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IDEALS FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
which required an opening of the understanding, was imparted in secret, to the chosen few. The same is the case with the Old Testament. To-day men read it as if it constituted a historical record; the Jews, also, read it in the same way. Yet we know what a Jesus would say to them if he stood among them: "Woe unto you lawyers! you have taken away the Key of Knowledge; ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered!' Surely, this meant nothing if not this that the way in which the Doctors of Theology were reading their scripture was not the one that led into the Hall of Understanding, but one which led men astray! The epistles all endeavour to reveal the hidden secret of the New Testament teaching in various ways, but always so that the fool and the knave may be thrown off the
scent.
This much is sufficient to show that the surface view, that is to say, the view which is presented on the surface of the allegorical scripts, is not the right but the wrong one. I could show, and have done so in several of my books, that the argument applies equally forcibly to the Scriptures of Hinduism, Muhammadanism and Zaroastrianism, as well as to the teaching of Lao Tse in China. Most, if not all, of the mythologies of the world also have to be read in the secret sense, if we are to get at the kernel of Truth embedded in them.
In a
Now, mark the peculiarities of what I have termed the undercurrent of scientific thought it is the same identically in each and every case, and always reveals a grounding of scientific laws governing the relation of soul and matter, revealing the natural perfections of the former if and when rid of the unwholesome companionship of the latter. word, all religions through this secret scientific undercurrent of thought teach with one voice that the Soul is a simple substance, and, as such, eternal and indestructible, that matter is also an eternal and indestructible substance, that the union of the soul and matter is the cause of untold misery and
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