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CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
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that secret science which is io reality secret only because it is hidden and locked in the inner nature of every wan, however iguorapt and humble, aud uone but himself can turu the koy.... In plain words... it gives the esoteric interpretatiou of tho Christos rayth; it tells what Iesoas, the Christos' really is, it explains the nature of the old ser pept, who is the Devii and Satan '; it repajiates the profane couception of an authropomorphis God; and with sublime imagery it points out the true and the only path to Lite eternai" (Ibid. p. 5).
It is not a new case that I am making out before you. As early as the fourth century A, D. Origen, a famous Christian, who was, on the authority of the Encyclo. Britannica, the inost distinguished and most influential of all the theologians of the ancient Chris. tian church, had applied the allegorical method witir reference to the interpretation of the Holy Bible. Origen fully believed that there was not either in the Old or the New Testament a single syilable that was void of divine meaning and import,
« But how," he asks, 'can we conciliate with thi, tenet of their
entire inspiration the existence in the Bible of such tales as that of Lot and his daughters, of Abraham prostituting first one wife and then another, of a succession of at least three days and nights before the sun war created ? Who will be found idiot enough to believe that God planted trees in Paradise like any husbandman ; that he set up in it visible palpable tree-trunks, labelled the one · Tree of Life,' and the other Tree of koowledge of Good and Evil,' both bearing real fruit that wight be masticated with corporeal teeth ; that he went
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