the knowledge of this arcane philosophy will invest the soul of man with greatly enlarged powers of doing good, and of "working the works of God." In the possession of this spiritual science, magnetism becomes the wisdom-lore of the ancient sages,—the knowledge of spiritual things, and their relation to natural things. Religion becomes the recognition of the Father and Mother sides of the Divine Being,—an androgyne Deity, the divine character rounded out into fullorbed completeness, and not a one-sided, stern, inflexible, masculine power and justice. And heaven itself, with its angelic hosts, is brought back from the immense remoteness, where the theology of materialism has placed it, into actual contact with men's souls.

In our Western theology, the masculine side of the divine nature has been pushed into extreme prominence, to the exclusion of the feminine side. In the Hindu system the reverse of this is true, and Mozoomdar boldly affirms, "We believe in a Mother God." It is an interesting fact that among them the Supreme Divine Essence, the Aditi (from a, not, and diti, bounded), is feminine, as the form of the Sanscrit word indicates. Hence, to the Hindu mind, the Absolute Divinity is passive and responsive, which ought to lay a firm foundation for faith in prayer. This is only another way of saying, “God is love," as love is the feminine side of human nature, and true love is an irrepressible inclination and impulse to give. In Swedenborg's "Science of Correspondence," the Father signifies the Divine Love, by which conception the sterner features of the Masculine Divinity of the popular theology are softened into motherhood, and the God we adore becomes tenderly responsive to our supplications, as the maternal instinct with loving haste flies to the rescue of her waiting child. In the Roman Catholic Religion, Mary is worshipped as a representative of the Universal Mother, and thus they unconsciously appeal to the Mother nature of God, and have accomplished the use of keeping alive in the Western mind

this idea. Among them, Mary is the healer, and thus they teach, consciously or unconsciously, a great truth. There is in God, in the Christ, in Jesus, and in every holy and truly spiritual being, a masculine and feminine element. The perfect harmony and balancing of these is the highest condition of man. But it is the feminine element that binds up the hurts of every living thing. Nari, Isis, and Mary represent the maternal side of the Divine Being, and the feminine divine life-principle in nature. The original trinity was not that of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but was expressed by the relations of Father, Mother, and Son. This is given us in the "Timæus” of Plato, but came from the much older philosophy of India. Each discrete degree of the human mind is dual; that is, it is constituted of intellect, and sensibility or feeling, a masculine and feminine element in union. So in the Divine Mind and all its manifestations and incarnations. Suppose, in the Christian theology, we should view the Holy Spirit as the universal Mother element, it would at first be suspected of heresy, but nevertheless would express an eternal truth. But such is the fixedness of religious opinions, that the bare mention of the divine motherhood in God is deemed improper, and subjects one to the charge of being "a setter forth of strange gods." But everything in nature is dual. The air we breathe is a union of two gases, oxygen and nitrogen,-a positive and masculine, and a negative or feminine element. So water is a combination of oxygen and hydrogen. Minerals and earths follow the same law. All the salts of chemistry—and their name is legion—are a union of an acid and an alkali. Marble is carbonic acid and lime, and is carbonate of lime.

The maternal element in God and nature is manifested in the tender, protecting, nursing, and healing care of the maternal parent among animals for her young. Jesus refers

us to the hen as an illustration. Take these qualities and attributes exhibited everywhere in nature in the ineffable

the plane

tenderness of motherhood, and project the idea upon of the infinite, and you have our conception of the universal divine life-principle. We may call it Eve, or Mary, or the Holy Spirit, but must not separate it from God. We may always trust in it to cure our maladies of body and mind, and can pray to this side of the divine character. It furnishes a secure standing ground for an assured faith, and will until "mothers cease their own to cherish." When we fully grasp the idea, it will ever say to us in the words of Jesus, "Be not afraid; only believe." (Mark v. 36.)

The union of intellect and feeling, the masculine and feminine elements, to constitute a world, a thing, a perfected and complete human entity, is the symbolic significance of the cross, which expresses one of the grandest, most far-reaching and all-comprehensive truths in the whole realm of mind. Thus we rescue the sacred cross from its degradation in the modern theology, and restore it to its ancient and true meaning, and its saving, healing power. It is said that Constantine, the Roman emperor, had a vision of a cross in the heavens, on which was inscribed the letters I.H.S. vince. That meant, and still means, In hoc signo vince, in what this sign signifies, conquer; for the truth, sublime in its simplicity, symbolized by the cross, is of the widest practical importance in the system of mental cure. The union of intellectual thought with feeling or emotion generates power. The omnipotence of God is the conjunction of infinite wisdom and infinite love. The union of the Divine Intellect and the Divine Love is Life, and all conscious and unconscious life is the result of that conjunction, a truth we have aimed to keep before the mind of the reader of these lessons. Hence the cross is the Kabalistic "tree of life." The highest psychological power is attained when we feel the truth we know and express. When the principle of spiritual intelligence in us is conjoined with its correlative emotion, it becomes a supreme saving and healing

power. Intelligence alone, unvivified by love, is cold and dead, and has no more animating power than moonbeams reflected from polar ice. The healing power of Jesus was the result of the union of a divine intelligence with a pure, unselfish love, and his very name signifies and represents the saving principle that is the product of that union, as we shall have occasion to illustrate hereafter.

CHAPTER XX.

THE KABALISTIC AND MESSIANIC METHOD OF HEALING, AND THE ONE PRACTISED BY JESUS THE CHRIST.

THAT the cures wrought by Jesus were effected by the application of certain fixed principles, which, when properly formulated, constitute an intelligible transcendental mode or science of cure, there can be little doubt. His practical metaphysics are not an impenetrable and incommunicable secret. The knowledge of its leading principles is attainable by the spiritually enlightened mind to-day, and that knowledge will invest us with the power to do the works that he did. It was the practical application of the Messianic method of cure, described in symbolic language in the Kabala. In the Sohar, or Book of Light, of Rabbi Simon Ben Jochai, it is said: "In the garden of Eden (which was in the lower region of the spiritual world, corresponding to the soul region in man) there is one palace which is called the palace of the sick. The Messiah goes into this palace and invokes all the sufferings, and pains, and afflictions of Israel to come upon him, and they all come upon him. Now if he did not remove them thus, and take them upon himself, no man could endure the sufferings of Israel, due as a punishment for transgressing the Law: as it is written, 'Surely he hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows.' (Isa. lii. 4.) (See Ginsburg's "Kabala.") This remarkable passage from the Kabala gives no foundation for the current doctrine of vicarious atonement, which was wholly foreign to the Jewish mind, but gives the key to a method of healing practised by Jesus, and perhaps also by the mystic