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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
reality, the truth lies the other way. As a matter of fact, the authors of our Scriptures were highly intellectual men, and possessed a more profound knowledge of things of which we are alnuost wholly ignorant, in spite of our much lauded methods of research. When the modern scientist smiles at the crass ignorance and the crude, superstitious faith of the Hindu who maintains that the universe rests on the back of a tortoise, he simply smiles at his own ignorance, although quite unconscious of the fact. The truth is, that it was never intended that this statement should be understood in its literal sense. The tortoise is the symbol of Life, which manifests itself or works through the five sense-holes, i.e., organs of sensation, just as a tortoise extends its limbs through the holes in its shield. Besides this, the tortoise possesses the power of expansion and contraction which is also a characteristic of the living substance or soul. Struck with the similarity between the functions of Life, and the holes in the bony covering of the tortoise, the propounder of the text in question employed the animal as a symbul for the soul. Thus, what is intended by the statement is not that the world, i.e., our little globe, actually rests on the back of a giant tortoise, but that the universe of matter and form is supported by the substratum of Life. Similarly, the passage (Matt. XXVII. 51 and 52)—
"The veil of the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves and appeared unto many (after the crucifixion of Jesus)" — was not intended to be read in its ordinary sense. The veil which was torn from top to bottom was not the
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