Ultimately all souls will merge into God, and thus Creator and creature will no longer be distinguished.

It was maintained that all Adam's progeny shared his guilt, but virtuous conduct brought return of heavenly light, while the death of the sinless man was a real sacrifice, serving as an expiation of guilt. Hence saints are the sacrifice and expiation of the world, exercising an important inflnence with God, and causing a larger proportion of Divine essence to pour itself forth through the sefiroth into the world.

The saints are defined to be such as have not given place to materialism, but are spiritualized by ascetic and exstatic exercises shaking off thereby material fetters or bodily impediments. God being in all and pervading all, rational creatures, may, therefore, by virtue of the divine inflatus, soar up to heaven by these ascetic gymnastics, and then contemplate perfection. The material world is a principle co-eternal with God, differing from, and therefore not produced by him. The intellects of the wicked, or those who have not overcome their material incubus, do not return to God, the gates of Eden are closed against them, and their spirits find no rest upon earth. All sin is connected with and inherent in matter, and thus the material body is the seat and cause of moral (theological?) evil, and the poison of the immaterial soul. Virtue then consists in overcoming this material, when the released spirit rises to communion with God. Two bonds connect the human soul with matter, the first is that of necessity, the second of pleasure. The former cannot be loosened, the latter, or love of pleasure, (self?) is the source of evil.

There exists an inferior Deity, the "Logos," or God manifest, standing midway between earth and heaven.

The proofs of the existence of God from the visible creation are inferior to those obtained by soaring heavenwards, without any material or external help, to an immediate contemplation of the Divine essence.

The origin of the human race is accounted for, in one place, by supposing the whole atmosphere to be peopled

SACERDOTAL HYPOTHESES OF CREATION.

283 with higher beings than man, then some of these beings descended to earth, and meeting with material elements originated the human race. Mankind are said to unite in their nature four classes of beings, viz., plants; those having souls; senses; and rational beings with self-determinating powers and responsibilities. Man is like the Logos, or "microcosm," of which the universe is the "macrocosm," and the intellectual faculties of man are not attributes of a definite cerebral organization like the rest of the animate world, but the human mind is the express image of the "Logos" emanating direct from God himself.

This "Logos" is the great connecting link between God and man, who is the mediator, the name of God, his vicar, and image. Relative to man this "Logos" is the first God, but to God as infinite and absolute he is only second, and neither unbegotten as the infinite existence is, nor begotten as man is. Wisdom is the spouse of the Most High, by whom he has begotten his only beloved and sensible son, the material universe. From this mystical union, all divine virtues and potencies spring.

66

In one sense there is only one infinite God, while in another and relative sense there are many, that is, there are three divine potencies, the formative, the preservative, and the governing, over, and in, and through all, is the highest or God of Gods. The universe is held together by the combined operation of these three divine potencies, the Logos" being an incarnation, embodiment, or materialization of immaterial or incorporeal ideas springing from the mystical union of God and wisdom. The infinite or supreme God exists as inaccessible light, while the Logos exists in the first as its material sun or concentrated light, but nothing exists save as far as it is in God, aud the infinite absorbs it in itself.

Thus far there is incontestible evidence of the presence of a grand philosophical element, true to the leading axioms in logical, metaphysical, and cosmological science, although the mind is encumbered with the ragged and threadbare clothes of ancient and effete mystical self-stultifications. But now

we are to drop down from the sublime to the ludicrous almost without warning.

God was said to be chief rabbi in heaven, and his angels acted as assessors. In case of disagreement among themselves this heavenly sanhedrim solved their difficult problems by taking the opinion of earthly sages. The Jewish theologians discovered, through a medium best known to themselves, that Deity was incapable or unwilling to devote his whole time to business. They said that he spent three hours daily in study, three in the commissariat department, providing provisions for the world, three in playing with leviathan, and only three in governing the universe, and this is only twelve hours altogether!

Then with reference to the existence of evil spirits, they were divided into two classes. Number one comprised all those who had originally been good angels, and the second lot included only their progeny by carnal intercourse with females of the human race! Lot number two, however, was further subdivided into two sorts, the first being the offspring of the devils in chief, and Adam and Eve, and the other being the progeny of male devils and the daughters of ordinary men. It seems that after the death of his son Abel, Adam deserted Eve, his lawful wife, and joined two she devils, named respectively Naama and Selith, the concubines of Samael the angel of poison, and this Samael revenged himself by "taking up with" Eve, and between them they gave to the world Asmodi, the chief of the devils. Again it is gravely stated that Adam, after his fall, possessed a whole harem of she devils, and that Eve's adulterous intercourse with evil spirits, and especially with the serpent seducer, was shameless and unrestrained, The issue of these piggish doings was the breeding of a vast herd of demons, and sin was begotten into the heart of the human race. The Israelites were, however, purged from the bad blood gendered by these evil demons in consequence of the presence of their forefathers at Mount Sinai.

How fearfully Jesus of Nazareth must have shocked their intuitive convictions, by telling them that these said fore

THEOLOGICAL DEGRADATION OF HEALTHY SENSE. 285 "Your fathers ate manna

fathers had perished for ever. "and are dead," said he.

It was maintained that these evil (or theological?) spirits had three faculties or attributes peculiar to angels, and three in common with the human race; that is, they had wings, could fly, and knew the future, and like men they eat drank, propagated their species, and died! So much for logic in theology, this overthrows by inference the immortality of the human soul.

The Talmud speaks of four parts in the human soul, the fourth being a kind of inward and spiritual grace which God gives to the Israelites every sabbath, and which returns to God at the close of every weekly festival.

The squalling of newly-born infants was accounted for in this ingenious way; it was said, that before a child sees the light of day, an angel shows it the glories of heaven, and the torments of hell, then beats it with a stick, and drives it into the world, hence the beaten infant comes crying into existence.

The consequence of Adam's fall amounted to this, that liability and proneness to sin had become natural to man, not that death had passed upon all men as connected with Adam.

Proneness to sin does not amount to actual sinfulness, but is merely an inclination, and tendency to evil.

At the age of thirteen a good inclination makes itself felt, and then a struggle between good and evil commences. After death the soul hovers a long time about the body. Besides the good who go straight to heaven, and the wicked who go headlong down to hell, there is a medium class who are purified by fire for twelve months; but Israelites are not liable to this purgatorial refining, unless the peculiar bodily mark of their descent had become effaced!

Fancy, now, the post-mortem investigation of the Devil and his assistants upon the body of a subject of doubtful circumcision!

There exist in man two inclinations, called respectively the "Jezer Job," or good, and the "Jezer-ha-ra," or evil inclina

tions, both come from God. To shut up the Jezer-ha-ra the most effectual means is study of the law. According to the "Sohar" evil is necessary to make virtue possible.

When souls appear before the great Judge he puts good works into one scale and evil into the other, and awards heaven and hell in proper proportion to preponderance of good or evil.

Some saints collect a superfluity of merits available for others. One saint, ycleped Simon-ben-jochai, boasted of his superfluous merits, that they were enough to atone for the sins of the world to the end of time.

In strict accordance with the peculiar charity of all theologians, they held that heretics and infidels are incapable of penitence, and consequently that any crime against their lives and bodies is justifiable.

Perfect saints have the privilege of descending into the infernal regions when necessary, and might fish up those who had repented on earth, but had been prevented by death from making satisfaction.

Condemned criminals, if unwilling to confess, were admonished to exclaim, "May my death be the expiation of my "sins!"

If a man was tortured by an uneasy conscience, he was directed to seek expiation of his sins by studying the law, and to look to his personal sufferings, his merits, and works of kindness, together with his final death agony, and these together would procure his pardon.

From the foregoing average sample of the bulk of ancient Jewish theological tradition, some estimate may be made of the condition of the literate mind of the nation when Jesus exclaimed, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and learned, and has revealed them "unto infants," that is infants in erudition.

66

Jesus avoided the literate when he selected his followers. He sought to educate or draw out the powers of the minds of the plain, straight-seeing, unprejudiced, and theistically illiterate men; and when we see the condition of the learned in divinity in those days the reason is obvious. For of true