, the reason for it is partially attributable to
climatic influence and especially to the physiological condition of the
population. Since the days of the Salem witchcraft, 200 years ago, when the
comparatively few settlers had pure and unadulterated blood in their veins,
nothing much had been heard of "spirits" or "mediums" until 1840. * The
phenomena then first appeared among the ascetic and exalted Shakers, whose
religious aspirations, peculiar mode of life, moral purity, and physical
chastity all led to the production of independent phenomena of a psychological
* Executions for witchcraft took place, not much later than a century
ago, in other of the American provinces. Notoriously there were negroes executed
in New Jersey by burning at the stake the penalty denounced in several States.
Even in South Carolina, in 1865, when the State government was "reconstructed,"
after the civil war, the statutes inflicting death for witchcraft were found to
be still unrepealed. It is not a hundred years since they have been enforced to
the murderous letter of their text.
as well as physical nature. Hundreds of thousands, and even millions of men from various climates and of different constitutions and habits, have, since 1692, invaded North America, and by intermarrying have substantially changed the physical type of the inhabitants. Of what country in the world do the women's constitutions bear comparison with the delicate, nervous, and sensitive constitutions of the feminine portion of the population of the United States? We were struck on our arrival in the country with the semi-transparent delicacy of skin of the natives of both sexes. Compare a hard-working Irish factory girl or boy, with one from a genuine American family. Look at their hands. One works as hard as the other; they are of equal age, and both seemingly healthy; and still, while the hands of the one, after an hour's soaping, will show a skin little softer than that of a young alligator, those of the other, notwithstanding constant use, will allow you to observe the circulation of the blood under the thin and delicate epidermis. No wonder, then, that while America is the conservatory of sensitives the majority of its clergy, unable to produce divine or any other miracles, stoutly deny the possibility of any phenomena except those produced by tricks and juggling. And no wonder also that the Catholic priesthood, who are practically aware of the existence of magic and spiritual phenomena, and believe in them while dreading their consequences, try to attribute the whole to the agency of the Devil.
Let us adduce one more argument, if only for the sake of circumstantial evidence. In what countries have "divine miracles" flourished most, been most frequent and most stupendous? Catholic Spain, and Pontifical Italy, beyond question. And which more than these two, has had access to ancient literature? Spain was famous for her libraries; the Moors were celebrated for their profound learning in alchemy and other sciences. The Vatican is the storehouse of an immense number of ancient manuscripts. During the long interval of nearly 1,500 years they have been accumulating, from trial after trial, books and manuscripts confiscated from their sentenced victims, to their own profit. The Catholics may plead that the books were generally committed to the flames; that the treatises of famous sorcerers and enchanters perished with their accursed authors. But the Vatican, if it could speak, could tell a different story. It knows too well of the existence of certain closets and rooms, access to which is had but by the very few. It knows that the entrances to these secret hiding-places are so cleverly concealed from sight in the carved frame-work and under the profuse ornamentation of the library-walls, that there have even been Popes who lived and died within the precincts of the palace without ever suspecting their existence. But these Popes were neither Sylvester II., Benedict IX., John XX., nor
the
VIth and
VIIth Gregory; nor yet the famous Borgia of toxicological
memory. Neither were those who remained ignorant of the hidden lore friends of
the sons of Loyola.
Where, in the records of European Magic, can we find cleverer enchanters than
in the mysterious solitudes of the cloister? Albert Magnus, the famous Bishop
and conjurer of Ratisbon, was never surpassed in his art. Roger Bacon was a
monk, and Thomas Aquinas one of the most learned pupils of Albertus. Trithemius,
Abbott of the Spanheim Benedictines, was the teacher, friend, and confidant of
Cornelius Agrippa; and while the confederations of the Theosophists were
scattered broadcast about Germany, where they first originated, assisting one
another, and struggling for years for the acquirement of esoteric knowledge, any
person who knew how to become the favored pupil of certain monks, might very
soon be proficient in all the important branches of occult learning.
This is all in history and cannot be easily denied. Magic, in all its
aspects, was widely and nearly openly practiced by the clergy till the
Reformation. And even he who was once called the "Father of the Reformation,"
the famous John Reuchlin,* author of the Mirific Word and friend
of Pico di Mirandola, the teacher and instructor of Erasmus, Luther, and
Melancthon, was a kabalist and occultist.
The ancient Sortilegium, or divination by means of Sortes
or lots an art and practice now decried by the clergy as an abomination,
designated by Stat. 10 Jac. as felony, and by
Stat. 12 Carolus II excepted out of the general pardons, on the
ground of being sorcery was widely practiced by the clergy and monks.
Nay, it was sanctioned by St. Augustine himself, who does not "disapprove of
this method of learning futurity, provided it be not used for worldly purposes."
More than that, he confesses having practiced it himself.
Aye; but the clergy called it Sortes Sanctorum, when it was they who
practiced it; while the Sortes Praenestinζ, succeeded by the Sortes
Homericζ and Sortes Virgilianζ, were abominable
heathenism, the
worship of the Devil, when used by any one else.
Gregory de Tours informs us that when the clergy resorted to the Sortes
their custom was to lay the Bible on the altar, and to pray the
Lord that He would discover His will, and disclose to them futurity in one of
the verses of the book. Gilbert de Nogent writes that in his days
*
Vide the title-page on the English translation of Mayerhoff's
"Reuchlin und Seine Zeit," Berlin, 1830. "The Life and Times of John Reuchlin,
or Capnion, the Father of the German Reformation," by F. Barham, London, 1843.
Lord Coke: 3 "Institutes," fol. 44.
Vide "The Life of St. Gregory of Tours."
(about the twelfth century) the custom was, at the consecration of bishops, to consult the Sortes Sanctorum, to thereby learn the success and fate of the episcopate. On the other hand, we are told that the Sortes Sanctorum were condemned by the Council of Agda, in 506. In this case again we are left to inquire, in which instance has the infallibility of the Church failed? Was it when she prohibited that which was practiced by her greatest saint and patron, Augustine, or in the twelfth century, when it was openly and with the sanction of the same Church practiced by the clergy for the benefit of the bishop's elections? Or, must we still believe that in both of these contradictory cases the Vatican was inspired by the direct "spirit of God"?
If any doubt that Gregory of Tours approved of a practice that prevails to this day, more or less, even among strict Protestants, let them read this: "Lendastus, Earl of Tours, who was for ruining me with Queen Fredegonde, coming to Tours, big with evil designs against me, I withdrew to my oratory under a deep concern, where I took the Psalms, . . . My heart revived within me when I cast my eyes on this of the seventy-seventh Psalm: 'He caused them to go on with confidence, whilst the sea swallowed up their enemies.' Accordingly, the count spoke not a word to my prejudice; and leaving Tours that very day, the boat in which he was, sunk in a storm, but his skill in swimming saved him."
The sainted bishop simply confesses here to having practiced a bit of sorcery. Every mesmerizer knows the power of will during an intense desire bent on any particular subject. Whether in consequence of "co-incidents" or otherwise, the opened verse suggested to his mind revenge by drowning. Passing the remainder of the day in "deep concern," and possessed by this all-absorbing thought, the saint it may be unconsciously exercises his will on the subject; and thus while imagining in the accident the hand of God, he simply becomes a sorcerer exercising his magnetic will which reacts on the person feared; and the count barely escapes with his life. Were the accident decreed by God, the culprit would have been drowned; for a simple bath could not have altered his malevolent resolution against St. Gregory had he been very intent on it.
Furthermore, we find anathemas fulminated against this lottery of fate, at the council of Varres, which forbids "all ecclesiastics, under pain of excommunication, to perform that kind of divination, or to pry into futurity, by looking into any book, or writing, whatsoever." The same prohibition is pronounced at the councils of Agda in 506, of Orleans, in 511, of Auxerre in 595, and finally at the council of Aenham in 1110; the latter condemning "sorcerers, witches, diviners, such as occasioned death by magical operations, and who practiced fortune-telling by the
holy-book lots"; and the complaint of the joint clergy against de Garlande, their bishop at Orleans, and addressed to Pope Alexander III., concludes in this manner: "Let your apostolical hands put on strength to strip naked the iniquity of this man, that the curse prognosticated on the day of his consecration may overtake him; for the gospels being opened on the altar according to custom, the first words were: and the young man, leaving his linen cloth, fled from them naked." *
Why then roast the lay-magicians and consulters of books, and canonize the ecclesiastics? Simply because the mediζval as well as the modern phenomena, manifested through laymen, whether produced through occult knowledge or happening independently, upset the claims of both the Catholic and Protestant Churches to divine miracles. In the face of reiterated and unimpeachable evidence it became impossible for the former to maintain successfully the assertion that seemingly miraculous manifestations by the "good angels" and God's direct intervention could be produced exclusively by her chosen ministers and holy saints. Neither could the Protestant well maintain on the same ground that miracles had ended with the apostolic ages. For, whether of the same nature or not, the modern phenomena claimed close kinship with the biblical ones. The magnetists and healers of our century came into direct and open competition with the apostles. The Zouave Jacob, of France, had outrivalled the prophet Elijah in recalling to life persons who were seemingly dead; and Alexis, the somnambulist, mentioned by Mr. Wallace in his work, was, by his lucidity, putting to shame apostles, prophets, and the Sibyls of old. Since the burning of the last witch, the great Revolution of France, so elaborately prepared by the league of the secret societies and their clever emissaries, had blown over Europe and awakened terror in the bosom of the clergy. It had, like a destroying hurricane, swept away in its course those best allies of the Church, the Roman Catholic aristocracy. A sure foundation was now laid for the right of individual opinion. The world was freed from ecclesiastical tyranny by opening an unobstructed path to Napoleon the Great, who had given the deathblow to the Inquisition. This great slaughter-house of the Christian Church wherein she butchered, in the name of the Lamb, all the sheep arbitrarily declared scurvy was in ruins, and she found herself left to her own responsibility and resources.
So long as the phenomena had
appeared only sporadically, she had always felt herself powerful enough to
repress the consequences. Super-
* Translated from the original document in the Archives of Orleans, France;
also see "Sortes and Sortilegium"; "Life of Peter de Blois."
"Miracles and Modern Spiritualism."
stition and belief in the Devil were as strong as ever, and Science had not yet dared to publicly measure her forces with those of supernatural Religion. Meanwhile the enemy had slowly but surely gained ground. All at once it broke out with an unexpected violence. "Miracles" began to appear in full daylight, and passed from their mystic seclusion into the domain of natural law, where the profane hand of Science was ready to strip off their sacerdotal mask. Still, for a time, the Church held her position, and with the powerful help of superstitious fear checked the progress of the intruding force. But, when in succession appeared mesmerists and somnambulists, reproducing the physical and mental phenomenon of ecstasy, hitherto believed to be the special gift of saints; when the passion for the turning tables had reached in France and elsewhere its climax of fury; when the psychography alleged spiritual from a simple curiosity had developed itself and settled into an unabated interest, and finally ebbed into religious mysticism; when the echoes aroused by the first raps of Rochester, crossing the oceans, spread until they were re-percussed from nearly every corner of the world then, and only then, the Latin Church was fully awakened to a sense of danger. Wonder after wonder was reported to have occurred in the spiritual circles and the lecture-rooms of the mesmerists; the sick were healed, the blind made to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear. J. R. Newton in America, and Du Potet in France, were healing the multitude without the slightest claim to divine intervention. The great discovery of Mesmer, which reveals to the earnest inquirer the mechanism of nature, mastered, as if by magical power, organic and inorganic bodies.
But this was not the worst. A
more direful calamity for the Church occurred in the evocation from the upper
and nether worlds of a multitude of "spirits," whose private bearing and
conversation gave the direct lie to the most cherished and profitable dogmas of
the Church. These "spirits" claimed to be the identical entities, in a
disembodied state, of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, friends and
acquaintances of the persons viewing the weird phenomena. The Devil seemed to
have no objective existence, and this struck at the very foundation upon which
the chair of St. Peter rested.* Not a spirit except the mocking manni-
* There were two chairs of the titular apostle at Rome. The clergy,
frightened at the uninterrupted evidence furnished by scientific research, at
last decided to confront the enemy, and we find the "Chronique des Arts" giving
the cleverest, and at the same time most Jesuitical, explanation of the
fact. According to their story, "The
increase in the number
of the faithful decided Peter upon making Rome henceforth the centre of his
action. The cemetery of Ostrianum was too distant and would not suffice for
the reunions of the Christians. The motive which had induced the Apostle to
confer on Linus and Cletus successively the episcopal character, in
order to render them capable of sharing the solicitudes of a church whose extent
was to be without limits, led naturally to a multiplication of the places of
meeting. The particular residence of Peter was therefore fixed at Viminal; and there was established that mysterious Chair, the symbol of power
and truth. The august seat which was venerated at the Ostrian Catacombs was not,
however, removed. Peter still visited this cradle of the Roman Church, and
often, without doubt, exercised his holy functions there. A second
Chair, expressing the same mystery as the first, was set up at Cornelia, and it
is this which has come down to us through the ages."
Now, so far from it being
possible that there ever were two genuine chairs of this kind, the majority of
critics show that Peter never was at Rome at all; the reasons are many and
unanswerable. Perhaps we had best begin by pointing to the works of Justin
Martyr. This great champion of Christianity, writing in the early part of the
second century in Rome, where he fixed his abode, eager to get hold of
the least proof in favor of the truth for which he suffered, seems perfectly
unconscious of St. Peter's existence!!
Neither does any other writer of
any consequence mention him in connection with the Church of Rome, earlier than
the days of Irenζus, when the latter set himself to invent a new religion, drawn
from the depths of his imagination. We refer the reader anxious to learn more to
the able work of Mr. George Reber, entitled "The Christ of Paul." The arguments
of this author are conclusive. The above article in the "Chronique des Arts,"
speaks of the increase
of the faithful to such an extent that Ostrianum could not contain the
number of Christians. Now, if Peter was at Rome at all runs Mr. Reber's
argument it must have been between the years A.D. 64 and 69; for at 64 he was
at Babylon, from whence he wrote epistles and letters to Rome, and at some time
between 64 and 68 (the reign of Nero) he either died a martyr or in his bed, for
Irenζus makes him deliver the Church of Rome, together with Paul (! ?) (whom he
persecuted and quarrelled with all his life), into the hands of Linus,
who became bishop in 69 (see Reber's "Christ of Paul," p. 122). We will treat of
it more fully in chapter iii.
Now, we ask, in the name of
common sense, how could the faithful of Peter's Church increase
at such a rate, when Nero trapped and killed them like so many mice during his
reign? History shows the few Christians fleeing from Rome, wherever they could,
to avoid the persecution of the emperor, and the "Chronique des Arts" makes them
increase and multiply! "Christ," the article goes on to say, "willed that this
visible sign of the doctrinal authority of his vicar should also have its
portion of immortality; one can follow it from age to age in the documents of
the Roman Church." Tertullian formally attests its existence in his book "De
Prζscriptionibus." Eager to learn everything concerning so interesting a
subject, we would like to be shown when did Christ WILL
anything of the kind? However: "Ornaments of ivory have been fitted to the front
and back of the chair, but only on those parts repaired with acacia-wood. Those
which cover the panel in front are divided into three superimposed rows, each
containing six plaques of ivory, on which are engraved various subjects, among
others the 'Labors of Hercules.' Several of the plaques were wrongly placed, and
seemed to have been affixed to the chair at a time when the remains of antiquity
were employed as ornaments, without much regard to fitness." This is the point.
The article was written simply as a clever answer to several facts published
during the present century. Bower, in his "History of the Popes" (vol. ii., p.
7), narrates that in the year 1662, while cleaning one of the chairs, "the
'Twelve Labors of Hercules' unluckily appeared engraved upon it," after which
the chair was removed and another substituted. But in 1795, when Bonaparte's
troops occupied Rome, the chair was again examined. This time there was found
the Mahometan confession of faith, in Arabic letters: "There is no Deity but
Allah, and Mahomet is his Apostle." (See appendix to "Ancient Symbol-Worship,"
by H. M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake.) In the appendix Prof. Alexander Wilder
very justly remarks as follows: "We presume that the Apostle of the
Circumcision, as Paul, his great rival, styles him, was never at the Imperial
City, nor had a successor there, not even in the ghetto. The 'Chair of Peter,'
therefore, is sacred rather than apostolical. Its sanctity proceeded,
however, from the esoteric religion of the former times of Rome. The hierophant
of the Mysteries probably occupied it on the day of initiations, when exhibiting
to the candidates the Petroma (stone tablet containing the last
revelation made by the hierophant to the neophyte for initiation)