THE MYSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

BY
H. SPENCER LEWIS
1927

This class was formed upon the petition of a hundred or more prominent persons v/ho
desired to study comparative theologies and religious doctrines, including the
Christian, with thought and emphasis upon Christian doctrines, that we may discover
in the Christian doctrines (and in all others) the origin of the fundamental prin
ciples, the basic ideas, which have influenced men in all times in their thinking
along religious lin es. Vfe must understand first of all manTs peculiar relation
ship to this one universal thought - religious thought.
As I was saying early this evening to one of our members, I cannot help but see the
humorous side of life in the most serious predicaments.
In all of my worries; and
the trials and problems of the big organization that we have, and in studying the
trials and tribulations of our members and those v/ho have been attending our
Sunday meetings and who come to me during the week for help and advice, more and
mere I see the humorous side of life because I look upon what you are doing and.-what I am doing and what every one is doing in life as playing;. We are all playing,
just as children play, with the same seriousness that they have.
In other words,
we believe that what we are doing is very important in the scheme of life . Yfe
believe that the work we are engaged in, the things that occupy our thoughts dur
ing the day and during the night, are serious things in the scheme of life .
The
business man is prone to think and worry about his relationship to his business
and the relationship cf his business to the world, and he thinks of what would
happen should he pass away, and wonders how things would go on after his transi
tion; and he takes himself seriously; yet a few days after he has gone he would
be surprised, if he could look back with the same sort of material understanding,
to find that things were going on in the world just the same as they were before
he passed away. Ke would realize that he was worrying about something that he was
taking too seriously and perhaps the rest of the world was not even noticing.
They noticed while he was at play, but did not notice after he stopped playing,-,.
It is true in regard to all things of l i f e , that each of us has either had cast-for us, by our previous action or by the scheme of things, a part on the stage.,, or
we have voluntarily assumed the part.
VTe have walked into the part, -we have ac
cepted the part that we should play, the part we think we can play best instead
of thinking a ll the time that it is a play and that we arc playing and that-half
the fun in l i f e , half the pleasure, half the profit is in realizing'that it is
only play. We start in to be very serious and by doing so we miss half of the.
reward of living*
Very early in the days when civilisation v/as in the making, when man v/as begin
ning to l ift himself up and out of the place he occupied, he first assumed a part
and then attempted to justify the place, the position he had picked. ; He said to
himself:
" I am here for some purpose.
There is some power, some intellect, some
mind superior to my own that has brought about my position, my very .existence, and
it is unworthy of me to try to go through life without knowing more .about that
mind, that intelligence, that power, that light breeze of chance that wafts me on
through l i f e . "
So he began to think seriously of himself and of h i s . connection
with the universe.
But in his vain, self-centered, way of looking .at it,..he really
said to himself What is the connection of the Universe with HE? ..Yftiat- is the
'relationship between all that exists and L3?n He could not understand -it. He
could not conceive of it! He had $ self-centered viewpoint.
There was nothing of
humility or humbleness in it .
There was nothing of the brotherhood viewpoint in
it .
He looked upon everything that existed as sending its beam of manifesta
tion, its ray of demonstration, toward ?IIK, and he felt as though he stood upon
a pinnacle lord of all that he could survey, all that he could see or that-he
could comprehend.
He felt very important and he believed that it v/as necessary
for. him to comprehend this great universe and all the things that were in it be
cause, forsooth, they wero created for HIM, tg serve HTi and that HE was the

ruling master of those things, insofar as he could roach out and contact thorn
physically and intellectually.
No matter how we may view the early religious thoughts of the first thinkers, as
we find such thoughts recorded in tno earliest w riting s, evon in the carvings upon
stone, we cannot holp but como to tho conclusion that the first promptings of
religious thought in man woro duo to this self-centcred viewpoint.
If he had had
the opposito viewpoint he would have realized that only through nobleness of
spirit could he have unlocked the door and brought about an influx of Divine
Illumination#
But through his self-centcred viewpoint he believed there was noth
ing that was hidden from him, that ho could give an interpretation to everything
that existed and explain everything, or create that which he could not undorstand
or explain and thereby satisfy himself and those who camo to him for similar ex
planations.
So we find the first ideas of religious expression in man centering
around himself and the unknown forccs with which he had to contend. Man has
always been more or loss vain and that includes the women. He has always been
wont to boliovo that ho was not only a superior being theologically, but that ho
wae a superior being so far as the entire animal kingdom was concerned.
It was a
terrible shock to the early thinking men to discover, after they had built a place
in the boughs of a troo in which to sleep, that while it could not be attackod or
reached oven by the wildest animals some sort of invisible thing liko a windstorm
could come along and blow it down; or that such a n o torio u s thing as a cloudburst
could come suddonly, against his w ishes, against his challenge, and wash it down;
or that the sun could change its course, seemingly, and whereas a few months- ago
his little sleeping place was on the shady side of the bough, now the scorching
sur. came upon it every afternoon. And then the things he would fix upon the
ground; the tides would come in and wash them away.
There were many things going
on around him over which he had no control.
That was shocking to his vanity.
It
challenged the prowess of his mind and his physical body.
It challenged him to do
greater things than he had been doing.
He had learned in his primitive way of
thinking that all l if e with which he had to contend in living form - such as
animals - had intelligence, some kind of intelligence like himself. He believed
therefore that there was some sort of intelligence back of these other things that
were occurring.
Ho did not believe that the wind came by chance.
It was such a
njysterious thing to him the way it came at times and he could see things moving
under its power, with no hand touching them, no great being in sight to .pull down
and tear and wreck the things he saw being destroyed.
It must be some in visible,
mysterious unknown agency challenging his intellectual power.
So, in his wild
speculations he began to think of invisible gods and goddesses - those who really
had charge of the elements.
There was one god that had charge of the v/ind;
another had charge of the storms on tho sea - made the water rise up and sink. He
could picture in his mind that some great god resided in the water; when he sat up
the water dropped lower; when he went back into the water it rose and swelled in
its place because the god was in the water; and if the god rolled over suddenly it
made waves that washed up the shore and destroyed things.
There was some god that
moved the sun and pushed it around. When he would build his sleeping place on tho
bough the god said 1 will challenge you and push the sun the other way."
It was not long before man had a long lis t of gods and goddesses in his imagina
tion, and then he began to picture them.
He began to p lay , to want to speak to
them, talk with them, and to do this he had to personify them, and of course he
believed that a god that was so invisible and so peculiar and so great as to cause
storms by wind must be a great big , gruesome, ugly sort of thing, so that is how
he- pictured him; these gods could not be nice, goodlooking, good-natured in div i
duals like him self. Ac he went on in his thinking he began to realize that there
mist, hn some othor force, somethin^ that could reside in the pround. grow and

spread out; so ho bogan to think of a god that looked after the planting and the
growing of things, and a god that did this # and that all along through the
incidents of his life u ntil, as the ages went by, and they had told generation
after generation of their beliofs, we fin d civilization advancing with a series of
gods and goddesses. That was the origin of our mythology that we now look back
upon and study with our playtimo seriousness and think foolish; and yot you and I
create gods of our own today, just as grotesque and just as p eculiar, to explain
the things that are occurring.
Wo have to skip over a long period now and come to the days of Egypt, with its
rustic tomples. IVe shall skip several generations of cycles or aeons of time in
which evolution had developed the inquisitive mind and we find that in every com
munity of ancient civilization there were those like you assembled here now - a
few out of every fifty thousand - who were willing to go where they could get an
answer - if not an answer, some sort of e;qplcr.ation to the questions that were
in their minds * So wo find the early establishment of schools called mystery
schools by those who fostered then:, bccausc those who did not attend the schools
thought they must bo a strango lot who would lock themselves up in a crowd in
hidden places under ground and suffer darkness and heat for some strange reason;
just as there are people in this city at this time thinking of you v/ho come to a
placc like this on a nice pleasant night to think about things that are net abso
lutely important in life at a ll.
Sc these assemblies in the days of the Oriental
religious systems wore considered mystery schools and they fin a lly fe ll into the
hands of the -priesthood. For in those -days there was an organization which we
might consider as the early establishment of religious cultisn - a group of men
and women bound together with certain ideas, certain bol'Tofs,""who believed that
it was their purpose to educate the others and incidentally to take advantage of
their ignorance# Y!q do not have to jump out of the middle ages to find any system
taking advantage of the ignorance of the masses. We can find it back in tho
earliest days of civilization and we find the priesthoods organized in Egypt,
Persia and India, taking advantage of the fact that there wore those who ''new
nothing but wanted to knew so badly that they were ready to believe anything, and
thoso v/ho laiev; a little but knew too much to acccpt just anything, and so they
were divided - the fools into one class who bccame the serfs, the slaves, the tools
of the priesthood; the wise and learned in the other class, who became the mngis,
miracle workers, as they were called, the illuminated ones, because with their
knowledge these persons were able to do certain things that the fools could not
do, and of course the fools criod "M iracles" and the wise - very wise - said
"Have it so2n It is always better to lot the fool enjoy himself in his -foolish
ness than to try to make him w ise, and it is part of the play all the time.
The
player on the stage that stands before the footlight posing, even as"the learned
one talking to others, gets his great advantage out of the pose; but it is not .a
marker to the advantage the student gets out of it in thinking he is the student
at the feet of the master.
It is a gome of play on both sides and has been so
through all the ages and we have it to-day in schools, colleges, churches, move
ments of all kinds, bccausc tho student and tho teacher have taken their oarts
seriously and have net seen the humorous side of it at a l l .
Now we junp again to the period just preceding the birth of Christianity. Tho
reason we are making this jump is that we ray have a definite starting point in
our analysis of the doctrines. We shall start with Christianity at its birth and
take up the fundamental early Christian doctrine:;, and as we take up each one wo
shall go back, flash back, as they say in the moving pictures, to those of the
past among the heathens and the pagans which were like unto the Christie:: doc
trines, and see how it has developed through the ages up to the time of the birth
of Christ, and then flash forward with tho same doctrine and see what civilization

has done with it sinoe it was reborn*

In this way we shall have a better under
standing of what Jesus taught, as well as the ancients, and we* shall perhaps have
evolved a new religious code for ourselves through a better understanding of the
real principles involved.
So we start fir s t with conditions as they existed just prior to the birth of this
teacher, for we shall refer to Jesus all through these lessons as a teacher until
we settle, through analysis, what other qualities, tributes, t it le s , and distinct
ions should bo given him.
We find Jerusalem, the holy land, the place in which the Master Jesus made his
great entrance, in a peculiar state after all the years of religious argument and
disputation, development and analysis* We find that there had been a traditional
idea in the consciousness of the peoples of all ages, and a fundamental one even
to-day in connection with religious development, and this idea was based upon ob
servation of things that had occurred.
Now there are several things that we must
keep in mind in the annals of religious doctrines and teachings as they have come
to us, and one is that man was over prone, in his atteqpt to get an idea of the
laws and principles of the universe, to analyze past occurrences and compare them
with present occurrences. The law of observation (or shall we say the system of
observing and tabulating the observations) is responsible for manfs building up
gradually certain beliefs regarding religio n , nature, himself, even moral and
ethical acts and principles; just as he had observed that if you plant corn in
order to get a peach tree you did not succeed v/hich taught him that like produced
like; just as he had observed through ages that certain violations of natural laws
brought their penalties, so he had observed many interesting things and had written
them down or more generally passed the knowledge or observation (with his comments
concerning them) along to other generations by word of mouth. But with the many
things they had thusly observed and recorded was this outstanding one, that every
so often in tho cycles of civ ilizatio n, there came to them as a p-eople, in the
darkest hour of their development, in the most critical time of their needs, a
great leader, a great teacher.
These they called avatars*
They believed they
were especially born*
They were not just one of the ordinary wise men. They were
persons who must have been born differently, must have been born and created d if
ferently, must have been inspired differently because their lives were different*
The things they taught were different.
The things they were able to do were
different.
In each period of civilization there were the Man;!, the wise men of the schools
we referred to a moment ago* These were ordinarily born men or women, born in the
regular way, in the usual way, but with some special aptitude, with better brains,
greater ability to comprehend things*
But these were not avatars. An avator was
usually a man who seemed suddenly to rise up in their midst; a man unexpected, a
man whom they had been associated w ith, perhaps, for months and years but v/ho had
never revealed himself as a great leader until the hour had arrived, and then by
his sudden risin g , by his mastership, by his povjer to stand and reveal and truly
demonstrate his mastership he provod that he had a different makeup, a different
nature, therefore must have been born diffe ren t, created different from any other
human being. We find that before tho period of the coming of the Master Jesus
there had been over twenty of such great avotars who had, at periods running way
back into antiquity, risen among the peoples and led them on to greater light, and
each one of then was held in groat esteem, great reverence.
But now, at the time
of tho birth of the Master Jssus, there had beon a long period with no great
'
leader, and we find this country of the Hobrcws in a serious predicament. We find
it in one of the blackcst crises of its whole history, even worse than when tho
tribes composing Israel we re made slaves in Egypt, even in a worse predicament than

they had been when they were in the midst of the Red Sea and dependent upon Moses*
God to hold back the waters and save their liv es.
Here in this country of Jerusalem and its outlying district these Hebrew poople had
tried to maintain their religious b e lie fs , the beliefs they had brought there with
then from Egypt generations before, the nystery elements, the mystery teachings,
the idea of one sole living God, whoso name, even, they were forbidden to pro
nounce; and they had also the idea of groat leaders sent by God to save the nation#
of people at critical times# Yet, here, with their efforts, they had to fight the
pagan beliefs which surrounded them, to hold fast to the Mosaic laws that Moses had
revealed to them as coming from God, in which they could see duplicates of the tra
ditional teachings of Egypt and which they understood and served so well in Egypt#
With all this and with their sincere attempt to live their lives as pure and as
logically and as rightly as they wanted to and could do, they wore in a predicament#
One of the outstanding features of the Jewish religion throughout all ages was not
only its great veneration for Him v:hose name should not be pronounced, but the
great veneration for their parents; and I am glad to say that one of the outstand
ing, redeeming, wonderful thoughts that is back in the hearts and consciences of
: '
the Jewish people throughout the world to-day is their respect and regard for their
parents and for their unfortunate offspring, and it was so in those days. Yet,
think of it! With their veneration for God, for their parents, and all their ances
tors,. all their forbears; with temples more sacrcd than anything we have to-day in
which not a sound was allowed, no word spoken unless it was intoned or chanted at
the proper pitch; no movement made by the congregation or the rabbis unless it was
in rhythm with the motion of the universe; no stepping across the great stone
floors of the temple unless in accordance with decree and law; no approach towards
the Shekinah without due salutation, without bowing in humility; no turning the
back while going out; no sign or symbol, no thought or movement, no expression or
idea contrary to two things: reverence for God and revorer.ee for all mankind, that
preceded and gave them physical birth - with all this as the basis of their relig
ious b e lie f, these Jewish people were being persecuted by the Roman Empire.
.
Here we find in a distant city great men who were trying to rule the 7/or Id , holding
p olitical position, controlling this tribe of people, and two things happening. We
find this the situation a few days, a few weeks, a few months, a few years before
the coming of the Master Jesus.
The synagogues wanted to support themselyes and
keep 15? their olabcr ate and impressive ceremonies and preserve their buildings and
build more without being forced to tax their followers to the utmost,^because
schism had entered, division had cone, and part of the Jewish people were being
taken away from their religion by the p o litic a l forces of the day.
So we find
two great groups - the Sadduceos and the Pharisees.
The Sadducees were those who
were driven away from1 the Jewish b e lie fs ; perhaps some of thorn because it put them
in favor with the Roman Empire, helped them get political positions, enabled them
to live with safety#
Just as to-day there are some living in Italy who at tho
mention of the name Mussolini raise their hands in salutation, whereas in their
hearts they would thank God if this movement would pass on and out of their
country, but becauso they want to protect thoir interests, their homes, their
children, they stand ready at the cry of the Society to raise their hands in salu
tation.
So it v/as in those days.
Any religious b e lie f that has antiquity behind
i t , as well as d iv in ity , is not easily cast out from the heart.
It may be cast
out of the lips but that is all#
There were the Pharisees, on the other hand,
struggling to maintain the ancient religious practices and b eliefs, and these were
giving thoir utmost, through taxation, to support the church, the temples, the
synagogues, while the Roman Empire v/as taxing them too greatly also.
The
Sadducees gave nothing to the temple, to the church.
They were seeking political

favoritism, influence, power, and they got i t .

Jerusalem divided against it s e lf.

This was the situation:

The only hope on the part of the faithful few was that the Great Messiah promised
in all ages to come v/hen most needed, long waited for in this particular period,
would soon come and save the situation.
Now these Sadducees had starred to make
Jerusalem a sordid place. Morale were cast aside and made subservient to p o lit
ical power.
Conventionalities were cast aside.
Anything that would serve the
purpose, give power to Rome, put a pleasing aspect upon the person that would make
him seem to be in sympathy with Rome, was adopted and carried on by this one-half*
of the Jewish people, the Sadducees; whereas the Pharisees were fighting to main
tain the moral principles and the fight was going on, just as it is to-day between
Orthodoxy and Modernism, between Agnosticism and Gnosticism, between God and the
Devil in all ages.
Only here at this time the faith of the good rested in the
hope of the coming of a great Messiah.
It would be a terrible thing to-day for
you and me, for our children, if our only hope for this age of the world depended
upon the coming of such a Messiah. We would cease trying to do tilings ourselves.
We would stop making new laws. We would cease depending upon our courts to rectify
undesirable conditions.
And that is exactly what they did then. Whenever the
strife became heated, or the situation black, the faithful would say "When the
Messiah conos, and soon it w ill endj So they waited - waited for the coming of
the Great Messiah, the one who would have to be unusually born, as had been all of
the Messiahs in the past; one who would have to be of the humble, of the down
trodden, of the class not in p olitical power, as had been all the Messiahs 01^ the
past; one v/ho would be w illing to talk to the poor and pay little attention to the
rich, as had all the other Messiahs of the past. You see, in the consciousness
of the people, the coming Messiah v/as already pictured, already created, as the
new character comes out onto the stage of life and plays the leading role.
I make
the analogy not with any lack of reverence, not in sacrilege, for after all Jesus
did prove himself to be the player in the greatest role on the stage of l if e , -and
it was because the stage was set, the scene v/as painted, the part was cast, even
the robe, tho costume that he v/as to wear, the lines he v/as to speak, were all
picked in the consciousness of the people before the curtain rose and the Master
stood in the center of the stage. This was the situation that v/e find at the be
ginning of the Christian teachings and v/e fin d that His coming sent a thrill of
emotion throughout the whole of that country, because it was the realisation of
an anticipation; and you should know in your own hearts and consciousness v/hat a
wonderful thing it is to- have the sudden realization of a great anticipation.
They te ll us that all through our life v/e derive more pleasure out of anticipation
than we do out of realization, for very often the realization falls far short of
the salt ic ip at ion.
But there is in the life of each one of us an outstanding inci
dent whore something occurred that v/as a fu ll and complete realization of an antic
ipation.
No;,- magnify that a thousandfold, a millionfold, not only in the indivi
dual lif e of a person, but magnify it by making it a wonderful collective realiza
tion of a collectivc anticipation, in unison, u n ifie d , s o lid ified , and put it on
the basis of being the greatest of anticipations, one divinely emotional, and you
have the picture in your mind of v/hat occurred v/hen it v/as proclaimed throughout
the holy land that the Messiah was about to come.
Immediately there came to the
minds of a l l , the sufferings, trials and tribulations of the past, their hopes,
their aspirations, the great outstanding truths that tradition tad given them, the
great religious principles of the past as well as of the present.
All these were
suddenly crystallized into actual existence, into magnetic power by the one pro
clamation that the Messiah had come.
So in our next lesson and lecture, we are
going to start with this thought - "The Messiah has come!" - and analyze the be
ginning and the effect of this coming; analyze what it meant and v/hat doctrines

that we have to-day were thus established and brought into existence, so that we
may realize why there is such a wonderful thing as a Christian religion to-day,
which after a ll is the rebirth of the Jewish religion, tampered with a little by
church makers, by creed makers, by theological doctrinal makers, but in its
Pristine purity residing in the consciousness of each one of us. For just as
the Jews believed that the great Hessiah that came, or was to come, would be of
the House of David, the line of power that had been shattered by the Roman Entire
and must be again established i f Judaism was to be maintained and saved, just so
all of the great teachings that Jesus taught are, after a l l , the pristine pure
thoughts of the Jewish religion adapted to our modern needs. We cannot go back of
the Jewish idea of God; we cannot make it greater; we cannot make it more vital.

Vie may lay aside some of the Mosaic laws and principles, some of the customs and
habits, but we cannot have a greater conception of the debt w g owe man, our parents,
to God the Father of a l l , than what the Jews had.
It was JesusT great right. His
great p rivileg e, to take these things in embryo, uncrystallized as they were,
darkened with some shadows of superstitition, and cleanse them and purify them and
rebuild them in the nower light#
And v/e shall do the same thing, for in our dis
cussion in this class we shall use some of the ancient writings and teachings that
Jesus used when he spoke alone with His Disciples, when he gathered them together,
as we are gathered together, and told them of the things that the outside world did
not know; just as we shall talk of things that the masses of this city, of this
country, of this world, do net know and do not caro about. We shall then have the
same advantage in becoming prepared Disciples of the Messiah as His Disciples had,
only that our Messiah has not come. Vfoen ho comes again he w ill come individually
in the heart of each one of us and it is our bounden duty to be prepared.
By your
coming together in such a class as this you are liftin g yourselves up in the cycle
of evolution and making yourselves worthy, truly prepared and duly qualified aa
Disciples fo r the future Kingdom of God.
This is all of the First Lesson.
Dr. H. Spencer Lewis,
Imp orator, AMORC.

THE MYSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

Second Lecture

We closed last weekfs lecture by bringing our survey and our review up to the
time of the supposed and anticipated arrival of a great Messiah, which in this
case proved to be, or we are told proved to be, the birth of the Master Jesus.
In beginning with the story of His birth, noticing the details of the miracles
that are associated with His birth, and analysing these miracles, there is one
very .important point that I must explain to you first and have you keep in mind.
Perhaps I can help you remember it throughout the whole course of our lessons by
telling it to you in story form or as a parable since we are going to deal with
parables very greatly in our class work.
So let me tell this story to you:
During tho centuries lying between 1600 and 1927 every time that a great man
was elected President of the United States or acknowledged to be King, Emperor
or Czar of his country, on the day of his ascendency into o fficial power the
populace 'would assemble and greet him and salute him, pay him homage and act
in every way as though a national holiday had been proclaimed. This was the
custom for centuries.
Now let us skip ten centuries without any such occurrence
and jump into the future, when on some particular day a man was elected a great
ruler -over a great nation and for some reason or other a national holiday was
proclaimed again, although no such thing had been proclaimed for the intervening
ten centuries, and the people paid him homage, came to celebrate his ascendency,
and the newspapers and magazines pictured it and wrote it* up in great style.
Let us again skip fiv e centuries and we find a rum standing before an audience,
lecturing upon ancient history, and we fin d him speaking in this wise:
"Sty friends, we read that five centuries ago a man became a great ruler cf our
country and according to our old histories - now five hundred years old the
populace turned ou; and paid him homage.
On the day of his ascendency they had
a celebration and holiday festiv itie s.
All of this is pictured in the history,
but listen , my frien ds, I donlt vrant you to believe that that is actually what
happened, because I have gone back fifteen to twenty centuries and found where
ten centuries before this :.;an became ruler the same tiling occurred with other
men. A number of them in different countries upon the occasion of their ascen
dency were paid homage by the populace; the day v/as a holiday with the same s^rt
of festivities as v/e read about in our five-hundred-year-old book.
So, my friends,
I claim that the historians who wrote these stories five hundred yeans ago simplystole and duplicated the facts of antiquity and there is nothing you c m i believe;
therefore, the thing that they say happened once happened every so often in
antiquity.
It is nothing but tradition repeated without warrant."
Do you under
stand my story?
7fe are going to find that at the time of the birth cf the Master Jesus many of
the miracles and all through his life many of the things related cf him
occurrod with many other greau leaders and masters in the ages gone by.
It is
going to be our business to pick out from antiquity, frcm the very remote dark
ages, things similar to what occurred at the tine of the birth of the Master
Jesus and all through His life similar in incident, similar in description,
similar in relation to the peoples and the Cosmos of the universe.
V/e are going
to note all that, but here is v/hat I would have you keep in m5.nd that there
are books on the market to-day, preachers preaching, writers writing and explaining

and trying to break down your faith in not only Christianity but in the things
said in tho Christian Bible and in tho old Testament. They point out to you
that you can find way back in antiquity similar incidents and so they argue that
v;hat is given to you in the Christian doctrines arcl in tho Old Testament is
nothing more than a repetition of ancient traditions and all that was wonderful
of the great men in the past was taken from the past and put into the life of
this man Jesus.
I would warn you against that sort of reasoning.
If you believe
such reasoning it would be like believing the story I told as an introduction
1 that because things happened once, to say that they happened again is simply
fallin g back upon tradition, and that is- not so. i7e are going to see that wonder
ful things do occur periodically throughout the history of c iv iliza tio n , but that
does not mean that each time they occur they are less real, less important or less
significant.
So please keep that in mind and remember that oven though wo find
these things among the ancient and primitive peoples it does not mean that they
wore only symbolical and had no actuality.
Now we begin with the birth of the man Jesus, and, as I said to you in last
week s lecture, v/e w ill refer to Jesus as the 'Great Master until after analyzing
His life and His work we find that which warrants us in giving him any other
title than Master.
So that is why I constantly use that title at the present
time.
To begin with the coming of this Messiah I am first going to read to you what
the Christian Bible has to say and you are urged, during the coming week, to
road the first few chapters of each of the Books of Matthew, Mark and Luke.
You w ill easily remember it just the chapters in each of those Books that
relate to the birth of Jesus up until the time that they found Him in the manger.
I w ill read here from a small book (with small print) that contains all the
Gospels analyzed, and I w ill read fir s t v/hat Luke has to say; Luke 1: 26-35 in
clusive.
Then wo turn to Matthew 1 : 13-25 inclusive.
Back to Luke 2: 1-16
inclusive. Again to Matthew 2: 9 :1 2 inclusive.
{Take out your Bibles now and
read those verses).
Nov/ we fin d from just this brief review some outstanding fccts which v/e wish
to analyze tonight.
F irst, v/e have the prediction that a Messiah would come and
he should be called Immanuel, the Great Messiah, the Great Messenger of God.
Secondly, v/e find Joseph discovering that his bride is with child ar$l in his
worried state he falls asleep and in a vision is informed not to cast her aside,
that she is with child through the agency of the Holy Ghost. On the other hand,
v/e find Mary herself being told by an angel that she is to have a child; much to
her surprise, as she did not believe that she could have a child at a l l , says one
account. 7Je find in the Koran or Talmud similar stories.
In the Koran, for
instance, v/e find that the angel who appeared to Mary v/as not described as an
angel but as a perfect man who stood before her and gave her the impression of
his real mission and she said to him:
" I f you fear God leave m e," and he said
"Fear not, for I fear not God.
I am come as a messenger from Kim to tell you
that from the Holy Ghost which I bring thou shalt conceive a c h ild ."
That story
is just a little different from v/hat is in our Christian Bible but wo w ill leavo
that out of our consideration.
So v/c have Mary conceiving and bearing this
child and at a certain period, in speaking to one of her relatives, it says that

she felt the child loap within the womb because of the greatness of the Holy
Ghost "within her.
Later the child is born and we have it picturesquely told
to us that the child was born in a manger, becausc there was no room in the
Inn, says one account.
The important point there, that is always featured
throughout all the Christian doctrines, is that this great Being, this great
ruler, this Prince of God of the highest royalty on earth, was born in the
most lowly place possible in which a child could be born.
That is such an
interesting picture that it sticks in our mind - is featured in all the
Christian doctrines, featured in celebrations in the Christian Church. Had
Jesus been born in the ordinary room or the average room of Jerusalem one of
the outstanding incidents of his life being born in a manger would bo
absent, would be missing from the story, so v/e must give due consideration to
that one point.
The next point is that the Shepherds on the hills saw the star, and it dis
tinctly says that they saw His star, and we note that this is one of the few
places in the Bible where tlicTword Magi is mentioned. This word Magi is loosely
interpreted in most of the Christian churches as meaning Wise Men, but you
should know better than that. You should know that Magi is a t it l e . Our words
magician and magic come from the same root.
It v/as a word which meant "The
Miracle Worker , those v/ho had studied and become masters in the art of astrology
and the Mystery Sciences.
They were the devotees of the mystic schools or the
mystery schools.
They were the oracles and teachers; they v/ere more than merely
Wise Men, And v/e have the word Magi and its plural Magus in our many organiza
tions to-day as tit le s .
So v/hen wo are told there one of the few places
where the Bible gives a literal translation of the word originally used in the
early manuscripts; the word Magi we must bear in mind that it was this sort
of men v/ho sav/ this star.
The multitude did not sec it ; there is no reference
that any one but these Magi saw this great star and followed it and, as I w ill
read to you in a moment, their statement was that it v/as His star and they
followed it and it led them to where this little child was oeing born. With these
outstanding facts on the birth of this cxpected Messiah let us turn now to tho
many references that I have gotten together in regard to antiquity and see v/hat
v/e find in regard to these outstanding facts in the birth of this great man.
I must first read you a little passage written by a Jewish Historian with a
comment in regard to what the Jews e j e c t e d at that time:
"instead, however, of the benevolent Jesus, the Prince of Peace 1 as Christian
writers make him out to be the Jews were expecting a during and irresistible
warrior and conqueror, who, armed with greater power than Caesar, v/as to conic upon
earth to rend the fetters in v/hich their hapless nation had so long g r e y e d , to
avenge the::: upon their haughty oppressors, and to re-establish the XingQ'om of
Judah, n
How let us take up the Immaculate Conception.
Bible,

We have just read about it in the

"immaculate conceptions and celestial descents w e r e g o currently received among

the ancients, that whoever had greatly distinr^iished himself in the affairs of
men was thought to be of supernatural liencage.
Gods descended from Heaven
and v/ere made incarnate in men, and men ascended from earth, and took their seat
among the gods, so that those incarnations and apothcosr.ses v/ere fast fillin g
Olympus v/ith d iv in it y ."

So writes one of the ancient writers in regard to one of the ancient beliefs*
Now let us see illustrations of it.
"i n the Maha-bharat^, an Indian epic poem, written about the Sixth century B .C .,
Chrisna, is associatod or identified with Vishnu the Preserving god or Saviour*,r
This is taken from Volume One of Asiatic Researches an authentic book.
Sir William Jones, first President of the Royal Asiatic Society, instituted in
Bengal, says of Chrisna:
nChrisna continues to this hour the darling god of the Indian woman."
Rev. D. 0. A lien, missionary of the American Board, for twenty-five years in
India, speaking of Chrisna, says:
"He was greater than, and distinct from, all the Avatars which had only a portion
of the divinity in them, while he was the very person of Vishnu himself in human
fo rm ."
This is to show that the Hindus believed in a god who was the human representative
' .of the invisible God.
Thomas 'Maurice, in speaking of Hathura, cays:

"it is particularly celebrated for having been the birthplace of Chrisna, who" is
..esteemed in India, not so much an incarnation of the divine Vishnu, as the deity
himself in human form."
Again, in his history of Hindustan, he says:
"Chrisna was born of a chaste v ir g in , called Devaki, who, on account of her
purity, was selected to become the mother of God. (Like Mary, the mother of
I Jesus, Devaki is called the "Virgin Mother", although she, as well as .Mary, is
' said to have had other children).
~
According to tho "BHAGAVAI P00RAUN", Vishnu says:
" I w ill become incarnate at Mathura in the house of Yadu, and w ill issue forth
to mortal birth from the womb of D e v a k i .... It is time""l should display my power,
and relieve the oppressed earth of its lo a d ."
Remember this is in the Hindu teachings of the sixth and seventh centuries, 3 .C .
We find that a chorus of angels answered this proclamation of Vishnu in these
words:
"in the delivory of this favored woman, all nature shall have cause to exu lt."
We pass on now and come to some more of tho Hindoo beliefs.
"The Hindoo b e lief in a divine, incarnation has at least, above many others, its
logical side of conceiving that God manifests himself on earth whenever the
weakness or the errors of humanity render his presence necessary, lie find thie

idea expressed in one of their sacred books called the 1Bhagavat Goota*, wherein
it says:
*1 (the Suprefiie Ono s aid ), I ammr.de evident by my own power, and as
often as thore is a decline of virtuo, and an insurrection of vice and'injustice
in tho world, I make myself evident, and thus I appear from age to age, for tho
preservation of the just, the destruction of the wicked,, and fch'e establishment of
v ir t u e .
You remember I told you in last week!s lecturc that it was traditionally under
stood by all the ancient peoples for many centuries before the Christian era that
whenever the people were oppressed or evil times v/ere upon them a groat Messiah
would come to relieve them'# The Hindus had that same belief as did the other
countries and in their ancient writings they had it expressed that so would this
Vishnu appear from age to age for the preservation of the just, the destruction
of the wicked, and the establishment of virtue.
"The next in importance among the God-begotten and Virgin-born Saviours of
India, is Buddha, v/ho was born of the Virgin Maya or Mary.
He in mercy left
Paradise, and came down to earth because he was fille d with compasion for the
sins and the misery of mankind. He sought to lead them into better paths, and
took their sufferings upon himself, that he night
expiate their crimes, and
mitigate the punishment they must otherwise inevitably undergo."
This is according to the Buddhistic teaching.
"According to the Fo-pen-hing, (which was the o ffic ia l doctrine) when 3uddha
was about to descend from Heaven, to be born into the world, the angels in Heaven,
calling to the inhabitants of the earth, said:
fYe mortals I Adorn your earth!
for Bodhisatwa, the great Mahasatwa, not long hence shall descend from Tusita 'to
be born amongst you! Make ready and prepare!
Buddha is about to descend and
be born!"
Yfe read from another authority that
"The womb that bears a Buddha is like a casket in which a relic is placed; no
other being can be conceived in the same receptacle; the usual secretions are
not formed; and from the time of conception, Maha-maya v/as free fronfpassion,
and lived in the strictest continence."

Now we come to that point in. the Buddhistic b e lie f that the mother cf Buddha,
being a virgin giving birth to a child, would have no other child, could.have
no other than this great one. V/e find in the early ages of the Christian
religion that when the fathers of the Homan Catholic church and the other writerc
were reforming the doctrines and translating, the ancient writings in the early
centuries, Mary v/as credited v/ith no other children in fact it was denied in
the early writings that Mary had any other child than Jesus.
It was not until
the other books were translated, until the ether parts of our present Bible were
translated, that it was admitted.
"So the resemblance between this legend and the doctrine of tho perpetual
virginity of Mary*, the mother of Jesus, cannot but be remarked. The opinion
that she had over born other children was called heresy by Jerome, long before
she had been exalted to tho station of supremacy she now occupies."

(G)
In his early -writings we find that he rather denied the heresy of some eminent
theologians who had been burned at the stake for daring to say that Mary had'
any other children than the Master Josus.
She must be a virgin before and after
the birth of the Master Jesus.
7/e w ill pass on to find that "The Siamese had a Virgin-born God and Saviour
whom they called Codom. His mother, a beautiful young virgin, being inspired
from Heaven, quitted the society of men and wandered into the most unfrequentod
parts of a great forest, there to await the coming of a god which had long been
announced to mankind, Tfnile she was one day prostrate in prayer, she was
impregnated by the sunbeams. She thereupon retired to the borders of a lako,
Uerween Siam and Cambodia, where she was delivered of a !hcavonly boy* , which
she placed within the folds of a lotus, that opened to receive him. V/hen the
bov grow up, he became a prodigy of wisdom, performed miracles, e t c ."
This statement I have taken from Squires 1 "Serpent Symbolism," a very ancient
and well recommended authority on the religion of the Siamese.
In many other
places we find the Siamese referring to their virgin-born Codom, with the lotus
loaf holding him, long before the Christian period.
"Dean Milman (one of the most eminent of Protestant writers,, on Christianity) in
his book called "History of C h ristia n ity ," volume 1, page 97, refers to the
tradition, found among the Chinese, that Fo-hi was born of a virgin; and he re
marks that the first Jesuit missionaries who went to China were appalled at
finding, in the nythology of that country, a counterpart of the story of the
virgin of Judea.
"Fooh'i is said to have been born 3463 years B'.C., and, according to some Chinese
w riters, with him begins the historical era and the foundation of the Empire.
YJhen his mother conceived him in her womb, a rainbow came down from Heaven and
infused life within h er."
Let us go to the next incident.
"Lao-Kiun, sometimes called J.c.o-Tsze, who is said to have been born in the third
year of the Ercperor Tir.g-wang, of "She Chov; Dynasty (604 B .C .) , was another
miraculously-born man. He acquired a great reputation for sanctity and marvelous
stories were told of his birth.
It was said that he had existed from all
eternity; that he had descended on earth and was born of a virgin,
black in
coup 1 exion, described tmarvelous and beautiful as jasper . 1
Sir Thomas Thornton, an eminent English writer on Chinese religion, says regard
ing this Lao-Kiun:
"The mythological history of this !prince of the doctrine of the Taou, 'which is
current amongst his followers, represents him as a divine emanation incarnate in
a human fo rm ."
~
Now we w ill pass on to the- next incident.
"Even as late as the seventQenth
century of our own era do we find the myth of the virgin-born God s t i l l 'I n
China. All these gods begotten and virgin-born men were called Tientse, or
sons of Heaven 1 .
If from China we should turn to Egypt we chould ~find that,
for ages before the time of Jesus of Nazareth, the mediating deity, born of a

v ir g in , and without a worldly father, was a portion of the Egyptian belief.

Horns, who had the epithet of 1 Saviourf , was born of the virgin Isis. His
birth "was one of the greatest Ity:-series- of the Egyptian religion. Pictures
representing it appeared on the walls of the sacred Temples. Ho is the second
emanation of Amon, the son whom he begot. On the other hand, the Egyptian
god Ra was born I'rom the side of his mother, but was not engendered."
We skip from these various gods of Egypt born of virgins and come to Zoroaster.
In the life of Zoroaster, the law-giver of the Persians, the common mythos
become apparent again in this country, because this great leader, Zoroaster,
according to their ancient w ritings, was b o m in innocence, of an immaculate
conception, of a ray of the Divine Reason. Plato, says that Zoroaster was said
to be the son of Oromasdes, 1 which was the name the Persians gave to the supreme
God therefore he was the Son of G o d .M
How wo come t : Perseus, who was the son of Jupiter by the virgin Danae, daughter
of Acrisius, King of Argos.
"Justin Martyr (one of the early fathers of the Christian Church) in A.D. 140,
in his Apology to the Emperor Adrian, says:
By declaring the Logos, the firstbegotten of God, our master, Jesus Christ, to be born of a v irgin , without any
human mixture, we (Christians) say no more in this than what you (Pagans) say of
those whom you style the sons of JoveT F o ry o u need not be told what a parcel
of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove.
mAs to the son of God, called Jesus, shall we allow him to be nothing more than
man, yet the title of the Son of God 1 is very ju s tifia b le , upon the account of
his wisdom, considering that you (pagans) have your Mercury in worship under the
t it le of the Word, a messenger of God.

11As to his (Jesus Christ 1 s) being born of a v irgin, you have your Perseus to
balance t h a t ,n
He means that Perseus was also born of a virgin.

We have Pythagoras born about 570 B. C. who had the highest honors paid him in
w ritings, in poems, in many ways that remain to us to this day, honors paid to
him because these writings say that his mother was impregnated through a spectre,
or Holy Ghost, a spirit, an angel, that appeared unto h er,.an d that his father or foster- father - was informed about his w ife bringing forth a son, and that
the son would become a bonafactor to manking - the identical story that we have
regarding the Master Jesus 570 B.C.
If we come over to this country, into America, which after all is as old^ if
not older in parts, we find the mythological system of "a virgin-born god 1 no
less clearly recognized than in those -of the Old Vforld. Among the savage tribes
his origin and character were, for obvious reasons, much confused; but among the
more advanced nations he occupied a well-defined position.
For instance, go to
Yucatan, the lowest part of the southern part of the United States, part of an
ancient Continent where geologists havo in recent years dug up very old tombs
and monuments, older than those in Egypt, and we find that further south scien
tists have recently discovered underground a city Larger than Chicago, with

roads leading in all directions, indicating a true metropolis of an ancient world

long forgotten* Down in this Yucatan d is tr ic t, among the nations of Anahuac, there
was a virgin-born God, described on these monuments, who had the name of Quetzalcoatle, who was regarded with the highest veneration.
"For ages before the land
ing of Columbus on its shores, the inhabitants of ancient Mexico worshiped a
'Saviour 1 as they called him (Quetzalcoatle) who was born of a pure virgin.
A messenger from Heaven announced to his mother that she should bear a son with-out connection with man. Lord Kingsborough tells us that the annunciation of the
virgin Sochiquetzal, mother of Quetzalcoatle v;ho was styled the 'Queen of
Heaven 1 v/as the subject of a Mexican hieroglyph.
"The Mayas of Yucatan, another section of their people, had their virgin-god,
corresponding entirely with Quetzalcoatle, if he was not the same under a diffe r
ent name, a conjecture very well sustained by the evident relationship between tho
Mexican and Mayan theologies.
He was named ZAMA, and was the only-begotten son
of their supreme god, Kinchahan." I am, taking this from Squire s bobk on Yucatan
Symbol and Religion. M
Taking it for granted that the Synoptic Gospels (the Christian -Gospels that I
have read from to-night) are historical - (and there is no question about it) we
do not want to proceed in our anaylcis on tho theory that the writings in the
Christian Bible are not based upon historical b e lie fs ; they are at least phrased
as they were understood during the Christian period, and in that sense they are
historical.
I w ill read as follows:

"Taking it for granted that the synoptic Gospels arc historical, there is no proof
that Jesus ever claimed to be either God, or a god; on the other hand, it is quite
the contrary* As Viscount Anberly says:
'The best proof of this is that Jesus
never, at any period of his l if e , desired his followers to worship him, oither as
God, or as the Son of God, 1 in the sense in which it is now understood. Had he
believed of himself what his followers subsequently believed of him, that he was
one of the constituent persons in a divine Trinity, he must have enjoined his
Apostles both to address him in prayer themselves, and to desire their converts to
do likewise.
It is quite plain that he did nothing of the kind, and that they
never supposed him to have done so. "
"3 e lie f in Jesus as the Messiah was taught as the fir s t dogma of Christianity,
but adoration of Jesus as God was not taught at a l l ."
11

0f

"But we aro not left in this matter to depend on conjectural inferences.

The
words put into the mouth of Jesus are p lain . Whenever occasion arose, he asserted
h is inferiority to the Father, though, as no one had then dreamt of his equality,
Tt is natural tha* the occasions should not have been frequent."

"He nado hiaisolf inferior in kn owl edge when he said that of the day and hour of
tho day of judgment no one knew, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son: no one
except the Father." Mark 1 3 :3 2 .
"He made himself inferior in power v/hen he said that seats on his right hand and
on his left in tho kingdom of heaven wore not his to g iv e ." Mark 1 0 :4 0 .
"He made himself inferior in virtue v/hen ho desired a certain roan not to address
him as 'Good Master1, for there v/as none good but G od." Mark 1 0 :1 8 .

"The words of his prayer at Gethsemane, fall things are possible unto thee*, imply
that all things were not possible to him, whilo it 3 conclusion not what I w il l ,
but what thou w i l t ,* indicates submission to a superior, not the moro execution of a
purpose of his own.
(Mark 14 :3 6)
Indeed, the whole prayer would have been a
mockery, useless for any purpose but the deception of his disciples, if he had him
self been identical with, the Being to whom he prayed, and had merely been giving
effect by his death to their common counsels."
So we find in those ancient records, therefore (and this is as far as we w ill go
tonight), that everything that is tabulated about the birth of Jesus was not looked
upon by the mass, those who understood, as being a miracle.
It was exactly what
they expected of ever;,' great Avatar and certainly of the one to come that he
would be b o m of a virgin as had twenty-six preat Avatars before the Master Jesus;
that he would be born in an humble station of l if e , not as a great Prince.
Of the
twenty-six, Buddha was the only one who was of royal birth and *it is plainly indi
cated in 3uddha s records that a few years after his birth he was left in charge of
persons of humble station who brought him up without consciousness of his royalty',
and that when later in life he discovered that he was of royal birth he discarded
and cast that standing aside and purposely adopted the present Buddha robe of a
simple yellow cloth thrown around the naked body, sandals, and a begging role, and
went out on the byways making himself of as humble appearance and'station in life as
possible. So even Buddha, who was an exception in that one regard, reduced himself
to the standard of all the ages. We can therefore find nothing that occurrcd in the
life of Jesus for us to lock upon as a miracle; nothing that we have discovered so
far*
Jesus was not the first to be born of a virgin through the Holy Ghost. Of
course this leaves us to question what is meant by "virgin" and the "Holy Ghost."
Did the ancient writers of the Siamese religion and he who wrote about Zoroaster
and the primitive tribes in Yucatan who built their huts on the side of the
c l if f s , - intend, when they said that their God was born of a v irgin, to mean the
same thing as the Christian Bible to-day which speaks of Jesus being born of a
virgin? V/o cannot be sure that those primitive people understood virginity in the
physiological sense we understand it to-day.
We cannot be sure that when they
referred to the Immaculate Conception they -.vero referring to sex matters at a l l .
!any things must be taken into consideration therefore.
It may be that they spoke
of pureness of motive, or purpose and idealism.
I believe there are thousands of
mothers in this country to-day, perhaps m illions, who believe that the child they
have - living a healthy, happy, smiling, joyful life was conceived and born in
purity, in that idealism, in that motive, in that thought world that gav to the
mother from the time of conception to the birth a pureness from nature s point of
view. Perhaps these ancient peoples thought of virginity and pureness of the Im
maculate Conception in the same way, because, forsooth, some of their gods were not
b o m of human beings at all. 7/hen Horus v;as born of Isis they were speaking of
mythological characters born in the petal of a lotus flower, and so on. Yet they
spoke of the Immaculate Conception and virgin birth.
They did not speak of it in a
physiological sense.
There was no material birth, no Immaculate Conception, no
material condition about it at a l l . We can go back and find that the same idea per
tained to imaginary characters as well as to individual characters, so there must bo
something for us to discover in connection with the Immaculate Conception and the
virgin birth.
The humble station, the coming of the Holy Ghost, the movement of the
star, the greatness of the person b o m thereby and under such circumstances all
these things entered into the mystical side of these pictures. We note the meaning
that is really behind it, the meaning that is behind these symbols, and in that
meaning we discover in religion that which we are to worship and adore, that which
we are to hold holy, and all that constitutes, as I said, religion.
That is what
we are going to get at in cur studies in this class.
End of Lecture Number Two.
H. Spencer Lewis,

THE MYSTICAlr^IBLE CLASS

THIRD LECTURE
On of the important things I vrould call to your attention is Astrology.
I am
not going to turn this class into a class for the study of Astrology, nor am
I trying to increase your faith one iota in regard to the so-called science of
Astrology*
If you are fond of scientific novelties, if you have a scientific
turn of mind, if you are analytically inclined, or if you are anxious to study
and attain something intellectual, a very fine amusement, and at the same time
something profitable in a great many ways then take up Astrology. But if
you are going to look at it or seek for it as a perfect and exact science, my
suggestion is to leave it alone.
This in spite of the fact that from 1906 to
1912 I probably worked out over 500 horoscopes in all the details and probably
worked on 1000 more just making tests and experiments.
I speak from knowledge
when I say of Astrology that it is not perfect enough to bo called a complete
science.
It is an interesting art, an interesting hobby, and something worth
while if you like to investigate things. ITcr.v I am going to talk about Astrology
in the days of our Bible story and here we find it in its greatest power.
Since
the time of the birth of Christianity the science of Astrology or the art of
Astrology has been greatly improved. Perhaps another hundred years w ill make
it more exact.
But: it has been greatly improved since the dawn of Christianity.
Fith all its inprovemjnts, all the books nor: available on the subject, with
the thousands of persons almost anywhere daily demonstrating its principles,
in the time of the birth of Christianity Astrology had its greatest power.
It
uus, hov.-ever, not a science alone but a great secret art and by it they measured
time and events> and by it they recorded the things that occurred.
It was more
than a science to them; it was a secret religion and just as in our Courts
to-day legal papers center around the element of time, and things are dated by
"noon of the day or "thirty days h ence, or sixty or ninety days in the case
of mortgage papers and notes, and so on, sc in the days of the birth _ 0f
Christianity tine was notated by its relation to the planets and the stars,
and it was common for one man to say to another: T,by ye Heavens, in Libra he
did so and s o , as In Shakespeare, and that would be equivalent to our "By
gosh, at three o clock it happened," to use the vernacular of the day; only
when wo say three o'clock we mean a period of time within four or five minutes
of three o*clock. Y.hnn they said Libra it meant a period of two to two and a
half hours and that was exact enough for their purpose. Wo find them swearing
by the sun and moon and by the heavens in many ways, even by the position of
the planets in the Zodiac.
They were conscious of the fact that evpry two or
two and a half hours there was a different sign of the Zodiao on the horizon,
that the twelve signs rose and set on the horizon every twenty-.four hours,
therefore thcr.e was no period of more than two or two and a half hours, accord
ing to whether the days were long or short, when a sign did not change.
Their
calendars were very much like astronomical clocks.
They had great faith in the
influence cf the planets.
All this had come to them as a science from the ages
pasb.
The Egyptians were the fir s t to work it out.
The Egyptians were the
ones to observe the influence of the planets.
They found that persons born at a
certain time of the year had certain tendencies and habits.
After all, it is
true.
There are twelve class ifications of persons in the world.
According to
Astrology with only twelve signs there can be only twelve classifications or
twelve divisions of the twelve classifications. 7fe find all through ancient
history there is reference to the twelve tribes, twelve nations, twelve this
and twelve that.
Twelve figures prominently in all our classifications of
things that occur in life as well as life itself.
There are twelve types cf
persons in every race and it is easy to pick thorn out generally.
I had the
pleasure of intimate companionship for 8 Or 10 years with Henry Waterhouse,

(2 )

Royal Astrologer of England, whose father boforo him had boon tho Horald of
Kings, proclaiming times and events according to astrological signs and
astronomical rockonings.
.
He could te ll by the physiognomy of a pcvson about whon he was born, which
is moroly a reversal of the rulo.
If you were born at a certain time you had
certain tendencies and habits.
The Egyptians worked this out from observation.
In completing thoir records for many centuries, with their notations, not
starting from any belief in astrology but by noticing persons born at certain
tinos of the year they sought for a cause and they decided that tho planets and
thoir positions were responsible.
The whole science of Astrology is an
assumption that more or loss proves itself but not sufficiently so bo exact.
Thov also noticed that when there was an eclipse of the sun or moon, or when
ever a comot appeared in the sky it foretold or indicated some great national
event.
The greater the comet, the greater the eclipse or the more unique,
the more indicative <of some unusual event.
So whenever a fow planets came
closer together or closer to the earth, they were sure that something of an
Those who followed this science made
unusual nature v/as about to happen.
their prediction by closely observing the great canopy of the heavens from
tho north to the south, from tho oast to the west.
The earliest observers,
without telescopes of course, of some new planet appearing on the horizon would
send v;ord throughout tho land that some great event was going to occur. Vfe
find many references in the ancient writings about a great star that swcDt over
the heavens and finally stood s t il l , and the people believed that where it
stood s till under that spot a great king, ruler, leader of seme kind was born.
If we keep in mind the astrological beliefs cf those people we know it was not
a superstitious religious b e lie f.
It was the only thing they had to
by in
analyzing and classifying the course of events.
If you can throw yourself
back into their viewpoint you w ill have more respect for it.
It is not right
for us to-day in our greater knowledge and greater illumination to smile at
some of the ancient beliefs and ideas; it is not fair to those cf the past.
Not until we can put ourselves into tho position of others can we realize what
it really meant.
Seme of our sciences to-day w ill be just as humorous to the
minds of the future as some of the ancient ones arc to us. We are doing
things, following ideas and principles to-day that would not stand the test
of water in the future.
They serve us fairly .veil to-day and enable us to do
certain things.
There is no question about it that sometime some one w ill
make our present calendar look ridiculous.
It has been changed and added to
and changed and addod to so that v.re do not really know, in going back into
history, what month anything really did occur. Here wo have to-day four
months with 30 days, seven with 31 days and one with 28 days. Yet according
to the ancients all the months used to have the same number of days.
A Lunar
month consistoa or 28 days and that was logical.
To take a sun mcnth would
be more logical, but to have it arbitrarily arranged as it is to-day, whore
certain kings said in the past " I w ill name a month after mo".
Nov* we w ill go on with some of the comments in regard to the life of tho
Master Jesus viewed from this astrological point.
The first which we shall
notice is the story of the star which is said to have heralded his birth, and
which v/as designated 'his s tar .
It is- related by tho Matthew narrator as
follows:

When Josus was born in Bothlehem, of Judea, in tho days of- Herod tho King,
Behold, there came wise men from tho East to Jerusalem, saying:
!Whore is
he that is b o m King of the Jews? For wo have seen his star in the East,
and are come to worship him*1
~
Herod the king, having heard these things, he privately called the wise men,
and inquired of them what time the star appearod, at the same tine sending
them to Bothlehem to search diligently for the young child.
Tho wise mon,
accordingly, departed and went on their way toward Bethlehem.
'The star which
they saw in the East went boforo them, t ill it camc and stood over whcro the
young child was.
The general legendary character of this narrative its similarity in stylo
with thoso contained in the apocryphal gospels and moro especially its
conformity with those astrological notions which, through provalent in the
time of the Matthew narrator, has boen exploded bv tho sounder scientific
knowlodge of our days all unite to stasp upon the story the impress of
poetic or mythic fictio n .
"The fact that the writer of this story speaks not of a star but of his star^
shows that it was the popular b e lie f of the people among whom he lived, that
each and every person was born under, a star, and that this one which had beon
soen was his star .*1 says one author.
Dr. Hooykaas, speaking on this subjoct, says:
"in ancient times the Jews, like other peoples, might very well believe that
there was some immediate connection between the stars and life of nan an
idea which we still preserve in tho forms of specch that so-and-so was born
under a lucky or under an evil star.
They might therefore suppose that tho
birth of great men, such as Abraham, for instance, was announced in tho
heavens.
In our century, however, if not before, all serious belief in
astrology has ceased, and it would be regarded ar an act of the grossest
superstition for any ono to have his horoscope drawn; for the course, the
appearance, and the disappearance of the heavenly bodies have been long
determined with mathematical precision by science.
(Bible for Learners, Vol.
3 , page 7 2 .)
'
"The Rev. Dr. Geikie says; in his Life of Christ, vol. 1, page 145:
"The Jews had already, long before Christ s day, dabbled in astrology, and
the various forms of magic which became connected with i t ....T h e y were much
given to cast horoscopes from tho numerical value of a name. Everywhere
throughout tho whole Roman Enpiro, Jewish magicians, dream expounders, and
sorccrers, were found."
"The life and portion of children,
says the Talmud, hang not on righteous
ness, but on their star . 1 'The planet of the day has no virtue, but the
planet of the hour (of nativity) has much.'
T/hen the Messiah is to bo re
vealed , 1 says tho book Sohar, 'a star w ill arise in the East, shining in great
brightness, and seven oher stars round it w ill fight against it on every side*
'A star w ill riso in the east, which is the star of the Messiah, and w ill
remain in the east fifteon d a y s .f

Y/c turn now to tho ancicnt records and find that:

"Without going through the lis t , we can say that the birth of every Indian
Avatar was foretold by colostial sig n s."
In tho lagends of the Jewish Patriarchs and prophets, it is stated that a
brilliant star shone at the time of the birth of Moses.
It was seen by tho
Magi of Egypt, who imnediatcly informed the K in g .ir
Another interesting point arises immediately in connection with this fact, for
"The next in order of the wonderful events v/hich are related to havo happened
at the birth of Christ Jesus, is the recognition of the Divino child, and the
presentation of g i f t s .
V/e are informed by the Matthew narrator, that being guided, by a star, the Magi
from the east came tc where ~jnc young child was.
"And when thoy were comc into the house (net stable) they saw the young child,
with Mary his mother, and fe ll down and worshipped him.
And when they had
opened their treasurers, they presented' unto him" gifts gold, frankincense,
and ryrrh . 11
Hot only was Crishna adored by the shepherds and Magi, and received with
divine honors, but he was also presented with g ifts.
These gifts were fsandaiwood and perfumes1 .
(Why not frankir-censo and myrrh?)
Similar stories are related of the infant Fuddha. He was v isited, at the time
of his birth, by wise men, who at once recognized in the marvelous infant all
tho characters of tho d iv in ity , and he had scarcely seen the day before he was
hailed god cf gods.

Mithras, the Persian Saviour, and mediator between God and man, was also
visited by !wise men called Magi, at tho time of his birth.
He was presented
y/ith gifts consisting of gold,
franlcincer.se and myrrh.
According to Plato, at the birth of Socrates (459 B .C .) there^came three Magi
from the east to worship him, bringing~gifts of geld frankincense and myrrh.
We have seen that the Matthew narrator speaks of the infant Jesus, and Mary,
his mother, being in a rhouse imp lying that ho had been born there; and
that the Lul:e narrator speaks of the i-^'ar.t lying in a manner* implying
that he was b o m in a stable. l'!o v;lll no-.- show -chat there is still another
story related to the . place in which ho war bo rn ."
According to Matthew, which treats of the place in which Jesus was born. He
was bora in a house. His words are these:
rTTo-.v when Jesus v/as born in
Bethlehem of Judea in tho days of Herod the King, behold, there came wise men
from the east 1 to worship him.
.'j id when" jncy wore come into the house, they
saw the young child with Mary his mother.

(5)

"Tho writer of the Luke version implies that he was born in a stable as the
following statoment'lviTl show:
fThe days being accomplished that she (Mary)
should be delivered . . . she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him
in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, there being no room for him in
the inn . 1
If these accounts were contained in these Gospels in tho time of Eusebius, the
first Ecclesiastical historian, who flourished during tho Council of Nice
(A .D . 3 2 7 ), it is very strange that , in speaking o f tho birth of Jesus, he
should have omitted oven mentioning them, and should have given an altogether
different version. He tells us that Jesus was neither born in a house nor in a
stable, but in a cave, and that at the time of Constantine a magnificent Temple
was croctod on the spot, so that the Christians might worship in the place where
their Saviour s feet had stood.
That shrine remains and all visitors are shown the cavo in which he was born.
This has been going on for many years, hundreds of years since the shrine was
b u ilt, and very few question the peculiarity of a cave-, which does not coincide
with Luke s manger or Matthew s house in which the Waster Jesus was born.
Tortullian (A .D . 200), Jerome (A .D . 3 7 5 ), and other Fathers of the Church, also
state that Jesus was born in a cave, and that the heathen celebrated, in their
day, the birth and J'*ystcries of their Lord and Saviour Adonis in this very cave
near Bethlehem.
Canon Farrar says:
"That the actual place of the Christ s birth was a cave,
is a very ancient tradition, and this cave used to be shown as the scene o f tho
event even so early as the tine of Justin Martyr (A .D . 1 5 0 ) ."
Mr. King says (in his wonderful book The Gnostics and Their Remains):
The
place yet shown as the scene of their (The Magi s) adoration at Eethlchcn is
a caveT1"
Any one who has ever visited Jerusalem or the Holy Land loves to witness this
beautiful ceremony called The Ceremony of the Nativity.
This is celebrated in
Bethlehem in a cave and is undoubtedly the same form of ceremony that the early
Christians practiced and soon after tho Resurrection the Disciples, who 'knew of
the cave vdiore the birth of tho Master Jesus occurred, continued to come to the
cavo and have their 7-ondorful celebration.
Crishna, the Hindoo virgin-born Saviour, v/as b e m in a cave, fostered by an
honest herdsman, and, it is said, placed in a sheep fold shortly after his birth.
Bacchus, who was the son of God by tho virgin Semelo, is said to have been
born in a cave, or placed in ono shortly after his birth. Philostratus, the
Greek Sophist and Rhetorician, says, the inhabitants of India had a tradition
that Bacchus was born at ITisa, and was brought up in a cave on Mt. Heros. T
Adonis, the Lord and Saviour , was placed in a cave shortly after his birth.
Apollo (Phoibos), son of the Almighty Zeus, was born in a cave at early dawn.

Mithras, the Persian Saviour, was born in a cave or grottc , at early dawn.
Hermes, the son of God by the mortal Maia, was born early in the morning,
in a cave or grotto, of the Ilyllemian H ill.
Attys, the god of the Phrygians, was bcrn in a cave or grotto.1*
So wc might go on with a long lis t of the many others to whom we have
referred, showing that they v/ere born, all of them, in a cave. You will
recall that I said to you last we el: that one of the outstanding features
in the Christian doctrine, as very picturesquely presented and dramatized,
is this one important and interesting event of the birth or finding of
the Master Jesus in a manger.
If v/e take away the manger from the birth
of the Master Jesus we seem to lose a very interesting picture or point
in the whole story.
I may ask you this question:
Is there any reason
why v/e should not feel that both statements of a manger and a cave are right?
Might it not be that there was an abandoned or empty cave along the road,
v;here the parents stopped, that had been used" as a manger? Is there any
reason for thinking that it may not have been a manger as well as a cave?
Both may bo right.
The important and outstanding fact to keep in mind is
that Jesus was born in a very humble- place, in a place -entirely different
from v/hat .we would expect a great leader, a great Messiah to be born in,
but it was typical of the place in which all groat men preceding him had
been born.
So we must keep that in mind for there must be a mystical
significance in the fact that a ll great teachers that represent the human
element on the divine plane and the divine element on the human plane should
be born in the most humble of all circumstances.
End of Lecture Number Three
H. Spencer Lewis, Imperator.

IffSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

FOUHTH LECTURE
We find in reviewing tho work or life of the Master Jesus as his whole life
was predicted from the tiiiie of his birth to the time the Wise Men cane to pay
hin homage that Astrology figured very prominently in it.
There are references
to "Kis Star , "His Day". 7/e find also that a certain percentage of tho populace
was ready to pfay him homage on the basis that he was the Great Messiah. We have
the Master Jesus before us as an infant whose very existence at this time and
in rhis country and unde1" such circumstances seemed to be a complete fulfilment
of the ancient prophecies, for Ke seemed to be the great Messiah that was expected
to come to Jerusalem. Ho seemed to be the one pointed out by the Star which the
'.Vise- Man sav/. He seemed to be born of a Virgin (for there was that about Mary
that the Wise Men and the others saw was peculiarly Holy or sweet and undefiled
in many ways) and he was born in a cave or manger, and the Wise Men of His time
came to pay Him homage in every little thing this little child seemed to be
the fulfilment of the prophecies.
i,*ow I am sure we can permit ourselves a few moments for the consideration of the
astrological effect of such an event as th is.
We must realize that the partial
realization of an anticipation of any kind arouses in the hearts and minds of
porscr.s further hope, further faith, further interest, and if among the faithful
of that time there were a few hundred whose hope and faith were pinned to the
possible coming of a Messiah, and if those few hundred came to this place whore
the infant Jesus was found and saw the homage being paid to Him, the Holy Light
surrounding Him, and they saw the Wise Men there proclaiming that it was the Great
Messiah, surely the faith of the hundred and their hope must have been aroused
by this partial realization of their expectations and immediately they pictured
for this little child a career of wonderful events. From that moment on the child
was marked, the child was respected, and everything it did, everything it seemed
to think, or feel or sense was watched and analyzed by the faithful ones. The
peculiar thing about it is that we have no record of what they thought and what
they did in watching this child, in waiting patiently for its development, in
observing its progress from infancy tcriiCiture childhood.
For twelve years at
least they must have watched and waited.
The Christian records tell us nothing.
One outstanding evont in His childhood is given us and it does not come from the
faithful it does not come from the close observers who must have keot some
record', who most have seen and understood.
It comes from the Jewish records, of
those who found this little child of twelve years of age for the first time in
their midst in the Synagogue and who astounded the Rabbi and the teachers with
His knowledge-.
We cannot believe that those who had been watching the develop
ment of the child for twelve years, who knew that He was to be the Great Leader
or believed that He was to be the Great Messiah, v/ould be surprised at His
knowledge at twelve years of age.
That would seem inconsistent with all they
believed about the Messiah.
The surprise and astonishment must truly have come
from those who had heard little or nothing about the child Jesus and discovered
suddenly that in their midst there was a prodijy, a marvelous, miraculous child,
and so wonderful did it seem to them They recorded it in tiioir w ritings; just
as we read in the papers sometimes now that at s 01:10 tost or some demonstration
in one cf the universities a child of youthful n.go reveals grout wisdom and
knowledge in regard to science or mathematics or something of the kind.
The
newspapers sneak of it and for two or throe days it is written up, may apoear
in some monthly magazine, and then is forgotten.
So it seems to have beer, about
this demonstration on the part of young Jesus at tho Synagogue, for He left there

(2 )
and went on back home, according to the records, and they nad no further interest
in him. These men did not beliove that it was the beginning of an outward
public manifestation of the wisdom of the coming Messiah or they would have
written more about Him, would have followed Him in His career from then on* Yet
wo find gaps again in his history*
I f we are going to stick stricbly to doctrine wo w ill have to leave those gape
in Hie life from His infancy to His appearance in the Synagogue at twelve or
more years of ago and from that two-day period on until He enters into his
ministry as a man.
If you ask the Orthodox authorities if there is any knowledge
about the life of the Master Jesus in those two periods, to be consistent with
tho doctrines of their church and with the Christian Bible they must say that
there is nothing that carries the weight of authority.
If you go up to
Schenectady, I I .Y ., and ask the Chief Director of the Laboratory of the General
Electric Company, who is sitting before his diagrams or charts of curves and
potentialities, and say to him in a purely scientific, technical way, as a man
talking to an authority on electricity, "Tell mo, what can you say about the
soul of man, because I w ill quote what you say and I want you to tell mo pre
cisely?" He has every reason to ansv;er you and say, as tho General Manager or
the General Director, or a specialist for this laboratory, " I must say to you
that I can say nothing about tho soul of man with authority." Very true; he
cannot. You did not ask "him what his personal belief might bo.
You asked him
to speak with authority and as an electrician. He has no right to speak about
the soul* Vie do not care whether the clergyman is a Baptist or a Methodist or
a Presbyterian or
a Unitarian - none of them can speak with authority, and
represent their church, their doctrines and creois, and say anything about the
two gaps in the history of the Jiastor Jesus, bocause their churches, their
councillors back of thoir churches, and the fathers back of the councillors of
their churches have decreed what is authority and what is not authority within
those churches.
So wo cannot expect tho Orthodox churchos, speaking with
authority, to sav anything more than: rtWo knew nothing with authority about these
years of the life of the Master Jes u s ."
Eut that doos not mean that there is no
answer, that there is no explanation, that there is no history. We find records
in the Orient, preserved in some of the old Temples referred to in many ancient
translations and writings, that indicate that the Llactcr Jesus was educated fir s t
in His own country and then later journeyed to ~gy~t whore He became a student;
that His work in Egypt began right after Ilis tests and examination in the
Synagogue at twelve years of age; that for twelve years or more He studied in the
great schools of lav;, religion, philosophy and ritualism of the Oripnt. That
should not shock you. That is no different from saying that you went to Boston
to learn music or to New York to learn lav; or to Y.ashington to learn politics.
Hoses learned nearly all he knew on ritualism, religious princip les, the existence
of one sole living God, hi Egypt, and there were ether great men, before the time
of the Master Jesus, who journeyed to Egypt fcr xheir learning,
We have many
records to-day that arc considered as correct in authority that refer to tho fact
that the great light of the world^s scientific wisdom was still in Egypt and
coming out of Egypt.
For instance, even in traditional history wo find that when K.ing Solomon v/as
going to build his great Temple ho sent for this architect, this builder who had
built Temples in Egypt, to come over into the Holy Land with his groat knowledge
of symbolism, knowledge of Architecture; for you have it in the Bible, in tho
traditional stories of many organizations.
That in but one illustration of how
ovon in tradition reference is mado to the light that came out of Egypt. Wo
have mer. living in the tinie of Jesus, born five years after Jesus was, such as
Apollonius of Tyana, who became in tho eyes of some people as great a miraplo

worker as the Master Jesus, but who worked in another part of the world, who did
not cross tho path of the Master Jesus at any particular time, but whoso path
ran very close to tho other vory ofton, and we find in tho historical records
about him that he raised tho dead and cured lepers. Ho did many wonderful
things but ho lived and worked not as the Son of God, not as a divinely difforent
person, but as an Adopt from the O rien t, and the reforoncos to his training,
his education in Egypt, and all the things ho did, all the seeming miracles ho
performed, were done upon a scien tific basis, with a scientific knowledge of
certain laws and principles for which he had prepared himself. You w ill find
some ancient books, books written in tho fift h , sixth, seventh, eighth and
ninth oonturios of tho Christian period in which these authors say that there
is a grave doubt as to whether Josus and Apollonius wore not tho same person,
their lives were so much alike as to make tho historians nix them. Later
historical records show that they were not the same, but two different
characters, whose paths never crossed or touched, although they ran p ar alle l.
On the other hand, this nan was not able todo all the things Jesus did, and
ho made no claim or even a demonstration of a closcness to God or relation
ship as a divinely appointed messenger, as did the Master Jesus.
So there is no reason to think it strange that Jesus as a student was
so brilliant at twelve years of age, for He was under special, private in
struction and with tho knowledge that His people had, that the people of His
section of Galilee had, it was not strange that He went into a foreign land
to study. Other non had gone. Egypt was not sc far away.
It v/as so much
older, sc much more advanced than the land in which Jesus lived and worked
it was a perfectly logical thing that the man who v/as to bo a great Leader,
a great Teacher, should study in that country. .Should we think any the less
of a man because in addition to his divine inspiration, his divine knowledge,
his divine illumination, he civ'uldtrgo forth to seme institution or to several
and add to his -divine knowledge tho knowledge of men, the ways and means of
earthly systems in promoting happiness, success, prosperity, in achieving the
material accomplishments of life? Certainly not. You and I would thin]f to-day
that any minister of the Gospel of God who attempts to preach from the plat
form and is not familiar with all of the sciences and all the arts, all the
things that man has to study or know in his daily a ffa ir s , v/as not as fully
equipped to help and guide and instruct as he should bo.
Divine illumination
alone is not satisfying tor.the whole being of nan. There is a cryi?fg need
for that but there is also a crying need for help in our worldly affairs.
Did not Jesus in His later life prove this to be so? Did He not', as Bruce
Barton, and other great writers have shown in modern books, demonstrate Him
self to be a business man, a good p o litician , a scientist, a lecturer, humani
tarian, and a methodical worker? 7/henever they put any question to Him as to
what they should do in any given matter He answered them logically re that in
His answer they found the practical knowledge they wantod plus a symbol of
spiritual illumination. When the fisherman asked Him, for instance, v/hat was
wrong v/ith casting their nets that they could not ^et any fish , He stood back
and watched. Wo do net know exactly v/hat sort cf reasoning went through His
mind, what principles of fishing He may have known.
But Ho told them to cast
their nets on the other side of the boat and they did, and caught the fish.
I have heard it said that there may havo been some scientific knowledge on the
part of Jesus, that Ho nay have noted that they were casting their nets on the
sunny side of the boat and know that by casting then in the shadow of the boat,
in the shadow of the sail, they would be able to get their fis h .
At all events
Ho saw this point and gave then a practical illustration, a practical and help
ful answer.
Later He said that He could make then oven greater fishermen than
th a t, fishers of mon!
He had shown thom that He' knew something about fishing

He turned that knowledge and that fa ith in Him to spiritual benefit. There
are mar.y other illustrations; that of turning water into wine, where His knowledge
was given a practical turn, a purely scien tific turn.
There was nothing miracu
lous about it except in the result. He explained His scientific and practical
knowledge so it had spiritual warmth and that is the way any successful or
wonderful teacher of any kind works. The teacher in the class room will answer
every little question in such a practical way that the students get a satisfying
answer from the material point of view, but the teacher w ill be careful tw see
that there is a moral lesson involved whenever it is possible. And that is what
Jesus did. We can point out, ever, in the Orthodox section of the Christian
Bible as accepted by the Orthodox Christian churches to-day, many statements on
the part of the Master Jesus, or on tho part of His Disciples who were quoting
Him or duplicating what he did that were examples of His very practical knowledge.
He did not always say things that were ether-eal and spiritual and so far up in
the clouds and above their heads as to mean nothing to them; it was only when
talking to His Disciples that He did that.
Talking to the multitudes He spoke
in the terminology of their own daily a ffa ir s .
Right here I would like to add
a point.
Although Jesus did (and it was accused of Him as though it was some
thing wrong for Him to- do) put Himself on the level of those with whom He was
talking to such an extent that He used their own good language, there is no
instance on record when in order to put Himself en rapport with them He had to
resort to the vulgar side of their nature.
Did you ever notice that I may speak
to a person who is less educated than I am and, knowing that, choose words which
are the best in his understanding? I do not have to use the worst that is in
his understanding, in order to make ngrself understood. We have too much of that
in the pulpit and throughout the country to-day.
You can talk to a child in its
own child language and use words just a lit t le bit above what it is used to, so
that it w ill learn and you w ill be setting an example.
The moment you drop
below its level you pull the child down and yourself with it. We have no example
that when Jesus was among the Publicans and sinners He used anything other than
simple words of choice expression, and it v/as that on thing that makes Him an
outstanding figure in philosophy and religion to-day, as it must have made Him
an outstanding figure among men in His day.
For after a l l , while man likes to
talk to a man in a manTs way, ever;.' man is pleased with the compliment when
that person in speaking to him does not resort to vulgarity or profanity.
If
there is one thing anywhere that a man is bound to recognize and appreciate
sooner or later in another man it is the fact that a great man canjbe a HE man
and yet be clean in tongue. Of course, it goes without saying, that there is
nothing so unpleasant to a man, and nothing so bad for a woman as to hear even
slightly profane words from the mouth of a woman, and the one redeeming thin?; of
the present age is that with all our so-called looseness in morals and conven
tionalities I am glad to say that I hoar less of profanity on the part of women
to-day than v/as heard ten years ago. V/e do not
even hear it in plays or in
the stores, and I think it indicates that woman, in her demand for suffrage
equalities, has realized that if she wants to be a HE woman she had better go
one step farther than the men do in keeping language clean.
It is a compliment
to the women and to the men.
bo

To rovert to the Master Jesus, who used the strongest language any man in history
used in connection with philosophy and religion;
His declarations wore- not ac
companied by any such statements as "By yo signs in the heavens I declare", etc.
It was not necessary.
He simply said "it i s " .
Certainly there wore those who

disputed Him, doubted Him, and kept their mouths shut, but when He continued
to say, day after day, week after week, month after month, " I am that I am",
without any stronger language, and "it is" and "i t is n o t", they came to one
conclusion at least that the speaker v/as convinced about v/hat He said:
If
He is convinced, seventy-five per cent of the conviction of another person is
already won and you do not help the matter by any groat declarations.
Jesus
language was the strongest and the most simple. Whether the translators havo
adhered strictly to v/hat tho early writers *.vrote or whether the early writers
recorded exactly v/hat Jesus said, is not so important as the fact that both
the early writers and their translators have given to us, for soms reason or
other, and in some way or other, the most beautiful, poetic, staterr.tnts ever
written in prose in connection with tho writings of the Master Jesus.
If we
say that the early writers made up these statements themselves, and they are
not the true statements of Jesus, then we must say that they were highly in
spired to bo able to write that way, for not even Shakespeare ever equalled
tho beauty and poetic splendor, as well as power, of the statements attributed
to the Master Jesus,
If it is the work of the translators -instead of tho
early writers to them also v/e must give credit for divine inspiration.
After
a l l , in both cases, we are tracing the wording dircctly back to God and it is
God s words wo are reading in any case.
So looking at it oven broadly we
find that this man proved that He had the education, sc ie n tific , materialistic,
practical, as v/ell as wonderful divine illumination, and therefore all His
demonstrations, all the socalled miracles for v/e have not yet decided
whether v/e should call them all miracles or not all His manifestations of
lav/s and principles simply show and prove then and now that He was a Master
in every sense of the word.
Speaking scientifically v/e may say that there is
no such thing as an exception to one of God s laws, but then we are making
even God a slave to His own situation. V/e may say that there can be no
miracles and yet the absence of miracles nay be a miracle it s e lf, for all we
know.
It may be that the things wo call miracles are, after a l l , really
demonstrations of lav/ and that the absence of niraclcs is something that we
should study and analyze. V/e may have the wrong viewpoint; v/e may think the
miracles are the things extraordinary, whereas they may be the fa ir , the just,
the average, the common; and the absence of miracles in our lives to-day are
the things we should be concerned about. Perhaps if we have not had personal
demonstration of miracles it is because we have not been worthy --'not be
cause miracles arc so unusual they can only come to the few.
So v/e are going to start, with next week s talk, and take up the various
demonstrations, tho various things this great man used as manifestations,
illustrations, and demonstrations in his talks.
Jesus did not go about
doing the things he did to show himself o ff, or to prove that He was what
He v/as. You remember that once that question v/as argued and v/hen some one
said:
"Give us a sign", He said to them:
"You arc so low in your compre
hension, so steeped in your superstition, so uoubting in your religion, so
incompetent in your analysis, you must have a sign before you w ill believe
v/hat I am telling y o u ." He must have had that put to Him many times, just as
every man to-day v/ho makes an unusual claim, not only about himself but
about his business, is tested, tried, crucified even on this same cross of
sceptism. Persons w ill say " I do not believe what you say until you prove
it to m e,"
So we have a sort of "guarantee" to-day that a thing in business
is what it is claimed to be; but Jesus offered no guarantee. He never once

submitted to a challenge.
Did you over notice that in reading the Bible? Not
once did He make a demonstration, heal a person, cure a person, chase out evil
s p irits , or even say a word when He was challenged, to prove that He was the
Son of God or Son of Man or Son of anything. He never accepted a challenge nor
would any man who had the power and was as sure of his power, and knew he was
on the side of right and not might. You know it is the one who is a weakling,
who is afraid of his own potentialities that is roady to make a demonstration,
to see if he s till has or controls tho power he claims to have, but the man who
is sure, or the woman who is sure, can smile at a challenge and know that it is
beneath the dignity of real power to show itself except when it can do good, and
to do/ good it must be for the fa ith fu l.
As Jesus once said:
" I f you cannot be
lieve in Me, whom you can see, how can you believe in God, the Father, whom you
have not seen? '1
Do not let any one ever challenge your fa ith , your b e lie f.
If you have a con
viction of any kind you are much better o ff than the man who has none.
It is a
lif e line between you and all that is noble, that salvation that you want to
have. Whatever your conviction may be, even though it may not be as right as
it should be, hold fast to it, let no man by right of argument, by demonstration
of his faith or conviction, change yours.
Conviction must come through knowledge;'
knowledge must come from experience; by your experiences, says the mystic, by
that illumination that comes from w ith in , through the divine illumination that
reaches your soul from that kingdom of heaven within you, must come your reward.
Let no one change your thinking by reasoning from without. You know the profes
sor in the university who was trying to show his class that logic was not a safe
thing to use, illustrated that point by using pure logic to prove that a horse
has five legs, and even his best students could not find the flaw in his reason
ing.
I want to tell you that the devil is a past master in the art of logic and
he can make things appear to you at any time as he> would have them. That is the
outer you.
So we find this great man going through life with a power that He probably might
have exercised by the snap of His fingers and caused all His doubters to fall
upon their knees, but which He never used that way. He might have raised His
hand at any time and caused all of them to stand paralyzed before Him, with
their mouths tied, but it was never done.
He might have caused His betrayer to
have been stricken deaf and dumb, but it was not so. He took the things in l if e
as they came; He labored to demonstrate, if nothing else, that peac, and love and
justice were the greatest factors in a man*s l i f e , and His whole life was a de
monstration of that.
His lessons were by parable and whenever He healed, when
ever He helped the poor, the sick, it was not tc demonstrate His power and not
before a crowd, for very often He said to those who came to Him appealing for
help, or sent a messenger; " I w ill come la ter , or ,h>7hen you get back you w ill
find that the person is w e ll", or He would take them apart from the multitude
and privately perform His work. He did not have tents or tabernacles built for
him. He did not have, so far as I can recall, any occasion when ho asked the
multitude tc gather and wait until three o 1 clock and He would come upon the
platform and have a great demonstration*
There was none of th a t, and that is
why we know so little of His life *
I do not believe that His own disciples ever
saw one-tenth >of what He did or one-hundredth part, for surely He did not tell
them about it .
Some of the things were repeated by His disciples in a way to
indicate that they heard about them afterwards. He did not te ll them " I did
this" or " I did th a t".
It was not for them.
It was to help the individual.
He hardly let His left hand know what His right hand was doing.
True Christi
anity throughout the world is rare to-day, and was probably rare in those days
also.
It was not the Jewish custom and is net the oustom to-day among the Jews
to let the left hand know what the right hand does. You would be surprised, i f

you over investigated the matter, to fin d how that is the* principle in the
Jevrish race to-day.
Take the case of a Jew in the business world, vrho will
hire a little boy to watch tho incoming mail and take tho stainps off the
envelopes, if they have not been cancelled, so he nay save sixteen cents
worth of postage.
On Friday night he w ill mail a check for $1600 to one
of the orphan asylums and say nothing about it . Even his bookkeeper or
his secretary know nothing about it. He very often overdraws his salary
and puts part of it into an envelope and sends it to a private institution
or somebody who needs help.
I have carefully watched this and analyzed it.
The Jews have done as much for charity as any of those organizations allied
to charity. They have contributed to music and to many uplifting things.
It comes from back in the Bible days. On the other hand wo have those in
the Jevrish race and Christian denominations to-day who like to chow off
when they do anything in that regard.
It is not the true Christian spirit,
though.
So ir. summing up, before taking 15) our next week's subject, lot us held
for this week!s picture the idea of a student man, a young man studying in
the Orient, coming back to the country of His birth to be the messenger
of God, the missionary in that land. You knew there is a proverb that says
that no man is a prophet in his own country.
I vnnt to tell you that it
must have been with some foreboding, with some doubt, knowing human nature
as Jesus did, that this young man of thirty odd years came, from Egypt back
into His own land to prove, to show, and to live the life of a Messenger
from God.
It would have been so much easier in come other land but He *
cams back because it was decreed as His l if e work, Hi:: mission.

Ilext week we w ill start with His first acts, His fir s t words, and see just
vrhat He did and what the mystical revelation is in that part of His l if e .
End of Lecture Number Four.
R. Spencer Lewis,
Ite rato r.

THE MYSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

Number Five
VTo open tonight*s scene on the stage by waiting patiently for the entrance of this
great character* fife must assume that he was away from his own city, his own town,
his own neighborhood, for sene little time because it would be remarkable to think
that during the early part of his thirtieth year he was living with and among these
persons who recorded every little incident of his life and that they should say
nothing about him until he appears on the scene at the time of the Baptism.
In
fact even that appearance does not seem to surprise them in any particular way.
The record opens with the statement that they were gathered together at the river* s
edge, watching John the Baptist baptize.
Some were commenting upon his great work.
He, you know, was considered as a divine representative of God, not especially
selected, but one who had attained that place in the scheme of things by his develop
nent, his devotion, his worthiness, and so they came to him to be baptized, and we
have the various accounts that we have read previously in regard to Jesus standing
there and John the Baptist recalling to the minds of the persons gathered there
the great prophecy that had once been made; that there would come to him for baptism
the Son of God and that when He came and appeared ready for baptism He would be
known by the great light that would shine upon Him. And then we read that as Jesus
stepped forward and made some comment, saying that he wanted to be baptized, John
recognized Him and said to the multitude, "Here is a man who is so great, so much
greater than I , that I am not worthy to stoop and fasten the strings on His sandals.
And the multitude must have looked up in surprise to see the Man they honored so
much speaking so about another character,
If we are going to continue the analogy of having a setting on the stage for our
visualization, we may picture in the foreground of tho scene this river, with a
host of believers and followers and perhaps some spies and some doubters and some
who jeered, standing in the background nudging each other and making unkind com
ments,
John is standing in the foreground waiting for them, one by one, to come
to be baptized,
V/e can look over the lit t le hills risin g just behind those waiting
on the shore and remember there was another great multitude, a great majority, who
looked upon John the Baptist as an authority but" did not believe that he had the
right to baptize or do anything in the name of God. They were the Romans who
feared any little change in the religious status of the people and we find that
even while John was standing in the water, doing this noble work, there^>7ere Roman
soldiers seeking to arrest him there.
This cloud was risin g over the distant h ills
and coming closer to John even while he stood there with the great honor of bap
tizing this noble character.
So our study of the work of the Master Jesus begins
right here. We read this little talk between John the 3 aptist and Jesus and we
road the wonderful statement of John the Baptist, not made in any glowing way, made
only to tho few who were there, and we wait to see what happens as Jesus is
baptized.
Just after he has been dipped in the water and starts to walk up the
sloping sandy beach and gets almost out of the water, almost on the dry sand
again, a dove comes down from Heaven and lights over his head and the Heavenly
Hosts send a beam of illumination upon him, and the Holy Ghost came upon the Master
Jesus. We have it described differently by the Gospel w riters, but all of them
agree & .rbnf.orfui sigh was given to those v/ho were assembled there, to indicate
that this was, as the groat prophecy had made i t , the baptism of the true Son of
God.
Jesus must have fe lt , must have realized that His baptism v/as what it should
be.
Today in the churchcs we have baptism too, V/e have the various "denominations
attempting to symbolize and duplicate this wonderful principle of Baptism,
Baptism is not a thing that is unique to Christianity at a l l . As they unearth

(2 )
and reveal tho ancient tonples in Eg;*pt to-day, and even some in the Yucatan
section of our own country, they find in all the real sacrod Temples where tho
more evolved and advanced forms of religious practicos and beliefs were demonstra
ted and taught, that in front of ovory one of tho altars in these great Temples
thore v/as a pool of 7.fater.
It is even depicted in some of tho painted pictures
on the walls.
This pool \vas for pur if ioation purposes.
Into it had to step those
who went through the initiation ccremony for tho first timo, and in many oUior
ccrcmonies those who were to como before the altar and seek freedom, grace and
favor religiously, had to bathe themselves symbolically, dip themselves into this
pool of '.rater, and thus purify themselves and stand beforo the Master on tho altar,
stand beforo tho priest or the High priest (whoever he may have been) with clean
hands and clean body before they could cxpcct to have thcmsolves cleansed inwardly.
We find that this was roally the origin of the baptismal system or principle, and
tho Jews took that idea into Jerusalem and tho Roman Catholic Church later adoptod
it and we have it in the Christian church to-day.
John war. practicing tho method
uniquely in baptizing out in tho stream and without the Temple ceremonies, and it
v/as this one point that caused the Jews and many of the others to criticize him for
what he was doing.
It was presumptuous and pretentious from their point of view,
without Temple or Synagogue, without altar and without due ceremony.
Do you realize that it was all symbolical? That before the Holy Ghost, before
divine illumination, before redeeming salvation can como to you, it really is
necessary for you to be regenerated, be purged or washed, or, as the Christian
Bible says, washed in the blood of the Lamb? That v/as symbolical becauso the Lamb
was used as a symbol of innoconce and purity ana for no ether reason. Ycu must be
cleansed by this redeeming touch of a great fountain of water symbolically; you
must also bathe in the Cosmic splendor of this redeeming influx from above. That
is what they call receiving the Holy Ghost.
To-day if you enter into the practice
of baptism without a thorough understanding you are not truly being baptized.
It
is not what the minister or the priest makes it ; it is not being wet with water
that constitutes Baptism.
It is being conscious at the moment of its true mystical
meaning and your abiding faith in its meaning and your cooperation with the process
that begins at that moment. And unless all of these things are present at one and
the same time no baptism is true baptism.
So Jesus arose and passed iiito the multitude, the messenger of God.
This great
symbol had apoeared. YJq have it from the words of His disciples that this happened,
and from John s statement. Xio have no other record in regard to it.
IV may be
that one of His Disciples saw this great light that appeared unto the Master Jesus
and, it may be that the multitude saw nothing.
It takes development-, divine
r.ttunement, real religious power of apprehension and comprehension for a person to
see the divine in another.
I imagine that what appeared unto the Master Jesus, the
halo that came around his body, was not something that tho doubters and the sceptics
and the unbelieving and the unknowing were able to see.
I believe that only tho
few saw.
Surely if something had happened there at the river bank that had never
happened to any of them before in baptism, and it had been such a material demon
stration that tho v.'hole multitude could have seen it, there never would have been
so many questioning Jesus tl-.roughout his l if e as to His authority, for Kis right
to talk as He did and to carry on as He did.
They were constantly asking Him for
some sign, corns symbol that would identify Him and prove His authority.
If the
multitude had seen what these Disciples described, they would not have required
any further sign than that.
So we find Him rising from the water and passing into the multitude, perhaps
understanding that only a few, those most highly attunod, those who were to becomo
His Disciples eventually, the faithful few, knew what had occur rod or that He had
startod his life mission ir. his own city and locality, where no man is a prophot

in his OY/n land, starting with them and asiong then His groat trwk, conscious of tho
fact that just over the h ills woro sccptics and doubtors waiting to arrost the man
who had baptized Him.
Do you thin!: you could start out on a carcor knowing all that and knowing tho con
ditions? Do you think you could facc tho inevitable criticism, tho inevitable
ccrsure, as woll as all the teasing, annoying, petty things that would be said
(tearing at your heart often) and start among pooplc who did not boliove - who could
say joeringly, as one did say, "Ho; why he is only tho carpontor!" Wo oft 0:1 hear
such things said about a person who is trying to bo, trying to do, trying to provo
and demonstrate. Somebody rices up and says "Why, I know him whon ho did so and so"
as though some lower work done in tho past was forever a barrier against his doing
anything greater. So Jesus faced this crowd and began his life work.
I an going to take, now, one phase of His work, His healing work, and soeak of tho
miracles that He perfom od before we take up some of tho statements that He made
and some of His teachings.
In. speaking of the miracles we aro forced to go back
again into ancient history and see why these niraclos seem to bo necessary. Vfc
often hoar it said that we arc absolutely wrong when wo vioxv the Christian doctrines
from the purely ethical point of view that Jesus was not a great ethical teacher
solely, but principally a groat religious teacher. Yet nearly a l l , if not all of
the toachings of Jesus can bo reduced to an ethical system, or system of ethical
culture, without robbing them of their value, without making thorn any less practical
or applicable.
In view of that fa ct, that what He was teaching wore laws and p rin
ciples that every man could plainly understand from a logical point of view and
could easily adopt with benefit to himself and to others, the strange thing is: why
did Jesus add the religious point and thereby place Himsolf under condemnation and
in the straight line of eventual crucifixion and persecution?
If He had gone on
through His land speaking cthically and morally, and made no reforence whatsoever
to His being the Messenger from God, He would never have suffered, never had the
persecution or criticism that He had. /mother interesting point is that from the
point of view of His teaching morally and ethically it would not have been necessary
for him to have performed a single miracle.
YTe can take each and every one of His statements (except possibly a few) and see
that none of them required Him to entangle Himself as He did by performing miracles,
because, as we will see, oven those who believed upon Him as a groat teacher early
in His career doubted Him and questioned Him when He began to perform miracles.
Some oven said to Him "You may have a right to say that that man s sins will bo
forgiven by God. That we have always had in our religion.
But whn you say that
you '.'.'ill forgive his sins in the name of God and to such an extent that by forgiving
his sins his body becomes clean and healed from all disease, then you arc stopping
beyond tho bonds of teaching and we doubt your authority." So you see that He
might have avoidedthe disastrous conditions that surrounded His life by making
Himself simply a groat teacher.
But wo find that Ho v/as trying to show by the
performance of miracles that He had a special power, a power that would come to
even His Disciples if they proved themselves worthy, and that all conditions in
lifo besides tho moral and ethical ones wore subject to regulations and control
through this Divine power.
But Jesus was not unique in thus demonstrating Divine
illumination and by using miracles.
As we go back again into ancicnt history we
find there were many preceding Jesus who used miracles and performed miracles as a
matter of demonstration of their claims, t'e find this about the miracles performed
by Jesus; that not one of them was performed for the sake of proving His position.
He did not make demonstrations, as I have said before, under challenge cr bccause

of challenge in order to provo His power or His connoction with any Divine principle
or law. He performed His miracles for tho sake of quietly assisting others, assist
ing suffering mankind; but those who -performed miracles beforo Him in tho preceding
agos did not perform thom with tho same notive. They did it, as v/e shall soo, to
demonstrate special divinity or to show that they wore worthy of being listened
to or followed.
One of tho first things vro notice in connection with the performance
of miraclos, as sot forth in the Bible, is tho story that wo road in the eighth chap
ter of the Acts of tho Apostles, which informs us that v.rhen Philip wont into Samaria,
"to preach Christ unto them1
,' ho found thoro "a certain man called Simon, which beforotine in the same city used sorcery", and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving
out that ho himself was some great one.
To whom they all gave hoed, from the least
to tho greatest, saying: This man is the great pov.or of God."
Simon travelled about preaching, and made many proselytes. He profcssod to bo The
VJisdon of God," fTho Word of Gcd1, fThe Paraclete, or Comforter, The Image of the
Eternal Father, manifested in the f l e s h , and his followers claimed that he v/as The
First Born of the Supreme. All of those are titles which, in after years, wero
applied to Jesus Christ. His followers had a gospel called lTho Four Corners of
the Vorld.*
In the time of Jesus and Simon Llagus it v;as almost universally believed that man
could foretell events, euro diseases, and obtain control over tho forces of nature,
by tho aid of s p irits , if they knew how to invoke then.
It v/as Simon s proficiency
in this occult science which gained him tho surname of Magus, or Magician.
Simon went into Rome, where he gave himself out to be an incarnate Spirit of God ,
Ke became a favorite with tho Br.poror Claudius, and afterward with Nero. His
Christian, opponents did not deny the miracles attributed to him, but said they were
done through tho agency of evil spirits, which v/as a common opinion among the
Fathers.
They claimed that every magician had an attendant evil spirit, who came
when summoned, obeyed his commands, and taught him ceremonies and forms of words,
by which he was able to do supernatural things.
In this way they were accustomed
to account for a ll the miracles performed by Gentiles and heretics.
Miracles were not uncommon things among the Jews before and during the time of Jesus
Christ. Casting out devils v/as an everyday occurrence, and miracles frequently
happened to confirm the sayings of Rabbis. One criod out, when his opinion was
disputed, May this tree prove that I .am right I And forthwith the tree v/as torn
up by the roots, and hurled a hundred ells o ff.
But his opponents declared that a
tree could prove nothing,
Hay this stream, then, witness for m e! cried E lie za r ,
and at once it flowed the opposite way.
Josephus, the Jewish Historian, tells us that King Solomon was export in casting
out devils v/ho had taken possession of the body of mortals. This gift v/as also
possessed by many Jews throughout different ages.
He (Josephus) rolates that he
saw one of his own countrymen (Eleazer) casting cut devils, in the presence of a
vast multitude.
So v/e could go on through the past and a oe where all these great men that we have
referred to in previous lectures, who were born and attributed with much of tho same
good that Jesus had, had performed miraclos, referring especially to Horus, Cyrus,
Zoroaster, ar.d the hosts of others who procoded these# Even Buddha v/as credited
with performing miracles.
In that land and country where the people expccted these
miraculous demonstrations as jor.ething that would accompany great power and Sonship
Jesus had to contend with thoir expectations. Ho had to go on His way preaching
and doing at the same time.

(5)
I am going to tako a few of tho miracles and comnont on thorn.
I am going to read
then principally from St. Matthew; starting with the 8th chapter of St. Matthew,
5th verso, we read of the beginning of his work after ho loft this shore and pro
ceeded on his way. First let me tell you that I am reading from a newer trans
lation of the New Testament, one by Janos Moffatt, whose translation of tho New
Testament is interesting because it loaves out a groat many forms of words that are
not modern and difficult to undorstand.
It is a translation into modern English
without changing in any way the real cssonco and real facts contained in the writing?
It is not an attempt at interpretation, sticking strictly to Orthodox interpretation,
but merely using a modern vocabulary. (The reader should now road from a standard
Bible the various passages referred to throughout this lecture.
Start by reading
the 8th chapter of St. Matthow, 5th verse). V7c see in this case that a Captain
c&nc to Him and said
servant is sick at home. Please say the word and cure him.
Jesus said "I w ill come to him" and tho Captain said at once "ify- home is not worthy
of your coning.
I an a nan of authority; I have soldiers under mo. All you have got
to say is that you want my servant here and I w ill send for him.
I have servants to
obey my slightest command.
I can have anything I want and they must obey no under
the Roman lav:, but I am coming to you instead of commanding you to como to me.
I
am asking you to do something for this servant."
Jesus was surprised at this great
faith on the part of this Captain, that with his right to believe that the Roman
law and Roman power included everything he s till had faith in a stranger and in the
Messenger of Cod being able to heal.
So we see that Jesus said to him "Go, as you
have had faith, your prayer is granted." /aid the servant was cured at that very
hour. The cemmenator says that all through the ministry of the life of Jesus they
found that when Jesus said prophetically "The person is cured, w ell, healed" that
when they got to the place they found tho person was well and the cure had come at
just about the hour when Jesus made the statement.
It seemed to be that whenever
Ho raised his hand and said "The cure is made" it was dene at that moment.
We go on tc the next instance, in the ninth chapter of St. Matthew, first verse.
(Read it) You see in this case this paralyzed man was about to be cured by Jesus
saying rise and walk. He preceded that statement by saying "Your sins are forgiven"
and this was the incident that brought about the questioning on tho part of those
listening and watching.
They could understand that Jesus night be able to do cer
tain things, but Ho seemed, in this instance, to be going boyond His authority in
forgiving sins and at tho same time wiping away disease by merely making a statement.
To go on tc the next instance, St. Matthew 9th chapter, 18th verse.
(Read it) Do
you note here that when Jesus, with his great knowledge (and wo must admit that he
seldom made a mistake if v/c arc going to believe the Gospels at a l l ) , said this is
so and that is so and made a prophetic statement according to the Gospels, each
tire it was verified.
YJe have no reason to think this an exception.
He said to
the crowd out there - stop your din and noise, your wailing and banging of cymbals
and all that which they were doing outside the house where the death had occurred.
He said to them "Be off with you; the girl is not dead, but asleep I"
They laughed
at him, but after the crowd had been put out he went in and took her hand and the
girl rose up. So you see this was net a miracle of raising the dead, but a mix aclo
of bringing back waking consciousness in a person in a coma or in a trance or some
unconscious state. He went in and took hold of the g i r l s hand and she rose up.
But it v/as looked upon as a miracle.
I have no doubt the crowd outside, including
this o fficial who came to him and said n!.'y daughter is dead", all believed that the
girl v/as dead and that Jesus had raised someone from the dead.
Such a report wculd
travel like wildfire and was probably the fir s t little knot in the rope that was to
tic Jesus to the cross later on.
Raising the dead was a serious thing in the minds
of those who were afraid of the coming of a great Master.

The 27th verse of the sane chapter of Matthew.

(Read it)
Is not this typical of
when somebody w ill te ll something to another person and say "this is confidential;
do not tell it to any one e ls e * You are challenging them to tell as much as they
possibly can to anyone they meet.
That is not what Jesus v/as doing. He meant
that He did not want thbm to build up, so early in His ministry, a reputation for
Kim that might be difficult to maintain.
Do you know what happens to a great many
ministers and clergymen and rabbis and priests who have hardly won the battle when
they f a ll from grace and get into disgrace in newspaper publications?
It is be
cause some in the flock have been building a reputation around that poor man and
raising him up to heights no man could maintain, and sooner or later there comes
a flo p. Y/hen he falls they are ready to point their fingers at him with scorn.
Now we turn to the 32nd verse of the same chapter, where the dumb man was brought
to Him and when the demon had been cast out the dumb man spoke.
(Read it)
It
does not say what Jesus did in this particular instance but ho cast out a demon.
That does not mean anything in particular. When we read in the Christian Gospels
that Jesus cast out demons it moans that in their b e lie f in those days when any
thing wont wrong, or any was i l l , or had some impediment, something abnormal about
them, it vra.s due to the possession or obsession of some demon, some evil spirit.
We had the same things hundreds of years later right here in our own country with
our Indian tribes.
Each tribe had a medicine-man and when some one was ill and
their herbal extracts would not help, they believed by tho stubbornness of the case,
or it may have been something abnormal, that the poor sick one was obsessed by evil
spirits and then the medicine-man would practice certain incantations while others
would dance around with their terrible noises and drive the spirit out.
Jesus had
that same thing to contend w ith.
But He does not mean that we should believe that
there was such a thing as demons possessing them in a really physical or psychic
sense.
He merely attempted to demonstrate in terms of ancient beliefs that there
was some condition about the sick person that might be removed by suggestion, by
proper thinking, by the exercise of divine power.
It docs not mean that a real
demon of any particular form was in possession of the person.
Next we read the 12th chapter of St. Matthew, 9th verse.
(Read it)
This was not
a caSe of being possessed of an evil sp irit.
This was a real physical condition,
a withered hand, and we presume it meant withered in the same sense that the term
is used to-day.
The translator would not have used this word withered-sunless the
original Greek word or Hebrew word was of such a nature as to indicate the real
condition.
The great epidemic of infantile paralysis that spread over this
country a number of years ago manifests itself to-day and we see some adults or a
young man or young woman with withered limbs, withered legs or arms, who were
afflicted witli that disease.
We know that a withered hand is something like the
bone or sicelet on of the hand with a little skin stretched over it and with tho
bones small inside. Yet according to this statement this man was asked to stretch
out his hand and with merely a word, possibly a touch (nothing is said about the
touch but that does not mean; that He did not t^ke hold cf the hand), the hand was
restored.
The Pharisees were trying to make out that Ho had no right to do such a
thing on the Sabbath, but they had no answer to His question about the sheep.
He
had them beaten in tho argument but they did not lose any time; they went on and
pressed their charge against Kim, that He was going about healing and demonstrating
as He should not have done.
The 22nd verse of the same Chapter of St. Matthew, is our next miracle.
(This
verse should be read).
This argument settled their contentions right there.

Next is the 17th chapter of St. Matthew, 14th verse.

(Read it)
I want to call yoi
attention to something here.
This is almost in the middle of St, Matthew*
It is
not at the close of the Gospel, it is not at the end of Jesus 1 ministry by any
means. Yet noticc what He said when they brought this man to Him and said "Sec if
you can make a cure in this case ." He said "How long must I s t ill be with you?"
Do you know what that means? It means that this little incident must have happens
after two or three years of hard struggle and contention with the doubters and
sceptics.
Jesus was already becoming tired of trying to convinoe them of what He
had to say. You may think by its location in the Book and by its connection with
His life generally that this happened early in His career. Yet we could hardly
believe that after one or two years in the ministry Jesus would be talking that
way.
No man who is trying to prove anything, ospecially religious teachings or
higher teachings of any kind, begins to lose faith until after many years of
struggling with the attitude of the multitude.
The world to-day w ill accopt some
thing and tomorrow flop over to the other side of the street because some one waves
his hand and" says "7Jhy not hear mo? I have another story to tell that ic different
from what he is telling you." So it v/as in the time of Jesus.
This same crowd
that said "Crown Him" one day the next day said "Crucify Him" because some one
turned their thoughts away. Here we begin to .see the breaking of His s p irit, that
broken spirit where He began to realise that He had a great work to accomplish and
it seemed an inpossible task.
One more citation is that in he 20th chapter of St. Matthew, 30th verse.(Read it)
Here we have another instance where He simply touched the eyes and the person v/as
instantly cured.
In just these few cases we see the problem that confronted this great Han in the
very start of His career. We see her;; d iffic u lt it was for Hin to meet the con
ditions.
I want to read you just a few words of His teachings before we close,
that you may think about them.
Before He began his miracles, before He began His
teachings, we fin d that right after He was baptized He was terripted. When He was
led into the desert by the spirit to be tempted by the devil He began to reveal
right there His knowledge of njystical principles and I want you to get the
mystical ideas in these statements that Ho used. You know there is just as much
of a devil waiting outside our door to accoi^any you to the street corner or your
automobile as there ever was, and it does not take Billy Sunday to describe him.
You w ill easily recognize him. You think it is a small devil that you can conquer
and get rid of.
Jesus recognised this temptation cf the world and H6 made to the
devil, this wonderful mystical statement, one of the first things recorded in His
teachings - 4th verse of the 5th chapter of St-. Matthew.
(Read f t ) .
Therein we can find strength and support and divine wisdom. 10th verse of the same
chapter.
(Read i t ) .
In the Rosicrucian rituals we have a statement that says
"Choose ye your way into light or darknoss, as ye cross the Threshold." And that
is what you have had sometime in your life to choose - whether you are going to
worship God or Satan; whether you are going on in darkness or into light.
You can
only worship, you can only be devout, you can only be sincere with one princip le,
one ideal at a t in e , only wal-k progressively and forward on one path at a time.
You cannot go both ways. You cannot stand s t il l .
Hero we have it mystically said
that "You must worship the Lord Thy God and serve Him a lo n e." A few minutes after
that He spoke again, saying "p.epent, the Reign of heaven is near" - From that day
He began to preach and the keynote v/as "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is n ear."
It is just as near for us at this moment as it v/as for any one then.
The middle
chapter of St. Matthew is a wonderful mystical chapter; verses 14, 20 , 22, 23, 29,
30, 38, to the 43d.
(Read them) Do you notice how wonderful these are? They tell
you what to do.
They do not follow some of the modern statements that say if there

Is something wrong about your body, something wrong in your l if e , sit down and
concentrate and say it is not so; it is only imagination; thorc is nothing wrong.
Th&t is not so.
Git rid of the thing that is wrong. Do not deny its existence.
Do not dony there is anything wrong.
That is not remedying it.
If it is a
thought you may remove it that way; if a matorial thing it is to be removed accord
ing to the material laws.
These were all inystical teachings and I am going to stop right hero and ask you to
go on and read tho rest of St. Matthew with the statements there of Jesus 1 teach
ings.
In our next lecture we w ill comment on thom and their mystipal meaning and
you w ill see that Jesus was teaching just what the1 Christian churches in most
cases are attempting to picture to you to-day, but v/o want to picture them to you
from their nystical meaning and show you that they are not sectarian. The true
Christian religion is not a matter of churchonity, not- a matter of denomination,
of sectarianism, but profound truths which Jesus uttered, which came to Him from
God; God s truths in Jesus;
God s revelations in Jesus.
End of Lesson N-o. F-ivo.
H. Spencer Lewis,
Imp orator, AMORC.

THE MYSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

Sixth Locturo

Thoso vrho wore w illing to accopt tho coming of tho Messiah and tho prcsonce of a
Messiah in their country had certain standards by which to judge a Messiah, a great
Teacher, and naturally, with all their faith in tho possibility of a Mossiah and
with their gretit hope that tho Mossiah would como and had come, they wore careful
enough, a great many of thorn, to apply a tost to this man and soe if He measured
up to tho standard that they had in thoir consciousness. Wo find that tho Master
Jesus was absolutely indifferont to the tests and, as I said bofore, Ho never ac
cepted a challengo and never made a demonstration of His groat powers because of a
challonge, but He must have realised, as wo will realizo in analyzing His work,
that tho performing of miracles was but a secondary thing in His groat mission.
As vre kn^w, Ho did not perform miracles to demonstrate His power. Ho wanted them
to believe in Him and His messago independent of any demonstrations, and his dem
onstrations, as wo analyze them in tho records, wore made upon roquest, without
pomp or ceromony, often away from the multitude and whoro but a few knew about
them* They were not demonstrations that accompanied His daily work.
If wo take
all of the recorded demonstrations and miracles and scatter thorn throughout the
years of His ministry we shall find that Ho performed one miracle a week throughout
that period. Yet He was a very busy nan.
He must have been ortremoly activc in
going about, if we are to believe anything at all of tho stories told of Him and
the number of cities that He was in during any given month or part of tho year;
back and forth over the h ills , along the stony, dusty roads, tired and thirsty,
hungry and sad. He stopped at times to commune and pray and laugh and feel glad,
and that is the way He spent His l if e ; teaching and demonstrating, but always
proving the Messiahship.
We have examined His miracles superficially to see the nature of them and under
what circumstances they were performed.
Let us now look at his teachings a little
more closely. We note that His greatest work was in teaching preaching you may
call it , but I am sure He would have called it teaching, because teaching was not
an attempt to explain His miracles any more than His miracles were an attempt to
explain His teachings. His teachings were along entirely differont lines, except
in a few instances, and those who v/erc doubting Him, those who were testing Him,
cortainly were more influenced by Eis teachings and the life He led them by the
miracles that He performed.
That, after a l l , is tho test that we should apply in
this class in trying to dotormine whether or not we should look'upon Jesus as a
groat man, a Leader or a Messiah the Messiah. We should soe whether this man that
moved among men for a brief period of time, as compared to all eternity, was just a
miracle-worker, like unto a great many others that had preceded Him, or whethor
after all He was the Messenger of God, with enlightenment, with knowledge, with
rare wisdom.
Remember that Jesus 1 work proves a very ancient law or maxim, one we know to-day;
that when persons are in such" a fin ancial, physical, moral, ethical, social state
that they need uplifting , need helping, the greatest benefit we can give them is
not to take them and assume their burden f :r the moment, share their responsibili
ties and by virtue of our own power lift them up, but rather help them to l if t
themselves. Tho best system of charity to-day that must manifest itself along
financial lines is not that form where you give, promiscuously, freely, some money
to a person who is in need, but that form of charity where you take the person who
must have money (and have it not only in this one instance but hereafter) and help
him to earn what he needs, to acquiro it in the propor -'ray, so that he is free
from dependence upon charity and at the same time a producer in exchange for what
he receives.
That is true in regard to persons who are i l l .
Wn
4-v.n+-

Jesus did our somo instantly, He told most of them how to keep free from pain and
suffering.
He might have spent His lifo healing evory one who was i l l , and perhaps
finished His work each year just in time to be able to start all over with the first
onos and do tho same work over again.
To take a person that is ill and perhaps ill
through ignorance, bccauso of violation of the natural laws, and simply euro without
making him understand why he bocame i l l and how to avoid it :.gain, is only leaving
him in darkness, and he may fall into the same error again and you would havo to
ro-hoal him over and over.
So wo find that Jesus taught them how to live clcanly
that they might havo tho best health, casting out error, physical sin and suffering,
and becoming pure in body as well as in heart and mind and soul. 77c find that He
told them how to evolve to higher things in life instead of just forcing them up by
the groat power that He might have used, and that is typical of the mystical maxim
or maxim of mystery; that through evolution and not through revolution arc the great
changes made in the lives of mankind.
J.fysticism points out the fact that no groat change that was ever started through
revolution remained. Only when evolution sets in and takes hold of things does it
become a permanent and lasting fact.
Revolution may throw the tide of situations
and conditions in the lives of persons or nation over night but it needs only a
reacting revolution or revolution of reaction to swing it back again.
But a change
that comes through evolution is permanently fixed, because it is constantly evolving
in one direction and can never retrograde.
So we find that Jesus in His teaching was a teacher of evolution self-evolution
in the lives of the people individually and therefore in their lives collectively as
a nation. Ee taught them by proper liv in g , proper thinking, proper attunement, how
they might change not only their -own immediate environment, as far as their homes
were concerned, their intimate relations with their fam ilies, but how in communities
and nations and in fact the whole world a change would gradually come about.
Is
there any one to-day who is really sane, and at the same time unbiased and f a ir , v/ho
cannot say that Christianity or the early Christian doctrines or tho foundation laid
in the Christian period has not actod as a system of evolution in the gradual im
provement of the world? Y/herever you nay go in your travels around the world, evon
in India, in the darkest parts of A frica, among tho most ignorant of Pagans and socalled Heathens, you w ill find that some principles of Christianity have touched or
affected S"ome phase of tho existence of the peoples, unless you find a place wher
no man, no living thing is beyond the first and early stages of primitive civili
zation. But i f any chango has come at all you w ill find it is for the better ana
that it can be traced to somo of the Christian doctrines not ne-eessarily through
the Christian church.
One of the men who went down into Africa many, many years
ago Stanley and had to be found there v/hen he was lost, did as much in chang
ing the c ivilization of the peoples there as any Christian missionary could ever do
in any such land, and yet Stanley was not necessarily a religious man; not a
missionary of tho Christian church.
He did not go there equipped with Bibles and
song books; he did not go with tho intention of trying to change c ivilizatio n.
But
he made the acquaintance of people and won their faith, their respect. They found
that besides this man being mysterious in complexion that he v/as mysterious in
habits.
He did not shoot every one on the suspicion that they wore enemies. He waited to
see if some other attitude might not manifest. IVhon he gave them things and they
gave him things they found that he made no miscount, no miscalculation, had not
under-weighed in measuring out to them. He trusted them and left his things un
locked. Vfhen he caught some of thom taking things instead of shooting or punishing
he tried to. make them understand.
They came gradually to look upon him as most

aysterious and yet a great revealer of laws that they had nover understood. To-day
there are tribes in Africa who point with great respect to the fact that Stanley was
the man that taught them something.
It can bo traced to Christian influence but not
necessarily to Christian church influence.
Truly a Jow going down into Africa would
have acted in the same way as Stanley did.
At least he would have had the same prin
ciples and demonstrated them in the same way.
But he, too, an Orthodox Jew, whoever
he may have been, would have been practicing Christian principles. Those that Christ
taught and that have been so wonderful in the evolving of civilization are the
principles that existed long before Christ came to make them so plain.
Some of the early fathers, oven the Archbishop of Canterbury of England, havo been
asked the question over and over again:
"Do you mean to say that all the multitudes
of men and women who lived in the ages preceding the birth of Christianity are con
demned to nell and eternal damnation because God' did not see fit to bring to them
the illumination that Jesus brought?" These great bishops and Archbishops, these
groat theologicans, havo admitted that that is not sound roasoning.
All of those
who lived before the time of Christ had, through other messengers, through other
avatars, through other illuminated ones, learned tho Christian doctrines, and those
who to the best of their ability in every possible way lived up to those doctrines
wore entitled to tho same salvation, same favor by grace, as those vrho followed in
the footsteps of tho Master Jesus after His coining.
So I say again that Christian
principles, net necessarily Christian church creeds and doctrines, not necessarily
churchanity, not necessarily theology, but the sound principles of Christelogy
these have beer, the saving things through all periods of c iv iliza tio n .
And so in
the time of Jesus the doubters, the sceptics, listened to hear what the great man
had to say. There would bo some here and there on the outskirts of the crowd, with
arms linked, whispering together and sayina
g "Can Ho be the great Messiah? Can He
be by warrant of tho synogogue or the Temple? Can He be the son of David? Can He
be of the great House? Lot us listen to what He ways, hear His arguments and sec
if He speaks the words of Jehovah".
Now let us listen and see what He said in those days tc those people, the people who
wanted to"laiow just what He says to us to-day through these same recorded words for
those who want to know about the groat teachings.
I w ill read first from the 6th chapter of St.. Matthew.
(Read i t ) .
Here He was
laying the foundation for argument in that little talk He made on one occasion. He
was speaking of helping, laying down one of the first fundamental principles of the
evolutionary process.
"Take caro not to practice your charity before men in order to be noticed'1. The
greatest help you can give to anyone is to take them aside and in confidence and
fa it h and hope and understanding givo them the advice and help they need. Do that
without show.
Do not humiliate the ono you are helping by making him the walking
or standing advertisement of your interest.
Let him think you arc just as happy
to keep his sorrows and grievances and tribulations away from the world as he is,
that you arc just as anxious to protoct his interests as ho is.
That is the mystical
way of approaching it. We see that Jesus was taking that into consideration.
Next from the 7th chapter (first to 20th verso) of St. Matthew.
(Read it) You
notice there the ethical reasoning and logic that had nothing to do with religion
from a theological point of view.
It was a lav/ and system that He was giving to
them that would enable them to evolve the first step of self-evolution, selfexamination, self-perfection.
In all forms of mysticism, whether Rosicrucian or
not, the candidate in initiation is brought to the point of self-analysis where he
begins to understand what is wrong with him and weak with himself before he has
opportunity to notice all the errors in other men and women.

"Do not givo dogs what is sacred and do not throw poarls before swino. ' 1 (Verso,s 6
to 8 ) , You sco ho followod up this examination and suggestion with tho further sug
gestion that if you sought and asked for things you night have them. Undoubtedly
tho first things we-discover, when wo bogin to analyze oursolvos are our doficiencies as wo 1 1 as our possessions of ovil and good. VIo find out how many things
about us aro good and bad and then discover how many qualitios, conditions and
elements wo have not.
In ordor to got rid of the bad ones and get in some more
good onos we have to seek God and pray to God.
Josus was trying to show here that
?.t was through asking, through expressing tho dosiro, which is anothor one of .tho
ancient rustical principles that He was giving to thoso people.
By expressing tho
desire the reward would come.
That is the way He taught His Disciples to pray.
9th vorso to 11th.
Hero ho is following up his suggestions about the value of
asking and that the Father in Heaven (wc do not know whcthor that is tho preciso
term that Josus used; if it was, properly translated Father in Heaven or tho Father
in tho Cosmic or the Cosmo, but at any rate tho idea was tho Father of a l l , the
Father that was above who supplied all needs) would givo to all who askod and would
f i l l their needs.
12th verse.
After he gave them a chance to think and they found thero was a law of
compensation, as you gave so would you receive, as you wished or thought of others
so they would think of you, He began to picturo tho Path. You remember that Josus
often was referred to as tho "iVay", oven in the Christian doctrines to-day, and He
Kimsolf said " I am tho Way, I am the Light, I am the Path".
It is a very old,
mystical allegory, symbol, metaphor. Listen how He presented it on this occasion:
(13th and 14th verses.
Road it) V.ro havo hoard it said sometimes that that is mis
understood; that the idea that the Christian path, hopeful and "Cheering, is narrow,
is discouraging to -those who would go upon it ; that if it is narrow it is probably
close and joyless; give me the wide-opon road that is full of sunshine and flowers
and grass.
Listen!
The real path upon which you would walk to progress, to any
worthy goal, need not bo wido. Your journey w ill be so stradght, so definite, in
such a progressive walk to a definite goal that it need not be a wide road at a l l ,
and the road to goodness, to health, to joy and real happiness need only be just
wide enough for you and those v/ho arc with you, behind you and in front of you.
For after all the real path to the greatest power and success and happines,s does
not need all of the allurements, all of the architectural beautios, all of the
hedges and trees, rivers and canals.
And they aro temptations that man puts into
tho material paths of life to make them tempting.
"The road that leads to life is
both narrow and close . 11
Verses 15 to 18.
(Read it)
Lot mo say again, as I havo said over and over, the
Rosicrucians eliminate all references to sox and sex teachings.
It is not because
we aro fanatic on that subject, not bccause we do not know any interesting facts in
regard to sex relations, sox functionings, sex nature, that would bo of interest
to married persons and to young porsons if properly explained.
The Rosicrucians
know that but they eliminate it from tho teachings because it is not so necessary
in tho work that it is worth the risk thoy have to take in dealing with it.
We are
criticized for that,
A clergyman v/ho is a great student of mysticism, when askod
to join our Order, said that he did not want to join our organization because ho
found that "Rosicrucians aro extremists and fanatic in their viewpoint regarding
sex teachings; they state in throe or four places that they do not teach those
things and carcfully, guardedly, purposely avoid any reference to sex teachings,
which shows that thoy are fanatical on that subjcct, just as those v/ho ovcr-teach
it are fanatical in that way. Nov/ there is nothing wrong with sex teachings that
thoy must bo let alone; it is essential and should bo a part of all teachings.
Sex
is a subjoct of nature and any system of teaching, to be conplete, should include
i t . That is what tho clergyman said. You and I know that if any or.o really wants

to know about sox matters they can go to thoir family physioian and find out without
discussing it in a mixed meeting and having it illustrated.
Here is the very thing that Jesus was r of erring to. The fruit of all those sex
movements has boon disgrace, sorrow, tears.
In the years that I havo boon connected
with tho Hosicrucian Order I have seen at least three hundred such cases of Foderu.1
investigation, nationwide disgrace, bocauso some woman or man who boasted that in
thirty-five years they had run the entire gamut of worldly experiences and dosirod
to teach about i t .
And Jesus was warning them when He said "Beware of false prophots;
they come to you with tho garb of sheep but at heart they are ravenous wolves, e t c ."
I would like all of you to accept from me as a sort of command that whorovor.'you
find this sex matter parading itsolf in tho garb of sex-hygiene or evolutionary
ideas that will lead to purification of tho race, if you find out who is at the head
of the thing you w ill find that it is some one who cannot stand a close examination,
or an eminent physician who means good, or some publisher of filth y books that they
want to sell to young people.
It is generally one of these three in every case in
the last twenty-five years.
I would charge you to take it upon yourselves to help
fight in this community, as we should in ovory part of the United States, the sort
of philosophy that these false prophots are trying to promulgate along lines that
civilization abandoned centuries ago.
Sex worship was at one time the predominating
form of worship.
It was so low down in the scale that it even preceded fire worship,
stone worship, hero worship, pagan worship.
It was the lowest form of worship. VIhy
should wo go back? Why should we revive it? Why should modern civilization take up
this subject again?
It is simply digging up a dying and rotten tree by its roots and
sticking the dying limbs down into the ground and turning the p artially dead roots
upward and calling it a revived tree.
There w ill be no good fruit on it if it ever
livos.
Jesus may have referred to this thing because sex worship was still to be
found in some places in the Holy Land in His time, but I do not believe that in tho
whole of tho Orient in tho days of Jesus there were as many devoting thoir daily
thoughts to the lowest part of their animal natures as you w ill find in America to
day. That is an awful thing to say but any one in the position I am in knows that
it is true and it is something that wo should be ashamed of.
10th chapter of St. Matthew, first verse.
(Road i t ).
I have told you that Jesus'
system was a system of self-evolution, that He had the right idoa of charity; to
help every one help themselves.
He did not just go about performing miracles.
If
we are to believe that Jesus performed a single miracle, as recorded iir the Bible,
there is nothing in the world to prevent us from believing that Jesus could have
stood up on tho Mount of Olive "(or any other mountain) and said "God, I find so many
i l l , so many sick in this land I want to heal them all at once, so be with me, God,
while I raise my hand and say All are healed1, 'A ll the dead a r is e 1 , 'A ll be w e l l '.
"This would not havo been any more of a miracle than the other m iracles, but we fin d
that He did not do any such thing.
He did not roach one-tenth of those He could
have reached from His own healing, but He started to teach His Disciples how thoy
could help and instruct others how to help themselves.
He started tho system of
self-help, self-evolution.
Listen to the extracts He gave them and sco how wonder
ful they are.
5th verse of the same chapter.
(Read i t ).
VJhy did He say "Do not
go among the Gentiles"?
I told you that He was born in the country where tho Gentilos were and that He was one of them.
They woro a highly evolved class of persons.
They had adopted the Jewish customs but were of Gentile b eliefs.
On the other hand,
the majority of tho Jews were highly educated and living a wonderful life but there
was a great class of the Host of Israel who had become sceptics, doubters of the
existence of a God, doubters of everything good and progressive.
They wore living
immoral, unclean, unhealthy lives, so Jesus told His Disciples "Do not go among the
Gentiles.
I oan take care of them.
They arc partly on tho path, but rather make

your way to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. And preach as you go, tell men
11 The Kingdom of Heaven is n e a r *." Ho meant by that not that the world was coming
to an end, but a great step in tho .evolution of civilizatio n, in the evolutionary
process that was going to bring the principles of the Kingdom, of Heaven upon earth;
the great change was at hand and if they wanted to get into the progress of c iv ili
zation th^v had the opportunity now or be for over lost by remaining in tho rear,

8th to the 11th verses of the same chapter.

(Read i t ).
Give as you would receive.
Give, because you have not paid for anything you have, is an old nystical law. There
are any number or organizations in the country to-day, including the sex movements,
that offer ycu all kinds of short, quick, oasT, royal roads to power and wisdom and
upliftment, but always the hand is our for great prices and certainly some expenses
must be incurred.
A woman wrote in and said she wanted to join our organization but could not see why
there must be a registration fee of $ 5 ,
".Thy cannot you give every one this know
ledge free without any cost?"
I found she had answered an advertisement that w had
placed in the Red Book magazine, a conservative, dignified statement of Rosicrucianism being available to the truly sincere seeker.
That advertisement cost $175;
only about thirty persons answered it and so theso thirty namos cost us about $5
apiece to begin with.
The moment this woman wrote, it had cost $5 to let her know
what the work was. Who was going to pay that $5? The printing must be paid, as
well as the postage, and every one connected with the operation.
That is what
Jesus meant when He said "The workman deserves his rations".
That is not paying.
There are some listening to this talk who say that these instructions could not be
paid for with 315 or $25.
Some in the membership who have been in two years and
paid in perhaps $50 in that time say that the money does not begin to pay for what
they are receiving and they know it.
It is not paying for what they receive; it is
paying for helping the organization to reach others. Every time a member joins,
his registration fee offsets the cost of reaching others with the same kind of
announcement.
That makes it a continuous chain and keeps the great work going on.
That is the way to look at it.
In the fin al statement here we find some other interesting facts:
10th chapter St.
Matthew, 12th verse.
(Read i t ) .
You know that the laws of all lands excuse a man
for shooting another v/ho breaks into his homo. You know you are upheld in your
right, your determination to protect your home.
Manfs home is his castle. He
should maintain inviolate the integrity of the home. The outstanding ^element of
human nature is self-preservation.
But do you ever do anything more than pay the
rent or provide the material things in your hone? Did you over do-anything toward
making home your home a-sacred place? Every time you cross the threshold and
go out in the morning and come in at night it is really a great joy to find the
home s t ill there.
In going and coming you are passing to and from a most sacred
institution a most holy place, a divine sanctum in every sense.
I want to leave this thought with you as the fin a l closing thought for the night.
You find in this statement of Jesus not a religious practice, not some peculiar
theological doctrine at a l l , not even an ethical principle.
It is a moral prin
ciple of the heart, of the Christian principle, without being sectarian, that of
making the home a sacred place and saluting it , paying your respects to it , thank
ing God when you come home at night that you can find it as you left it; asking
God in the morning when you leave that Ho w ill guide and guard the loved onos left
there.
If you w ill do this you w ill attune yourself to your home and to those in
it.
And v/hen you come home to this place that you have blessed for the day, there
its r^mething different about it that you never noticed before.
Let us make our
homes real Teqples of worship, joy and Peace.
This w ill bring us closer to God and
to each other,

End Qf Lesson Number Six.

THE MYSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

SEVENTH LECTURE
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Let us have ten questions from -those proo^nt, and I w ill answer each question as it
is asked* Proceed;
No, I .

//here in the Bible do ire find that Jesus was the baby of th family?

You won!t find it in the present Christian Bible and I do not knov.' just how you a,;ill
find it in any popular Bible.
Despite the statements so broadly made about the
Bible being the Word of God, unchanged and unaltered even while B illy Sunday may
say this from his platform he knows very well that in many parts of this world the
high Councillors of various churches are ro-tranolating and revicing the Bible and
that y/o have in the libraries of the world to-day, espocially in the old country,
nineteen versions of the Christian Bible that have at d iffe re n t ages been accepted
as authentic. Even the Guttenberg 3ible is different from what we have to-dn.y.
There are many diverse and peculiar statements made in the so different editions and
so vf% cannot depend upon the precise words in any one of our Bibles o** editions or
translations or versions.
Wo find that some of the Bibles referred to Jesus as
having been the last of seven children, whereas another translation gives it as
though he was the first of the seven.
It seems that in translating from the .ancient
languages in many places it is difficult to t e ll by the words used which is right.
It is difficult to te ll whether Jesus was one or the other so opinion has stepped
in, in the case of some translators, and in the ease of the King James version a
group of translators working together voted which way it should be, which v/as the
concensus of opinion., and it was established in the version that he was the? fir s t .
In other w ritings, in other languages than English, the reverse is indicated.
So
we have no proof ono way or the other.
The only important point is that the
average reader of the Bible is not aware of the fact that Jesus had a number of
brothers and sisters.
Some challenge me to prove that that statement is anywhere
in the Bible.
I an surprised at that.
But I found that Sunday School Children did
not believe that Mary had any other children than the child Jesus,
That seemed to
be the common opinion.
I say again that any system of teaching in regard to the
l if e of Jesus that so seldom speaks of the human, personal home life and intimate
parts of His life that the average student of Sunday School and church is not
familiar with the fact that Jesus was one of seven children, is not a good system.
It is all due to an attempt to make us think He was created alone f solely unique,
in the life of Mary, and there was no other like Him in any sense, n~t even by
blood relationship.
In trying to impress that upon us the facts of his family
relations wore suppressed.
That is not fa ir .
The important point is that Jesus
was one of seven and that He had many interesting family experiences, some of which
are recorded in the Bible; among them being disagreements and arguments with his
brothers, and the fact that His m.ther and father had difficulty in understanding
his peculiar viewpoints and strange actions at times.
So there is considerable
light thrown upon Jesus as a man.
No. 2.

Do you think that so many different versions of the Bible are helpful?

Very, if we can be sure that each one is bettor than the last and not worse.
That
is a thing that is d iffic u lt , of course.
I believe that one of the modern versions
that gives the 3 iblc in every day language such as we uso to-day, eliminating the
Thee and Thou and other words of that kind, serves a great purpose with children
and even adults, and I believe that our greater understanding of foreign languages
is making it possible for us to have a far better translation of the Bible.
For
instance, we fin d , taking one of the early statements in the Bible - l?In the be
ginning God etc. that in the Hebrew translation there is a peculiar word used
there for God that means, without any question (and tho greatest exports of languages
have agreod upon th is, oven church dignitaries) that "In the beginning Gods

(p lural) "crcated tho heavens" (plural) 'and oarth".

That being so wo have got to
fin d out v:hat was meant by tho plural Gods sinco there it is in black and white and
it is a word that could not bo accidontally used. Wo find many other things that
throv/ considerable light upon a proper understanding of tho words used.
Do you know that there is a place in tho Bible (and it appears in a ll of the
versions - you can read it in Rovelations) whore tho Master Jesus is called "the
A.rion?" Wo have always been told to consider the word "Amon" as a sort of bonedictloi
at tho ond of a prayer or a sort of ploa, being equivalent to "So mote it bo"", or
"Wo hope it shall bo? If that is what it moans how could you call Jesus the Amen?
Yet there it appears in all tho prcsont-day versions of the Bible in tho Book of
Revelations. Wo find it is not a Hebrew word but an Egyptian titlo meaning the
Avatar, the !$rstic Teacher, and that is whore the othor mystics of Egypt, called
Amenhotep, Amcnophis and Anen-Ra, came from. That is an instance whore tho modern
translation helps us not by changing tho word but by revealing its origin and
what it means.
You know that not many years ago, as timo goos, they discovered
that famous stone in Egypt called the Rosetta Stone.
I had the pleasure of putting
my hands upcn it this last summer.
It is very much lik e , to those interested in
language and history and the development of c ivilizatio n, a shrine, for I wont a
long way out of my way to got to the British Museum and put my hands on this famous
Stone, first bocause it was discovered in the ruins of Egypt whoro Rosicrucianism
started, and secondly because of the light that it has thrown upon ancient languages
and history,
I havo known persons to go around the world, or nearly so, to go to
the Rosetta Stono and say that they had seen it ond read i t .
This Stone was dug up
in the sand, unsuspocted in merit exccpt that they saw it was a piece of the blackost
stone they had over seen, large in its surface, highly polished on one side, rough
on tho other; on the polished side it had throo groups of w riting, writings in two
different forms of Egyptian and one of Greek.
Because it was a wonderful piece of
carved stone it was preserved and sent to Europe.
The greatest linguists in the
world worked on it until they discovered that it contained Egyptian Hiorcglyphics
and Greek characters and by translating the Greek they wore able to get at tho
secret alphabet of the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The Stone was cut in the second
century B.C. to preserve for tho future the secret cyphers which could not be read
until that Stone was discovered.
Then, by discovering the thought and getting at
the Egyptian alphabet, and the origin of thousands of words that tho Jews used and
that were used in Bible times, they were able to make a different understanding or
translation of many of the things that appear in the Christian Bible.
One of the
things referred to in the Jewish synagogues and temples is the altar, called the
Shekinah. We have it in our Lodges, a triangular stand in the center of the room.
It sounds like a Jewish word and was considered in a ll Encyclopedia^ and Dictienarios as a Jewish word for a holy altar of some kind, until the Rosetta Stone cair.c
into existence and through the religious hieroglyphics it appears that the word was
not Jewish but Egyptian, spelled Shokynah. We notice right away in the Shekynah tho
Egyptian root and wo can see that it could bo Egyptian; something no one had sus
pected. We found in the Egyptian Ternplcs it meant the presence o f the Lord, the
sole living God.
Therefore this Temple or altar called the Shekinah was always
kept carefully coverod and out of sight except during the high coremonies when it
was uncovered and revealed and saluted bccausc it was supposed to be the presence
of God in their mids~ during the convocation. From an adaptation of that came the
Ark of tho Covenant that was kept covered in the Jewish temples, preserved and only
unveiled at certain times.
This is another instanco of where the interpreting, in
the light of modern understanding of ancient languages, reveals another important
thing in connoction with the Bible.
It is true that reinterprotations of good
sound versions made by eminent authorities w ill give us the best information. V/hy

make translations of parts; some of tho writing is so faded and gone to pieces from
age nothing can over bo dono with it ,
Tho Christian Bible to-day, regardless of the
version, i f it is ono of tho standard versions usually sold as the Christian Bible,
is the result of several Conclavos hold in the fourth, fifth and sixth conturies, at
which time they decided as to what books would constitute the Bible and what would
not; which versions were right and which were not.
So you have only a version, no
matter what you buy.
If ono version is good and ],is served the to is reason to "think
That is all you can say in regard
that a more carefully made version may be better.
to interpretations or translations of the Bible.
(The sixth chapter of Mark speaks of four brothers and two sisters of Jesus in a way
to indicate that the four brothers were very well known, but that Jesus, being the
youngest, was not known.)
No. 3.

What is your interpretation of the Book of Revelations?

I can not say much about that and say it in any illuminating way because first of all
the Book of Revelations is more or less of a condensation of a very large manuscript.
It is' quite apparent to any one who studies the Book of Revelations that ho is deal
ing with an enormous book, one probably larger than the whole of the Christian Bible
to-day, including the Old and New Testaments, and that the Book of Revelations, as
we now have it, is condensed from ancient manuscripts, Without question if you ever
see any of the ancient Hebrew writings and Greek writings of a religious nature you
would see that there would be thirty or forty pages of manuscript around one thought.
They wrote volumes of their ideas, and condensation was the only way to present what
was in any one of their sacred books. But in the condensed Revelations a great deal
of symbolism was brought closely together, many allegories are brought there into
close relationship.
One way to tell it is to take each single thought and dwell upon
it, meditate upon it , until you have something eternal, an illuminating interpreta
tion of a Cosmic nature that helps you to understand it.
It is the most difficult
book of any in the Bible to understand. For that reason you cannot take it in its
brief form, and have it produce results in your mind without careful meditation.
That is why so many persons have taken some of the statements literally and want to
see how these things work out.
It is like trying to take the subject of the antiChrist or the Seven Horsemen or the other things referred to in the Bible and attempt
ing to interpret them literally.
You cannot do it with the Book cf Revelations.
It
it too mystical and too greatly inspired in its wisdom to be run through lightly.
No. 4.

What about the Lost Books of the Bible?

That is a misnomer.
There were no books.' lost.
It should be the Rejected Books of
the Bible, or the Suppressed Books. When Constantine called the great assembly of
Iviasters and Martyrs together, to say what should be the true Christian Bible, they
had before them, in this great Conclave of many hundreds of learned theologians,
thousands of pieces of mystical and spiritual w ritings, including all the present
books of the Bible and many others. They had 3218 religious books from which to
select.
Some preferred this; some preferred that.
After voting for many days upon
which books should constitute tho Bible of the Church, they finally sifted the manu
scripts down to a certain number of books that had a bearing upon ancient Jewish
religion and the Jewish teachings.
They divided them into the Old Testament and the
New Testament.
Then they proceeded to put them in order; which should be the first
book, which tho s econd, which the third, and so on.
When it came to the New Testa
ment, which should precede Matthew, Luke, Mark or John. Vfhen they were all
through they found that they had some books left over and these, while recognised,
says the report, as containing the teachings like unto the other books of the Bible,
were not necessary to church practice, church r itu al, church development, so they

wore laid asido; not condomnod* but merely rojectod from the present Christian B ib le .
Those are called the Books of tho Apocalypse. Within the last several hundrod y^ars
they have been included in the back of tho average Church Bible. They are also sold
separately*
The Church of England, tho Episcopal Church of tho United States, has
issued many copies of the Apocalypse containing these rejected books of tho Bib le in
separate form, with a profaco stating why thoy are published separately. Many pub
lishers who found that they have a groat bearing upon parts of the life of Jesus not
contained in the regular Bible, have been issuing and soiling them.
In order to make
the sale a little larger, and to make the book more appealing to those who might not
otherwise buy a Bible, they give it the title of "The Lost Books of the B ible".
They
never wore really lost.
I have several editions dated 1700 and 1800, some modern
ones.,, and fin d reference therein to these rejected books and find reference to them
in very many ancient manuscripts.
That great story of tho Seven Horsemen is taken
from one of these books. Wo find that they wore not lost books but merely rejected.
You will fin d them very interesting.
The one callod Hary" gives the boyhood l ife of
Jesus, all about Him and His birth and His life ministry. While not contradicting
anything John or Mark or Luke or Matthew say it contains information that the others
do net have.
So with the books of Solomon and othors, and Marie Coroilifs famous
novel called "Ardath" is based upon passages in one of the books in the Apocalypse.
If you have opportunity to you can buy the Book for about $ 2 .5 0 , and you w ill find
it very interesting.
No. 5.

Have not several books been found recently?

In one of the old cathedrals of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, the manuscript
of the original book of peter is claimed to have been found and this is now included
in the "Lost Books of the Bible" as they call it .
The book begins with the words nI,
Peter, say so and so 11 and he tolls thore all about his work of establishing the
Christian Church.
Uo. 6 .

Was Mary, the mother of Jesus, descended from the House of David?

Mary -was a descendant *of the House of David and, more than that, she was of the
mystical school of David. We perhaps do not realize why the Jews, or let us say
the devoted religious persons of Jerusalem, were waiting for a Messiah that would
come from the House of David. The House of David had been for many centuries the
great religious, symbolic, mystical, school of thought, carrying cut the real
mystic principles as Moses had brought them from Egypt. You must realize, too, that
along with the development of the Mosaic ideas of God there were Pagan Jews Pagans that were worshipping ideals of all kinds.
Finally the Pagans outnumbered the
devoted and were ruining the Temples; in fact the Roman Empire was given over to a
great deal of Pagan worship to such an extent that with its political control of
Jerusalem Rome was about to gradually turn the whole of Jerusalem into a Pagan
country. The whole of tho devoted peoples of Jerusalem were looking forward to a
new Messiah who would come and establish again the reign of the House of David, just
like the denominations of Christianity to-day who are looking forward to and waiting
for the return of the Master Jesus to establish his Kingdom again as He once had it
established on earth.
So the Jews were looking for a Messiah from the House of
Dp.vid. That meant not because of worship in a p olitical sense or even in a religious
sense, but in a spiritual, mystical sense. Mary and many of the other Gentiles who
lived in her part of the country were followers of the old House of David, trying
to keep up the ancient traditions and religious practices of the pure Mystic ideals,
and it was for that reason that the Master Jesus was born of that particular class.
It was most natural that Jesus should come out of the House of David, out of that
Gentile settlement, that mystical group, even though they were under the Roman rule
and had to submit to Jewish customs or Hebrew habits in regard to worship.
That is
why the biography of Jesus is given as being of the House of David. On the other

hand, Joseph while not of the House of David and not a descendant, was of that same
mystical, religious, cult as was Mary, and it was only natural that Mary and Joseph,
should be wed and that Joseph should be the father of Jesus, because of his wonderful
connection with the religious development through the House of David.
No. 7 ,

What proof have we in the Bible that the Saviour did not die on the Cross?

We have no proof in the Bible that He did not die on tho Cross, and we have no proof
in the Bible that He d.i die on the Cross, We went over that story very carefully in
one of the early lectures where the Bible account sr.ys that He gave up the Ghost, thai
His body was placed in the tomb and that later He arose. We have only one reference
to death or the dead, and that is where Mary; in looking for Him and finding Him
gone, was surprised.
In one case it says a soldier in another case an angel, in
another a young man, in the tomb, who said "Why seek ye the living omong the dead?"
That tomb was in a burial place, a cenetery.
That was no refer once to the condit ion
of the Master Jesus but rather to the condition of the environment.
So there is no
pro of in the Bible itself that Jesus died there on the cross other than that He gave
up the host. You cannot take that thought as: meaning that He gave up l if e , breath,
animation, because if you do, if giving up the Holy Ghost meant giving up l if e , what'
are ;^ou going zo say about the incident when He was baptized and the "Holy Ghost
came upon Kim" for the first time? Was He just born then? Just come to life? No,
giving up the Ghost means the end of His sacrifice, giving up* His active work as the
Missionary, as the Divine Son of God, as the servant, as the Avatar, as everything
He had been; He gave it all up and sacrificed it all at the time of the Crucifixion
and from that moment His groat life work ended; there was nothing Veft but to let
the Divine Holy Ghost within him return to the God from whence it canfa.
It is the
only interpretation you can give to this and be consistent with all the other state
ments in the Bible. You cannot pin your faith to what the Holy Ghost meant-in one
chapter of the Bible and then go back to another chapter and say that there it does
not mean the same thing, that it means something else.
If you do that you are
giving your own individual interpretation and translation of the Bible.
No. 8 .

Any record of His living more than forty days after resurrection?

There is a record of His living more than forty days. Forty days is a symbolical
number in the Bible.
There are dozens of places in the Old and New Testament where
"forty days is used.
Jonah was in the whale's belly forty days; it rained forty
days; forty days this and forty days that.
A few years, ago I had the pleasure of
the acquaintance of the son of an American Indian Medicine Man.
I took him into my
home and lived with him and got from him all the information I could about Indian
Medicine Men. This boy's name was Flood, and when I asked him how he got that name
he said that during one of the wars, I think it was the Civil War, his grandfather
had been called to Washington as a Medicine Man and advisor and leader of the tribes.
When asked his name the grandfather said Wo Wo Wo the throe Wos meant an awful lot
of wvfcer, so they put it down as Flood. We find that the Hebrews and the people be
fore them in all things -pertaining to history used the number forty, which meant an
indefinite period. V-Je find even in the records of those persons who came from the
Orient into Yucatan that "forty years ago the world began," "forty years ago the
great Continent cf Atlantis was destroyed". They counted up to forty and after that
it meant a very indefinite number.
In the Old Testament we find many references to
the number forty'.
If it said that a person lived forty years, was forty days build
ing something; it meart an indefinite period that they did not attempt to state. That
is where forty comes from in the Greek and Hebrew writings.
That Jesus lived forty
days after the ressurrection does not mean that it was forty days of twenty-four
hours.
It means that He lived some time after that; how many days or months would
not be indicated by that any more than when they said a building was forty cubits
long; it meant at least that and a great many more.
The records indicate that Jesus
lived several years after the resurrection and was seen by a groat many in addition

to thoso doscribod in the Bible. How long Ho lived is not definitely stated and thor
is no way of getting at tho actual number of days that Ho may have livod.
No. 9.

Is it true that the Gospol of St. John may be spurious?

I do not bolievo that there is any reason why we should take the Gospol of St. John
as being anything other than the genuine writings of St. John. He was v^..-y mystical
in his nature and he would write just the book that is given thero. He saw tho
mystical side of all that Jesus did and said, and gives us a very unique and pleas in'*
account of the whole life of Josus.
There is no reason for believing that John coulq
not write it and that it must have come from some great mystical mind of tho Orient.
Ho. 10*

What do you think of the Aquarian Gospel?

I consider the Aquarian Gospel a wonderfully inspiring book but know nothing about it
to guarantee its authenticity.
It contains statements and facts to bo found in other
Oriental writings and records.
Many of them arc in the suppressed books of the
Apocalypso.
There is nothing to indicate that they arc other than actual facts.
It is a wonderfully inspiring book and contains a boiled-down essence of tho sacred
writings of many lands in regard to the Master Jesus and His work, but it is , after
a ll, a compilation in poetry, written in prose form.
It is a beautiful piece of
writing and was wonderfully inspired, but that is the most that can be said for it.
I have the book and use it for discussions and do not want my criticism to indicate
that I do not approve of it .
ISy statement is in regard to its authenticity.
Next week I am going to take up 3ono of the teachings again, from a mystical point of
view, perhaps touching upon the little known and l it t le understood miracles that
Jesus performed, yet which we find referred to in tho 3iblc.
That w ill bring us a
little closer to the real foundation and essence of Christianity.
That is what wo
are after, tho basic principles of Christianity.
Not churchanity, which has built
up for itsolf doctrines and creeds and rituals and statements and beliefs and dogmas
that are based, perhaps, upon Christian doctrines, but are not absolutely Christian
insofar as Christ had anything to do with their establishment.
For instance in tho
High Church they havo seven mystical lights always appearing above the chancel.
That
come from the Oriental mystical schools and did not appear in the Hebrew synagogues
and was unknown in tho early Christian church, not oven used in the early Catholic
churches.
The statue of Christ in the church with references to the cross, certainly
was not in the original teachings while Jesus was alive but has been added since.
I
could enumerate thousands of little points that appear in church systems to-day that
have nothing to do with Christianity except that you must have form-^and ceremony.
Thero is a distinction between theology and religion.
Theology is the study of re
ligion. Religion is spiritual development and understanding within you.
There is
the same difference as there is between electricity and the art and science that
makes an electrician.
One is the study of the thing and the other the thing it s e lf.
So we have theology and churchanity.
The authors of theology te ll you that there arc
things in their church system that are "theological n ec e ss ities."
That is why they
are there.
They are stepping stones to an end.
If you can get along without them
and understand church religion and have just a pure religious understanding, you arc
better off than those who must have the other things.
The use of the holy water in
tho bowl at the entrance to Roman Catholic churches is churchanity and not religious
Christianity, Religiously you can purify yourself by contact with God.
Rut those
v/ho cannot do so must use a medium, must havo some symbol of the proccss, and for
them the water and the bowl are parts of the process.
It is interesting, theologi
cally, but it has nothing to do with religion.
Those are the things wo must keep
separate.

How can I answer tho question often us)ced "Do I beliovo in the holy water bowl? It
w ill do for those who cannot find any other vray of understanding tho symbol. A
groat many who do use it do so unknowingly and they should be educated by tho church
so they do understand it.
I could not condemn it for persons at all times who are
ignorent, and you would not either.
So, with a great many other processes in
church theology. Wo must view them from the viewpoint of how they serve, and if
they serve ju s tifia b ly , and do not hurt, we can leavo then stand. When they hurt
ijistead of doing good wo may critic ize.
End of Lesson Not. Soven.
H. Spenccr Lewis,

Enperator.

THE MYSTICAL BIELE CLASS

Eighth Lecture

To-night we w ill go on with the interpretation or understanding of some of the teach

ings or statements of Jesus in order to get at some of the hidden meanings. Perhaps
some of you have forgotten (for I feel sure th :.z most of you have heard it at one
time or another) that the early Christian Church, in its physical formation and in
its spiritual process of working, was organized along different lines from what we
have to-day. For instance; for the first fevr centuries of the Church, under its
almost direct Discipleship, there was the outer'or profane congregation of member
ship, and the inner or secret membership. The outer congregations listened to the
preachers, the evangelists, the Disciples, in large public assemblies very often
out in the fields or along the roadside or in some protected enclosures and the
talks were generalities and always in the form cf a plea that those who were listen
ing would give some serious thought and study to the Christian Doctrines.
And the
devout and sincere seeker for those doctrines was eventually selected by various
means and permitted to attend the secret sessions. We might compare the secret part
of their work like unto our own Rosicrucian organization, where the work is carried
on privately in carefully graded lessons and lectures, progressively covering one
subject after another, with the intention of making the selected members or students
masters 'in each step of the work.
The profane, as they were called, were those upon
whom the effect was to be solely of a practical nature without preparing then to be
evangelists. We find that the theological seminary, in one sense, is the outgrowth
of the secret or inner part of the work of the early Christian Church, and that our
present-day churches are the result of the development of the profane congregations.
Those who were studying the secret work were being drilled, developed, made ready to
become workers net necessarily evangelists, Disciples, or preachers, but those
who could assist, even by their meditations and their prayers, in the development of
the Christian doctrines and principles, and they had the doctrines analyzed tc them,
the real meaning back of each principle presented to them in a different way than to
those of the profane congregations
We are following that same method in this work.
To us it is not so important whether
the words wo have in the Christian Bible are the precise words of tire Master Jesus
or not.
The important thing is that the words we have are the symbols cf the thought
He tried 'o convey, and what interests us is the thought in the symbols. We have a
great class of translators who are busily engaged in analyzing the symbe-ls of His
words and they throw "a great deal of light very often, as I said in last week's
lecture, upon what was meant by some of the words, but after all we-a.re not so much
interested in the precise meaning of the words as we are in the thought.
If we were
students of art, in the sense that we were attempting to understand and appreciate
what was in the a r t is t s mind when he painted the great picture, what he was attemp
ting to convey to us by the paint on his canvass, we might spend several hours be
fore a great painting, with the lights thrown upon it , and have several authorities
point out tc us by the lighting, by the coup os ition, and by the little hidden
things in the foreground -and in the background and in the sky, what the painter was
trying to convey to our minds by his masterpiece, and that would be one way of
patronizing art or studying art.
But, when we wore all through, another class of
art students might come in and listen to the instructor, who would stand before the
same canvas.s and say to them:
"Now stop looking at this picture in its broad sense
and in its meaning and what the artist meant.
I want you to study the clouds to
night.
See if you can 'understand what kind of white he used, what neutral colors he
used in shading the sky.
See if you can discover how he cast his brights and how ho
cast his shadow on those clo uds." They might stand an hour examining the compositicn,
technique, and rendition of thoso clouds, another night on the trees, another night
on the grass, and foreground, and so on.
This class might study that painting until

they knew every pigment, eyory shade, every color, every stroke the artist used in
tho picture, and yet not 6ne of them would thoroughly realize what the artist had
attempted to convoy, what \ms in the picturc that thoy were studying. Wo have the
same thing in regard to religious literature to-day. Wc have those whose fear hangs
upon tho preacher s interpretation of the least little word. The others - they may
bo modernists, may be broadminded religionists, may be unaffiliated with the church
or any church - but they are not hanging their faith on c.ny interpretation, any ono
fact in regard to the life of Jesus, but upon the whole s-oory, the whole pictnro that
Jesus tried to convey to His own people cf His day and to posterity thruugh tho
thoughts that He expressed.
That is what we want to do.
If there is any salvation
whatsoever in the life and teachings of the Master Jesus it is to be found in what
He was trying to tell us, not in the words He used, not in the material incidents
of Hie life whatsoever.
It would be like the art student interrupting the man who
was telling the class about the wonderful fooling, the atmospheric effect, that
manifests in the sunset clouds of the picture, and the student stood up and said
"Please toll me if he usod chrome yellow or Naples yellow in shading those clouds.
That is what we have very often in the study of the Scriptural teachings.
To illus
trate my meaning I want to take one of the statements that is quoted and misquoted
very often in regard to mystical matters. We find tho New Thought, Theosophical,
practical Psychologist and others of every school quoting this particular statement
and taking it very literally, and it is time to think of the mystical meaning back
of it .
I refer to the statement that is paraphrased, in a popular way, with these
words:
" i f you havo faith you can move a mountain'.'
Those are not the precise
words, but a paraphrase of them.
But it convoys tho thought, covers the thought that
the Master Jesus had in mind.
Incidentally taking it in its literal sense,
it con
veys the thought that these modernists have in mind when they use it.
Hero is a
sentence that you cannot analyze by taking tho words alone.
In the first place, you
would have to ask yourself why all of the beauty of the story was limited to moving
mountains? Why not a house, railroad tracks, a busines proposition, disease, ill
health, all that sort of thing? Why move it? Why not destroy it, neutralize it,
reduco it? You see we cannot take the sentence literally and get at its real meaning.
But what does it really mean? You w ill hear those who can only take it in its
literal sense, and who are failures in l i f e , saying that it is all right for some
preacher to say that with faith you can move a mountain.
Ho w ill say to you 1
challenge you to shew m3 any one living to-day or who lived in the past wh^ ever
moved a mountain with f a i t h ."
I want to te ll you of one example of whore a mountain
was moved and fa ith , great fa it h , made it possible and brought it about.
It would
never have been moved except through fa ith .
I saw tho mountain before i was moved,
before it disappeared from the place whore :.t was, and it was a real mountain.
It
was a large mountain, 482 feet above the ground upon which it stood. It may have
been 1482 feet above sea level, but this mountain was directly in the path of a new
road in California and if the road was to go straight and level in the direction in
which it was aimed, it would either have to go through that mountain or the mountain
would have to be moved. And I saw a man, with groat .faith, plan to move that moun
tain.
It was situated on the edge of a great precipice and in order to carry out
his scheme he had to depend, with absolute faith, upon God s laws being immutable,
unchangeable, unfaltering.
Engineers had passed up the problem because the man who
would move the mountain, or the group <jf ruen who would move it, had to risk their
cwr. liv es, theoretically, and perhaps move with it.
In other words, by dynamiting
that mountain, it would shake loose the rjjeks upon which it stood and the mountain,
rockt', and men would all go together do^m into this deep valley a thousand feet be
low. None of them
take the chance.
But this o&e man believed in the law, the
immutable lav/ of physics, ana he personally placed in this mountain, at different
points, the sticks of dynamite; he ran the olectric wires to his ono shooting box;
and he utood on tho edge of tho precipice and, with absolute fa ith , and solely
through faith in what would happen, he pushed down the lever in the shooting box and
the mountain was moved and he remained standing steady on the edge of that precipice.

It was a miraculous, marvellous demonstration of faith and every one agreed that
faith moved that mountain.
It took faith to plan tho points at which the dynamite
was to be placed, to figure out, upon the basis of the immutability of God*s laws,
how that dynamite would act and what effect it would have on the mountain. Faith
alone moved that mountain.
It was faith that gave us the Panama Canal.
It was
faith that gave us tho submarine; faith that made tho Wright Brothers procoed, in
tho face of accident and injury, and finally in the death of one of them, to make
their trials with the air-planes.
It has been faith that has moved the mountains
of obstacles in the path of civilisation through all ages. When any one says that
with faith you can move mountains you must see it in the mystical sense. Man in
planning, man in conceiving, man in scheming, using faith in his reasoning, using
faith in his physical actions, in using faith to move, to do. They te ll you that
you generally can get at the meaning of a law, the meaning of a principle, especially
a rnystical ono, if you w ill consider its antithesis, its opposite. Let us tako this
Jfoiv let us
same statement that puzzles so many and see. We have had the thesis.
take the antithesis; that without faith you could not move a mountain.
Does any
one question that? Without faith can you move anything? Without faith what would
civilization have given us to-day?' Where would we be?
Sometimes our faith makes us do peculiar things but it is faith, after a ll, that has
made us move.
There were those who had faith enough in the automobile to ride in it
eventually.
There were those who finally had faith enough in the Pullman car to get
in it and go to sleep and lose consciousness, who did not sit up all night and wait
for the bump that would indicate that they had hit something and they could jump out
of the window.
Faith makes all things possible and that is what Jesus meant by these words and they
were not original with HLm. His thought had been used by others but He applied it
in original ways, as I have been applying it to-night and connecting it with other
than purely spiritual things.
If you have faith you can move a mountain.
The one
thought that has held more persons back in their progress in life than anything
else, has been lack of faith.
Faith in the immutability of God s laws.
Faith in
a merciful and just God. Faith in the ultimate result of everything for good.
Faith in oneT,,s own a bility .
Faith in the ability of others.
Lack of faith!
Think
it over and see if the lack is not a greater obstacle than a mountain.
The mystic
knows that with faith everything is possible. With the proper faith disease can be
kept from the system. With the proper faith health can be restored. With the
proper faith you can master every obstacle in life .
With the proper faith you can
attain your desires and your wishes.
If it seems merely like a theory, do^as I
said and reverse it. Would you be here now, have the husband you have, the wife
you h ave, the home you have, anything you now enjoy, if you had no faith in any
thing? You w ill see that faith has held you to where you are.
That is what tho
Master Jesus kept in His mind as the keynote throughout all His teachings.
He was
trying to build up faith in God, faith in Himself as a Messenger of God, faith in
the loving mercy of God s laws; that they were just, that there was nothing personal
about them; that God did not decree for some to-day that this should happen, and
tomorrow, as a result of prayers or a change of heart or mind, decree something
different.
No I Constancy, immutability, universal justice, universal love,
universal mercy; faith in these things was what Jesus was trying to establish, try
ing to illustrate, trying to demonstrate, trying to prove by His own l i f e .
You w ill
see, toe, that some of the present-day preachers that teach us to have a fear of God,
that say that a fearful heart and humble spirit are the religious qualifications for
entering the Kingdom of Heaven, are wrong. You cannot havo a fearful heart and have
faith.
You cannot have a fearful heart and believe in universal love.
You cannot
be in fear of God and yet believe that God is just.
You cannot have a fear of God s
ways and believe that His laws and methods are immutable.
All these things are in
consistent with this fear.
I f , on the other hand, you love God, understand God,

conprehend God, you havo faith*

You have faith without trying to got it . You do
not have to memorize a creed that says:
" I believe in God the Father", etc. You
will feel it so inwardly that to state this Crood and to attenpt to express your
faith through a Creed would be like saying to yourself " I know that I am" as an at
tempt _to convince yourself that you arc alive. You would know it was nonsense.
So
it is with the faith based upon a couprehension, an apprehension, of God as a liv in g ,
just, merciful Father of all beings.
IIow if we take the other teachings of Jesus and view them from this point we see
hew Kg was ever watchful for an opportunity to drive home that thought as an illu s
tration,
You remember, for instance, what He said to the men, tho learned, superior
men perhaps there we re some women there, too - those that had a sort cf superior
ity coup le x , as they say to-day, who wore condemning a woman? They were criticising
her; they had forced her to wear a scarlet robe, to wear an emblem, a sign, that she
vras not as good as they were*
They had cornered her in a public place, had her at
bay; like men out hunting who fin a lly corner a lit t le , helpless animal. Have you
over noticed these men, whose bodies are ter. to a hundred times larger than the
little animal they are chasing, whose intelligence is so superior, whose very
essence, elements, and everything about them should make them busy with some more
important and useful occupation, stand and brag becausc they have cornered this
little animal?
It would be as though the elephant had lifted his foot and put it
down upon a little mouse and said "Pat me for killing this little anim al, If
these persons had any real intelligence they ~.rould chase an obstacle twice their
own size and master it.
That would be demonstrating to some purpose.
So it was
with the men who had cornered this woman.
If they had understood a woman s nature
they would not havo been so proud over the fact that they had her cornered; they
would not have been so proud of their own egotistical superiority if they had known
women at a l l .
There they were, pointing the finger of scorn at her,
Jesus brought
it all home to them quickly when he said that he who was without sin was justified
in stepping forward and making the definite positive statement. He alone was
ready and qualified, properly justified in making the accusation.
"He that is
without sin among you let him cast the first stone at h e r ."
That was only to i l
lustrate this great principle.
Jesus knew cf the mercy, justice, fairness of
God's laws.
Jesus knew why and how sin came to be in the world. How it came to be
in the hearts of men and women.
Knew that sin was not a thing that existed only
among a few.
Knew that where there was light there was darkness; where there was
joy there was sadness; where there was work "hero was rest; whore there was goodness
there was sin.
Knew there was goodness in the heart of every one, even tho worst
sinner.
Know there was some sin in the heart of every man, even the besV of them.
Knew, therefore, that no scheme in the universe .vould center its condemnation upon
the least atom in the universe as being the only bad atom, nor would tiny part of
the universe cast its beam of light upon any other atom and say "You arc the only
good atom. 11 What right, therefore, had any group of men, or even one man, to point
his finger at another human being and say that that one was bad and should be ston
ed to death, should be punished, should be isolated from all community interests
because of the physical, mental, moral, spiritual condition within that body? Jesus
demonstrated to them by their own sudden realization that they, too, were not w ith
out sin; that the laws of the universe were fa ir.
By His lesson He helped to
establish faith in the woman. He established greater faith in His own heart by
seeing how the principle worked again; established faith in the hearts of some of
those who heard the words and saw the magic affect of them upon the crowd. For
as this multitude of criers of "Shame" stopped to think a moment when Jesus said
"Let him that is without sin cast the first stone", they all knew their sins and
one by one they went away.
It 'was a wonderful lesson of power, of the principle of
faith. Yfe find the same, as I have said, all through the teachings of the Master
Jesus,
God does forgive, and Jesus, as His messenger, was forgiving.
God does
allow us to compensate and Jesus compensated for many of man s sins and errors of

thinking; not by His suffering on tho cross but by the lossons that He taught man,
enabling man to rodeon himsolf through different living, different thinking. Lot
us take the healing work as we havo referred 'to it.
Josus nover doubtod for ono
momont that tho law of healing ivould work. His faith, in the laws was so wonder
fully established that without hesitancy ho diroctod even those who soomod to bo
dead to arico; those whose eyes wore closed to open then and see. He nover hesita
ted for a moment for foar tho law might not work.
Ho had absolute fa ith.
There
wore thoso v/ho had absolute faith in tho very being of Jesus as the Messenger j like
tho woman v/ho just reached out and grabbed hold of His garment as He v/alkod by,
touching the hom of His garment and was healed, and Jesus said it was her faith
that made her whole, pointing out what faith meant and what it would accomplish.
I'ever mind whether tho woman actually touched the garment or what kind of a garment
Jesus had on; never mind if it was the aura she touchcd instead of the garment.
That is immaterial.
The fact is that His Disciples tell the story to show how tho
faith of one person brought her to the position of humbleness, of trustfulness, of
giving in to the lav: of principle and lotting it take its course with the result
that tho blessing came.
It makes no difference whether she knelt or stooped or bent
down or stood up straight when she touched His garment.
That has nothing to do with
the spiritual and mental side of the process.
You will notice that all that Jesus
told in His teachings was directed to men and women personally.
He spoke directly
when he spoke.
Tho parable of the camel going through tho eye of a needle was a
personal illustration. When he spoke about the rich man and the Door man and their
relative chances of getting into Heaven ho was speaking directly and personally.
There is no place in the whole Bible where we would get the impression that Josus
was speaking to multitudes collectively.
He was urging each to worship God for
himself and by himself. We find, therefore, no warrant for the modern thought that
your worship can be done solely as a body of persons, a congregation within a
church, within a walled place, within a sacred place.
Jesus miracles wore per
formed out in the open, on the mountainside, on the roadside, in the valley, in tho
plateaus, in public, in private, standing cn the grass, standing on dusty roads,
at noontime, at nighttime, in the morning, sitting, standing by the wayside on the
highway.
It was all the same with Him.
God was everywhere; His power was just the
same; He did net ask them to congregate on a certain day or at a certain hour, in
any one particular way, or to use any particular ritual,
He urged them to worship
God in their hearts, meaning privately, not with pomp and ceromony, not with show;
and He even took occasion to remind some of them that their mutterings of prayer at
the prayer w alls, their show of pomp, was hypocricy; that the quiet, humble faith
that hardly showed itself to man or revealed itself as a glorious light tp como,
was the real fa ith, the real form of religion.
That is what mysticism says.
The
churches have their purpose.
The church should be graded for study wu-ere the mem
bers of the church could go, not to worship God, not exclusively for the purpose of
paying adoration and signing His praises and having some ono lead then in prayer,
but for the coming together of thoso who want tc study, who want to listen* to d is
courses, who want the work presented to them so they car. understand and comprehend
better and then go off tc their individual homes, to their places of work, to their
places of duty and obligation, and there live the religion they have learned, in
stead of merely assembling to hear it preached one day in the week ?.:id forgetting
abr.ut it all the rest of the week.
Mysticism says your congregations should be
schools, colleges, universities for the training of religious thought, just as you
have your schools of music, your Conservatories, at which the principles of music
are taught; where they go to listen to the discussion of harmony and the fundamen
tals of music. No thousand students could attempt to play at the same time on their
musical instruments in one school.
They might listen tc the principles expounded
and go off to the privacy of their homes and play.
No class of artists can sit and
paint in one great room and havo the same view of the same painting.
The angles cf
observation would give them different pictures.
But they could go to listen to

instruction, and receive mental ideas of art, and then go off and in the privacy of
their own homes create thoir individual picturos out of tho gardens of thought and
memory, and express the real thought w ithin, rather than tho model they had studied.
Yrtiy, then, should we beliovc that a congregation should comc together on one day a
week to worship in unity? To sing praises written by some one else to a tunc or
melody that ray not bo the tune in our hearts? To listen to some one toll us what
we should say in our prayers and never do any praying by ourselvos, never do any
thirling by ourselves? The greatest prayer that the Christian preacher ever pave
from the pulpit upon which his congregation conccntratod could not possibly equal in
expression and sincerity the marvellous words of a soul at homo who suddenly r e a li
zed tho beauty of life and tho blessing of a homo with the words "Thank God for what
I hav e,"
That is a prayer from tho heart.
It is cur personal expreiences that give
us fa it h .
It is our personal problems that must be met.
It is our personal attunor.ont with God that constitutes religion.
It is our individual dovelopmont that
constitutes spiritual growth. Everything else in the universe pertaining tc religion
or spirituality must serve the purpose of developing us individually, not collcctivoly, for we were not born alike except in divine essenco. We were born as
different lights and we are told that we should so act and think and live that our
own light w ill shine among men. Each ono of us has a mission in this life - other
wise we would not have been born. Each one can do one thing bettor than any one
else, We can put some quality of our thinking, some prowess of cur physical or
mental a b ilit ie s , some achievement of our individual accomplishments, into the per
fection and development of tho human race, into the growth of the spiritual commun
ity interests, into the leading on into the path of those who arc seeking in order
to become the workers in tho vineyard through our own personal efforts.
Lfysticism
pleads for individuality.
Churchanity pleads for collective community formalities
and practices in religion.
If we look at the life of Jesus and His teachings we
soo that He was the Personal Messenger. He came among men as a man.
Ho lived among
men as a man. He was a man in all His expressions. He never for one moment acted
or assumed to act as though He considered Himself ono whit better than the meanest
of men with whom He had to cone in contact.
Ho was criticized for that thinking.
They pointed him out as claiming to be the Messiah and going among the Publicans
and Sinners.
Think of it I But Ho purposely did it.
It is the one thing v/hich
should give us faith in the saneness of His doctrines, that He Himself demonstrated
the universality of tho teachings universal love, universal lav/, universal jus
tice, the fact that all men and all women, all creatures, all human beings we re the
sons and daughters of God, that all of us were redeemable, regardless of "how we had
sinned.
Faith is the thing that He left with us. Faith is the greatest lesson that
Jesus ever put into the heart of every student of Christianity.
In ySur ultimate
analysis you w ill have to agree that it is that faith that would move mountains that
Jesus wanted us to have. A supreme faith, a faith that had nc limitations, a faith
that had no qualifications whatsoever, illimitable faith.
Is it hard to think of
that sort of thing? Your scientist asks you to believe in and to have unlimited
faith in Cosmogony and modern Astronomy.
I challenge any one of you to think of
unlimited spaco.
It is incomprehensible, but unlimited faith is not incomprehensi
ble. Faith begets confidonce.
Confidence begets fa ith .
And the- more you give in
to fa ith , depend upon faith, exercise fa ith , the more faith increases in you.
Perhaps some of you are seeing things from a distorted point of view because your
faith is just developing, your confidence is still being tested and tried, you have
not exercised your fa ith , you have net manifested confidonce, have net put it to
the supreme test, have not risen above your distorted point of view and are not
seeing things with the grown-up viewpoint that comes through mystical spiritual
development.

This is all for to-night.

I havo been giving you a preachment on faith as the
Master Jesus tried to picture it and" as I understand it .
If it is not your con
ception of what Jesus meant by " i f you havo faith you can move a mountain' thon
you tell your own story.
Got a story in your heart that means something to you
about faith and let that story bo a continuous preachment to you, a continuous
r.rge to try and try. Uever givo ini Never admit that there is such a thing as
failure!
The time may not be just right, conditions may :-ot be just right, to-day
you cannot do it - but not because you c>^nnot ever do i t , not bccausc it is im
possible, not because it has not been done and never w ill bo done, but because
you are not ready to do it .
It makes no difference what the thing is to bo done,
faith w ill carry you through.
If I can make that little story or that lesson
stay in your heart or mind, thon the whole work of these lectures will bo a success.
God had tried for ages to put these thoughts and teachings into the minds of the
masses and they would not accept them.
Jesus had to come and live them, demon
strate them, that the people might have faith enough in them to test thorn and try
them out for themselves.
Whether you call it Christianity, or not, it is God's
laws and principles and those things are working out through all lands, in all
ages, and have been the redeeming law and principle in the development of c iv il i
zation.
Let faith be your guide to carry you on to greater heights.
Faith un?
limited; omnipotent fa ith.
It can bo omnipotent because it is of God, from, God,
and through God, that man can perceive of and comprehend fa ith .
End of Lecture Number Eight.
H. Spencer Lewis,
Imperator.

THE MYSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

NINTH LECTURE
I w ill read tonight from a very ancient record that throws considerable light
upon the last part of the life of the Master Jesus.
I am doing this because I want
you to see, from some very ancient and dependable records, the opinion of many
minds in regard to.rthe charges that were mad against the Master Jesus at His trial
and the many points involved in His conviction and crucifixion.
I cannot say that
this account differs so greatly from that in the Christian Bible in the important
facts but it does differ in this regard; it contains a number of sidelights that
make the whole story very interesting to us. Very often we can judge of the worth
of a man by the close of his life better than we can by judging of his activities in
the heighth of his career, and very often we can judge of what a man is accomplish
ing, or has been accomplishing, by noticing what his enemies have to say about him.
Very often we can find in a manrs seeming failure why he was great in the things in
which he did not fa il and why he was weak in the things in which he did f a i l .
So
by taking the closing part of the life of the Master Jesus at this time, after hav
ing analyzed some of His teachings, seme of His practices, we have other reasons,
another set of facts, by which we can judge of His character and the work He accom
plished.
This account is taken from the records of the Orient, from private person
al records, but they have been known to the churches, to tho Christian Fathers, to
the theologians for many years and nobody has ever challenged the authenticity of
them; in fact, they have been greatly spoken of in many synods and international and
national conclaves of the highest dignitaries of the churches.
As one eminent
authority said at one time, it would mean the incorporating of further books in the
Bible if this matter was to be properly introduced and it would not in any way a f
fect the doctrines of the church unless a complete revision was made, and no real
servicc would be gained by that, in their opinion. However, I am going to read
now and lot you form your own opinion as to whether this information does change
our understanding or not.
I am going to break right into the middle of a long
record and start at the point where Jesus has been arrested and Pilate was informed
of the fact that the arrest had been mado, or that charges had been preferred, and
that the case was to come before him:
Pilate was at once consulted, who determined to delay matters until the holidays,
He foresaw trickery and intrigue and hoped tc gain tLme and thus avoid injustice to
anyone.
But the Sacred Synod demanded a trial without delay.
They demanded that
the prisoner be judged at once, that Pilate that very night givo his decision for
crucifixion, and that all necessary preparations to this end be made^ They demanded
that the order of the Enjperorfs prefect be carried out, as they held the warrant
which entitled them to the execution of their command.
That night Pilate heard the docisions of the minor judges and witnesses and
found the testimony insufficient to convict the Master, even tho the warrant demand
ed condemnation to the fu ll extent of the law.
P il a t e Ts household were believers in Yessu1s work to a great extent, and Pilate
himself, once healed by the Masterss hand of a grave malady, was a follower of the.
Great Teacher. Ho wanted time to consider the case, but the church demanded imme
diate action and Pilate was therefore compelled to use technicalities to stay pro
ceedings.
Knowing that Yessu was a Galilean by birth, Pilate thot best to refer the case
to- Herod who was then present at Jerusalem on account of the festiv al.
Korod,
however, knew the holy character and fame of Yessu too well to be drawn into the
a f f a ir .
Knowing it to be a church offense he referred the accusers to Caiaphas ana
his council for a decision.
Thus the proceedings were somewhat delayed.

Caiaphas and his cabinet understood the moaning of this shifting from one
court to another and took a firm stand.
The intriguers feared that every moment of
delay might be repealed, or the friends of Yessu might raise an army and by force
compel His release.
In such an event the festival would prove disastrous to the
church, not only morally but also fin ancially.
Thus the council demanded of Pilate an immediate decision.
It was customary on the occasion of this great and rare festival to give the
life and liberty to some criminal who was the choico of the people, and relying
upon this usual custom Pilate expected to offer tho same as an excuse to Rome for
the entire release of Yes sue of Nazareth in case he was takon to task by the
government for his actions.
As the people crowded before the steps of the open palace, and thousands of
voices were raised shouting for Yessue of Nazareth, their beloved, there were many
also who called loudly for Barabbas. At the same time the priests and their
emissaries dashed among the throng and called at the top of their voices "Barabbas,
Barabbas".
They wended their way to the steps and the pillars of the palace and like
maniacs cried for Barabbas until that name seemed to ccho and re-echo from the
throats of a l l .
The court of Sixty" who wero to decide as to the name called by
the loudest voices could not do otherwise than favor Barabbas, altho a dispute
arose among them as to which it should be.
Pilate was powerless to act further, and turning to Yessu the Nazarito asked
of Him what could be done to stay their hands. Pilate felt that ho had been out
witted, and awaited anxiously for an answer. Yessu replied:
"Pc thou as thy
position demands of th ee ."
Pilate turned to the people and once more asked "what shall be done with this
man?" And the reply came back like a thunderbolt, "crucify Him, crucify Him."
Pilate asked for time, he1 asked for a postponement but the priests threatened and
the people became uneasy. They demanded that Yessu be crucified before the end of
the fe s tiv a l.
P ila te, however, was just as determined that the matter be delayed.
Ho thot perhaps the bloodthirsty mob would be satisfied if they saw the Master
boaten, His skin torn and blood streaking the white and clean-lcept flesh.
To see
the man of stately mien and iron w ill in streams of blood might satisfy and dis
gust them so they would make no further demands.
Yessu was ordered beaten before them.
Soldiers were carefully selected who
.vere instructed to inflict wounds of only a superficial nature.
Pilate and his chosen friends, in company with the Covenanters, were unable tounderstand why their Roman conferees were so dilatory in their intervention of the
warrant issued for the arrest of Master Yessu, as all that was taking place was
evidently known to them. Even tho delayed in seeing the Enperor a repealing edict
should have arrived the day the warrant was served.
Nearly a week had elapsed since the warrant v/as in the hands of the authori
ties; s till the friends of Yessu hoped for the best; s till they waited for some
thing that might transpire to save the life of their Master.
Three hours had elapsed since the cross with its precious burden had boon
raised on Golgotha, and the Jewish factions had dispersed to prepare for the
approach of the Sabbath.

That the body of tho Master might be kept up by stimulation, hyssop was ad
ministered to produce a stupor resembling the appearance of death.
Just as the setting sun cast its last rays over the horizon, and the deepening
shadows of night were spreading rapidly over the valley, there was a confeotion in
the palace of Pontius P ila te .
A herald had just arrived with a document bearing
tho private seal of Tiberius, and all were anxious to learn its contents. The
document instructed Pilate to cancel the warrant and leave matters to bo investi
gated by Cyrenius.
It further instructed that Yessu* if arrested, be sot at liberty
until a full report could be made.
It was the hunted hour of twilight, the dying day draped the scene in its
mysterious shadows. At the foot of the cross the silent watchers awaited anxiously
the hour when something would be done to relieve the sufferings and dangerous con
dition surrounding their beloved Lord and Master.
The sombre stillness, hanging
like a p all, seemed to speak of unutterable woe as if the wrath of the Infinite
were being poured out upon the heads of those responsible for this awful tragedy.
But hope took the place of despair among the fa it h fu l, for in the distance
could be dimly discerned the familiar figures of Mathaeli and Yousef of Arimathea
hurrying to the scene at Golgotha.
Their coming was significant.
Upon their arrival, and after hastily examining the body of Yessu, they de
clared to the bystanding curiosity seekers that Ho was dead.
Even the wounds upon
His side were opened and blood and water flowed forth, proving conclusively to the
onlookers that the body was life le s s .
Contrary to all laws even the two criminals
were also taken down and removed without further delay.
As soon as the body of Yessu had been taken down from the cross and laid in
the private burial place of Yousef of Arimathea, and other necessary preparations
completed, the church authorities, who had been informed that the body was lifeless
and friends of the llazarite had secured permission from Pilate for its bu rial, sent
a delegation to investigate the burial place and a ffix their own seal upon the door
which closed it , and to report to the council if all things had been done according
to the law.
That night a storm raged fiercely in the valleys of Yudea; thunders echoed and
re-echoed in the mountains round about.
Thots of events of the last few days mademany hearts tremble, and many minds were troubled.
That night the heart of Yudas seemed rent in twain.
He wept bitterly and con
demned himself for the action taken, thinking he was the cause of all this great
trouble. His remorse turned to maddness.
The one he had loved, cared and labored
for had met a terrible fa te, and his intention had been that He bo recognized as
Lord and King.
In the city there arose a great commotion among the priests when thfe news
reached their cars cf an event which had no parallel in all the history of Yudea.
Witnesses were heard and cross-examined, and they one and all
agreed that a terrible
noise like that of an earthquake had first been heard, followed by the fa llin g , as
it were, of rocks.
The witnesses claimed that the dead arose and stood before them,
arrayed in garments of white.
They heard the midnight cry, as related in the
scriptures, and a* storm arose, followed by a shower of rocks, to which the many
flesh wounds some of them had received testified, a proof not oasily denied.
An investigation of the sepulchre showed the gravc had been opened and the rock
sealing the opening broken in two. Many marks showed that a terrible and superhuman
forco had been employed in the removal of the stone that had bonn
nn tho mrhn*'

Tho authorities folt that thoy had boon outwitted, but they know that to make
further investigation would incrininatc then and place then in a possible disastrous
position.
On that eventful day, the first day of the week, a new order of things occupied
tho min'. s of tho people, and oven tho faithful could hardly bolieve the story that
had bpon heralded far and wido,
"Ho livcth!" Like wild-fire it spread from mouth
to mouth among thousands and tons of thousands, "Ho livoth!"
At tho break of day, while they were considering the stops most advisable to be
taken, they hoard footstops approaching. Lathaoli, the younger one, received tho
approaching ones v.rith tho words:
"VVhat seek ye, tho living among the dead? Ho
liveth; go and toll His d is c ip le s ."
Such a new revelation to the faithful was indeed like pouring oil upon tho
troublod waters, and was bound to crcatc a great deal of excitement and arouse tho
curiosity of tho remainder of the disciples. Altho Mathacli had but thotlessly ad
dressed the visitors with these strange words, they had their cffect and others
were brought to the scene, who, altho they had not seen the "angels", as claimed by
former witnesses, saw that the body of Yessu was gone and the linen in which tho
body was drapod lying in a heap on the ground.
This sufficed to convince them that
something extraordinary had happened.
ITith the coming of tho day the two men in white knew only too well that
would be unwise for them to invite further inquiry, as detection of the true
of affairs might follow, and this they did not care to have happen, as other
planations would become necessary, which would invite complete investigation
result in probable exposure.

it
state
ex
and

As the news of the resurrection spread from mouth to mouth, the men who knew
better dared not further speak, as the fate of their most beloved friend and
Ilaster was at stake, and so were compelled to remain silent even tho against their
w ill.
Master Yessu, altho maltreated beyond the term of brutal, wounded, with very
great loss of blood, enough to cause death to any ordinary being, and tho having
suffered physically, mentally and spiritually, tho agony and bloody sweat of a Son
of God unrecognised by His people, recovered more rapidly than His best friends had
expected, and once down from the cross and His wounds given the necessary attention,
it became only a question of nature doing the rest.
Although when nailed to the
cross, and all hope of release seemed lost, the Master, obedient even to the last,
felt that if anything could be done to stay His death it would bo done by those who
were nearer to Kim than His disciples.
His inner circle friends had determined to save Him at any cost, and their
knowledge and understanding of the higher sciences obtained from Him were now to be
brought to a test.
Thus, as soon as the body had been taken down from the cross
it was interned in the private sepulchre and after the stone door had been carefully
sealed the Master s friends entered the secret passageway leading thereto. Here
they set to work at once.
7,'hen He wac taken from the cross they knew that He was not dead but merely in
an unconscious condition, superinduced by the opiate which had been so ingeniously
administered, for under the cover of night they had determined to do a desperate
act had not the arrival of the Imperial edict made matters much more favorable for
them*

As . soon as Master Yessu learned of all that had transpired He revived

quickly, and, to the astonishment of a l l , once more took up the thread of life and
become Master of the situation as if nothing extraordinary had occurrod.
For nino long and weary years ho had labored and worked with them, and now He
askod of them that thoy prove themselves worthy of having been His disciplos. As
thoy went to carry the message to the world that "He v/ho was thot dead' God has risen
from the grave," the curiosity of tho inquiring mind would be everywhere aroused to
learn more of this Master and His wonderful teachings of the Gospel of Liberty.
His intimate friends persuaded Him for His own sake, as well as for their
safety, to make His abode east of the river Jordan, where the friends of the Inner
Circle had small communities.
It was there, among His own, those who had remained
faithfu l to Him, that He would make His abiding place.
But to do this it was nec
essary to evade the energy, to remove all possible clows from thoso who were secretly
upon His track.
On the way towards the Jordan, and not far from Bethany, tho company asccnded
the highest mountain peak.
Here the Master, after instructing them in matters per
taining to their .great mission, imparted individual blessings. V/hile doing this the
sun was sinking fast and the clouds rolled up in columns as if late in witnessing an
important event while the mist, lowering heavily, promised the fa llin g of a heavy
dew.
VThile watching the rolling of the swiftly-passing clouds, to which the atten
tion of the people had been called by the Master, and while garing at the gradually
sinking sun which only revealed its splendor as if in the act cf bestowing a last
benediction on the world, the .approach of thunder in 'distant tones bccamcs perceptible
to their ears, and while awaiting further orders as tc what steps wore to be taken,
a sudden, heart-rending cry was raised by some of the friends, "look and see!" All
eyes, as if with one accord, gazed up into the heavens. V/hat could it mean? A
cloud-burst I a whirl-windi a cyclone! and then a hail stem !
While yet gazing at the myriads of rapidly-forming pictures drawn by the rest
less clouds, two mysteriously-garbed men in white appeared and in \ciccs clear and
distinct announced:
"Ye men of Israel, why gaze ye into the clouds; the Same v/ho
has disappeared from out thy sight shall cone again in like manner, and all who
have oyes shall see him."
^
This most unexpected surprise seemed to root their feet to the ground.
They
dared not look or see. IVhen their courage returned they left the mountain top one
by one and retraced their steps towards Bethany to look for a resting place for the
night.
Only then did they wonder and marvel at the Master s sudden disappearance.
Some -seemed to remember just faintly the phenomenon of a dissolving and de
mat eriali zing form, while others again thot it merely a phantasma due to the p e
culiarity of the rapidly-changing clouds.
That closos that part of the story.
You w ill see that it is intensely interest
ing, dramatic, well told, and contradicts nothing, or very lit tle , of the fundamen
tals, the important principles of the Christian Doctrines in regard to the same
incidents.
On the other hand, it does tell us many things not spoken of in the
Christian Bible.
.ra plainly sec the position that Pontius Pilate was in, p lainly
see the trickery in connection with tho crucifixion or conviction and the charges
that this man bo crucified instead of the criminal. We sec also how Ho was made to
suffer even bofore the crucifixion, why His body was taken down and given- by Pilate
to His friends, which we fin d, according to the Jewish law, was a great exception,

a thing not generally done.

They had to stay so many days and nights upon the
Cross, with their bones broken and otherwise treated, to be sure they were dead,
yet only a few hours after being arrested His body was permitted to be taken down,
because there cane into tho Roman headquarters a repeal of his arrest, a paper
sotting aside His arrest until further investigation could be made.
It was too
late I He had died on the Cross, they were to ld, but P ila te , who always had a
kindly feeling, allowed tho friends to tsQco down tho body, believing there was
l i f e there.
There was l i f e # although He was-unconscious, and the Christian Bible
to lls us how His body was placcd in the tomb and His Disciples immediately pro
ceeded to use tho sane principles that Jesus had taught them. You know the Bible
tells us that Jesus had assured His Disciples that oven greater things than He
had done they would bo able to do. VTe know the Disciples tried to carry on His
great work after the passing of Jesus. We build tomples, cathedrals and churches
to-day to St. Paul, and St. John, and to the others who carried on His work. We
say that St. Peter received from the Master Jesus all the Apostilic power to con
tinue the Church of Christ all through the ages.
If we had no faith in that
generally, there would be no churches to-day, for the churches would have no power.
So it is not surprising that these Disciples, who had been trained and prepared,
were able to do great things.
Josus had foretold many years before that the hour
was coning when He would suffer as He did, so it is reasonable to believe that He
had prepared His Disciples by instructing them.
They used this knowledge to re
store Him to consciousness, but He .ms a broken man, broken in spirit, knowing
that the very multitude that He had tried to save vras the fir s t to cry "Crucify
Him . He was broken in spirit because He saw that after all one man could not
save the world; that all that one man could hope to accomplish would be to bring
the light to a few and count upon then to carry on.
1927 or more years have passed since the birth of Jesus, and yet only thirtyfour per cent of the population of the world has any kind of interest in Christian
doctrines.
So the world has not received that instruction as generally as had
been hoped for in the minds of the Disciples.
For a number of years Jesus tarried
with them and then there was His final disappearance.
There is- no miracle in that,
if you stop to think of the way the Master appeared before the Disciples, many
times right in their midst when eating, preaching, praying, studying. That is ,
the Christ appeared - the personality, the sp irit, the soul of the Master Jesus
appeared; not the man Jesus, for he always said 111 am the Way, I an the. Light1,
then would say to others "None is good but God.
I an but the Messenger, the Way,
the Pointer, the Medium, the Index, the Teacher, the Instructor." o we can under
stand that every prophecy v;as really/ a law uttered by Jesus when He said "Yfoere
two or three are gathered together in 'Jy name There, there I am, the "1 am that I
am" would be present not Jesus, not the Master, but that principle which He
represented would be present wherever two or three were gathered in the name of
the Christ; in the name of the principle, there the principle would be.
Mystics
have always held that what makes a Temple or Synagogue or any other placc sacred
is not the things in it, not its shape, not its croation, its Roman or Gothic
typo, or tho windows with stained glass, altars, crucifixes, chancels, pictures,
ornaments and equipment, nor the p riest, nor the preaching, nor the praying, nor
the Bible, nor the sanctimonious procession, nor the day the services are held.
What makes the church sacred and holy are the vibrations of the heart, of the mind
of the people who assemble there.
You have to sanctify a church by dedicating it
to a divine principle and holding fast to that dedication.
So it is when two or
throe are gathered together in a home, a hall, on a mountain top thinking,
paying adoration and respoct to a divine principle, the Christ principle, or the
God of the universe. You w ill immediately bring into your presence, and surround
yourself with, an aura of divinity', of sanctimonious sacrednoss. You w ill place
yourself within a circle, as the cystic says, a circle of divine power, and at
once be ensconced by tho Christ.

So the time cane whon He disappeared.

It was not a miraclo.
It should not bo
rocorded in the Christian Bible as one of the miracles.
In fact none of tho things
Jesus did or that occurred in connection with Him should be called miraclos, unloss
you mean divine occurrences or uncommon occurrences.
If you mean by "miracle"
extraordinary things, setting aside the natural laws or exceptional things that can
never be performed again, you are giving a wrong impression.
Jesus disappeared in
the cloud. We have nowhere any warrant for the belief or the statement that Jesus
rose up in a cloud.
The cloud appeared and disappeared before the crowd had op
portunity to analyze it .
One Disciple may have made the statement or described it
as going up in the clouds. The others do not so describe it. There are four d i f
ferent stories in your Christian Bible.
The concensus of opinion is that Jesus
disappeared.
The divinity in Him outshone the material and 4;hat brings us to the
mystic point for the night.
Crucifixion is inevitable in the life of every man and
woman. Your physical body, with its arms outstretched in labor, t r ia l, temptation,
represents the cross.
Upon that cross all of you must be crucified sooner or later.
Through the cross you must be purged from all that is unclean or unholy or you must
suffer the penalty of the evil in the world.
You must bear tho burden of the sin
that the world has in it.
Through this crucifixion w ill you rise from the material
to the divine plane.
That is resurrection.
Through your crucifixion w ill your
resurrection come. Resurrection is inevitable with each one of you.
Only you need
not wait until the multitude condemns you to bring about your crucifixion. You are
suffering each and every hour.
You can end it all by giving up the Holy Ghost, as
Jesus did; by saying sometino,. when you arc alone, " I have suffered, I am suffering;
the hour has come, the hour of earthquake, storm, of shooting comcts, of fir e ; the
hour has come in my life , the last hour of ry crucifixion, for now I give up the
Ghost a ll't h e earthly things, all the material things I change in this moment
and become a Christ principle, a Christ-liko b e in g ." From that moment your re
surrection begins and for three days, or three years, or whatever the time may be,
you w ill pass through tho sopulchre. You will go through the tomb and out of the
tomb you w ill come, the risen Christ-principle.
It is possible in the life of each
one of you*
It is the thing you should work for, pray fo-r, and, through under
standing,
know all about it, anticipate it, and be thankful when it comes. . Then
for the rest of your life you w ill go about as the risen Christ did and await the
day of ascension, and when that day comes you, too, w ill disappear in the cloud, the
real you, .the you that every one knows; the physical body may go into the grave, it
may be cremated, it nay be put aside, it may be lost at sea, lost in a fir e , lost
in many ways,
and no one ever find it, but none w ill care if they understand
that the soul w ill have risen.
There you w ill find ultimate asconsi'&n and, as if
in a- cloud, you, the real you, the Christ you, w ill disappear even though the
multitudes are against you. You w ill rise and it w ill be y o\c ascension and your
friends and those who love you w ill say of you, as they saia of tho Jesus,
"He
arose and went up in the clouds and ascended into Heaven." None of them w ill speak
of where your body wont.
It carried nothing with it.
It meant nothing. Eventually
it would be laid away.
But tho real you is the one you should make worth w hile, make
beloved by every man and woman you "contact. That yofc should be the one they would
think of and say "it has ascended into heaven." Tficn you, too, w ill have witnessed
love, anxiety, resurrection and ascension. Let that be the message for you to-night,
and all of you, whether Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Roman Catholic, Unitarian or
Baptist, w ill recognize in what I have said a universal religion, a universal doc
trine, the truo mystical principles of real Christianity.
H. Spencer Lewis,
Impcrator,

THE MYSTICAL BIBLE CLASS

LECTURE NUMBER TEN - THE LAST LECTURE
We w ill have a little summary of what we have gone through and see if we can find in
our whole course of study some outstanding, inspiring points that we can absorb and
make a part of our consciousness.
I havo every reason to assume that you joined
this Class because you are interested more than casually in the Scriptures, in tho
Christian and pre-Christian religious doctrines, and if you are more than casually
interested in any subject there should always be some fundamentals of that subject
that you know so well you can repeat them, refor to them, and manifest as a sound
part of your general education.
I think that any man or woman shows a degree of
culture, of education, of ethical eulture if you choose to call it , by being famil
iar with some outstanding religious points to such a degree that they can speak of
then freely and with conviction; that is, from the purely intellectual point of viow.
I know that all men and all wonen v;ill improve their own lives by absorbing and mak
ing a v ital, living part of their consciousness same of those outstanding religious
principles. After a ll, we are always known to our friends and to our enemies by the
things that reveal our inner selves. When
meet a man or a woman with no convic
tions, regardless of their education, social or financial position, we find a person
who is a weakling. We admire a person who has convictions on some points, even
though they are wrong. A conviction, right or wrong, is better than no conviction
at a l l , and we do meet those who are going through life without any real serious
conviction of any kind.
They may - in fact they do - have a schooling that leaves
them in that sort of attitude, for sometimes we hoar them brag of the fact that they
accept everything as it comes day by day and nothing else matters. They do not know
v/hether the earth is round or fla t.
They do not know whether they are living on the
inside of tho earth or the outside.
They do not know v/hether the phases of the noon
are due to the moon! s motion or whether the moon may be a disc like the bottom of a
shining dish pan, and that somebody is up there on a step-ladder covering over part
of i t .
They do not know what life is , where it begins or where it ends, and they
seem to be perfectly happy.
They toll you they are.
But the intellectual mind,
the spiritual mind, the cultured mind, does want to know some things and it has
some beliefs, some convictions, and these beliefs and convictions influence their
thinking, their doing, and consequently influence their very living.
The more a
man or a woman has ideals and the higher these ideals are the more inevitable w ill
be the joy and peace of that person s l if e .
The lower the ideals the more sorrow
fu l, sordid and unhappy w ill be that l if e .
But do not think that a life that results
from ideas of sordidness is half as bad as the life that continues to go-* on and on
from day tc day without any ideals, any convictions, any b e lie fs , any faiths of any
kind.

So I say again, that if we can take to ourselves some convictions of a spiritual

nature and hold fast to then and let them be component parts of our thinking, our
living, we w ill be determining from day to day the course of our liv es.
There is no
question about the fact that as we think, so we are. We meet persons who are con
stantly laboring under fear; fear, through some complex, is the uppermost, predomi
nating, thought in their minds.
Fear of God, fear of physical things, fear of on
coming emergencies, fear of accidents, fear of disease, fear of neighbors c r i t i
cisms, fear of failure in some undertaking, fear of germs, fear of appearances, fear
of scandal, fear of the loss of l i f e , fear of fir e , fear, fe ar 1
. You w ill notice, if
you study the lives of such persons, that they are in a fearful predicament all the
time and that their lives end in such a way you could write the whole story of their
lives with one word fear.
They lived in fear, they sowed fear and they reaped
fear.
There are others that have certain thoughts - thoughts of success, or peace,
or happiness, or love and we find that their livec are being, perhaps unconscious
ly , guided by that predominating thought. Of course the average individual has more

than one thought, has many convictions, many b e lie fs , many laws unto himself by
which he guides his life and measures his standards, just as through a telescope
he observes everything in its oncoming motion, through a microscope he examines
every minute thing and brings it into immediacy. This sort of person gets the
utmost out of life#
Among the predominating thoughts that we should have standing
out in our process of self-examination, like milestones along the road, should be
some spiritual' convictions, some beliefs about the divine side of lif e , our own
divinity and our relation to all that is divine. Perhaps If we review the class
lessons that we have had now we may be able to see for ourselves some outstanding
points that vie w ill adopt and make convictions, and hold fast to then against
argument, against temptation, against all the things we read and hear unless they
can prove themselves to be more formidable as a logical conviction and presentation
than the ones we have.
Going back over the past of all religious thought perhaps the first great principle
that we observe and can stand out in relief as an interesting medallion, like an
intaglio that one of the ancient masters carved, would be the fact that man has
ever been conscious of the fact or at least conscious of the realization of the
fact that there is a great mind, a great intelligence, a great architect, a
great Lord of a ll, a Father, a God; that the universe is ruled and operated in ac
cordance with system and order of such infinite perfection that the mind, the
consciousness that rules it , or that decreed it, or established it, must have been
in fin it e , must have been perfect in its consciousness, in its understanding of the
needs, necessities, laws and principles.
If that becomos a fundamental, or a con
viction, in our consciousness a ll the rest that we should have becomes easy, be
cause fir s t of all if we grant that everything about us from the seeming
idiosyncracies of the movements of the meteors or the planets, the exact mathemati
cal rotation of the earth with its sunrises and sunsets, all the great things we
see from the bud or a little flower from the seed put into the ground, to the con
tinued existence of the great redwood trees in California -- if all these things
inpress us with the fact that the universe is being run in accordance with system
and order and that some infinite mind must have decreed these things, must have
established these things and perhaps is s t ill guiding and directing all of these
things then the second great revelation comes to us, a thing that is very funda
mental in our comprehension of our relations to God and to one another; and that is ,
that this great God who created and conceived, who managed and perhaps still
manages the universe with such infinite wisdom, must also be of infinite love,
infinite mercy, infinite understanding.
If you can conceive of your God, the God you car. understand, the God you can
attune w ith, the God you can comprehend, the God you can create in y 6ur comprehen
sion and bring down into your very soul - if your God bccomes to you a God of
infinite love, of infinite mercy, infinite justice, in fin ite understanding, then,
says the mystic, you are on the path to redemption, salvation from all of the sins
and all the sufferings in this world.
But you w ill realize at once that such a
conviction places you in a most unique position.
For you w ill contact in your
daily lives those who will speak to you of a God of revenge, a God of hatred, a
God who is stony in his heart, a God who is ever and anon watching to punish the
evil doer, a God who forgives only under circumstances and conditions most hard
and most d iffic u lt , a God you must fear instead of love, a Goa you must respect
with awe instead of adoration, a God you must bow down to instead of reaching up
to, a (Sod that is ever further and further away from you instead of closer to
you. You see there are many kinds of Gods, as there are many kinds of conceptions,
and your God w ill be the God you conceive and the nearer your conception equals
the ideal of God the closer you w ill bring yourself to God and bring God to you.
If* you w ill conceive of God as being infinite love, in fin ite mercy, infinite justice,
infinite understanding, you will no longer fear God, you w ill adore God; you w ill no

longer live in expectation of revenge from the hands of God but ever constantly
await the further benedictions and blessings that God is constantly giving.
So these are the two groat principles that should be carved in your heart and con
sciousness as though they were great statues upon stone bases at the very portal,
at the very portico, of your reasoning - your Temple of understanding. First would
be a statue that represents the system, the law, the order, tho infinite exactitude
of all the laws and principles in tho universe, the immutability of the operation
of all laws decreed by God. The other statuo would be your idealization of a great
loving Father, with His infinite understanding, love, mercy and justice.
Between
these two should you walk daily and enter the temple of your understanding. When
ever you fin d a problem in life confronting you, whenever you find anything that
perplexes your consciousness, that tempts the precision of your physical endeavors,
that seems to bo waiting to awaken your moral, your ethical, standards, fa it h , and
hope, go into the temple, pass betwoen these two portals and draw in with you, as
you go between them into the silonco of the chamber, draw in with you the magni
ficence of the symbolism of those two statues; sit down awhile and meditate upon
the meaning of -the two statuos, the two great columns of the portico outsido; the
one a testimonial to the immutability, system and order of all things, the other
a testimonial to love, mercy, justice and infinite understanding of God.
Between
these two you w ill find a safe retreat in all your perplexities, find strength,
encouragement', solace, and that other condition that the Rosicrucians call peace
Profound, because you w ill know, if your reasoning goes along with you and you
permit your reasoning to talk to you in- the silencc of this chamber, you w ill know
that where everything is according to lav; and system and order and where the God
of all thought and the Father of your very being is fair and just and loving and
merciful, that everything that occurs w ill bo fair and just; that everything that
is to touch upon the horizon of your existence w ill be what is right; that every
thing w ill bo adjusted in the end; that there w ill be no such thing as an unfair
position for you, unfair compensation, unfair suffering; and that if you, as a
dutiful and trusting and understanding child of the Father, w ill place your faith
and confidence in that Father, with the knowledge of the great laws that are im
mutable and systematic and exact, you w ill receive just what you deserve and no
more; that you w ill reap just what you have oarned, no more and no less; that your
thoughts w ill be understood before they arc expressed; and that you w ill always
find a tender understanding and an opening and an opportunity, a chance and a way.
Now, then, we come to the great outstanding point in the lessons that we have
studied. We fin d at all ages and at all times when the masses were perplexed,
when through tho decades of understanding and the retrogression of mental compre
hension the wavering minds of the people had forgotten that there was system and
order and were thinking of a revengeful, unkind and unjust God, that God sent His
Messenger to the people to talk to them, to inspire them, to direct their thinking
and lead them on; and we find through the history of antiquity, a history that is
not complete, a history that has been mutilated, a history that had originally
been carved in stone, written on palm leaves, on the papyrus sheets, upon things
that have faded, that have turned yellow, that have disappeared, written only in the
memories of men's minds and repeated by tradition.
Going way back to the preChristian ora it is a wonder that we have as much history as wo have, but with
wha fragments we do have with us in a ll ages there were these Messengers, leaders,
divine and inspired minds with the same message, always with the same symbolism,
an attempt to picture in the crude minds of the people the great truths that were
difficult to explain.
J u s t as we try to picture to you to-day some of tho great
principles with symbolism in order to arouse a picture and even demonstrate the
boauty of cheerful giving, unselfish giving to others that they may share our
happiness.
Just as man has created for the childmind the symbolism of Santa Claus.

Would you hearken to any one who tried to pro-to to you that there was no good in tii
thought of the Santa Claus principle because, forsooth, there is no truth in the
story of Santa ciaus?
Is not the spirit of Santa Claus the living, vital thing
and not the human form it may take? Because we cannot find in antiquity any exact
records that describe to us the human physical form of these early Messengers have
we any reason to doubt that their spirit remains with us unclothed by any physical
form? If we need any proof vie need only move forward and come to the Christian day.
when there came to the masses the one that was again expected the Master Jesus,
We call Him the founder of Christianity but He did not come as such. We call Him
the founder o f the great Christian Church, but He did not come as that. He came
as a Messenger of God and because a great many have founded churches in His name anc
have made Him their founder there is no reason for us to look upon the man Jesus
as anything else than the Great Inspired Messenger of God. We have ample proof to
illustrate the fact that He came not as a king or potentate, with no physicalj
p olitical power, not even with financial power. The simpleness of His l i f e , of His
name and ancestry, further illustrate that He came as a Messenger to the masses, not
to the few.
Yet He said over and over " I am the Way and that brings out the next
picture that wo should carve in our understanding of the great fundamentals,
I
said a moment ago that we should find in our reasoning about God and His infinite
love and justice and mercy, and in the immutability of the laws he has established,
a V.ray, a Path, for our l if e .
Jesus came to them and pointed out this very thing to
them and he used that very phrase " I am tho ,,ray, I am the Light . If v;e, therefore,
have another great statue in our hearts perhaps we can make it an idol in this
little temple, in this little chamber.
Perhaps we can stand this great mystic in
the holy sanctum, not as a stone idol, not as a carved image, but as a liv in g,
vital thing, this image of the Master Jesus with one hand extended forward in real
fellowship, in gentleness, in kindness and sweetness, and the other hand pointing
to the distant h i l l s , to the Path that leads on, and on, to the goal of l i f e .
As
we stand in this chamber perhaps each one cf us can look and see the Master Jesus
saying Come, I am the Way , and see Him pointing to the Path, and we w ill know then
what He meant when He used those words, because as the Messenger of God he repre
sented the immutable laws of the one statue on the outside, and the love, mercy,
justice and understanding of God, the other statue.
By coming unto the Master
Jesus and listening to Him, listening to the simple lessons He told, remembering
the simple doctrines He expounded, we find that we have a guide-book, a directory,
tc the Path we are on. We can do that without thinking of Christianity, without
thinking of sectarianism; as Jew, as Gentile, as Protestant, as Roman Catholic we
can walk up into this individual temple in our hearts and to the Master standing
there and take His advice, follow His directions, listen to His suggestions, abide
by His comments, His criticisms, bask in His love and His smile, and qo on our way
better, side by side, along with all these cf other sects, for we have seen in the
teachings that Jesus taught nothing that all the Messengers before*Him had not
atternpted to teach; that He taught nothing that Jew and Gentile, Roman Catholic
and Protestant alike cannot accept.
He taught nothing that is inconsistent with
our own inner convictions if we view them fairly and properly.
So our next litt le statue, or carving, that we may make is an altar with the Bible
upon it, a Holy Book, a sacred book, and in that book we can read the outstanding
doctrines that the Master Jesus taught.
Think of the ones we have referred to in
our class lessons. Was there one that tore down without immediately reconstructing?
Was there one that took away a single stone without having another ready to put
into its place? Was there one that distinctly applied to one class and eliminated
another? Was there one that was for women and not for men, one for men and not for
women? One for black or v/hito or yellow or brown? One that pertained to a part of
the world and not all of the world? Was there anything in His doctrines that indi
cated that any man of any birth, of any blcod, of any tongue was not a Son cf God?
liol We cannot find anything in the doctrines that is not universal.
It would havo
to be so if it came from the Messenger of a universal, infin ite Father who was all

loving, all merciful, all just and all wiso, for no such Father could pick and
oliminate and say that some aro rny children and some aro not.
So we should have
as a conviction the doctrinos, tho sinple doctrines, that Jesus taught.
Nov; we havo a temple in our hearts with an altar and a Bible, with doctrines of tho
Master there boforo the altar, a retreat, a haven, a place to go in perplexity and
socle for instruction, ligh t, sympathy, guidance, understanding, strength, for power
to overcome, and oven havo the proper words to use when Satan tries to tempt. V/c
have this wonderful thing, but some cannot accept it.
Thoy say there arc objections;
that ;;hat Jesus taught and demonstrated included miracles, and that miracles aro in
consistent.
I have tried to show you that you w ill bo a better Christian, a better
man and a better woman, a better Jew, better Gentile, better Homan Cathclic, better
Protestant, if you w ill leave out of your consideration, out of your religious
thoughts, the miracles that Josus performed, and take His words, follow His life
as Hp lived i t , follow tho instructions that He taught. Do not pin your faith to
what seems to be a miracle of birth, a miracle of transition.
If you must consider
those miracles romember this:
There is no reason in considering a miracle to bo an
exception to any of nature s laws.
Really it would be a miracle if God performed no
miracles at a ll.
Miracles are and always have been the exceptional demonstration of
tho consistent power of the infinite mind. There is no warrant for the common be
lie f that everything that is proper and true is just, but normal and commonplace,
and that the uncommonplacc, the unnatural or tho unnornal must be a miracle. A
miracle can happen in your life when you arc ready for the greatest miracle of a l l .
Each one of you can experience a miracle tomorrow even tonight a miracle that
would make the angels in Heaven rejo ice, that would make the God of your statue smile,
and that would establish tho immutable laws that wo have been speaking about - a
miracle that would cause the thunder and lightning of the Cosmic tc manifest again:
the miracle of Redemption.
If tonight you could go into this sanctum, this hcly
chamber that I have been talking about, taking in with you all your grief and all
your sorrow and all your badness and all your evil take them all in with you and
stand before the Master and let him tG ll you why' and how you aro what you are, and
there,, in the presence of the Master Jesus and in accordance with the doctrincs of
the Book on the altar, find in that personal contact, in that sacred presence, in
that silence the beginning of a now l i f e , a fresh start in your thinking, in your
believing, in your doing, tho change that would come over you, the songs you would
hear being sung, the music that would come from the choirs of the spheres, the joy
that would come in your heart, the power that would f i l l your being would be a
miracle, the greatest miracle of a l l , and you would no longer have any doubt about
miracles, or any misunderstanding about them.
Do not wait for the miratfles in the
lives of others.
Do not pin your fa ith on tho miracles that have occurred in the
past. Do not depend upon the miracles that may come in the future. ^ Put yourself
in attunement with God and the Universe and let the great miracle happen to you.
Jesus caine tc teach that.
Ho came to demonstrate it, although we find in the
earliest days of civilization similar references to great God's and adorations to
other great leaders; they were all great in their time, they were all good in the
circumstances, but Jesus came fin ally to the more evolved civilization with the
last of the great messages on earth and told us then that we could find hereafter
the Kingdom of Heaven w ithin, and of all that was demonstrated, all that was done,
even greater things could each one of us do. This is not sectarianism.
This is
nothing of a limited nature.
It is nothing that is strictly limited to a church.
It is something that is as equally vital to each one of us in our daily affairs as
is any other thought or conviction, any other gift or pov/er, any other promise or
blessing or benediction.
So we find in our review that there was a great Redeemer that came to earth.
It is
immaterial where Ho was born, how He was born, just how He lived, how He left us.
Ono outstanding thing is that He was, and of His being, the one great outstanding

thing was the l i f e that He lived.

Of tho life that He lived, the ono groat out
standing thing was th& doctrine, tho system of thought', that Ho left for us.
Of
that system the most beautiful and wonderful outstanding thing is the fact that
it applies to a ll of us in such a practical way, in such a simple way, that it
constitutes the Way to Salvation.
The mystic says that we were all born in original sin, the sin of ignorance; we
were^born without the objective, material, worldly knowledge of cur own being,
our own power, and from that sin we must be saved, from that ignoranco we must
be redeemed.
Jsus came and said " I am the Way, the Salvation." Tho great
teacher came and said "Through me, by means of me, you w ill be saved of your
ignoranco, saved from your s i n ." You have been taught now, your minds have been
refreshed through these lectures, of the lessons you were taught early in l i f e ,
perhaps at your m other^ knee, in tho Sunday School, in tho church, perhaps some
of them wrongly explained, perhaps some of them misunderstood.
But all has beon
reviewed and now you are at the entrance to tho temple w ithin. You are free to
choose from this hour onward whether you w ill walk into the temple of illumination,
self-examination, perfect construction, ideal guidance,, and start oa the Way to
Salvation, start on the way to better liv in g , higher thinking, more perfect manif<. station of the soul that is within you, or go on as you have been. No exhorta
tion can lead you to it.
No psychological feats should ever tempt you. No great
crowds or assemblies should be the place for your basking in the light of redeeming
illumination*
It should be when you are alone in the innermost sanctum of the hcly
of holies; when you are free to choose with no urge from without but ever called from
w ithin; when you go voluntarily; when none but you and God shall know. This, says
the mystic, is the only way to enter into the temple, to come before the Master and
through Him fin d the Way to go and through this Way get the peace, the infinite
peace, infinite love, infinite mercy, infinite justice; for once you are in the tem
ple and in the presence of the Master, once you are on the Path, you w ill show to all
men love, and intolerance w ill be trampled under you feet; you w ill show sympathy and
understanding as a child of the loving Father. -You w ill show mercy. You w ill be
f a i r , you w ill depend uDon the laws for ccnpensating and adjusting. You w ill attempt
no rovenge upon your own account.
By living thus, walking in the Light that comes
from the Cross of the heavens , from the breast of God, through the being of Kis
Messenger, you w ill find yourself walking in the illumination that makes your Light
among men a Light of Love and Peace.
This is my closing talk to you and I hope that I w ill see some fr u it ,
some express
ion from each of you to prove w h a t you have found the Path.
May God ble-ss you.
H. Spencer Lewis,
Imperator,
April 18, 1S27

AKORC