Disclaimer: Electronically typed and edited by Juan Schoch (a.k.a. PC93) -> http://members.tripod.com/~pc93 for educational research purposes of that which is contained in his library. Any donations of textual materials (esp. of any Kuhn materials which I am still looking for) or help in the acquiring of textual materials is not only appreciated but welcome. Contact can be made at pc93@my-deja.com

Gerald Massey, a man of many talents, distinguished himself as a social reformer, a poet and an Egyptologist. His fame rested mainly on the six monumental volumes in which he dealt at length on the mythology and religion of Ancient Egypt, and on his poetry. Although he was a capable lecturer, the lectures were not widely circulated, and were privately printed in an obscure volume. It is timely that this valuable collection is once again presented to Massey's increasing public.

Relatively little is known of Massey's career. His humble birth at Gamble Wharf, Hertfordshire, England in 1829 held scant promise for the future. His parents were illiterate--his father was a poorly paid canal boatman. His own early education was meager. Only occasionally was the young Massey able to attend the neighboring school, for which he paid one penny a week. From the age of eight he labored twelve hours a day. At first he found employment in a silk mill. When it was destroyed by fire, he worked as a straw-plaiter. Doubtless there were many such jobs until at fifteen he went to London as an errand boy. Later he was fortunate enough to become a haberdasher's clerk.

It is evident that Massey improved his life at every opportunity. Not only did his positions become more responsible, but in his spare time he read literature, and was inspired to write poetry. He even composed a popular song, which was so well-received that it was exhibited in a London shop window. In passing the Editor of "The Athenaeum", London's most distinguished periodical, noticed and bought a copy. The song, "The People's Advent," caught the Editor's fancy to the extent that the composer's name--Gerald Massey--remained in his memory.

A year later, his book of poetry readied for publication, Massey brought it with hope and humility to the Editor of "The Athenaeum." The Editor, recognizing the author's name as the composer of "The People's Advent," was predisposed to like the poems before reading them. He wrote a brilliant, laudatory review of the poetry. The book-sellers of London, impressed by the review ordered the book with no hesitation. In one day the first edition was sold out.

Gerald Massey became increasingly interested in Egyptology. He studied the extensive Egyptian records housed in the British Museum. He eventually taught himself to decipher the hieroglyphics. Finally after many years of study he wrote a series of scholarly works on the Religion and Mythology of Ancient Egypt. In 1881 he published in two volumes "A Book of the Beginnings," in 1883 "The Natural Genesis" followed, and finally in 1907 he published in two volumes "Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World,".

Through those long years of devoted study at the British Museum, Massey enjoyed the friendship and wise counsel of Dr. Samuel Birch, an outstanding Egyptologist. He attracted a following of dedicated students, who later were privileged to assist in his research. Two of his most prominent co-workers were George St. Clair who authored "Creation Records Discovered in Egypt," and Dr. Albert Churchward, who wrote "The Origin and Evolution of the Human Race."

When Massey lectured in America and Canada, he found himself surrounded with able students. Miss E. Valentia Straiton, author of "The Celestial Ship of the North," and Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn, who wrote extensively on comparative religion. Dr. Kuhn acknowledged that in Gerald Massey had been a great inspiration to him. In fact in his posthumous work, "A Rebirth for Christianity," Dr. Kuhn called attention to the great worth of Massey's research on Christian origins, as follows:

"With brilliant scholarship and insight he pierced Egypt's enigmatic scriptology, and documented the provenance of both Old and New Testament literature from remote Egyptian sources. He forced us to ask how the four Gospels of the Christian canon could be the biography of any Messianic personality living in the first Christian century, when he traced their texts back to Egyptian documents that must have been venerable even in 3500 B.C.

"We are faced with the inescapable realization that if Jesus actually lived in the flesh in the first century A.D., and if he had been able to read the documents of old Egypt, he would have been amazed to find his own biography already substantially written some four or five thousand years previously. Tertullian, Justin Martyr and

other writers have noted that the leaders of the Christian movement confessed that many of their doctrines, rites, creeds and symbols were identical with Egyptian antetypes. The late outstanding American Egyptologist, James H. Breasted, found evidence of such similarities between the Old Testament book, Proverbs, and addresses to the Pharaoh of Egypt dating as far back as 3500 B.C. All this confirms Massey's conclusions." (pp. 39-40)

Gerald Massey so impressed the novelist, George Eliot, that she made him the hero of one of her famous romances. Thus Massey became immortalized in literature as "Felix Holt the Radical."

Among Massey's American friends and admirers was a prominent New York Journalist and publisher, D. M. Bernett. In the second edition of his "The World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers" on page 967, Bernett says,

"Gerald Massey is a warm-hearted, genial man, and as a companion and friend he has few superiors. His interests and incentives are decidedly in the direction of Science and Rationalism. He has many years been freed from the binding and blinding theological creeds and obligations. He regards priestcraft as one of the great evils which mankind for thousands of years have been compelled to endure and support; and regards it as one of the most important works that men of the present time can engage in to demolish the idols of the past dark ages; to liberate the mind from the dwarfing and blighting effect of pagan and Christian mythology and to dispense with the officious and expensive services of a designing, useless, aristocratic and wily priesthood. He most desires to see the human race advance in knowledge and truth and mental freedom, which science and philosophy imparts to the diligent investigator. He believes ignorance to be the Devil, Science the Savior of the world."

For those who finish the reading of these lectures and desire a further acquaintance with the works of Gerald Massey, there are his greater works beginning with "Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World."

Gerald Massey, though a poet, Shakespearian scholar, and renowned Egyptologist, is best remembered by his unswerving convictions. His research led him to the conclusion that in Africa alone could be found the origins of myths, mysteries, symbols, languages and religions. Egypt was the mouthpiece.

He did not hesitate to undertake to prove that all Christendom were the dupes of delusions. His zeal caused him to challenge the scientists, the theologians, the philologists, the anthropologists and sociologists. However, he did not rest his case there. He was too much the honest scholar for that. Therefore, he presented to his peers the abundant evidence resulting from his immense amount of research, which had been sifted through the most reliable authorities.

In these present lectures Gerald Massey renewed his contention that the gnosis of Christianity was primarily derived from Egypt on various lines of descent--Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Alexandrian, Essenian and Nazarene. These converged in Rome where the history was manufactured from identifiable matter recorded in the ancient Book of Wisdom.

It was during this period that he delivered the lecture on GNOSTIC AND HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY. He clearly depicts the origin of Christianity and makes it unequivocal that it was not derived from Buddhism. Jesus spoke repeatedly about the Father. Massey said, "The Buddha is the veiled God unveiled, the unmanifested made manifest, but not by the line of descent from Father to Son. Buddha was begotten by his own becoming before the time of divine paternity."

Long before man uttered a verbal prayer, he expressed himself by actions or gesture-language. Massey discussed this at length in MAN IN SEARCH OF HIS SOUL DURING FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS AND HOW HE FOUND IT. Present-day psychologists recognize gesture-language as an indication of man's true unexpressed attitudes, for unconsciously he assumes gestures revealing his thinking. The old cliché, "Actions speak louder than words," has come full circle and vindicated Massey.

Massey had but one desire. He wanted to gain all the knowledge the past could afford him, and then to supplement it with all that is known in the present. He maintained it was impossible to understand the present without a profound knowledge of the past. Unless man comprehended the laws of evolution and past development, and of present survival, it was impossible to form an opinion that would be of value to anyone. With patience and determination he carried this out in all his writings.

He had little patience with those who talked of the great occult secrets. He was convinced the so-called ancient mysteries were manufactured by pseudo-Esoterists and Occultists. The only interest Massey took in such matters was to determine how they had originated, to verify their supposed phenomena, and to ferret out their meaning. He insisted the need for mystery vanished with the coming of the printing press and public experimental research. It became a passion with him to publish the facts as he saw them, and then to distribute the knowledge widely. In THE SEVEN SOULS OF MAN, he said, "The modern manufacture of ancient mysteries is a great imposition, and sure to be found out. The mysteries called Christian . . . I look upon them as the greatest imposition of all."

His own meditation on facts of both abnormal or extraordinary nature which continued and were verified over the years, proved to him that Mind existed and operated invisibly. He did not trouble about "the other world" at all, for it was in this world that people needed assistance. Life to him was not worth living if something were not done to further its work. "It is only in helping others that we can truly help ourselves," said Mr. Massey in the lecture, THE DEVIL OF DARKNESS IN THE LIGHT OF EVOLUTION.

To Gerald Massey it was an unforgiveable pretense for the clergy to continue to preach that man was a fallen creature. He continually pointed out that man could not be saved through prayful intercession. Every advance made by science for humanity had been carried out through research and perseverance--not by praying to a jealous God. Massey proclaimed, "It is a sad farce for you to pray for God to work a miracle . . . when you are doing all you can to prevent it."

Speaking of creation, he saw it as beginning with the first means of measuring and recording a cycle of time. In Genesis, the first day was measured by the morning and the evening. To the present day time continues to be measured by this identical method.

Through years of observation Massey recorded the outcome of such statements as, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." He concluded that the meek did not inherit the earth and were not about to. Teachers had been woefully mistaken and unobserving. The death of Jesus could not save man from himself. Massey was adamant in pointing out that man was what he was as the result of what he had done. There was no dodging the law of cause and effect.

One of Massey's greatest contributions is his lecture on THE COMING RELIGION. It is poignant with his sincerity. He put his own belief into every word. To him each person must do his own thinking and have absolute freedom of expression. He stressed that the new religion must have "sincerity of life, in place of pretended belief; a religion of science, in place of superstition." This religion will proclaim man's Ascent rather than his Fall. It will be a religion of fact in the present, not of mere faith for the future. The temple will be what it was intended to be--the human form rather than an edifice of brick and stone. It will be a religion of accomplishment, rather than of worship; and in place of the many creeds, it will be a religion of life. Above all it will be a joyous religion. To realize such a religion a man must be honest and courageous as was Gerald Massey himself.

His final plea in THE COMING RELIGION was to urge man to bear in mind that the origin of evil in the moral domain was derived from ignorance. It was Hermes who said, "The wickedness of a soul is its ignorance." To this Gerald Massey fittingly added that after gaining the consciousness to recognize the right, then it is man's permissiveness that allows evil actions to take place.

Sibyl Ferguson

In presenting my readers with some of the data which show that much of the Christian History was pre-extant as Egyptian Mythology. I have to ask you to bear in mind that the facts, like other foundations, have been buried out of sight for thousands of years in a hieroglyphical language, that was never really read by Greek or Roman, and could not be read until the lost clue was discovered by Champollion, almost the other day! In this way the original sources of our Mytholatry and Christology remained as hidden as those of the Nile, until the century in which we live. The mystical matter enshrouded in this language was sacredly entrusted to the keeping of the buried dead, who have faithfully preserved it as their Book of Life, which was placed beneath their pillows, or clasped to their bosoms, in their coffins and their tombs.

Secondly, although I am able to read the hieroglyphics, nothing offered to you is based on my translation. I work too warily for that! The transcription and literal rendering of the hieroglyphic texts herein employed are by scholars of indisputable authority. There is no loophole of escape that way. I lectured upon the subject of Jesus many years ago. At that time I did not know how we had been misled, or that the "Christian scheme" (as it is aptly called) in the New Testament is a fraud, founded on a fable in the Old!

I then accepted the Canonical Gospels as containing a veritable human history, and assumed, as others do, that the history proved itself. Finding that Jesus, or Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, was an historical character, known to the Talmud, I made the common mistake of

supposing that this proved the personal existence of the Jesus found portrayed in the Canonical Gospels. But after you have heard my story, and weighed the evidence now for the first time collected and presented to the public, you will not wonder that I should have changed my views, or that I should be impelled to tell the truth to others, as it now appears to myself; although I am only able to summarize here, in the briefest manner possible, a few of the facts that I have dealt with exhaustively elsewhere.

The personal existence of Jesus as Jehoshua Ben-Pandira can be established beyond a doubt. One account affirms that, according to a genuine Jewish tradition "that man (who is not to be named) was a disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia." It also says, "He was born in the fourth year of the reign of the Jewish King Alexander Jannæus, notwithstanding the assertions of his followers that he was born in the reign of Herod." That would be more than a century earlier than the date of birth assigned to the Jesus of the Gospels! But it can be further shown that Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been born considerably earlier even than the year 102 B.C., although the point is not of much consequence here. Jehoshua, son of Perachia, was a president of the Sanhedrin--the fifth, reckoning from Ezra as the first: one of those who in the line of descent received and transmitted the oral law, as it was said, direct from Sinai. There could not be two of that name. This Ben-Perachia had begun to teach as a Rabbi in the year 154 B.C. We may therefore reckon that he was not born later than 180-170 B.C., and that it could hardly be later than 100 B.C. when he went down into Egypt with his pupil. For it is related that he fled there in consequence of a persecution of the Rabbis, feasibly conjectured to refer to the civil war in which the Pharisees revolted against King Alexander Jannæus, and consequently about 105 B.C. If we put the age of his pupil, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, at fifteen years, that will give us an approximate date, extracted without pressure, which shows that Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been born about the year 120 B.C. But twenty years are a matter of little moment here.

According to the Babylonian Gemara to the Mishna of Tract "Shabbath," this Jehoshua, the son of Pandira and Stada, was stoned to death as a wizard, in the city of Lud, or Lydda, and afterwards crucified by being hanged on a tree, on the eve of the Passover. This is the manner of death assigned to Jesus in the Book of Acts. The Gemara says there exists a tradition that on the rest-day before the Sabbath they crucified Jehoshua, on the rest-day of the Passah (the day before the Passover). The year of his death, however, is not given in that account; but there are reasons for thinking it could not have been much earlier nor later than B.C. 70, because this Jewish King Jannæus reigned from the year 106 to 79 B.C. He was succeeded in the government by his widow Salomè, whom the Greeks called Alexandra, and who reigned for some nine years. Now the traditions, especially of the first "Toledoth Jehoshua," relate that the Queen of Jannæus, and the mother of Hyrcanus, who must therefore be Salomè,

in spite of her being called by another name, showed favour to Jehoshua and his teaching; that she was a witness of his wonderful works and powers of healing, and tried to save him from the hands of his sacerdotal enemies, because he was related to her; but that during her reign, which ended in the year 71 B.C., he was put to death. The Jewish writers and Rabbis with whom I have talked always deny the identity of the Talmudic Jehoshua and the Jesus of the Gospels. "This," observes Rabbi Jechiels, "which has been related to Jehoshua Ben-Perachia and his pupil, contains no reference whatever to him whom the Christians honour as God!" Another Rabbi, Salman Zevi, produced ten reasons for concluding that the Jehoshua of the Talmud was not he who was afterwards called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth (and of the Canonical Gospels) was unknown to Justus, to the Jew of Celsus, and to Josephus, the supposed reference to him by the latter being an undoubted forgery.

The "blasphemous writings of the Jews about Jesus," as Justin Martyr calls them, always refer to Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, and not to the Jesus of the Gospels. It is Ben-Pandira they mean when they say they have another and a truer account of the birth and life, the wonder-working and death of Jehoshua or Jesus. This repudiation is perfectly honest and soundly based. The only Jesus known to the Jews was Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, who had learnt the arts of magic in Egypt, and who was put to death by them as a sorcerer. This was likewise the only Jesus known to Celsus, the writer of the "True Logos," a work which the Christians managed to get rid of bodily, with so many other of the anti-Christian evidences.

Celsus observes that he was not a pure Word, not a true Logos, but a man who had learned the arts of sorcery in Egypt. So, in the Clementines, it is in the character of Ben-Pandira that Jesus is said to rise again as the magician. But here is the conclusive fact: The Jews know nothing of Jesus, the Christ of the Gospels, as an historical character; and when the Christians of the fourth century trace his pedigree, by the hand of Epiphanius, they are forced to derive their Jesus from Pandira! Epiphanius gives the genealogy of the Canonical Jesus in this wise:--

Jacob, called Pandira, Mary=Joseph--Cleopas, Jesus.

This proves that in the fourth century the pedigree of Jesus was traced to Pandira, the father of that Jehoshua who was the pupil of Ben-Perachia, and who becomes one of the magicians in Egypt, and who was crucified as a magician on the eve of the Passover by the Jews, in the time of Queen Alexandra, who had ceased to reign in the year 70 B.C.--the Jesus, therefore, who lived and died more than a century too soon.

Thus, the Jews do not identify Jehoshua Ben-Pandira with the Gospel Jesus, of whom they, his supposed contemporaries, know nothing, but protest against the assumption as an impossibility; whereas the Christians do identify their Jesus as the descendant of Pandira. It was he or nobody; yet he was neither the son of Joseph

nor the Virgin Mary, nor was he crucified at Jerusalem. It is not the Jews, then, but the Christians, who fuse two supposed historic characters into one! There being but one history acknowledged or known on either side, it follows that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jehoshua of the Talmud, or is not at all, as a Person. This shifts the historic basis altogether; it antedates the human history by more than a hundred years, and it at once destroys the historic character of the Gospels, together with that of any other personal Jesus than Ben-Pandira. In short, the Jewish history of the matter will be found to corroborate the mythical. As Epiphanius knew of no other historical Jesus than the descendant of Pandira, it is possible that this is the Jesus whose tradition is reported by Irenæus.

Irenæus was born in the early part of the second century, between 120 and 140 A.D. He was Bishop of Lyons, France, and a personal acquaintance of Polycarp; and he repeats a tradition testified to by the elders, which he alleges was directly derived from John, the "disciple of the Lord," to the effect that Jesus was not crucified at 33 years of age, but that he passed through every age, and lived on to be an oldish man. Now, in accordance with the dates given, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been between 50 and 60 years of age when put to death, and his tradition alone furnishes a clue to the Nihilistic statement of Irenæus.

When the true tradition of Ben-Pandira is recovered, it shows that he was the sole historical Jesus who was hung on a tree by the Jews, not crucified in the Roman fashion, and authenticates the claim now to be made on behalf of the astronomical allegory to the dispensational Jesus, the Kronian Christ, the mythical Messiah of the Canonical Gospels, and the Jesus of Paul, who was not the carnalised Christ. For I hold that the Jesus of the "other Gospel," according to the Apostles Cephas and James, who was utterly repudiated by Paul, was none other than Ben-Pandira, the Nazarene, of whom James was a follower, according to a comment on him found in the Book Abodazura. Anyway, there are two Jesuses, or Jesus and the Christ, one of whom is repudiated by Paul.

But Jehoshua, the son of Pandira, can never be converted into Jesus Christ, the son of a virgin mother, as an historic character. Nor can the dates given ever be reconciled with contemporary history. The historical Herod, who sought to slay the young child Jesus, is known to have died four years before the date of the Christian era, assigned for the birth of Jesus.

So much for the historic Jesus. And now for the mythical Christ. Here we can tread on firmer ground.

The mythical Messiah was always born of a Virgin Mother--a factor unknown in natural phenomena, and one that cannot be historical, one that can only be explained by means of the Mythos, and those conditions of primitive sociology which are mirrored in mythology and preserved in theology. The virgin mother has been represented in Egypt by the maiden Queen, Mut-em-ua, the future mother of Amenhept III.

some 16 centuries B.C., who impersonated the eternal virgin that produced the eternal child.

Four consecutive scenes reproduced in my book are found pourtrayed upon the innermost walls of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Luxor, which was built by Amenhept III., a Pharaoh of the 17th dynasty. The first scene on the left hand shows the God Taht, the Lunar Mercury, the Annunciator of the Gods, in the act of hailing the Virgin Queen, and announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming Son. In the next scene the God Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives the new life. This is the Holy Ghost or Spirit that causes the Immaculate Conception, Kneph being the spirit by name in Egyptian. The natural effects are made apparent in the virgin's swelling form.

Next the mother is seated on the mid-wife's stool, and the newborn child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the Adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the Gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right, three spirits--the Three Magi, or Kings of the Legend, are kneeling and offering presents with their right hand, and life with their left. The child thus announced, incarnated, born, and worshipped, was the Pharaonic representative of the Aten Sun in Egypt, the God Adon of Syria, and Hebrew Adonai; the child-Christ of the Aten Cult; the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother, personated by Mut-em-ua, as mother of the "only one," and representative of the divine mother of the youthful Sun-God.

These scenes, which were mythical in Egypt, have been copied or reproduced as historical in the Canonical Gospels, where they stand like four corner-stones to the Historic Structure, and prove that the foundations are mythical.

Jesus was not only born of the mythical motherhood; his descent on the maternal side is traced in accordance with this origin of the mythical Christ. The virgin was also called the harlot, because she represented the pre-monogamic stage of intercourse; and Jesus descends from four forms of the harlot--Thamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba--each of whom is a form of the "stranger in Israel," and is not a Hebrew woman. Such history, however, does not show that illicit intercourse was the natural mode of the divine descent; nor does it imply unparalleled human profligacy. It only proves the Mythos.

In human sociology the son of the mother preceded the father, as son of the woman who was a mother, but not a wife. This character is likewise claimed for Jesus, who is made to declare that he was earlier than Abraham, who was the typical Great Father of the Jews; whether considered to be mythical or historical. Jesus states emphatically that he existed before Abraham was. This is only possible to the mythical Christ, who preceded the father as son of the virgin mother; and we shall find it so throughout. All that is non-natural and impossible as human history, is possible, natural and explicable as Mythos.

It can be explained by the Mythos, because it originated in that which alone accounts for it. For it comes to this at last: the more hidden the meaning in the Gospel history, the more satisfactorily is it explained by the Mythos; and the more mystical the Christian doctrine, the more easily can it be proved to be mythical.

The birth of Christ is astronomical. The birthday is determined by the full moon of Easter. This can only occur once every 19 years, as we have it illustrated by the Epact or Golden Number of the Prayer Book. Understand me! Jesus, the Christ, can only have a birthday, or resurrection, once in 19 years, in accordance with the Metonic Cycle, because his parents are the sun and moon; and those appear in the earliest known representation of the Man upon the Cross! This proves the astronomical and non-human nature of the birth itself, which is identical with that of the full moon of Easter in Egypt.

Casini, the French Astronomer, has demonstrated the fact that the date assigned for the birth of the Christ is an Astronomical epoch in which the middle conjunction of the moon with the sun happened on the 24th March, at half-past one o'clock in the morning, at the meridian of Jerusalem, the very day of the middle equinox. The following day (the 25th) was the day of the Incarnation, according to Augustine, but the date of the Birth, according to Clement Alexander. For two birth days are assigned to Jesus by the Christian Fathers, one at the Winter Solstice, the other at the Vernal Equinox. These, which cannot both be historical, are based on the two birthdays of the double Horus in Egypt. Plutarch tells us that Isis was delivered of Horus, the child, about the time of the winter Solstice, and that the festival of the second or adult Horus followed the Vernal Equinox. Hence, the Solstice and spring Equinox were both assigned to the one birth of Jesus by the Christolators; and again, that which is impossible as human history is the natural fact in relation to the two Horuses, the dual form of the Solar God in Egypt.

And here, in passing, we may point out the astronomical nature of the Crucifixion. The Gospel according to John brings on a tradition so different from that of the Synoptics as to invalidate the human history of both. The Synoptics say that Jesus was crucified on the 15th of the month Nisan. John affirms that it was on the 14th of the month. This serious rift runs through the very foundation! As human history it cannot be explained. But there is an explanation possible, which, if accepted, proves the Mythos. The Crucifixion (or Crossing) was, and still is, determined by the full moon of Easter. This, in the lunar reckoning, would be on the 14th in the month of 28 days; in the solar month of 30 days it was reckoned to occur on the 15th of the month. Both unite, and the rift closes in proving the Crucifixion to have been Astronomical, just as it was in Egypt, where the two dates can be identified.

Plutarch also tells us how the Mithraic Cult had been particularly established in Rome about the year 70 B.C. And Mithras was fabled

as having been born in a cave. Wherever Mithras was worshipped the cave was consecrated as his birthplace. The cave can be identified, and the birth of the Messiah in that cave, no matter under what name he was born, can be definitely dated. The "Cave of Mithras" was the birthplace of the Sun in the Winter Solstice, when this occurred on the 25th of December in the sign of the Sea-Goat, with the Vernal Equinox in the sign of the Ram. Now the Akkadian name of the tenth month, that of the Sea-Goat, which answers roughly to our December, the tenth by name, is Abba Uddu, that is, the "Cave of Light;" the cave of re-birth for the Sun in the lowest depth at the Solstice, figured as the Cave of Light. This cave was continued as the birthplace of the Christ. You will find it in all the Gospels of the Infancy, and Justin Martyr says, "Christ was born in the Stable, and afterwards took refuge in the Cave." He likewise vouches for the fact that Christ was born on the same day that the Sun was re-born in Stabulo Augiæ, or, in the Stable of Augias. Now the cleansing of this Stable was the sixth labour of Herakles, his first being in the sign of the Lion; and Justin was right; the Stable and Cave are both figured in the same Celestial Sign. But mark this! The Cave was the birthplace of the Solar Messiah from the year 2410 to the year 255 B.C.; at which latter date the Solstice passed out of the Sea-Goat into the sign of the Archer; and no Messiah, whether called Mithras, Adon, Tammuz, Horus or Christ, could have been born in the Cave of Abba Uddu or the Stable of Augias on the 25th of December after the year 255 B.C., therefore, Justin had nothing but the Mithraic tradition of the by-gone birthday to prove the birth of the Historical Christ 255 years later!

In their mysteries the Sarraceni celebrated the Birth of the babe in the Cave or Subterranean Sanctuary, from which the Priest issued, and cried:--"The Virgin has brought forth: The Light is about to begin to grow again!"--on the Mother-night of the year. And the Sarraceni were not supporters of Historic Christianity.

The birthplace of the Egyptian Messiah at the Vernal Equinox was figured in Apt, or Apta, the corner; but Apta is also the name of the Crib and the Manger; hence the Child born in Apta, was said to be born in a manger; and this Apta as Crib or Manger is the hieroglyphic sign of the Solar birthplace. Hence the Egyptians exhibited the Babe in the Crib or Manger in the streets of Alexandria. The birthplace was indicated by the colure of the Equinox, as it passed from sign to sign. It was also pointed out by the Star in the East. When the birthplace was in the sign of the Bull, Orion was the Star that rose in the East to tell where the young Sun-God was re-born. Hence it is called the "Star of Horus." That was then the Star of the "Three Kings" who greeted the Babe; for the "Three Kings" is still a name of the three stars in Orion's Belt. Here we learn that the legend of the "Three Kings" is at least 6,000 years old.

In the course of Precession, about 255 B.C., the vernal birthplace passed into the sign of the Fishes, and the Messiah who had been represented for 2155 years by the Ram or Lamb, and previously for other

2155 years by the Apis Bull, was now imaged as the Fish, or the "Fish-man," called Ichthys in Greek. The original Fish-man--the An of Egypt, and the Oan of Chaldea--probably dates from the previous cycle of precession, or 26,000 years earlier; and about 255 B.C., the Messiah, as the Fish-man, was to come up once more as the Manifestor from the celestial waters. The coming Messiah is called Dag, the Fish, in the Talmud; and the Jews at one time connected his coming with some conjunction, or occurrence, in the sign of the Fishes! This shows the Jews were not only in possession of the astronomical allegory, but also of the tradition by which it could be interpreted. It was the Mythical and Kronian Messiah alone who was, or could be, the subject of prophecy that might be fulfilled--prophecy that was fulfilled as it is in the Book of Revelation--when the Equinox entered, the cross was re-erected, and the foundations of a new heaven were laid in the sign of the Ram, 2410 B.C.; and, again, when the Equinox entered the sign of the Fishes, 255 B.C. Prophecy that will be again fulfilled when the Equinox enters the sign of the Waterman about the end of this century, to which the Samaritans are still looking forward for the coming of their Messiah, who has not yet arrived for them. The Christians alone ate the oyster; the Jews and Samaritans only got an equal share of the empty shells! The uninstructed Jews, the idiotai, at one time thought the prophecy which was astronomical, and solely related to the cycles of time, was to have its fulfilment in human history. But they found out their error, and bequeathed it unexplained to the still more ignorant Christians. The same tradition of the Coming One is extant amongst the Millenarians and Adventists, as amongst the Moslems. It is the tradition of El-Mahdi, the prophet who is to come in the last days of the world to conquer all the world, and who was lately descending the Soudan with the old announcement the "Day of the Lord is at hand," which shows that the astronomical allegory has left some relics of the true tradition among the Arabs, who were at one time learned in astronomical lore.

The Messiah, as the Fish-man, is foreseen by Esdras ascending out of the sea as the "same whom God the highest hath kept a great season, which by his own self shall deliver the creature." The ancient Fish-man only came up out of the sea to converse with men and teach them in the daytime. "When the sun set," says Berosus, "it was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all night in the deep." So the man foreseen by Esdras is only visible by day.

As it is said, "E'en so can no man upon earth see my son, or those that be with him, but in the daytime." This is parodied or fulfilled in the account of Ichthys, the Fish, the Christ who instructs men by day, but retires to the lake of Galilee, where he demonstrates his solar nature by walking the waters at night, or at the dawn of day.

We are told that his disciples being on board a ship, "when even was come, in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them walking upon the sea." Now the fourth watch began at three o'clock, and ended at six o'clock. Therefore, this was about the proper time

for a solar God to appear walking upon the waters, or coming up out of them as the Oannes. Oannes is said to have taken no food whilst he was with men: "In the daytime he used to converse with men, but took no food at that season." So Jesus, when his disciples prayed him, saying "Master, eat," said unto them, "I have meat to eat that you know not of. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me."

This is the perfect likeness of the character of Oannes, who took no food, but whose time was wholly spent in teaching men. Moreover, the mythical Fish-man is made to identify himself. When the Pharisees sought a "sign from heaven," Jesus said, "There shall no sign be given but the sign of Jonas. For as Jonas became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the son of man be to this generation."

The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan, or Fish-man of Nineveh, whether we take it direct from the monuments, or from the Hebrew history of Jonah, or from the Zodiac.

The voice of the secret wisdom here says truly that those who are looking for signs, can have no other than that of the returning Fish-man, Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonah: and assuredly, there was no other sign or date--than those of Ichthys, the Fish who was re-born of the fish-goddess, Atergatis, in the sign of the Fishes, 255 B.C. After whom the primitive Christians were called little fishes, or Pisciculi.

This date of 255 B.C. was the true day of birth, or rather of re-birth for the celestial Christ, and there was no valid reason for changing the time of the world.

The Gospels contain a confused and confusing record of early Christian belief: things most truly believed (Luke) concerning certain mythical matters, which were ignorantly mistaken for human and historical. The Jesus of our Gospels is but little of a human reality, in spite of all attempts to naturalize the Mythical Christ, and make the story look rational.

The Christian religion was not founded on a man, but on a divinity; that is, a mythical character. So far from being derived from the model man, the typical Christ was made up from the features of various Gods, after a fashion somewhat like those "pictorial averages" pourtrayed by Mr. Galton, in which the traits of several persons are photographed and fused in a portrait of a dozen different persons, merged into one that is not anybody. And as fast as the composite Christ falls to pieces, each feature is claimed, each character is gathered up by the original owner, as with the grasp of gravitation.

It is not I that deny the divinity of Jesus the Christ; I assert it! He never was, and never could be, any other than a divinity; that is, a character non-human, and entirely mythical, who had been the pagan divinity of various pagan myths, that had been pagan during thousands of years before our Era.

Nothing is more certain, according to honest evidence, than that the Christian scheme of redemption is founded on a fable misinterpreted; that the prophecy of fulfillment was solely astronomical, and the Coming One as the Christ who came in the end of an age, or of the world, was

but a metaphorical figure, a type of time, from the first, which never could take form in historic personality, any more than Time in Person could come out of a clock-case when the hour strikes; that no Jesus could become a Nazarene by being born at, or taken to, Nazareth; and that the history in our Gospels is from beginning to end the identifiable story of the Sun-God, and the Gnostic Christ who never could be made flesh. When we did not know the one it was possible to believe the other; but when once we truly know, then the false belief is no longer possible.

The mythical Messiah was Horus in the Osirian Mythos; Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra; and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters.

The Christ is the Good Shepherd!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Lamb of God!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Bread of Life!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Truth and the Life!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Fan-bearer!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Lord!

So was Horus.

Christ is the Way and the Door of Life!

Horus was the path by which they travelled out of the Sepulchre. He is the God whose name is written with the hieroglyphic sign of the Road or Way.

Jesus is he that should come; and Iu, the root of the name in Egyptian, means "to come." Iu-em-hept, as the Su, the Son of Atum, or of Ptah, was the "Ever-Coming One," who is always pourtrayed as the marching youngster, in the act and attitude of coming. Horus included both sexes. The Child (or the soul) is of either sex, and potentially, of both. Hence the hermaphrodital Deity; and Jesus, in Revelation, is the Young Man who has the female paps.

Iu-em-hept signifies he who comes with peace. This is the character in which Jesus is announced by the Angels! And when Jesus comes to his disciples after the resurrection it is as the bringer of peace. "Learn of me and ye shall find rest," says the Christ. Khunsu-Nefer-Hept is the Good Rest, Peace in Person! The Egyptian Jesus, Iu-em-Hept, was the second Atum; Paul's Jesus is the second Adam. In one rendition of John's Gospel, instead of the "only-begotten Son of God," a variant reading gives the "only-begotten God," which has been declared an impossible rendering. But the "only-begotten God" was an especial type in Egyptian Mythology, and the phrase re-identifies the divinity whose emblem is the beetle. Hor-Apollo says, "To denote the only-begotten or a father, the Egyptians delineate a scarabæus!

By this they symbolize an only-begotten, because the creature is self-produced, being unconceived by a female." Now the youthful manifestor of the Beetle-God was this Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus. The very phraseology of John is common to the Inscriptions, which tell of him who was the Beginner of Becoming from the first, and who made all things, but who himself was not made. I quote verbatim. And not only was the Beetle-God continued in the "only-begotten God"; the beetle-type was also brought on as a symbol of the Christ. Ambrose and Augustine, amongst the Christian Fathers, identified Jesus with, and as, the "good Scarabæus," which further identifies the Jesus of John's Gospel with the Jesus of Egypt, who was the Ever-Coming One, and the Bringer of Peace, whom I have elsewhere shown to be the Jesus to whom the Book of Ecclesiasticus is inscribed, and ascribed in the Apocrypha.

In accordance with this continuation of the Kamite symbols, it was also maintained by some sectaries that Jesus was a potter, and not a carpenter; and the fact is that this only-begotten Beetle-God, who is pourtrayed sitting at the potter's wheel forming the Egg, or shaping the vase-symbol of creation, was the Potter personified, as well as the only-begotten God in Egypt.

The character and teachings of the Canonical Christ are composed of contradictions which cannot be harmonised as those of a human being, whereas they are always true to the Mythos.

He is the Prince of Peace, and yet he asserts that he came not to bring peace: "I came not to send peace, but a sword," and not only is Iu-em-hept the Bringer of Peace by name in one character; he is the Sword personified in the other. In this he says, "I am the living image of Atum, proceeding from him as a sword." Both characters belong to the mythical Messiah in the Ritual, who also calls himself the "Great Disturber," and the "Great Tranquilizer"--the "God Contention," and the "God Peace." The Christ of the Canonical Gospels has several prototypes, and sometimes the copy is derived or the trait is caught from one original, and sometimes from the other. The Christ of Luke's Gospel has a character entirely distinct from that of John's Gospel. Here he is the Great Exorciser, and caster-out of demons. John's Gospel contains no case of possession or obsession: no certain man who "had devils this long time"; no child possessed with a devil; no blind and dumb man possessed with a devil.

Other miracles are performed by the Christ of John, but not these; because John's is a different type of the Christ. And the original of the Great Healer in Luke's Gospel may be found in the God Khunsu, who was the Divine Healer, the supreme one amongst all the other healers and saviours, especially as the caster-out of demons, and the expeller of possessing spirits. He is called in the texts the "Great God, the driver away of possession."

In the Stele of the "Possessed Princess," this God in his effigy is sent for by the chief of Bakhten, that he may come and cast out a possessing spirit from the king's daughter, who has an evil movement

in her limbs. The demon recognises the divinity just as the devil recognises Jesus, the expeller of evil spirits. Also the God Khunsu is Lord over the pig--a type of Sut. He is pourtrayed in the disk of the full moon of Easter, in the act of offering the pig as a sacrifice. Moreover, in the judgment scenes, when the wicked spirits are condemned and sent back into the abyss, their mode of return to the lake of primordial matter is by entering the bodies of swine. Says Horus to the Gods, speaking of the condemned one: "When I sent him to his place he went, and he has been transformed into a black pig." So when the Exorcist in Luke's Gospel casts out Legion, the devils ask permission of the Lord of the pig to be allowed to enter the swine, and he gives them leave. This, and much more that might be adduced, tends to differentiate the Christ of Luke, and to identify him with Khunsu, rather than with Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus, who is reproduced in the Gospel according to John. In this way it can be proved that the history of Christ in the Gospels is one long and complete catalogue of likenesses to the Mythical Messiah, the Solar or Luni-Solar God.

The "Litany of Ra," for example, is addressed to the Sun-God in a variety of characters, many of which are assigned to the Christ of the Gospels. Ra is the Supreme Power, the Beetle that rests in the Empyrean, who is born as his own son. This, as already said, is the God in John's Gospel, who says:--"I and the Father are one," and who is the father born as his own son; for he says, in knowing and seeing the son, "from henceforth ye know him and have seen him"; i.e., the Father.

Ra is designated the "Soul that speaks." Christ is the Word. Ra is the destroyer of venom. Jesus says:--"In my name they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." In one character Ra is the outcast. So Jesus had not where to lay his head.

Ra is the "timid one who sheds tears in the form of the Afflicted." He is called Remi, the Weeper. This weeping God passes through "Rem-Rem," the place of weeping, and there conquers on behalf of his followers. In the Ritual the God says:--"I have desolated the place of Rem-Rem." This character is sustained by Jesus in the mourning over Jerusalem that was to be desolated. The words of John, "Jesus wept," are like a carven statue of the "Afflicted One," as Remi, the Weeper. Ra is also the God who "makes the mummy come forth." Jesus makes the mummy come forth in the shape of Lazarus; and in the Roman Catacombs the risen Lazarus is not only represented as a mummy, but is an Egyptian mummy which has been eviscerated and swathed for the eternal abode. Ra says to the mummy: "Come forth!" and Jesus cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" Ra manifests as "the burning one, he who sends destruction," or "sends his fire into the place of destruction." "He sends fire upon the rebels," his form is that of the "God of the furnace." Christ also comes in the person of this "burning one"; the sender of destruction by fire. He is proclaimed

by Matthew to be the Baptiser with fire. He says, "I am come to send fire on the earth."

He is pourtrayed as "God of the furnace," which shall "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." He is to cast the rebellious into a "furnace of fire," and send the condemned ones into everlasting fire. All this was natural when applied to the Solar-God, and it is supposed to become supernatural when misapplied to a supposed human being to whom it never could apply. The Solar fire was the primary African fount of theological hell-fire and hell.

The "Litany" of Ra collects the manifold characters that make up the total God (termed Teb-temt), and the Gospels have gathered up the mythical remains; thus the result is in each case identical, or entirely similar. From beginning to end the Canonical Gospels contain the Drama of the Mysteries of the Luni-Solar God, narrated as a human history. The scene on the Mount of Transfiguration is obviously derived from the ascent of Osiris into the Mount of Transfiguration in the Moon. The sixth day was celebrated as that of the change and transformation of the Solar God in the lunar orb, which he re-entered on that day as the regenerator of its light. With this we may compare the statement made by Matthew, that "after six days Jesus went up into a high mountain apart, and he was transfigured, and his face did shine as the sun (of course!), and his garments became white as the light."

In Egypt the year began soon after the Summer Solstice, when the sun descended from its midsummer height, lost its force, and lessened in its size. This represented Osiris, who was born of the Virgin Mother as the child Horus, the diminished infantile sun of Autumn; the suffering, wounded, bleeding Messiah, as he was represented. He descended into hell, or hades, where he was transformed into the virile Horus, and rose again as the sun of the resurrection at Easter. In these two characters of Horus on the two horizons, Osiris furnished the dual type for the Canonical Christ, which shows very satisfactorily HOW the mythical prescribes the boundaries beyond which the historical does not, dare not, go. The first was the child Horus, who always remained a child. In Egypt the boy or girl wore the Horus-lock of childhood until 12 years of age. Thus childhood ended about the twelfth year. But although adultship was then entered upon by the youth, and the transformation of the boy into manhood began, the full adultship was not attained until 30 years of age. The man of 30 years was the typical adult. The age of adultship was 30 years, as it was in Rome under Lex Pappia. The homme fait is the man whose years are triaded by tens, and who is Khemt. As with the man, so it is with the God; and the second Horus, the same God in his second character, is the Khemt or Khem-Horus, the typical adult of 30 years. The God up to twelve years was Horus, the child of Isis, the mother's child, the weakling. The virile Horus (the sun in its vernal strength), the adult of 30 years, was representative of the Fatherhood, and this Horus is the anointed son of Osiris. These two characters of Horus

the child, and Horus the adult of 30 years, are reproduced in the only two phases of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. John furnishes no historic data for the time when the Word was incarnated and became flesh; nor for the childhood of Jesus; nor for the transformation into the Messiah. But Luke tells us that the child of twelve years was the wonderful youth, and that he increased in wisdom and stature. This is the length of years assigned to Horus the child; and this phase of the child-Christ's life is followed by the baptism and anointing, the descent of the pubescent spirit with the consecration of the Messiah in Jordan, when Jesus "began to be about 30 years of age."

The earliest anointing was the consecration of puberty; and here at the full age of the typical adult, the Christ, who was previously a child, the child of the Virgin Mother, is suddenly made into the Messiah, as the Lord's anointed. And just as the second Horus was regenerated, and this time begotten of the father, so in the transformation scene of the baptism in Jordan, the father authenticates the change into full adultship, with the voice from heaven saying:--"This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased;" the spirit of pubescence, or the Ruach, being represented by the descending dove, called the spirit of God. Thus from the time when the child-Christ was about twelve years of age, until that of the typical homme fait of Egypt, which was the age assigned to Horus when he became the adult God, there is no history. This is in exact accordance with the Kamite allegory of the double-Horus. And the Mythos alone will account for the chasm which is wide and deep enough to engulf a supposed history of 18 years. Childhood cannot be carried beyond the 12th year, and the child-Horus always remained a child; just as the child-Christ does in Italy, and in German folk-tales. The mythical record founded on nature went no further, and there the history consequently halts within the prescribed limits, to rebegin with the anointed and regenerated Christ at the age of Khem-Horus, the adult of 30 years.

And these two characters of Horus necessitated a double form of the mother, who divides into the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys. Jesus also was bi-mater, or dual-mothered; and the two sisters reappear in the Gospels as the two Marys, both of whom are the mothers of Jesus. This again, which is impossible as human history, is perfect according to the Mythos that explains it.

As the child-Horus, Osiris comes down to earth; he enters matter, and becomes mortal. He is born like the Logos, or "as a Word." His father is Seb, the earth, whose consort is Nu, the heaven, one of whose names is MERI, the Lady of Heaven; and these two are the prototypes of Joseph and Mary. He is said to cross the earth a substitute, and to suffer vicariously as the Saviour, Redeemer, and Justifier of men. In these two characters there was constant conflict between Osiris and Typhon, the Evil Power, or Horus and Sut, the Egyptian Satan. At the Autumn Equinox, the devil of darkness began to dominate; this was the Egyptian Judas, who betrayed Osiris to his death at the last supper. On the day of the Great Battle

at the Vernal Equinox, Osiris conquered as the ascending God, the Lord of the growing light. Both these struggles are pourtrayed in the Gospels. In the one Jesus is betrayed to his death by Judas; in the other he rises superior to Satan. The latter conflict followed immediately after the baptism. In this way:--When the sun was half-way round, from the Lion sign, it crossed the River of the Waterman, the Egyptian Iarutana, Hebrew Jordan, Greek Eridanus. In this water the baptism occurred, and the transformation of the child-Horus into the virile adult, the conqueror of the evil power, took place. Horus becomes hawk-headed, just where the dove ascended and abode on Jesus. Both birds represented the virile soul that constituted the anointed one at puberty. By this added power Horus vanquished Sut, and Jesus overcame Satan. Both the baptism and the contest are referred to in the Ritual. "I am washed with the same water in which the Good Opener (Un-Nefer) washes when he disputes with Satan, that justification should be made to Un-Nefer, the Word made Truth," or the Word that is Law.

The scene between the Christ and the Woman at the Well may likewise be found in the Ritual. Here the woman is the lady with the long hair, that is Nu, the consort of Seb--and the five husbands can be paralleled by her five star-gods born of Seb. Osiris drinks out of the well "to take away his thirst." He also says: "I am creating the water. I make way in the valley, in the Pool of the Great One. Make-road (or road-maker) expresses what I am." "I am the Path by which they traverse out of the sepulchre of Osiris."

So the Messiah reveals himself as the source of living water, "that springeth up unto Everlasting Life." Later on he says, "I am the way, the truth, the life." "I am creating the water, discriminating the seat," says Horus. Jesus says, "The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father." Jesus claims that this well of life was given to him by the Father. In the Ritual it says, "He is thine, O Osiris! A well, or flow, comes out of thy mouth to him!" Also, the paternal source is acknowledged in another text. "I am the Father, inundating when there is thirst, guarding the water. Behold me at it." Moreover, in another chapter the well of living water becomes the Pool of Peace. The speaker says, "The well has come through me. I wash in the Pool of Peace."

In Hebrew, the Pool of Peace is the Pool of Salem, or Siloam. And here, not only is the pool described at which the Osirified are made pure and healed; not only does the Angel or God descend to the waters--the "certain times" are actually dated. "The Gods of the pure waters are there on the fourth hour of the night, and the eighth hour of the day, saying, 'Pass away hence,' to him who has been cured."

An epitome of a considerable portion of John's Gospel may be

found in another chapter of the Ritual--"Ye Gods come to be my servants, I am the son of your Lord. Ye are mine through my Father, who gave you to me. I have been among the servants of Hathor or Meri. I have been washed by thee, O attendant!" Compare the washing of Jesus' feet by Marry.

The Osiris exclaims, "I have welcomed the chief spirits in the service of the Lord of things! I am the Lord of the fields when they are white," i.e., for the reapers and the harvest. So the Christ now says to the disciples, "Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that are white already unto the harvest."

"Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest that he send forth labourers into his harvest. And he called unto him his twelve disciples." Now, if we turn to the Egyptian "Book of Hades," the harvest, the Lord of the harvest, and the reapers of the harvest are all portrayed: the twelve are also there. In one scene they are preceded by a God leaning on a staff, who is designated the Master of Joy--a surname of the Messiah Horus when assimilated to the Soli-Lunar Khunsu; the twelve are "they who labour at the harvest in the plains of Neter-Kar." A bearer of a sickle shows the inscription: "These are the Reapers." The twelve are divided into two groups of five and seven--the original seven of the Aahenru; these seven are the reapers. The other five are bending towards an enormous ear of corn, the image of the harvest, ripe and ready for the sickles of the seven. The total twelve are called the "Happy Ones," the bearers of food. Another title of the twelve is that of the "Just Ones." The God says to the reapers, "Take your sickles! Reap your grain! Honour to you, reapers." Offerings are made to them on earth, as bearers of sickles in the fields of Hades. On the other hand, the tares or the wicked are to be cast out and destroyed for ever. These twelve are the apostles in their Egyptian phase.

In the chapters on "Celestial Diet" in the Ritual, Osiris eats under the sycamore tree of Hathor. He says, "Let him come from the earth. Thou hast brought these seven loaves for me to live by, bringing the bread that Horus (the Christ) makes. Thou hast placed, thou hast eaten rations. Let him call to the Gods for them, or the Gods come with them to him."

This is reproduced as miracle in the Gospels, performed when the multitude were fed upon seven loaves. The seven loaves are found here, together with the calling upon the Gods, or working the miracle of multiplying the bread.

In the next chapter there is a scene of eating and drinking. The speaker, who impersonates the Lord, says:--"I am the Lord of Bread in Annu. My bread at the heaven was that of Ra; my bread on earth was that of Seb." The seven loaves represent the bread of Ra. Elsewhere the number prescribed to be set on one table, as an offering, is five loaves. these are also carried on the heads of five different persons in the scenes of the under-world. Five loaves are the bread

of Seb. Thus five loaves represent the bread of earth, and seven the bread of heaven. Both five and seven are sacred regulation numbers in the Egyptian Ritual. And in the Gospel of Matthew the miracles are wrought with five loaves in the one case, and seven in the other, when the multitudes are fed on celestial diet. This will explain the two different numbers in one and the same Gospel miracle. In the Canonical narrative there is a lad with five barley loaves and two fishes. In the next chapter of the Ritual we possibly meet with the lad himself, as the miracle-worker says:--"I have given breath to the said youth."

The Gnostics asserted truly that celestial persons and celestial scenes had been transferred to earth in our Gospels; and it is only within the Pleroma (the heaven) or in the Zodiac that we can at times identify the originals of both. And it is there we must look for the "two fishes."

As the latest form of the Manifestor was in the heaven of the twelve signs, that probably determined the number of twelve basketsful of food remaining when the multitude had all been fed. "They that ate the loaves were five thousand men;" and five thousand was the exact number of the Celestials or Gods in the Assyrian Paradise, before the revolt and fall from heaven. The scene of the miracle of the loaves and fishes is followed by an attempt to take Jesus by force, but he withdraws himself; and this is succeeded by the miracle of his walking on the waters, and conquering the wind and waves. So is it in the Ritual. Chap. 57 is that of the breath prevailing over the water in Hades. The speaker, having to cross over, says: "O Hapi! let the Osiris prevail over the waters, like as the Osiris prevailed against the taking by stealth, the night of the great struggle." The Solar God was betrayed to his death by the Egyptian Judas, on the "night of the taking by stealth," which was the night of the last supper. The God is "waylaid by the conspirators, who have watched very much." They are said to smell him out "by the eating of his bread." So the Christ is waylaid by Judas, who "knew the place, for Jesus often resorted thither," and by the Jews who had long watched to take him.

The smelling of Osiris by the eating of his bread is remarkably rendered by John at the eating of the last supper. The Ritual has it:--"They smell Osiris by the eating of his bread, transporting the evil of Osiris."

"And when he had dipped the sop he gave it to Judas Iscariot, and after the sop Satan entered into him." Then said Jesus to him into whom the evil or devil had been transported, "That thou doest, do quickly." Osiris was the same, beseeching burial. Here it is demonstrable that the non-historical Herod is a form of the Apophis Serpent, called the enemy of the Sun. In Syriac, Herod is a red dragon. Herod, in Hebrew, signifies a terror. Heru (Eg.) is to terrify, and Herrut (Eg.) is the Snake, the typical reptile. The blood of the divine victim that is poured forth by the Apophis Serpent at the sixth

hour, on "the night of smiting the profane," is literally shed by Herod, as the Herrut or Typhonian Serpent.

The speaker, in the Ritual asks: "Who art thou then, Lord of the Silent Body? I have come to see him who is in the serpent, eye to eye, and face to face." "Lord of the Silent Body" is a title of the Osiris. "Who art thou then, Lord of the Silent Body?" is asked and left unanswered. This character is also assigned to the Christ. The High Priest said unto him, "Answerest thou nothing?" "But Jesus held his peace." Herod questioned him in many words, but he answered him nothing. He acts the prescribed character of "Lord of the Silent Body."

The transaction in the sixth hour of the night of the Crucifixion is expressly inexplicable. In the Gospel we read:--"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour." The sixth hour being midnight, that shows the solar nature of the mystery, which has been transferred to the sixth hour of the day in the Gospel.

It is in the seventh hour the mortal struggle takes place between the Osiris and the deadly Apophis, or the great serpent, Haber, 450 cubits long, that fills the whole heaven with its vast enveloping folds. The name of this seventh hour is "that which wounds the serpent Haber." In this conflict with the evil power thus portrayed the Sun-God is designated the "Conqueror of the Grave," and is said to make his advance through the influence of Isis, who aids him in repelling the serpent or devil of darkness. In the Gospel, Christ is likewise set forth in the supreme struggle as "Conqueror of the Grave," for "the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose;" and Mary represents Isis, the mother, at the cross. It is said of the great serpent, "There are those on earth who do not drink of the waters of this serpent, Haber," which may be paralleled with the refusal of the Christ to drink of the vinegar mingled with gall.

When the God has overcome the Apophis Serpent, his old nightly, annual, and eternal enemy, he exclaims, "I come! I have made my way! I have come like the sun, through the gate of the one who likes to deceive and destroy, otherwise called the 'viper.' I have made my way! I have bruised the serpent, I have passed."

But the more express representation in the mysteries was that of the annual sun as the Elder Horus, or Atum. As Julius Firmicus says: "In the solemn celebration of the mysteries, all things in order had to be done which the youth either did or suffered in his death."

Diodorus Siculus rightly identified the "whole fable of the underworld," that was dramatised in Greece, as having been copied "from the ceremonies of the Egyptian funerals," and so brought on from Egypt into Greece and Rome. One part of this mystery was the portrayal of the suffering Sun-God in a feminine phase. When the suffering sun was ailing and ill, he became female, such being a primitive mode of expression. Luke describes the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane as being in a great agony, "and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground." This experience the

Gnostics identified with the suffering of their own hemorrhoidal Sophia, whose passion is the original of that which is celebrated during Passion week, the "week of weeping in Abtu," and which constitutes the fundamental mystery of the Rosy Cross, and the Rose of Silence.

In this agony and bloody sweat the Christ simply fulfils the character of Osiris Tesh-Tesh, the red sun, the Sun-God that suffers his agony and bloody sweat in Smen, whence Gethsmen, or Gethsemane. Tesh means the bleeding, red, gory, separate, cut, and wounded; tesh-tesh is the inert form of the God whose suffering, like that of Adonis, was represented as feminine, which alone reaches a natural origin for the type. He was also called Ans-Ra, or the sun bound up in linen.

So natural were the primitive mysteries!

My attention has just been called to a passage in Lycophron, who lived under Ptolemy Philadelphus between 310 and 246 B.C. In this Heracles is referred to as

"That three-nighted lion, whom of old

Triton's fierce dog with furious jaw devoured,

Within whose bowels, tearing of his liver,

He rolled, burning with heat, though without fire,

His head with drops of sweat bedewed all o'er."

This describes the God suffering his agony and sweat, which is called the "bloody flux" of Osiris. Here the nights are three in number. So the Son of Man was to be three nights as well as three days in the "heart of the earth." In the Gospels this prophecy is not fulfilled; but if we include the night of the bloody sweat, we have the necessary three nights, and the Mythos becomes perfect. In this phase the suffering Sun was the Red Sun, whence the typical Red Lion.

As Atum, the red sun is described as setting from the Land of Life in all the colours of crimson, or Pant, the red pool. This clothing of colours is represented as a "gorgeous robe" by Luke; a purple robe by Mark; and a robe of scarlet by Matthew. As he goes down at the Autumn Equinox, he is the crucified. His mother, Nu, or Meri, the heaven, seeing her son, the Lord of Terror, greatest of the terrible, setting from the Land of Life, with his hands drooping, she becomes obscure, and there is great darkness over all the land, as at the crucifixion described by Matthew, in which the passing of the Lord of Terror is rendered by the terrible or "loud cry" of the Synoptic version. The Sun-God causes the dead, or those in the earth, to live as he passes down into the under-world, because, as he entered the earth, the tombs were opened, i.e., figuratively. But it is reproduced literally by Matthew.

The death of Osiris, in the Ritual, is followed by the "Night of the Mystery of the Great Shapes," and it is explained that the night of the Great Shapes is when there has been made the embalming of the body of Osiris, "the Good Being, justified for ever." In the chapter on "the night of the laying-out" of the dead body of Osiris, it is said that "Isis rises on the night of the laying-out of the dead body, to lament over her brother Osiris." And again: "The

night of the laying-out" (of the dead Osiris) is mentioned, and again it is described as that on which Isis had risen "to make a wail for her brother."

But this is also the night on which he conquers his enemies, and "receives the birthplace of the Gods." "He tramples on the bandages they make for their burial. He raises his soul, and conceals his body." So the Christ is found to have unwound the linen bandages of burial, and they saw the linen in one place, and the napkin in another. He too conceals his body!

This is closely reproduced, or paralleled, in John's Gospel, where it is Mary Magdalene who rises in the night and comes to the sepulchre, "while it was yet dark," to find the Christ arisen, as the conqueror of death and the grave. In John's version, after the body is embalmed in a hundred pounds weight of spice, consisting of myrrh and aloes, we have the "night of the mystery of the shapes": "For while it was yet dark, Mary Magdalene coming to the sepulchre, and peering in, sees the two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body had lately lain." And in the chapter of "How a living being is not destroyed in hell, or the hour of life ends not in Hades," there are two youthful Gods--"two youths of light, who prevail as those who see the light," and the vignette shows the deceased walking off. He has risen!

Matthew has only one angel or splendid presence, whose appearance was as lightning, which agrees with Shepi, the Splendid One, who "lights the sarcophagus," as a representative of the divinity, Ra. The risen Christ, who is first seen and recognised by Mary, says to her, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father." The same scene is described by the Gnostics: when Sophia rushes forward to embrace the Christ, who restrains her by exclaiming that he must not be touched.

In the last chapter of the "Preservation of the Body in Hades," there is much mystical matter that looks plainer when written out in John's Gospel. It is said of the regerminated or risen God--"May the Osirian speak to thee?" The Osirian does not know. He (Osiris) knows him. "Let him not grasp him." The Osirified "comes out sound, Immortal is his name." "He has passed along the upper roads" (that is, as a risen spirit).

"He it is who grasps with his hand," and gives the palpable proof of continued personality, as does the Christ, who says, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself."

The Sun-God re-arises on the horizon, where he issues forth, "saying to those who belong to his race, Give me your arm." Says the Osirified deceased, "I am made as ye are." "Let him explain it!" At his reappearance the Christ demonstrates that he is made as they are; "See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see. And when he had said this he showed them his hands and feet. Then he said to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands, and reach hither thy hand and put it into my side." These descriptions

correspond to that of the cut, wounded, and bleeding Sun-God, who says to his companions, "Give me your arm; I am made as ye are."

In the Gospel of the Hebrews he is made to exclaim, "For I am not a bodiless ghost." But in the original, when the risen one says to his companions, "Give me your arm, I am made as ye are," he speaks as a spirit to spirits. Whereas in the Gospels, the Christ has to demonstrate that he is not a spirit, because the scene has been transferred into the earth-life.

The Gnostics truly declared that all the supernatural transactions asserted in the Christian Gospel "were counterparts (or representations) of what took place above." That is, they affirmed the history to be mythical; the celestial allegory made mundane; and they were in the right, as the Egyptian Gospel proves. There are Healers, and Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been one. But, because that is possible, we must not allow it to vouch for the impossible! Thus, in the Gospels, the mythical is, and has to be, continually reproduced as miracle. That which naturally pertains to the character of the Sun-God becomes supernatural in appearance when brought down to earth. The Solar God descended into the nether world as the restorer of the bound to liberty, the dead to life. In this region the miracles were wrought, and the transformations took place. The evil spirits and destroying powers were exorcised from the mummies; the halt and the maimed were enabled to get up and go; the dead were raised, a mouth was given to the dumb, and the blind were made to see.

This "reconstitution of the deceased" is transferred to the earth-life, whereupon "the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up" at the coming of the Christ, who performed the miracles. The drama, which the Idiotai mistook for human history, was performed by the Sun-God in another world.

I could keep on all day, and all night, or give a dozen lectures, without exhausting my evidence that the Canonical Gospels are only a later literalised réchauffé of the Egyptian writings; the representations in the Mysteries, and the oral teachings of the Gnostics which passed out of Egypt into Greece and Rome--for there is plenty more proof where this comes from. I can but offer a specimen brick of that which is elsewhere a building set four-square, and sound against every blast that blows.

The Christian dispensation is believed to have been ushered in by the birth of a child, and the portrait of that child in the Roman Catacombs as the child of Mary is the youthful Sun-God in the Mummy Image of the child-king, the Egyptian Karast, or Christ. The alleged facts of our Lord's life as Jesus the Christ, were equally the alleged facts of our Lord's life as the Horus of Egypt, whose very name signifies the Lord.

The Christian legends were first related of Horus the Messiah, the Solar Hero, the greatest hero that ever lived in the mind of man--not

in the flesh--the only hero to whom the miracles were natural, because he was not human.

From beginning to end the history is not human but divine, and the divine is the mythical. From the descent of the Holy Ghost to overshadow Mary, to the ascension of the risen Christ at the end of forty days, according to the drama of the pre-Christian Mysteries, the subject-matter, the characters, occurrences, events, acts, and sayings bear the impress of the mythical mould instead of the stamp of human history. Right through, the ideas which shape the history were pre-extant, and are identifiably pre-Christian; and so we see the strange sight to-day in Europe of 100,000,000 of Pagans masquerading as Christians.

Whether you believe it or not does not matter, the fatal fact remains that every trait and feature which go to make up the Christ as Divinity, and every event or circumstance taken to establish the human personality were pre-extant, and pre-applied to the Egyptian and Gnostic Christ, who never could become flesh. The Jesus Christ with female paps, who is the Alpha and Omega of Revelation, was the IU of Egypt, and the Iao of the Chaldeans. Jesus as the Lamb of God, and Ichthys the Fish, was Egyptian. Jesus as the Coming One; Jesus born of the Virgin Mother, who was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost; Jesus born of two mothers, both of whose names are Mary; Jesus born in the manger--at Christmas, and again at Easter; Jesus saluted by the three kings, or Magi; Jesus of the transfiguration on the Mount; Jesus whose symbol in the Catacombs is the eight-rayed Star--the Star of the East; Jesus as the eternal Child; Jesus as God the Father, re-born as his own Son; Jesus as the Child of twelve years; Jesus as the Anointed One of thirty years; Jesus in his Baptism; Jesus walking on the Waters, or working his Miracles; Jesus as the Caster-out of demons; Jesus as a Substitute, who suffered in a vicarious atonement for sinful men; Jesus whose followers are the two brethren, the four fishers, the seven fishers, the twelve apostles, the seventy (or seventy-two in some texts) whose names were written in Heaven; Jesus who was administered to by seven women; Jesus in his bloody sweat; Jesus betrayed by Judas; Jesus as conqueror of the grave; Jesus the Resurrection and the Life; Jesus before Herod; in the Hades, and in his re-appearance to the women, and to the seven fishers; Jesus who was crucified both on the 14th and 15th of the month Nisan; Jesus who was also crucified in Egypt (as it is written in Revelation); Jesus as judge of the dead, with the sheep on the right hand, and the goats on the left, is Egyptian from first to last, in every phase, from the beginning to the end--

MAKE WHATSOEVER YOU CAN OF JEHOSHUA BEN-PANDIRA.

In some of the ancient Egyptian Temples the Christian iconoclasts, when tired of hacking and hewing at the symbolic figures incised in the chambers of imagery, and defacing the most prominent features

of the monuments, found they could not dig out the hieroglyphics and took to covering them over with plaster or tempera; and this plaster, intended to hide the meaning and stop the mouth of the stone Word, has served to preserve the ancient writings, as fresh in hue and sharp in outline as when they were first cut and coloured.

In a similar manner the Temple of the ancient religion was invaded, and possession gradually gained by connivance of Roman power; and that enduring fortress, not built, but quarried out of the solid rock, was stuccoed all over the front, and made white awhile with its look of brand-newness, and re-opened under the sign of another name--that of the carnalised Christ. And all the time each nook and corner were darkly alive with the presence and the proofs of the earlier gods, and the pre-Christian origines, even though the hieroglyphics remained unread until the time of Champollion! But stucco is not for lasting wear, it cracks and crumbles; sloughs off and slinks away into its natal insignificance; the rock is the sole true foundation; the rock is the only record in which we can reach reality at last!

Wilkinson, the Egyptologist, has actually said of Osiris on earth:--"Some may be disposed to think that the Egyptians, being aware of the promises of the real saviour, had anticipated that event, regarding it as though it had already happened, and introduced that mystery into their religious system!" This is what obstetrists term a false presentation; a birth feet-foremost. We are also told by writers on the Catacombs, and the Christian Iconography, that this figure is Osiris, as a type of Christ. This is Pan, Apollo, Aristeus, as a type of Christ. This is Harpocrates, as a type of Christ. This is Mercury, but as a type of Christ; this is the devil (for Sut-Mercury was the devil), as a type of Christ; until long hearing of the facts reversed, perverted and falsified, makes one feel as if under a nightmare which has lasted for eighteen centuries, knowing the Truth to have been buried alive and made dumb all that time; and believing that it has only to get voice and make itself heard to end the lying once for all, and bring down the curtain of oblivion at last upon the most pitiful drama of delusion ever witnessed on the human stage.

And here the worst foes of the truth have ever been, and still are, the rationalisers of the Mythos, such as the Unitarians. They have assumed the human history as the starting point, and accepted the existence of a personal founder of Christianity as the one initial and fundamental fact. They have done their best to humanise the divinity of the Mythos, by discharging the supernatural and miraculous element, in order that the narrative might be accepted as history. Thus they have lost the battle from the beginning, by fighting it on the wrong ground.

The Christ is a popular lay-figure that never lived, and a lay-figure of Pagan origin; a lay-figure that was once the Ram, and afterwards the Fish; a lay-figure that in human form was the portrait and image of a dozen different gods. The imagery of the Catacombs shows that the types there represented are not the ideal figures of the human

reality! They are the sole reality for six or seven centuries after A.D., because they had been so in the centuries long before. There is no man upon the cross in the Catacombs of Rome for seven hundred years! The symbolism, the allegories, the figures, and types, brought on by the Gnostics, remained there just what they had been to the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians. Yet, the dummy ideal of Paganism is supposed to have become doubly real as the God who was made flesh, to save mankind from the impossible "fall!" Remember that the primary foundation-stone for a history in the New Testament is dependent upon the Fall of Man being a fact in the Old; whereas it was only a fable, which had its own mythical and unhistorical meaning.

When we try over again that first step once taken in the dark, we find no foothold for us, because there was no stair. The Fall is absolutely non-historical, and, consequently, the first bit of standing-ground for an actual Christ, the redeemer, is missing in the very beginning. Any one who set up, or was set up, for an historical Saviour from a non-historical Fall, could only be an historical impostor. But the Christ of the Gospels is not even that! He is in no sense an historical personage. It is impossible to establish the existence of an historical character, even as an impostor. For such an one the two witnesses--Astronomical Mythology and Gnosticism--completely prove an alibi for ever! From the first supposed catastrophe to the final one, the figures of the celestial allegory were ignorantly mistaken for matters of fact, and thus the orthodox Christolator is left at last to climb to heaven with one foot resting on the ground of a redemption that must be fallacious. It is a fraud founded on a fable!

Every time the Christian turns to the East to bow his obeisance to the Christ, it is a confession that the cult is Solar, the admission being all the more fatal because it is unconscious. Every picture of the Christ, with the halo of glory, and the accompanying Cross of the Equinox, proffers proof.

The Christian doctrine of a resurrection furnishes evidence, absolutely conclusive, of the Astronomical and Kronian nature of the origines! This is to occur, as it always did, at the end of a cycle; or at the end of the world! Christian Revelation knows nothing of immortality, except in the form of periodic renewal, dependent on the "Coming One;" and the resurrection of the dead still depends on the day of judgment and the last day, at the end of the world! They have no other world. Their only other world is at the end of this.

Now there are no fools living who would be fools big enough to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a barque so rotten and unseaworthy as this in which they hope to cross the dark River of Death, and, on a pier of cloud, be landed safe in Heaven. The Christian Theology was responsible for substituting faith instead of knowledge; and the European mind is only just beginning to recover from the mental paralysis induced by that doctrine which came to its natural culmination in the Dark Ages.

The Christian religion is responsible for enthroning the cross of death in heaven, with a deity on it, doing public penance for a private failure in the commencement of creation. It has taught men to believe that the vilest spirit may be washed white, in the atoning blood of the purest, offered up as a bribe to an avenging God. It has divinized a figure of helpless human suffering, and a face of pitiful pain; as if there were naught but a great heartache at the core of all things; or the vast Infinite were but a veiled and sad-eyed sorrow that brings visibly to birth in the miseries of human life. But "in the old Pagan world men deified the beautiful, the glad;" as they will again, upon a loftier pedestal, when the fable of this fictitious fall of man, and false redemption by the cloud-begotten God, has passed away like a phantasm of the night, and men awake to learn that they are here to wage ceaseless war upon sordid suffering, remediable wrong, and preventable pain; here to put an end to them, not to apotheosize an effigy of Sorrow to be adored as a type of the Eternal. For the most beneficent is the most beautiful; the happiest are the healthiest; the most God-like is most glad. The Christian Cult has fanatically fought for its false theory, and waged incessant warfare against Nature and Evolution--Nature's intention made somewhat visible--and against some of the noblest instincts, during eighteen centuries. Seas of human blood have been spilt to keep the barque of Peter afloat. Earth has been honeycombed with the graves of the martyrs of Freethought. Heaven has been filled with a horror of great darkness in the name of God.

Eighteen centuries are a long while in the life-time of a lie, but a brief span in the eternity of Truth. The Fiction is sure to be found out, and the Lie will fall at last! At last! At last!!!

No matter though it towers to the sky,

And darkens earth, you cannot make the lie

Immortal; though stupendously enshrined

By art in every perfect mould of mind:

Angelo, Rafael, Milton, Handel, all

Its pillars, cannot stay it from the fall.

The Pyramid of Imposture reared by Rome,

All of cement, for an eternal home,

Must crumble back to earth, and every gust

Shall revel in the desert of its dust;

And when the prison of the Immortal, Mind,

Hath fallen to set free the bound and blind,

No more shall life be one long dread of death;

Humanity shall breathe with ampler breath,

Expand in spirit, and in stature rise,

To match its birthplace of the earth and skies.

It has been shown in previous lectures that the matter of our Canonical Gospels is, to a large extent, mythical, and that the Gnosis of Ancient Egypt was carried into other lands by the underground passage of the Mysteries, to emerge at last as the literalised legend of Historic Christianity.

The mythical Christ was as surely continued from Egypt as were the mythical types of the Christ on the Gnostic Stones and in the Catacombs of Rome! Once this ground is felt to be firm underfoot it emboldens and warrants us in cutting the Gordian knot that has been so deftly complicated for us in the Epistles of Paul. To-day we have to face a problem that is one of the most difficult; it is my object to prove that Paul was the opponent and not the apostle of Historic Christianity. It is well known to all serious students of the subject that there was an original rent or rift of difference between the preacher Paul and the other founders of Christianity, whom he first met in Jerusalem--namely, Cephas (or Peter), James, and John. He did not think much of them personally, but scoffs a little at their pretensions to being Pillars of the Church. Those men had nothing in common with him from the first, and never forgave him for his independence and opposition to the last. But the depth of that visible rift has not yet been fathomed in consequence of false assumptions; and my own researches and determination to look and think for myself have led me to the inevitable conclusion that there is but one way in which it can be bottomed for the first time.

It is likewise more or less apprehended that two voices are heard contending in Paul's Epistles, to the confounding of the writer's sense

and the confusion of the reader's. They utter different doctrines, so fundamentally opposed as to be for ever irreconcilable; and this duplicity of doctrine makes Paul, who is the one distinct and single-minded personality of the "New Testament," look like the most double-faced of men; double-tongued as the serpent. The two doctrines are those of the Gnostic, or Spiritual Christ, and the historic Jesus. Both cannot be true to Paul; and my contention is that both voices did not proceed from him personally.

We know that Paul and the other Apostles did not preach the same gospel; and it is my present purpose to show that they did not set forth or celebrate the same Christ. My thesis is, that Paul was not a supporter of the system known as Historical Christianity, which was founded on a belief in the Christ carnalised; an assumption that the Christ had been made flesh; but that he was its unceasing and deadly opponent during his lifetime; and that after his death his writings were tampered with, interpolated, and re-indoctrinated by his old enemies, the forgers and falsifiers, who first began to weave the web of the Papacy in Rome. In this way there was added a fourth pillar or corner-stone to the original three in Jerusalem, which was turned into the chief support of the whole structure; the firmest foundation of the fallacious faith.

The supreme feat, performed in secret by the managers of the Mysteries in Rome, was this conversion of the Epistles of Paul into the main support of Historic Christianity! It was the very pivot on which the total imposture turned! In his lifetime he had fought tooth and nail, with tongue and pen, against the men who founded the faith of the Christ made flesh, and damned eternally all disbelievers; and after his death they reared the Church of the Sarkolatræ above his tomb, and for eighteen centuries have, with a forged warrant, claimed him as being the first and foremost among the founders. They cleverly dammed the course of the natural river that flowed forth from its own independent source in the Epistles of Paul, and turned its waters into their own artificial canal, so that Paul's living force should be made to float the bark of Peter. Nevertheless, those who care to look closely will see that the two waters, like those of the river Rhone, will not mingle in one colour! And it appears to me that, whether Paul was mad or not in this life, such nefarious treatment of his writings was bad enough to drive him frantic in the next, and make him insane there until the wrong is righted.

It is the universal assumption that Paul, the persecutor of the early Christians, was converted by a vision of the risen Jesus, who proved his historic nature and identity by appearing to Paul in person. So it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The account, however, is entirely opposed to that which is given by Paul himself in his Epistle to the Galatians. He tells how the change occurred, which has been called his conversion. It was by revelation of the Christ within, but not by an objective vision of a personal Jesus, who demonstrated in spirit world the reality and identity of an historic Jesus of Nazareth, who

had lately lived on earth. Such a version as that is rigorously impossible, according to Paul's own words. His account of the matter is totally antipodal. He received his commission to preach the Christ, as he declares, "when it was the good pleasure of God to reveal his Son in me," and therefore not by an apparition of Jesus of Nazareth outside of him! His Christ within was not the Corpus of Christian belief, but the Christ of the Gnosis. He heard no voice external to himself, which could be converted into the audible voice of an historic Jesus; and nothing can be more instructive to begin with, than a comparative study of these two versions, for showing how the matter has been manipulated, and the facts perverted, for the purpose of establishing or supporting an orthodox history. What he did hear when caught up in the spirit he tells us was unspeakable; words which it is not lawful for a man to utter! He makes no mention of a Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, Jesus of Nazareth is unknown to Paul! His name never once appears in the Epistles; and the significance of the fact in favour of the present view can hardly be exaggerated. So, Jesus of Nazareth does not appear in the Gospel of Marcion; or, as it was represented by some of the Christian Fathers, Marcion had removed the name of Jesus of Nazareth from his particular Gospel--being so virulent a heretic! Here we find Paul in agreement with Marcion, the Gnostic rejecter of Jesus of Nazareth, and of historic Christianity. Moreover, Paul was the only apostle of the true Christ who was recognised by Marcion. Now, as Marcion had rejected the human nature of the Christ, and left the sect which ultimately became the church of historic Christianity, it is impossible that he could have adopted or upheld the Gospel of Paul as it has come down to us in our version of the Epistles. Hence, Irenæus complains that Marcion dismembered the Epistles of Paul, and removed those passages from the prophetical writings which had been quoted to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord! That is, Marcion, the man who knew, recognised his fellow-Gnostic in Paul, but rejected the literalisations and the spurious doctrines which had been surreptitiously interpolated by the founders, who were the forgers, of Historic Christianity. Further, with regard to the Marcionites, Irenæus says they allege that Paul alone, of all the Christian teachers, knew the truth; and that to him the Mystery was manifested by revelation. They spoke as Gnostics of a Gnostic. At the same time, as Irenæus tells us, the Gnostics, of whom Marcion was one, charged the other Apostles with hypocrisy, because they "framed their doctrine according to the capacity of their hearers, fabling blind things for the blind according to their blindness; for the dull, according to their dulness; for those in error, according to their errors."

Clement Alexander asserts that Paul, before going to Rome, stated that he would bring to the Brethren (not the true Gospel history, but) the Gnosis, or Gnostic communication, the tradition of the hidden mysteries, as the fulness of the blessings of Christ, which Clement says were revealed by the Son of God, the "teacher who trains the Gnostic

by mysteries," i.e., by revelations made in the state of trance. He was going there as a Gnostic, and therefore as the natural opponent of Historic Christianity.

The conversion of Paul, according to the Acts, is supposed to have occurred sometime after the year 30 A.D. at the earliest; and yet if we accept the data furnished by the book of Acts and Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, he must have been converted as early as the year 27 A.D. Paul states that after his conversion he did not go up to Jerusalem for three years. Then after 14 more years he went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas. This second visit can be dated by means of the famine, which is historic, and known to have occurred in the year 44, at which time relief was conveyed to the brethren in Judea by Barnabas and Paul. If we take 17 years from 44, the different statements go to show that Paul had been converted as early as the year 27. Thus, according to the dates and the data derived from the Acts, from Paul's epistle, and the historic fact of the famine, Paul was converted to Christianity in the year 27 of our era! This could not have been by a spiritual manifestation of the supposed personal Jesus, who was not then dead, and had not at that time been re-begotten as the Christ of the canonical history. This is usually looked upon (by Renan, for example,) as such an absurdity that no credence can be allowed to the account in the Acts. On the contrary, and notwithstanding all that has been said by those whose work it is to put a false bottom into the Unknown, I am free to maintain that nothing stands in the way of its being a possibility and a fact, except the assumption that it is an impossibility. You cannot date one event by another which never occurred, or, if it did occur, is not recorded by Paul, especially when his own account offers negative evidence of its non-occurrence. It is only using plain words justifiably to say that the concocters of the Acts falsify whenever it is convenient, and tell the truth when they cannot help it! In Paul's own account of his conversion he continues: "Immediately, I conferred not with the flesh and blood; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them who were Apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia." He did not seek to know anything about the personal Jesus of Nazareth, his life, his miracles, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; had no anxiety to hear anything whatever from living witnesses or relatives about the human nature of this Divine Being, who is supposed to have appeared to Paul in person; completely changed the current of his life, and transformed his character; no wish even to verify the historic or possible ground-work for the reality of his alleged vision of Jesus! When he did go up to Jerusalem, three years afterwards, and again in fourteen years, he positively learned nothing whatever from those who ought to have been able to teach him and tell him all things on matters of vital importance (for historic Christianity), about which he should have been most desirous to know, but had no manifest desire of knowing. He saw James, Peter, and John, who were the pillars of the church and persons of repute, but whatever they were it made no matter to

him; they imparted nothing to him. He says these respectable persons, these pillars, who seemed to be somewhat, communicated nothing to him; contrariwise, it was he who had a gospel of his own, which he had received from no man, to communicate to them! He had come to bring them the Gnosis. They privately gave him the hand of fellowship, and offered to acknowledge him if he would keep out of their way with his other gospel--go to the Gentiles (or go to the Devil), and leave them alone. There was a compromise, and therefore something to compromise, though not on Paul's account; but the only point of genuine agreement between them was that they agreed to differ! On comparing notes, he found that they were preaching quite another gospel, and another Jesus. We know what their gospel was, because it has come down to us in the doctrines and dogmas of historic Christianity. It was the gospel of the literalisers of mythology; the gospel of the Christ made flesh to save mankind from an impossible fall; the gospel of salvation by the atoning blood of Christ; the gospel that would make a hell of this life, on purpose to win heaven hereafter; the gospel of flesh and physics, including the corporeal resurrection, and the immediate ending of the world; the gospel that has no other world except at the end of this. Theirs was that other gospel with its doctrines of delusion, against which Paul waged continual warfare. For, another Jesus, another Spirit, and another gospel were being preached by these pre-eminent apostles who were the opponents of Paul. He warns the Corinthians against those "pre-eminent apostles," whom he calls false prophets, deceitful workers, and ministers of Satan, who came among them to preach "another Jesus" whom he did not preach, and a different gospel from that which they had received from him. To the Galatians he says: "If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be damned;" or let him be Anathema. He chides them: "O, foolish, Galatians, who did bewitch you? Are ye so foolish: having begun in the Spirit, are ye perfected in the flesh?" That is, in the gospel of the Christ made flesh, the gospel to those who were at enmity with him, who followed on his track like Satan sowing tares by night to choke the seed of the spiritual gospel which Paul had so painfully sown, and who, as he intimates to the Thessalonians, were quite capable of forging epistles in his name to deceive his followers. It has never yet been shown how fundamental was this feud between Paul and the forgers of the fleshly faith, because the real facts had not been grappled with or grasped concerning the totally different bases of belief, and the forever irreconcilable gospels of the Gnostic or spiritual Christ, and of the Christ made flesh, to be set forth as the Saviour of mankind, according to Historic Christianity. It was impossible that Paul and Peter should draw or pull together; the different grounds of their faith were in the beginning from pole to pole apart. He says: "I made known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it

from man (or from a man), nor was I taught it, save through revelation of the Christ revealed within."

He did not derive his facts from history, nor his gospel from the Apostles; he was neither taught by man nor book. He derived his gospel from direct personal revelation of the Christ within. In short, his Christ was not that Jesus of Nazareth whom he never mentions, and whom the others preached, and who may have been, and in all likelihood was, Joshua Ben Pandira, the Nazarene.

From the present standpoint there is no doctrinal difficulty, even about Paul being the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. I do not need to call in another author here anymore than elsewhere. The double-dealing of the interpolaters and forgers would be cause enough to account for all the difference and the difficulty. They who would have, or who had forged epistles in his own name, would not scruple to indoctrinate his writings when they got the chance; and if this epistle be not Paul's, then his name as author has been forged. Now, in this epistle, the Christ is non-historical, he is the Kronian Christ, the Æonian manifestor of the mythical, that is astronomical prophecy; he is after the order of Melchizedek, who was "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life." This was the ever-coming one who could not become a human personage; and for that reason, I take it, Paul repudiates the genealogies of Christ. In advising Titus to give no heed to "Jewish Fables," he tells him to "shun foolish questionings and genealogies." He counsels Timothy to warn his followers against giving heed to "fables and endless genealogies," such, for instance, as we now find in the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke." These could have no application to the Christ of the Gnosis, hence their absence from the gospel according to John. Human genealogy could not indicate the Gnostic mode of the Divine Descent; could not authenticate the "Word" of John, or Philo; nor the Christ of Marcus, or of Paul; consequently we learn that Marcus, the Gnostic, eliminated the genealogies from the gospel of Luke, and all that was written respecting the generation of the Lord. The Docetæ who rejected the humanity of Christ had, as Epiphanius phrases it, "Cut away the genealogies in the gospel after Matthew." Tatian, the pupil of Justin, who is called an "Apostle from the Church," also struck out the genealogies that were intended to prove the human descent of the Christ; he who had once accepted the gospel of the Christ made flesh, but rejected it when he had learned to know better. This they did because their Christ was spiritual, not an historic Jesus; and the same reason holds good as an explanation for Paul. He repudiated the vain genealogies employed in vain by those who sought to establish a human line of descent for the Christ, because he rejected the flesh-and-blood Jesus who was preached by the advocates of Historic Christianity. This being so, it follows that the opening passage of the Epistle to the Romans, which now looks like Paul's first utterance to all the world, begins the tale of the interpolations, and thus appears in the right place, for

it stands nearly alone in the writings of Paul, with its frank or forced acknowledgment of the humanity of Jesus, by admitting the Word made flesh to be of the seed of David. But the Christ of Paul could not, at one and the same time, have been "without genealogy" and yet be of the seed of Abraham or David. That would be a complete reversal of his teaching, who, in rejecting the genealogies, had already repudiated the descent from David. Moreover, Barnabas, the most intimate friend of Paul and fellow-teacher with him, who, as a Gnostic, denied the human nature of the Christ, and, like Paul, spoke disrespectfully of the other Apostles--Barnabas assures us it was according to the error of the wicked that Christ was called the Son of David. Paul also tells us that no "man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. xii. 3), and therefore not through the facts of an external history, or human pedigree.

The Christ of the Gnosis was not connected with place any more than personality, or line of human descent. His only birthplace was in the mind of man. Consequently, in his gospel, Marcion, who was a Gnostic Christian, does not connect his Christ with Nazareth. His Christ is not Jesus of Nazareth. And this note of the Gnosis is apparent in the writings of Paul. His Christ is nowhere called Jesus of Nazareth, nor is he born at Bethlehem, either of the Virgin Mary, or of Mary the wife of Cleopas, who was not the Virgin. Of course, either an historic Jesus could become the Christ, as Saviour of the world, or he could not; and, as the world never was lost in any such sense as the ignorant have derived from a fable misinterpreted, why he could not, and as he could not, then he did not, and Paul who was an Adept in the mysteries, a Master of the Hidden Wisdom, could never have mistaken the fable for a fact on which to build his system of Christology; nor could he accept it from others. When once we have got the Gnostic clue to the Hidden Wisdom, we find an universal argument amongst the Gnostics concerning their tenets. Wherever we meet with them they give us the Masonic grip; and by the same sign we know that Paul was a Gnostic. This is further corroborated by his own claim to have been an Adept, a wise master-builder, one who spoke wisdom amongst the Perfected. He was a Gnostic in the supreme degree, and all Gnostics agree that the Christ of the Gnosis could not be made flesh, and therefore all are, and must be opposed to Historic Christianity, Paul included. It was as a Gnostic, a wise master-builder, that Paul laid the foundations which others built upon; and the superstructure they reared became the Church of Historic Christianity. The Gnostics were Christians in an esoteric sense, but not because they explained a human history esoterically. There was no history to explain until the myth had been made exoteric by those who were ignorant, or who cunningly converted the Gnosis into history. It was the work of Peter to make the mysteries exoteric in a human history. It was the work of Paul to prevent this being effected by explaining the Gnosis. Hints of this appear in the Epistles when he speaks of his gospel, and the revelation

of his mystery concerning the Christ, and warns his disciples against the preaching of that "other gospel" and "other Jesus," which are opposed to his own truer teaching. As when he tells Timothy to "remember Jesus Christ according to my gospel," and says to the Romans, "establish you according to my gospel;" that was the gospel of the Gnosis which he had brought to them.

We are also able to watch the interpolators of his writings at their work. The tampering with the text of Paul's Epistles is still made apparent by a comparison of the various recensions, as the marginal notes in the Revised version yet suffice to show; and if this remains so palpable in the latest transcript, what must it have been in the earlier and nearest to the author's original? In some instances, instead of a perfect join, there is a gaping gulf of doctrinal difference, too deep for the interpolators themselves. There is a ludicrous mixture of the historical Jesus and spiritual Christ in the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, where Christ Jesus is spoken of as he "who, before Pontius Pilate, witnessed the good confession;" and half a dozen lines later on Paul's Jesus is the "lord of lords dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen, nor can see." That is the Christ of the Gnosis who could not be made flesh to stand in the presence of Pontius Pilate. Again, Paul speaks as a spiritualist of our transformation in death and the continuity of consciousness, when he says: "Behold, I tell you a mystery, we shall not entirely sleep, but shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." This was the mystery of the Gnosis and the transformation revealed by spiritual phenomena. Then follows the interpolated doctrine of the resurrection at the last day: "For the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised." Physically, which was impossible to Paul. These are as opposite as yes and no, or day and night. Once more, we know how emphatically Paul insists on the originality of his gospel. It was his very own, personally received by revelation. He derived nothing from the supposed apostles of an historic Jesus; they imparted nothing to him, and he received nothing from any man. Yet in face of this fatal evidence the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is assigned to Paul, is made to say, that the "salvation first spoken through the Lord was confirmed unto us by them that heard!" And in his Epistle to the Corinthians he is made to declare that he first of all delivered to them that which he had received (not by subjective revelation, but according to the history externalised), "How that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to above five hundred of the brethren at once [this is piling it up!] then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also, for I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle." But James and Cephas were those whom he saw in Jerusalem, and who, as he expressly tells us, had imparted nothing to him! The passage belies what Paul has

elsewhere said, and is at war with all he was! So far from lowering himself in that way, he asserts in the very same epistle: "In nothing was I behind these pre-eminent apostles"-therefore he was not behind in time! "Let me speak proudly!" that was his attitude when he compared himself with Cephas, James, and John. And if Paul ever did call himself an abortion (the true rendering of the sense), we may be sure that he did not apply such a figure of that which is premature to the lateness of his birth as an apostle. It cannot be made to apply. The Gnostics tell us what he did mean. They alone could understand the allusion, which carries the Christ of the Gnosis with it. The Christ appears to Paul, as to an abortion, just as did Horus the Christ to Sophia (or Achamoth), when she forlornly lay outside of the pleroma as an amorphous abortion, and the Christ came and extended himself cross-wise and gave her flowing substance form! Here the Gnostic doctrine involves the Christ of the Gnosis, and not of the human history. Paul applies the figure to himself. If these statements had been true, Paul must have been taught by men. This was to receive his information from Scriptures (whatsoever they may have been!), and was not to receive his revelation solely from the Christ, who came within, as he declares. In this way it becomes apparent how Paul's writings were made orthodox by the men who preached another gospel than his; with whom he was at war during his lifetime, and who took a bitter-sweet revenge on his writings by suppression and addition, after he was dead and gone.

The Christ proclaimed by Paul is frequently designated the "first-born." He is the "first-born of all creation" (Col. i. 16), "the first-born from the dead" (Col. i. 18), the "first-born among many brethren." "Now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of them that slept!" But in what sense? It is impossible to apply such descriptions to any historical character. No Historical Jesus could be the First-born from the dead.

If continuity be a natural fact, as was held by the Gnostics (and Paul was a Gnostic!), and is maintained by all Spiritualists (and Paul was a Spiritualist!), we shall live on by a law of nature, not by some jugglery with natural law, called a miracle, performed once upon a time! The first-born from the dead could not have waited for the resurrection until Anno Domini; nor could our spiritual continuity have been demonstrated at that or any previous period by a physical resurrection, such as forms the foundation of the Christian faith! The doctrine enunciated by Paul was Egyptian, Chaldean, Kabbalist, and Gnostic, and, as such, it can be explained.

In the Ritual the soul that rises again from the dead exults and exclaims, "I am the only one that comes forth from the body!" that is, as the supreme soul of all the seven; the one representative of the pleroma of powers, or as Paul has it, "the first-born of many brethren;" the first-born from the dead, because the only one that attained immortality, as the spiritual man, or the Christ, called the Second Adam by Paul; that celestial man referred to by Philo when he says: "There

is the man whose name is East. A strange appellation if it had been intended to speak of a man composed of soul and body. But if it be the Incorporeal man, who comprehends in himself the divine Idea, it must be admitted that East is the name that suits him best;" i.e., the re-orient man of the resurrection, or re-arising. It is the same Gnostic typology employed by Paul when he speaks of "building up the body of Christ; till we all attain unto the unity of faith, and of the knowledge (or Gnosis) of the Son of God; unto a full-grown man; unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." The fulness of the Christ being the Egyptian, Buddhist, and Gnostic pleroma of all the seven preceding powers that culminated in the Christhood.

One title of the Gnostic Christ is "All things." He is called Totum, or "All things." Nothing short of the Gnosis can tell us why. The Christian world is without the Gnosis, and therefore without the means of understanding Paul! Concerning the formation or creation of the Gnostic Christ in the character of "All things," or Totum, we are told that "The whole pleroma of the Æons, with one design and desire, brought together whatever each one had in himself of the greatest beauty and preciousness, and uniting all these contributions, so as to skilfully blend the whole, they produced a being of most perfect beauty, the very Saviour Christ." This "All things," who was the consummate flower of the fulness or pleroma of the previous seven powers, is the Christ of Paul, who, himself, is "All things," because in "him are all things," and in "all things" he has the pre-eminence. "All things are summed up in Christ" (Eph. i. 10). "Of him, through him, and unto him, are all things" (Rom. xi. 36). "In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. ii. 9). That is as the Gnostic Totum!--the All--The Christ--the eternal Soul or Spirit, in "whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" are hidden! He warns his followers against a certain false teacher, whom he knows personally, and might name, and whose teaching is after the "tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after the Christ" of the pleroma. The Gnostic Christ was also called Eudocetos, because the whole pleroma of the Godhead was well pleased with him as glorifier of the Father. This is Paul's Christ, in whom the whole fulness (pleroma) was pleased to dwell. The text in Paul's Epistle to the Colossians should be "for the whole fulness was pleased to dwell in him." There is neither "God" nor "Father" in the case. It is the whole Gnostic pleroma of powers which made up the immortal soul, or came to the consummate flower of soul in man, and the Godhead in the Christ, as sum total of the powers. The Ancient Gnosis comes first. Paul repeats it; and then we have an adaptation of it to the later gospel history, in which we hear the voice of the Father in heaven saying: "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." The Gnostics did not derive their knowledge from the history, any more than Paul did, and therefore it follows that the history was derived from an adaptation of the Gnosis.

The founders of Historic Christianity taught and enforced the

doctrine that their Jesus the Christ had risen from the dead, body, bones, and all, and that he demonstrated the fact to his followers when he declared that he was not a spirit! The resurrection, therefore, was physical from the first! In a confession found in the Apostolic Creed, in the year 600, the convert has to say, "I believe in the resurrection of the flesh"; and only the other day Canon Gregory declared in St. Paul's Cathedral, that if you took away the physical resurrection of Jesus, the one foundation of their spiritual life was gone! If the Christ did not rise corporeally from his tomb, then that tomb would be the grave of Christianity. But Paul's doctrine of the resurrection is totally opposed to this cardinal doctrine of the Christian creed, the resurrection of the body. He does not expect to rise corporeally because of any physical resurrection of the Christ. His doctrine is that of the Gnostics, and consequently identifiable by the comparative process. It is also entirely opposed to that which was proclaimed by his contemporaries, Hymenœus and Philetus, who taught that the resurrection was past already, and who had overthrown the faith of some in the doctrine preached by Paul. He says "they are in error," and "their word will eat as doth a gangrene." Now, the sole way in which the resurrection could be set forth as already past was the same then as it is to-day--namely, as the resurrection once for all of a personal and historical Saviour, who there and then arose from the dead for the first time and instituted the resurrection. Paul's own resurrection from the dead was not assured by any such miraculous, non-natural, or impossible means! On the contrary, in a passage which shows a cleavage in the context, he breathes an aspiration thus: "If by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead"--therefore, not the means set forth by Historical Christianity--and he continues: "Not that I have already attained, or am already made perfect, but I press on." Again, this is pure Gnostic doctrine. The Perfect were those who had reached the octave, or height of attainment, in a sense which can only be understood by the Gnosis. It was his endeavour to reach the Christhood of the Gnosis on which the continuity in death depended--a glimpse of which had been obtained by him in abnormal vision. This kind of working out of one's own salvation, and earning one's own eternal living in this life, is absolutely opposed to the Christian doctrine of the Atonement! The old Jewish doctrine of Atonement by blood, continued into historic Christianity, is provably impossible to a Gnostic and a spiritualist like Paul. But this was the doctrine promulgated by those who preached that "other gospel" which he repudiated. Therefore I infer that texts like these are a part of the matter interpolated: "Without shedding of blood is no remission of sin" (Heb. ix. 22). "Having made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col. i. 20). "In whom we have our redemption through his blood" (Eph. i. 7). Such doctrine being impossible to the Gnostic, I hold these texts to have been falsely fathered upon Paul. The two doctrines cannot co-exist in one mind, or system of thought; and we have to ascertain which of the two is the genuine Pauline doctrine before we can deter-

mine the nature of his Christology. Again he says, "wherefore let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith towards God, of the teaching of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection from the dead, and of eternal judgment, and this will we do!" Here we find a complete repudiation by Paul of certain cardinal doctrines of Historic Christianity elsewhere ascribed to him! These are called first principles, or those belonging to an exoteric or exterior interpretation of the Gnosis, which is looked upon as a pernicious and deadly heresy. They were a part of those "beggarly rudiments" which kept men in bondage to the Petrine gospel of the flesh. Paul positively repudiates, and most distinctly denies, salvation by means of these Christian Sacraments! Those who have taken up with this teaching are treated as backsliders from the true faith, which is that of Paul's own gospel, and of the esoteric interpretation. "For as touching those who were once enlightened, and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again." Every special phrase reveals the Gnostic and the Gnosis. Those who fell away have lapsed from the interior teaching of Paul, and gone over to those who now preach the externalised history, the "other gospel" of the "other Jesus," with its corporeal resurrection. Having been fed on solid food they have become such as have need of milk. This repudiation of dogmas culminates in his banishing the resurrection of the dead, and the Eternal Judgment or punishment at the Last Day. Here the resurrection of the dead must include that of the historic Jesus, if there had been one, and theref