THE “NEW GOSPEL OF INTERPRETATION”

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VI.

The Bible Throughout Denounces Ecclesiasticism

Besides its emphatic affirmations on behalf of an intuitional or esoteric sense and the duty of searching for it, Scripture clearly indicates the source and cause of the failure to apprehend that sense; bitterly denouncing at the same time those who deny or withhold it, and commending highly those who seek for and discern it. And it is precisely this sense that is the subject of the conflict which the Bible throughout exhibits as waged between priest and prophet. For, while the former is perpetually denounced as the minister of sense and the materialiser of things spiritual, the latter is constantly extolled as the minister of the intuition and the redeemer from materiality.

And this according to the exoteric as well as the esoteric sense of the Bible; the Church’s loss of its spiritual perception compelling the prophets to speak plainly. Hence we find the prophets openly denouncing Ecclesiasticism as represented by the priests, for defiling the pure altars of God by shedding upon them the blood

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of the animals used to symbolise the spiritual gifts and graces which men ought to cultivate and dedicate to the service of God, instead of cultivating those gifts and graces themselves; and declaring there was no divine command or sanction for bloody sacrifices; but that, on the contrary, the sacrifices of God are spiritual, consisting in righteousness and purity of heart. It is Ecclesiasticism which all through the Bible is the “Jerusalem that slays the prophets,” the two orders of priest and prophet being typified in Cain and Abel, to find their culminating representatives in Caiaphas and Christ. For Cain is always the priest who, cultivating the “fruits of the ground” of the sense-nature, kills the Abel who, as prophet, cultivates the “lamb” of a pure spirit, and therein a pure intuition – the lamb which at last overcomes all evil.

And it is no other than Ecclesiasticism which, serving as agent of the “serpent,” effects the ruin of the Edenic Church, by depraving the faculty of spiritual perception represented by the “woman.” And to the very end of the Bible the same influences are exhibited as constantly endeavouring to destroy this faculty in man; the faculty which, possessed in high measure, makes the prophet, and in plenitude the Christ, causing Him to be called the “son of the woman,” and she a “virgin.” And while in her restoration and exaltation man is to find his redemption, so will Ecclesiasticism find its destruction, and “that old serpent,” his tempter through Ecclesiasticism in Eden, be “bound for a thousand years.” What, precisely that faculty is will duly be shown. For, as itself the product of it, the “New Gospel of Interpretation” represented by this Society is especially concerned to explain it.

Unlocked by the key thus recovered, the stories of the Deluge, of the Cities of the Plain, of the Exodus, of Esther, of the Captivity and Return, and many others, disclose the same meaning. In their esoteric sense they

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are parables setting forth the Church’s decline into spiritual darkness and the bondage of materiality through the depravation by Ecclesiasticism of its faculty of spiritual perception, and her restoration through the recovery of that faculty. The thick darkness which covered the earth at the crucifixion of Christ by Ecclesiasticism denotes the total eclipse of the same faculty; and His second advent implies its full restoration; the heaven in the clouds of which He will come, being the heaven of the “kingdom within” of man’s restored understanding. For then, for Church and world, as formerly within Himself, the “veil of the temple will be rent in twain from the top to the bottom,” and the Gospel of which He was the manifestation will be succeeded by the Gospel of Interpretation. The hour of the “man” fulfilled and accomplished, the hour of the “woman” will have come. For she is the interpreter.

Such is but a brief selection and abstract of the methods whereby the Bible illustrates and enforces the perpetual endeavour of the Church Celestial to establish the Christ-gnosis in the world, and the determined attempt, hitherto successful, of Ecclesiasticism to withstand and suppress it.

This is not, however, to say that the collection of writings which form the Bible is all of it Holy Scripture and Word of God. For it comprises books which are sacerdotal, historical, and secular, as well as books which are prophetical, mystical, and spiritual; and it has moreover been subjected to much alteration, interpolation, and mutilation, in such wise as to constitute it rather a mass of clay, in which are imbedded grains, and nuggets, and veins of gold, than a mass which is all gold. Being thus material vehicle and dross, as well as the pure metal of divine truth, the Bible requires a “spirit of knowledge and understanding” to determine what portions of it really are divine truth, as well as to

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comprehend that truth itself. It is in view of the mischief wrought by the undiscriminating worship of the book and letter of Scripture that the New Interpretation includes the Bible among the idols which must be cast into the fire in order to undergo the purification indispensable to the revelation of the truth contained in it. And when it is said, as in these pages, that “the Bible says so and so,” the reference is to that in the Bible which, being divine, constitutes it a Bible or book of the soul.