THE “NEW GOSPEL OF INTERPRETATION”

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XXII.

The Church of the Regeneration, its

Characteristics: “the Dry Bones Live”

IN THE Church of the Regeneration to come of the New Interpretation, Ecclesiasticism, transformed, will decline any longer to regard as its proper type that which, whether as pagan or as papal, has ever been the synonym for Force – Roma; but reversing it, will have Amor, Love; taking for its legend, and living up to it, “There is no religion so high as Love.”

And the “Peter,” too, of the Regeneration, instead of denying his Lord and claiming to be, himself, the Rock of the Church, will fulfil his proper twofold function, as implied in the name of his great prototype, Hermes, being Interpreter as well as Rock. So doing he will show that he has learned to recognise the Understanding, and no person, no book, no tradition, nor any thing but the Understanding, as the Rock – the impregnable Rock – of the Church, and that only as the true Church

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which is founded thereon. Inasmuch as it is Faith that saves, and that which is without Understanding is not faith but Credulity. And it is only against the Church which is so established that the gates of hell cannot prevail. For Mystery, which is the negation of the understanding, is the Devil’s most potent device, being – as parent of all other of his devices – called the “Mother of abominations.”

And with the Mystery which, instead of requiring but the exaltation of the understanding, demands its suppression, will go its correlate, Magic, that which, under the name of “Sacramentarianism,” implies the power of outward and visible signs to effect of themselves saving results, independently of inward and spiritual graces. For it will be recognised as a subtle device of the father of priestcraft, having for its end the subversion of Regeneration as the one true way of salvation, in favour of Substitution and a doctrine of blood, and the further confirmation of his own kingdom through the glorification of his earthly representatives, the fallen priesthoods. Thus discarding the traditions, derived from the pit, whereby hitherto they have “made the Word of God of none effect,” the clergy will cease the vain and impious endeavour to “make concord between Christ and Belial,” and no longer aid “the god of this world to blind the eyes of men to the light of Christ’s glorious Gospel.” There can be no “agreement between the temple of the living God and idols,” no compromise between the Gospel of Christ and ecclesiastical religion.

And “Peter” will use his sword, no longer to cut off the ears of listeners lest hearing they should understand and be converted and healed; but to open them, giving them, instead of the “stones” of innutritious because uncomprehended dogmas and the “serpents” of the illusory astral, the pure mysteries of the celestial. So will he at length fulfil his Master’s injunction, “Feed

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my sheep,” by giving them that only “true bread of heaven,” the food of the understanding.

And his sword will be the “sword of the Spirit,” and not of the flesh. For it will be that “Word of God which pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” So that no more for lack of power to distinguish between these two indefeasible factors of Being, shall the Father and the Son be denied, the Holy Ghost blasphemed, the Heir killed, and the Spirit grieved and quenched, and this “in the house of their friends,” through the suppression of Her, the Mistress of that house, the Substance and Mother of God; of Her without whom both the “Upper Triangle” in the High Heavens of the Unmanifest, and the “Lower Triangle” of the Manifest in man are rendered lifeless and void and barren, a very abomination of desolation. But the Whole Deity and Whole Humanity shall find the recognition and manifestation their due, and the earth be filled with the knowledge which, being that of God in man, is at once that of God and man, “as the waters cover the sea-bed.”

And, inasmuch as the New Interpretation does not merely “denounce the corruptions of the Church,” but shows wherein those corruptions consist, together with the cause and the process and the motives thereof, and with whom the responsibility lies, and restores the truth in its purity, it shall be with the dogmas and creeds and rituals and other symbols of the Church as it was with those “bones,” so “very dry,” upon which, in view of such restitution, the prophet prophesied as he was commanded, saying, “O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Behold I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live, and ye shall know that I am the Lord. And as he prophesied there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And the sinews and the flesh came upon them, and the skin covered them, and the breath came into them, and

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they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”

For, as now has at length been made manifest, all these things are “vessels of the house of the Lord, which have been carried away into the Babylon” of an Ecclesiasticism wholly given to idolatry, and deprived of their proper significance and efficacy, to the desolation of the Jerusalem of the Church. But the time has come when “the Lord shall turn away the captivity of Zion;” and “Cyrus” shall build again the temple of the true humanity, the elements of which they symbolise. An army, therefore, are they, as thus restored, omnipotent to blast and wither up the whole Assyrian host of the blasphemies against God, nature, reason, and man, which, under the baleful rule of the past, have usurped the sacred names of religion, morality, philosophy, and science, only to outrage them by using them as a cover under which to make of the earth the Aceldama and Golgotha it has hitherto been. So will be accomplished the Armageddon of those inveterate enemies of all that, being spiritual, is substantial and real, the “Gog and Magog” of Externality and Materiality whose habitat is ever the “north” of mere Intellectualism. For that which Armageddon implies is the destruction of these by means of a New Gospel at once of Interpretation and of Reconciliation; making Christ no more a sword but peace, peace on earth and goodwill among men to the glory of God in the Highest.