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• The Bible’s Own Account of Itself. Edward Maitland. 1st Edition:
Ruskin Press,
Information: This book was (until we put it in this site) a rare one, very difficult to find. However, as far as we can see, its message is still of the greatest importance to the well being of the world. May it be a sign of the times. Here you have the complete Html text, with its title pages, the Arguments and Contents (with the links to all the chapters) and the Prefaces to the First and Second Editions:
THE BIBLE’S OWN
ACCOUNT OF ITSELF.
BY
EDWARD MAITLAND
(B.A. CANTAB.)
Author of “The Keys of the Creeds,” “The
Story of the New Gospel of
Interpretation,” “The Life of Anna
Kingsford,” etc., and Joint
Writer with Dr. Anna Kingsford of “The
Edited by SAML. HOPGOOD HART.
SECOND
EDITION,
COMPLETE WITH
APPENDIX.
__________
PRICE
SIXPENCE,
Or in cloth covers, gilt, ONE SHILLING AND
SIXPENCE.
__________
THE RUSKIN
PRESS, RUSKIN HOUSE,
1905.
(p.
x)
ARGUMENT AND CONTENTS
____________________________
Preface to the
Second Edition
(iii-viii)
Preface to the
First Edition
(ix)
CHAPTER II
– The sources of information whereby to determine this question are
four in number, being (1) the Bible itself; (2) the consensus of qualified
commentators; (3) the general usage in corresponding scriptures; (6-11)
CHAPTER III
– (4) The intrinsic nature of the case, as arising from the function
of religion, and discerned by the spiritual consciousness. (12-15)
CHAPTER IV – The
doctrine of the Bible in neither that of Orthodoxy nor of Materialism, but of
Pantheism, in that it involves the divinity of inherency in such wise that
evolution, which is the manifestation of inherency, is accomplished only by the
realisation of divinity, the only barrier to which realisation is man’s own
will. (16-22)
CHAPTER V
– The necessary unity, duality, and trinity of Original, and therein
of all, Being.
The mystical “woman,” of the Bible, in the universal
Substance; in the individual, the Soul. Her recognition
and appreciation to constitute the “Woman’s Age.”
The two trinities, of the Unmanifest and the Manifest, and the
failure of Orthodoxy to distinguish between them. (23-26)
CHAPTER VI – The
passage of Original Being from the static to the dynamic state, in which it is
designated “Holy Spirit,” is followed by the “generation” of the gods and the
world. (27-30)
CHAPTER VII – The
narrative of the Creation, the Flood, and the Nativity. Divine incarnation,
rightly defined, both a logical necessity and an actual fact. (31-36)
CHAPTER VIII – The divinity of inherency, evolution, immortality, regeneration, and re-incarnation, as indispensable to divine incarnation, implied in the promise make to Eve in the sentence pronounced on the serpent, and similarly in the declaration of Jesus to Nicodemus. (37-41)
(p. xi)
CHAPTER IX – The
“Divine Marriage.” The initial and final stages of man’s
spiritual evolution, represented by “Adam” and “Christ,” “Eve” and “Mary,”
“David.” Method of redemption purely spiritual.
Unscriptural and blasphemous nature of the Orthodox presentations. The
sacrifice alone of divine appointment, and efficacious, that insisted on by the
prophets in opposition to the priests. These two orders in conflict throughout the Bible. How to “put on Christ.” The Higher Alchemy
and the true Resurrection. (42-48)
CHAPTER X – The
Soul’s Intuition, the interpreter deliverer, represented in the Bible as a
woman, and symbolised also by the “ass.” Raab, Jael, Esther; David and Daniel; Balaam, Samson and Jesus.
The ego in man, the problem of this the same as the as the God
in the universe. “Christ” macrocosmic as well as microcosmic. The Church
Invisible as “body” of the former. The love of God by which man is saved, the love of perfection.
The Finding of Christ the completion of the Intuition and realisation of the
Ideal. Jesus, why selected to be the new exemplar. (49-55)
CHAPTER XI – The
mystic exodus from the mystic
CHAPTER XII – The
significance of the work represented by this exposition as indicative of the
meaning of the Age. The “time of the end,” the “end of the world,” the
“abomination of desolation,” the “budding of the fig-tree,” the coming to “sit
down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God,” the “drying up of
the Euphrates and passage of the kings of the East,” the “Two Witnesses,” their
resurrection and ascension, the “war in heaven” and “standing up of Michael,”
the “coming of the Son of man” and descent of the “Holy City” – the intended
sense of these expressions, and their present actual realisation in that sense.
The Mystic and the Materialist, the former’s admonition
to the latter, and exposition of the order of the Christ. (62-69)
Letter, “On the Trinity.” (70-75)
Extract from Letter, “The Church and the Bible.” (76-83)
(p. iii)
TO THE SECOND EDITION
________________________
Since the publication, in 1891, of “The Bible’s Own Account of Itself,” Edward Maitland has passed over to the other
side. His withdrawal took place on the 2nd October, 1897 – a little more than
nine years after the death of his colleague, Dr. Anna Kingsford. He has left
behind him an interesting account of his life and work in
“The Life of Anna Kingsford,” his last book, which was published in
1896. From this we learn that he had the “idea of a mission” early in life, and
that this idea gathered force and consistency until it was made clear to him
that “not destruction merely, but construction, not exposure of error but the
demonstration of truth, was comprised in it.” When, in January, 1847, he first
met Dr. Anna Kingsford, who had a similar idea, they recognised that their
mission, which they declared was derived from “the Church invisible, celestial,
and incorruptible,” was a joint mission, and that
“it was summed up in the word ‘interpretation.’”
Mystics have always known that the true and intended sense and meaning of all
holy scripture is to
(p. iv)
be
found, not in the letter, but in a hidden interpretation to be put upon the
letter. Thomas à Kempis (for example), in “The Imitation of Christ,”
says of Moses and the prophets: “They may indeed sound forth words, but they
give not the spirit. They deliver the letter, but Thou, O Lord God, disclosest
the sense. They publish mysteries, but Thou explainest the meaning of the things
sealed. They cry out with words, but Thou givest understanding to the hearer.”
Before the publication of the writings of Dr. Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland, there were not any writings that disclosed the sense and explained the
meaning of the “things sealed.” But, thanks to Dr. Anna Kingsford and Edward
Maitland, this is not so now. When, in 1881, the time had come “for the
unsealing of the world’s Bibles,” they knew that their “own appointed mission”
was that of “unsealing the Bibles of the West.” How they performed their
mission, how they rescued the spirit of the Bible from a literalism that had
hidden and well nigh destroyed it, is shewn in their great work, “The
Already are numerous clergy of the various communions into which, for want of
the key of knowledge, the Church has split, recognising the necessity of
adopting the new interpretation as that alone which, by making religion
intelligible and reasonable, can save it, and with it the world; and in view of
the complete, inexpugnable, and absolute demonstration afforded of the spiritual
nature of existence, the being of God, the soul and immortality, “no one can
henceforth pose as a Materialist without convicting himself of wilful ignorance
and blindness; and determined rejection of
(p. v)
positive
fact.” (1)
“To assume that Carlyle would have “persisted in his description of the Bible as
‘that Hebrew bundle of old clothes,’ after he had read the new
exposition, would be to suppose him so firmly fixed in his prejudices as
to be inaccessible to evidence and reason on the subject. The recovery of the
esoteric sense has completely changed the condition of Biblical interpretation.
To continue to treat Scriptures on the old lines and from the old standpoint
will, henceforth, be an act of wilful perversity.” (2)
But Edward Maitland ever insisted that “in order to have cognisance of thing
interior, mystic, spiritual, men must direct their minds forcibly and reverently
to the region of the consciousness within themselves, leading meanwhile the life
which accords with such high thought:” (3)
and he pointed out that, though the results of his and Dr. Anna Kingsford’s
labours were before the world and accessible to all, they belong to a lever of
thought which cannot possibly be reached or comprehended by those who choose to
assume that man is a mere shell, material, phenomenal, hollow, and
unsubstantial, and who accordingly will not let themselves think inwards and
upwards to reality, but only outwards and downwards to appearance:” (4)
for “in order to appreciate the solution of any problem, man must first be
conversant with the elements of that problem, and for this he must be sensitive
and vitalised in that plane of the consciousness to which the problem is
related. The mere Materialist can no more comprehend things belonging to the
spiritual plane than the mere athlete can comprehend things belonging the
intellectual and metaphysical plane; but he is not therefore justified in
denying their reality.” (3)
Respecting the practice of ascribing to the Bible meanings which it expressly,
emphatically and
(p. vi)
repeatedly disavows, as by giving literal and material significations to
statements obviously and declaredly mystical and spiritual, thereby converting
it into gross and blasphemous nonsense, and of insisting on this as its real
meaning, to the total falsification of that meaning, Edward Maitland said: “I
have only to say that if such practice be not folly, ignorance and dishonesty, I
know of no practice that is.” (1)
In
“The Life of Anna Kingsford”
the following passage occurs with reference
to the year 1891, and the writing of “The Bible’s Own Account of
Itself,” Edward Maitland there says:
“By a train of events so exceptional as to seem to be ordered, I had been
brought into relations with a certain weekly paper which was about the last I
ever anticipated writing in. This was the Agnostic Journal and Eclectic Review,
which I knew only as an organ of unbelief in its most pronounced form, its
editor avowing it to be the object of his life utterly to discredit the Bible
and destroy all that passed for Christianity. The few numbers that I had seen of
it had simply disgusted me by the dense materialism and coarse profanity of its
writers. The editor, nevertheless, was – I was assured – better than his paper,
and his revolt was not really against religion as such, but against the
presentation of it to the destruction of which I myself was devoted. What if I
could, in his columns, get pure spiritual teaching to an audience otherwise
inaccessible on that side of their nature? The chief priest and Pharisee class
had proved themselves as deaf as of old to any but the conventional orthodoxies.
Appeal to them was useless. There was no room in the sumptuous inns of a press
inveterately sacerdotal for the humanity represented by our work. How about the
publicans and sinners of the lowly cave and stable represented by the Agnostic
Journal? I was bound to get a hearing, wherever it might be accorded, and what
more likely than that the very novelty of the attempt to convict the dominant
(p. vii)
orthodoxy of heresy and falsehood out of its own sacred books, and thus to
rehabilitate these, would win a hearing which would otherwise be denied?
“Such were the conditions under which I consented to contribute to the paper in
question the series of articles entitled ‘The Bible’s Own Account of Itself,’
and subsequently published under that name. I had despatched the first of the
series over-night, without any particle of misgiving; but on rising the next
morning I found myself labouring to an extraordinary degree with apprehension at
the prospect of the encounter I had challenged, feeling that I had gone into a
hornet’s nest, or thrown myself, like another Daniel, into a den tenanted by far
less noble creatures than lions, since, as materialists and vivisectionists,
they had, most of them, so far suppressed their humanity as to be rather demon
than human. Thus pondering and shrinking, I sat at the foot of my bed, when
suddenly Mary (1)
threw herself upon me in an all-pervading embrace, giving me an immense
accession of force and courage, and exclaiming in her own unmistakable accents,
‘Caro! (1) They who are on your side are
more than they who are against you. The mountain is full of horses and chariots
of fire round about you!’ And from that time forth, for all the years I wrote in
that paper, I found myself possessed of force and lucidity amply sufficient to
sustain me in every exposition and secure victory in every encounter; and from
many of its readers – some of them life-long unbelievers – I received tokens of
grateful appreciation declaring that as I put spiritual things before them, they
had no difficulty in accepting them.” (2)
It will be noticed that the above-mentioned communication from Dr. Anna
Kingsford was
heard
by Edward Maitland. This was the first occasion, he tells us, after the death of
his Colleague, on which he was able “to catch the tone and accents of the
voice.”
(p. viii)
I have carefully compared this book with the Author’s MS. which is in my
possession. A few additions have been made to the text of the last edition so as
to give the work complete, and I have inserted a few additional notes. I have
also added, by way of Appendix, two
letters, written by Edward Maitland, which have a bearing upon the subjects
dealt with in this book, and these I trust will be found useful to many.
SAML. HOPGOOD HART.
CROYDON,
August, 1905.
NOTES
(v:1) E.M.
letter A.J., 15th September, 1894.
(v:2) From M.S. dated 19th September, 1891 (endorsed
“approx. from memory”), of letter written by E.M. “in reply to Saladin.”
(v:3) E.M. letter A.J., 8th September, 1894.
(v:4) E.M. letter A.J., 29th December, 1894.
(vi:1) E.M. letter A.J., 29th December, 1894.
(vii:1) “Mary” and “Caro” were the initiation names given to
Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland respectively. Anna Kingsford had passed over
to the other side on the 22nd February, 1888. S.H.H.
(vii:2) Life of A.K., Vol. II, pp.
406, 407.
(p. ix)
TO THE FIRST EDITION
______________________
These chapters were originally written as an exposition of the Mysticism of the
West, in distinction from that of the East as propounded by the Theosophical
Society.
In view of a certain identity between the two systems, it is but right to state
here that the work represented by these chapters, and formulated in the joint
writings of the late Dr. Anna Kingsford and myself, was
commenced prior to the formation of the Theosophical Society, and carried out in
complete independence of its teachings. Such resemblance as occurs is due,
therefore, to the correspondence originally subsisting between the religious
systems of the East and the West.
E. M.
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