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It is obvious that the Roman Church remained Gnostic at the beginning of the second century, and for some time afterwards. Marcion, the great Gnostic, did not separate from it until about the year 136 A.D. Tatian did not break with it until long after that. In each case the cause of quarrel was the same. They left the Church that was setting up the fraud of Historic Christianity. They left it as Gnostic Christians, who were anathematized as heretics, because they rejected the Christ made flesh and the new foundations of religion in a spurious Jewish history.

The Church in Jerusalem, at the head of which was James, called the "brother of the Lord," was one of the Essenic or Therapeutic communities that were founded by the Gnostic Nazarenes. James was reputed to have been a follower of Joshua, the Nazarene-- i.e. , Ben Pandira--who was converted more or less into the later Jesus of Nazareth. The Jewish legends show that he was of the Nazarene sect. But no Nazarene brotherhood could have been founded on any supposed Jesus of Nazareth. They also show that James was a Nazarene of the ancient ascetic type--one of those who were set apart and consecrated from the mother's womb--one who never shaved or cut his hair, who drank neither wine nor strong drink, nor ate of any animal food; he would not anoint himself with oil, nor wear woolen garments. Bishop Lightfoot admits that the members of the early Church at Jerusalem were Gnostics, like the other Essenes: only, for him, they were heretics. He cannot make out the hiatus, which was not then filled in with the Gospel history.

Now, whether it be called Christian or pre-Christian, the Gospel of James is good, as far as it goes. It was undoubtedly the same Gospel of the Essenes that opened the poor man's door to heaven. It teaches their doctrines in their own language, and without the Historic apparatus. It puts certain things which have been disestablished on their original foothold. In the Lord's Prayer we are taught to ask the Divine Father not to lead us, his children, into temptation. But James declares emphatically that "no man should say he is tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man." The Epistle of James is of supreme importance.

Eusebius, the suspected forger and falsifier, when he made his fatal admission, must have known that the Scriptures of the Essenes had been utilized as ground-work for the Epistles and the later Canonical history. He claims the Essenes themselves as Christians when he tells us that Philo "describes with the closest accuracy the lives of our ascetics"--that is, of the Therapeutæ. He confesses "it is highly probable that the ancient commentaries, which Philo says they have, are the very gospels and writings of the apostles, and probably some expositions of the ancient prophets, such as are contained in the Epistle to the Hebrews and many other of Paul's epistles." He might have said, including the Ebionite Epistle of James, only that was to be denounced as spurious. But it is impossible to claim the Essenic Scriptures as being identical with the Canonical records, without, at the same time, admitting their pre-historic existence, their non-historical nature, and their anti-historical testimony. They could only be the same in the time of Eusebius by the non-historical having been falsely converted into the historical. This was what had been done, and that alone will explain why the earliest scriptures, which ought to have contained the historical record, have not been preserved, but were got rid of altogether when the Council of Nice "suppressed all the devices of the heretics."

I have previously shown that the real root of the whole matter can be delved down to and identified in the mythology and mysteries of Egypt. When we see the Child-Horus emerging from the lily-lotus, or holding the forefinger to his mouth, as portrayed upon the Gnostic stones and in the Catacombs of Rome, absolutely the same as on the Egyptian monuments, we know that it is the identical divinity, no matter how it came to represent the Christian Christ. But identification is more difficult when the mythical type has passed into the more mystical phase. That is, the portraits of deities are more recognizable than the hidden doctrines and veiled features of the Gnosis. Yet, the Egyptian doctrines were as surely continued by the Gnostics and the Christians as the personal likenesses of Egyptian deities were reproduced by Gnostic Art in Rome. And by aid of the Gnosis, we can recover much that has been dislimned and made indefinite in the doctrinal stage, to be left as an unfathomable mystery! For example, the Child-Horus, with finger to mouth, wherever found, indicates the divine Word or Logos in a particular way. He was the child of the Virgin mother alone, and always remained the child. He, therefore, was not the True Voice , or Voice of Truth , only the Imperfect Word, the Inarticulate Discourse, as Plutarch calls the first Horus. But, just as the voice of the boy changes and becomes manly at puberty, so in his second or virile character Horus, as representative of the Father, becomes a True Voice, and is the "Word of Truth" personified! In this character he was designated Har-Makheru, i.e. , Horus, the "Word of Truth," from Ma, Truth; Kheru, the Word. In the Egyptian texts the Word of Horus is Truth; the function confided to him by the Father! He vanquishes his enemies with the Word of Truth. It is said of the Osirified deceased, He goes forth with the Word of Truth. To make the Truth by means of the Word is synonymous with the giving of life here or hereafter. In a prayer to the Pharaoh it is said, "Grant us breath by the gift which is in thee of the 'Word of Truth.'" Moreover, men conquer their sins by means of this "Word of Truth" within, the Makheru conferred on them by the Deity!

This title of Makheru, the Word of Truth, was translated the Justified by Dr. Birch, which M. Pierret says is "unfortunate." But there is a Christian sense in which that is a correct rendering. With the Egyptians, the Christians ( o… crhsto… ), the faithful Departed, were actually called by this title of Makheru or the Justified. They were those who always had been saved by the "Word-of-Truth!" in Egypt long Ages before the Christian Era!

Now, let us return for a moment to the Epistle of James canonized in the New Testament, and called by Luther "an Epistle of Straw," because it had not a grain of Historic Christianity in it. James was the head of the Church in Jerusalem. He was titled a brother of the Lord--no doubt in relation to the Nazarite Brotherhood; the Lord being a typical character like Horus, Mana, or Elias, who was ignorantly assumed by the literalizers of legends to have been a Judean peasant named Jesus or Joshua. Hence the imposition of certain family details in the Canonical Gospels, which will be traced hereafter. James is believed to have died about A.D. 60. But in the whole seven chapters of this Epistle of James, excepting an opening salutation, there is not one single sign of Historic Christianity! It recognizes no Jesus of Nazareth, and it announces no salvation through the atoning blood, the death, resurrection and ascension of a personal Christ.

Nothing whatever begins with or is based on the history which was afterwards made canonical, nor on the Christ that was localized at a later stage of development. Everything is absent that was and still is essential to the physical faith. Instead, we find the exact opposite of all that was made historic in the Gospels. The doctrine of salvation is Gnostic, Essenic and Egyptian. Salvation, according to James, cometh of the "Word of Truth." Speaking of the "Father of Lights" (Lord of Lights being a title of Horus) he says:--"Of his own will begat he us with the 'Word of Truth' that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures." "Wherefore receive ye with meekness the implanted Word which is able to save your souls." The transaction is direct between the divine father and the human soul. The Christ within is the only savior! The total teaching of the Epistle of James is based on this ancient Egyptian Word of Truth; the implanted Word which confers the Makheru on man, which never could be represented by an historical Christ. The "Word of Truth" as rendered by James is the best possible translation of the Egyptian "Ma-Kheru." Moreover, the context shows that the Word of Truth is the Egyptian Makheru by the exhortation, "Be ye doers of the Word," which renders good Egyptian doctrine in perfect accordance with exact Egyptian phraseology.

Just as Horus Makheru was the Word of Truth; or that which was said was fulfilled indeed, so men are re-begotten in the divine likeness by the Word of Truth; and as livers or doers of that Word they are to be saved--as it was taught in Egypt thousands of years previously without the Word of Truth becoming incarnate in Horus as a human person. This Word of Truth, the Christ of James and Paul, which alone was able to save, is identical with that made known aforetime, which needed not to be brought down from heaven for any personal incarnation; needed not to be brought up from the dead by any physical resurrection; needed not to be sent from over the sea, because, as was said by the Mosaic mouthpiece of Egypt's Wisdom, "that Word is in thy heart that thou mayest do it!" And this is the position re-occupied; this is the teaching re-echoed by Paul, in whose mouth the Word of Truth becomes doubly anti-historic ( cf. Deut. xxx. 12-14, with Romans x. 6, 7).

There is also a reference to the "Word of Truth" in Paul's Epistle to Timothy, which still further identifies the Makheru. The word Ma, for that which is true, originally means to hold out straight before one. And Paul exhorts Timothy, as a workman, to hold a straight course according to the Ma-kheru, or "Word of Truth." This True Voice or Word of Truth is, I take it, that living and abiding voice which is appealed to by Papias as evidence for his Christ, who was the Lord of the Logia; and, if so, his testimony thus far does not make for, but tends to invalidate, the history. Of course, he is supposed to mean the voice of contemporaries when he decries what would be the more certain voice of written records; but that is not what he means. He prefers, in reality, the traditions of the oral wisdom, and may be claimed as another witness for the non-Historical Christ. Also, the epistle to Diognetus, supposed to have been written by Marcion, contains the same doctrine as the epistle of James. Speaking of the Gnostic Christians, he says:--"They are put to death and they come to life again," and the reason of this is that "God the Invisible hath himself from Heaven planted the truth and the holy incomprehensible Word and established him in their hearts." This epistle of James is indefinitely older than the Canonical history. James is believed to have died about the year 60 of our era, and in this, one of the earliest utterances of the Church, instead of the History, we find the divine Makheru of the Egyptian mythos in a mystical and doctrinal phase.

Instead of an original gospel based on the life, character, and teachings of his own human brother, James presents us with the translated Word-of-truth--the Horus of Egypt, and the Christ of the Gnostics, who could not become historical. This beginning, then, is doctrinal, and the doctrine, like the portrait, is Egyptian. The same mythos was visibly continued in the Gnostic phase. In the Gospels, which were being compiled at least one hundred years later, we find this same Word of Truth, which was personated by Horus-Makheru and by Iu-em-hept in Egypt some 3,000 years earlier, is now represented in a personal character as Jesus the Christ.

This Word of Truth, which is doctrinal and non-historical, according to James, is the Word of Truth made flesh according to John. Also, the Christ is the Horus continued in his two characters. Hence the Word, or Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, is to come as the mystic Paraclete who shall testify to the reality of an historic Jesus.

These two characters, as the Sayer and Doer, constitute the double foundation of the Christ in the other Gospels. The Christ of Matthew is chiefly the Sayer. The Christ of Luke is mainly the Doer. He is mighty in deed and word! He is the Healer or Doer with the Word. "What a Word is this"! exclaim the multitude, who are amazed at the miracles. Both characters had been blended in one as Horus-Makheru, the Word of Truth, who was mythical in Egypt, and who is mythical in the teaching of James before the Word was described as being made flesh, to become an historical personage in the later Gospel according to John. This is the fatal kind of fact that turns the canonical history into fiction, and brands the falsifiers full in the face. There is no room left here for any historic fulfillment, and no need of any personal Savior or vicarious victim. The Word of Truth is the Spirit of God, the Begetter of Souls, the Christ within, the Bringer of Immortality to Man, as it is in the teaching of Hermes, of Zarathustra, of Philo, and of Paul, as well as James; as it was in Egypt, in Chaldea, in India, in all the Mysteries, no matter where the Gnosis or Kabalah may be found. In presence of the Gnosis, here as elsewhere, there is no place, no significance, in the alleged facts of a human history, lived for us by a carnalised Christ. And yet such a history was made out, and we are now able to get a glimpse of the forgers engaged in the process of making it out!

Our Canonical Gospels are a Palimpsest, with one writing so elaborated over another that the first is almost crossed out, and the rest are thoroughly confused. Yet, the whole of them have to be seen through before the matter can be really read. By holding this Palimpsest up to the light, and looking at it long and closely, we can trace the large outline, the water-mark, of the Egyptian mythos, with its virgin-mother, who was Hathor-Meri--the Madonna--its child-Christ of 12 years, and the virile adult of 30 years, who was Horus, the anointed son of that Father in heaven whom he came to reveal. This is the earliest and most fundamental of the nuclei . Next we find a collection of Sayings as the nucleus of the Gospel of Matthew. These sayings were attributed to the Lord, and that Lord is supposed to have been a Judean peasant, as the original author! It is noticeable, though, that the title of the Lord is not once applied to Jesus by Matthew in the earth-life, but after the resurrection he is called the "Lord." Now, it is well known to scholars that the Gospel according to Luke is based upon, or concocted, with suitable alterations, from an earlier "Gospel of the Lord." That is, the latest gospel according to the Gnostics, preceded the earliest of those that were made canonical. This was called the "Gospel of the Lord"--the kurios --and it is commonly referred to as the gospel of Marcion, the great Gnostic. But the Lord, as known to the Gnostics, was not a character that could become historical. As Irenæus declares, according to no one gospel of the heretics could the Christ become flesh; consequently the gospel of Marcion, who was the arch-heretic and very Anti-Christ of the second century, in the sight of the incipient Catholic Church, could not have been a gospel of the Christ made historical; and we have now the means of proving that it was not. When once we know that the origins were mythical, that the Christ was mystical, and the teachings in the mysteries were typical, we shall be able to utilize the gospel of Marcion as a connecting link between the Egyptian Mythos, the epistle of the Word of Truth, and the canonical history according to Luke.

"The Lord" had been Horus by name in Egypt, and the Greek kuriou, or kurios, agrees with the Egyptian kheru, for the Word, Voice, or Logos, as in Ma-kheru (earlier, Ma-khuru). This was the Lord continued as the Gnostic manifestor, their Horus, or Christ. Marcion assigned his gospel to the Christ, in the same way that the Egyptian Ritual is ascribed to Hermes. Later on, the sayings of the Lord were also called the writings, as we see by pseudo-Dionysius, who charges the Gnostics with having falsified the Writings of the Lord.

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Marcion claimed that his was the one true Gospel--the one--and he pointed to the multiplicity of the Catholic Gospels, full as they were of discrepancies, in proof that they could not be genuine. In the fourth century even, there were as many different gospels as texts. As transmitted to us by the Christian copyists, who were nothing if not historicisers, Marcion's gospel opens with the statement, that "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate ruling in Judea, Jesus came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee," or "into Judea," as reported by Irenæus.

Tertullian says,--"According to the gospel of Marcion, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Christ Jesus deigned to emanate from heaven, a salutary spirit. " But, he also says, according to this "Great Anti-Christian," the Christ was a phantom, who appeared suddenly at the synagogue of Capernaum in the likeness of a full-grown man for the purpose of protesting against the law and the prophets! It would be difficult to date the descent of a phantom Christ, and impossible to date the descent of the Gnostic Christ at all, except as Lord of the æon in relation to an astronomical period! But it is certain that the Lord or Christ of Marcion is entirely non-historical. He has no genealogy or Jewish line of descent; no earthly mother, no father, no mundane birthplace or human birth. The Gnostic nature of this Christ is further and fully corroborated by both Irenæus and Tertullian. Clearly then nothing can be made of the statement on behalf of the Canonical history. This statement in Marcion's gospel takes the place of the baptism and descent of the holy spirit in Luke's; and this same date is quoted by Luke for the time when the Word of God came to John in the wilderness, which is followed by the baptism of Jesus and the transformation into the Christ or Horus of 30 years, whose unpronounceable name contained 30 letters, according to the Gnosis. Such a beginning is entirely unhistorical, and applicable solely to the mythical Christ, who became the virile adult, the anointed son of the father at 30 years of age. Of course Christian apologists like Irenæus and Tertullian maintained that Marcion had mutilated their version of Luke; and they managed to get rid of the "Gospel of the Lord," and to suppress the writings of Marcion in proof to save us the trouble of judging for ourselves. But that was only another Christian lie, as we have now the means of knowing. The Gnostics were not the falsifiers of the historic scriptures; it was not they who had anything to falsify! Hitherto the forgers and falsifiers have been believed, and now the accusers and accused are about to change places in the witness-box and the dock. Everywhere the Gnosis was first; the history was last. You are only asked to take this view tentatively, and then let us watch the process and see how the compilers and forgers of our Luke put in the touches by which the mythos was rationalized and the human history was added to the Gnostic "Gospel of the Lord." The "Sayings of the Lord" were first, and they were not personal. The "Gospel of the Lord" was first, and the Lord was not historical.

The Jesus of Marcion like the Jesus of Esdras, of Paul, and other Gnostics, is no Jesus of Nazareth. This title has been added by Luke. Marcion's Jesus being mythical and not historical, he has no Jewish father and mother; consequently we find the test question:--"Is not this Joseph's son?" does not appear in the "Gospel of the Lord." It has been added by Luke. Again, the statement, "there came to him his mother and brethren; and they could not get at him for the crowd" (Luke viii. 9), is not to be found in Marcion's gospel; it has been added by Luke. And for what? but to manufacture and make out that human history which was at last believed in, but which had no place in any gospel according to the Gnostics or true primitive Christians! It can be proved how passage after passage has been added to the earlier gospel, in the course of manufacturing the later history. For example, the mourning over Jerusalem (Luke xiii. 29-35) is taken verbatim from the 2nd Esdras (i. 28-33) without acknowledgment, and the words previously uttered by the "Almighty Lord" are here assigned to Jesus as the original speaker. The account of Pilate's shedding the blood of the Galileans and mingling it with their sacrifices (Luke xiii. 1) has been added by some one so ignorant of Hebrew history, that he has ascribed to Pilate an act which was committed when Quirinus was governor, twenty-four years earlier than the alleged appearance of Jesus. Again, the anti-Nazarene, anti-Gnostic passage about the publicans being baptized with water, and the Son of Man coming eating and drinking as a glutton and a wine-bibber, has been added.

In the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration, which is purely mythical, and therefore common to Osiris, Buddha, and Zarathustra, we are witness to the forging of another historical nexus in the statement that "Moses and Elijah appeared in glory and spake of his decease which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 31). This passage does not appear in the "Gospel of the Lord." Nor does the statement (Luke xviii. 31-34), "And he took unto him the Twelve, and said unto them, 'Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets shall be accomplished by the Son of Man.'" This mode of making out the history in the New Testament by fulfillment of prophecy found in the Old was not adopted by the compilers of Marcion's "Gospel of the Lord." The story of the colt and the riding into Jerusalem in triumph, to turn all the Jews out of their sacred Stock Exchange, are additions to the earlier Gospel! In the scene of the Last Supper almost the whole of the text is missing from Marcion's Gospel. Twelve verses of Luke 22 have been added!

In Marcion's Gospel there is no distribution of the Paschal Cup amongst the disciples; no promise is given that the Apostles shall eat and drink and judge the twelve tribes of Israel in the kingdom of Christ; nor is there any appointment made with the dying thief on the Cross to meet him that day in Paradise! These have been added. Now, this is no mere matter of a difference in doctrine! We are witnessing the very forgery of the human foundations and the insertion of the manufactured facts upon which the history was established.

The Primitive Christiani, the so-called heretics , who preceded the historic Christians, were all of them spiritualists in the modern sense.

In the sight of Bishop Lightfoot the Gnostic Spiritualism was "a shadowy mysticism which loses itself in the contemplation of an unseen world." This he looks upon as the false teaching and the heresy of the Gnostics! He knows nothing of any underlying natural verities, or phenomenal facts; only sees a refining, a mysticising and a whittling away of the Gospel histories.

But as practical Spiritualists, the Essenes had eight stages in the evolution of perfect personal purity and the attainment of the highest spiritual powers:--

1. Purity of baptism.

2. Purity from animal desire.

3. Spiritual purity.

4. The purity of a meek and gentle spirit.

5. The purity of holiness.

6. The purity by which the body became a temple of the Holy Ghost.

7. The purity which gave the power of healing the sick and of raising

the dead; i.e. , the spirits of the dead!

8. They attained the mystic state of Elias, who was the Essenic Christ!

And in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, Bishop Lightfoot rises to

explain that the Essenes were Fortune-tellers!

Orthodox Christianity knows nothing of Spiritualism to-day, and consequently can know nothing of Spiritualism in the past, because it is fact alone that can prove the fact. They reject it because it was repudiated by the founders of the historic faith; because it offers no facts to prove, whereas it does offer facts that furnish us with disproof of a physical resurrection. But it is absolutely necessary to be a phenomenal Spiritualist, or at least to know that phenomenal Spiritualism is founded upon facts of possible human experience, before we can take the first step toward really understanding this matter of the beginnings, or gauge the impassable gulf of difference that lies between the Gnostic Religion and Historic Christianity. With the Gnostics knowledge was the foundation of their faith; but the Historic Christians made faith the basis of knowledge, and the first demand of the new faith was for the convert to believe that all the mythical typology of the past had been made literally true in the present. By faith the fable was crystallized into the dogma of historic fact.

The Gnostic doctrines of the pre-Historic religion were formulated as being those of knowledge, faith, and immortality. Knowledge was fundamental. On this their faith was founded by means of a first-hand acquaintanceship with those facts which gave them their faith for the present, and sustained it with something more than the hope or promise of continuity for the future. Knowledge, Faith, and Immortality! Historic Christianity was based upon faith without that knowledge, and those who knew the least were actually considered and designated the better believers, just as it is in the Salvation Army of to-day. Lord Bacon, in a most unworthy utterance, affirmed that "the more irrational and incredible any divine mystery is the greater the honor we do God in believing it, and so much the more noble is the victory of faith." Such, however, was the teaching of the Church whose divine mysteries were manufactured from misinterpreted mythology. Nor was it very difficult to literalize the mystical representation when a man like Origen could maintain that the planets were animated bodies and rational beings.

All the secrets of the great knowledge of the interior and mystical life, which M. Renan calls the "Most glorious creation of Christendom," were in possession of the Gnostics of various lands long ages earlier, whilst their modus operandi of ascertaining the truth was now to be rejected and denounced as damnable by the corporeal Christians, or carnalisers of the Christ. They not only let go, they anathematized the knowledge that was already won from nature, and prohibited the means of continuing it or of recovering it again.

The Gnostics, as Irenæus shows, pointed out the very serious error that was committed by those who imagined that the Christ had arisen in a mundane body, not knowing that "flesh and blood do not attain to the Kingdom of God!"

The Christ of the Gnostics was a mystical type continued from mythology to portray a spiritual reality of the interior life. Hence the Christ in this human phase could be female as well as male; Sophia as well as Jesus; the spirit of both sexes. It was impossible for such to become historical, or be made so, except by ignorantly mistaking a mythical Impersonation for a Hermaphrodite in Person!

What, for example, is the actual base of the "Great Renunciation" ascribed to the Buddha or the Christ in the doctrinal, mythical, or spiritual phase? It is this:--When the soul of man came to be considered as a divine principle of celestial origin, it was figured as being entirely opposed to the evil nature of matter; therefore, birth or manifestation in matter was a descent of the soul from the heaven of pristine condition into a lower state of impurity and impermanence; of disease, decay, and death, where it was bound to bear or struggle to get out of it again as soon as possible.

This soul, personified as the Divine Man in Buddha or the Christ is afterwards represented as being consciously able to renounce the pleasures of Paradise, and of its own free will and choice come down to earth as the Savior of the World, by giving lessons in divinity and living a life so lowly that this life should be conquered by rejecting it on behalf of the other thus revealed to men! The mode of glorifying such a being is simply that of the infantile mind. The proof of his supernatural character is shown through his power of suspending the known laws of nature by miraculous means, such as are humanly impossible. As the Lord of Life he raises the dead! The tree bends down and bows its acknowledgment to him in the womb of his mother; or the wild beasts grow tame in presence of the radiant child that lights the darkness of the cave when born. As a mere babe he becomes a teacher to the teachers. In youth he surpasses all competitors, conquers in every trial. All nature is turned into an elastic vesture that will fit this figure of the impossible--the false Ideal that makes our common everyday world a scene of phantasmal unrealities. In certain respects the Buddhist portrait of this divine Ideal, believed to have been realized in Gautama, transcends the Christian--in the depths of its tenderness, the range of its sympathies, and the embrace of its compassion. All true lovers of animals are naturally Buddhistic rather than Christian. For, it is upon the down-trodden beasts which perish that the Christian sets his foot for the first step upward as the possessor of an immortal soul. His brutalizing belief, and baseless assumption, that animals have no souls, are guilty before God and responsible for most of the cruelties suffered by them throughout all Christendom to-day!

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