the "holy vessels." An angel blows a trumpet, and calls the Chaldæans to enter, and the people are made captive. Jeremiah joins the train of exiles after flinging the keys of the Temple towards the sun. Baruch dwells among the tombs. Abimelech, the good Æthiopian, had been dispatched on an errand just before the city fell. He fell asleep for sixty-six years, and, on awaking, found some figs which he had in a basket still fresh. On entering the city he was bewildered by the changes which he beheld. After learning from an old man the history of Jerusalem's ruin, he met Baruch among the tombs. By divine command, Baruch wrote a letter to the captives and announced their approaching deliverance. An eagle carried the manuscript to Babylon, where he found Jeremiah and a concourse of Hebrews burying a dead man. The corpse revived when the eagle stood on it; and the miraculous bird carried Jeremiah's reply to Baruch. The exiles returned, but those who refused to part from their heathen wives first went back to Babylon, and then retraced the journey and settled in the district of Samaria. So far the incidents and tone are completely Jewish; but a break now occurs. Jeremiah, while praying in the Temple, fell into a three days' trance. The people thought him dead, but were forbidden by the voice of God to bury him. Jeremiah arose and exhorted the people to the praise of God—“And praise Jesus the Christ and Son of God, the Light of all the Ages, the unquenchable Light, the Life of the Faith." When Christ came he would cause the barren trees to bear fruit, and red would become white, and bitter sweet. He would choose Twelve Apostles to preach to the nations; and would appear on the Mount of Olives and satisfy the hungry souls. The multitude turned angrily upon the prophet, but he calmly took a stone and said: "Eternal Light, cause this stone to become a man." The stone was transformed, and the mob, taking it for Jeremiah, cast stones at it with murderous intent. The stone cried: "O foolish children of Israel, why do you throw at me, thinking me to be Jeremiah? behold, he stands in your midst." In a few moments Jeremiah lay slain, and the people buried him, and placed over his tomb the wonderful stone with the sarcastic inscription, "Lo, this is Jeremiah's help.” Here, not without a sense of the dramatic, the writer closes the apocalypse.* 20. The Elkesaites.--In the slow and obscure gestation which produced orthodox Christianity many sects commingled their influences, and then almost sank into oblivion. For information concerning them we depend on stray allusions and more or less garbled reports in the writings of early Christian authors. We have before spoken of the Mandæans and Sabæans, strange churches whose creeds may have drawn elements from Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic sources. They helped to prepare the train of religious thought which worked out in the religion of Mohammed. Clearer, though not nearly so full or so exact as we could wish, are the indications which we possess on the subject of the Elkesaites. They may or may not have derived their name from a certain Elxai, whom conjecture has placed in the reign of Hadrian. Their sacred "Book" (its title is unknown), they averred, had fallen from heaven, or had been revealed by the Son of God. They observed the Sabbath; they circumcised; they baptized in order to wash away sin and heal disease; they also performed washings on days which the stars declared propitious. Baptism was administered in the name of the Father and the Son, and in the presence of the Seven Holy Witnesses-heaven, earth, water, the holy spirits, the spirits of prayer, oil, and salt. At the Sacred Meal only bread and salt were eaten. food was forbidden. The Elkesaites esteemed marriage. They allowed no sacrifices, detested fire, and venerated water. Paul they denounced, but cherished certain biographies of Peter, Clement, James, and the like; and maintained that these apostles were vegetarians. After Aaron, no prophet arose till Christ, and of Christ's life they possessed an account in the "Hebrew gospel of Matthew." Some said Christ came of a virgin mother, others denied. Some said Adam and Christ were one; others affirmed that he had appeared not only as Adam, but in other forms and * Flesh Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift for 1872 (German translation from the Æthiopic); J. R. Harris's "Rest of the Words of Baruch," Greek text (only) and introduction. at various periods; and others saw in Jesus a man elected by God to receive the Holy Spirit at baptism. A further stroke of fancy represented Christ as a Great King, ninetysix miles high, twenty-four miles broad. At Christ's side stood the female Holy Spirit. The Elkesaites had kinship with the Essenes, and later on (so said Epiphanius) were identified with the Sampseans. The Sampseans prayed with their faces towards the sun.* 21. The Gnostics. So far-reaching and complex a phenomenon as Gnosticism does not lend itself to orderly description. We may deal briefly with-(1) The sources. (2) The leading doctrines. (3) The teachers. The sources lie dimly among the Mystæ of Asia Minor, who, in turn, lit their lamps of speculation from the fires of Indian, Persian, Chaldæan, Egyptian, and Jewish thought. Contributions to the Gnostic philosophy flowed in from the Old Testament, from the secret learning of the Kabbala, from the tenets of the followers of Zoroaster, from Hindus and Buddhists, from the priests of Mithra, from the hieroglyphic wisdom of Egypt, from the magic devices of Chaldæa.† How came the world into existence? how came life? how came evil? The Gnostics answered these questions in their divine gnosis, or knowledge. They taught that the Supreme Being was ineffable, unnameable, an impenetrable abyss. The Ineffable One manifests in a Pleroma, or Fulness, of divine Powers or Æons. One of these Œons is the Demiourgos (Demiurge), or maker. But he is a degenerate Æon, and the material world that he fashions is totally evil. Or, in another view (for in such speculations no consistency need be demanded by the historian), the Demiurge presents himself as a master of darkness, an adversary, an enemy of light. An Eon must descend to redeem the world and reveal to ignorant mankind the illuminating Gnosis. In various modes the Gnostics found this redeeming on in Christ. * Kurtz's 66 History," vol. i., section 28; Harnack's "History of Dogma," vol. i., chapter vi. +These sources are pointed out in somewhat greater detail in vol ii. of this "History," concluding section. Kurtz's "History," vol. i., section 26; article in " 'Encyclopædia. Britannica." No adequate account of the series of Gnostic teachers has reached modern eyes. We must content ourselves with sparse notices from Hippolytus and other Christian authors. Previous mention has been made of Simon Magus,* but we recapitulate certain details in order to give a connected sketch of the succession of Gnostic propagandists. Simon traced the universe to an origin of Boundless Power, the Voice, the Name, the Root, the primal Fire. The mystic Root even exists in Man. From the uncreated Fire emanated the World, and the emanation took place by means of Six Radicals-Mind, Intelligence, Voice, Name, Reason, Thought; and their symbols are seen thus:-Of Mind, Heaven; Intellect, Earth; Voice, the sun; Name, the moon; Reason, air; Thought, water; and the Hebrew story of the Six-days' Creation darkly hinted at the Six Root-powers. Another allegory Simon saw in the legend of Paradise, and to him the making of man in Eden signified the construction of man in the mother's womb. The four rivers flowing from Paradise were the four senses (leaving out Touch), or the four books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers), while Deuteronomy (its emblem being Touch) was supplied as a general explanation and repetition. The Radical known as the Intelligence became lost [a parable, perhaps, to represent the human intellect wandering helplessly in search of truth], and, in the form of Helena, drifted hither and thither waiting for redemption. Simon himself brought redemption by publishing the Gnosis. He appeared to the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father, to the Gentiles as the Holy Ghost. An extract from Simon's "Revelation" runs as follows:-" Unto you, therefore, I say what I say, and write what I write. The writing is this. There are two stocks of all the ons put together, having neither beginning nor end, springing out of one root, the which is Silence, invisible, inconceivable; of which stocks, the one shows itself from above, the which is a great Power, Mind of the All, pervading all things, and of the male sex; the other, showing itself from below, is the Great Intelligence, and is of the female sex, generating all things," etc. All this is told by Hippolytus, and he twists the Helena doctrine into a piece of gossip about Simon having a harlot Helena for his companion. In misrepresenting Simon he was following the example of the Theophilist who penned the book of Acts. Hippolytus adds that Simon died in Persia, having been buried alive after assuring his disciples he would re-emerge on the third day.* Menander was Simon's disciple, and, like his leader, a Samaritan. Only a fragment of tidings concerning him has come down to us. He taught that the world was made by angels, who sprang from the divine Ennoia, or Conception. They who were baptised in his name should never suffer old age or death. Probably he used allegorical expressions touching baptismal influence, which his opponents turned into this absurd parody.† Of Cerinthus little can be related. The famous anecdote of the Apostle John hastening out of a bath, lest the roof should fall while Cerinthus polluted the place, is an idle tale, but strikingly marks the state of feeling which Christians cherished towards the Gnostics. Cerinthus compounded Gnostic, Jewish, and Christian ideas. He held the belief in the under-god, or Demiurge. Insisting upon the necessity of obeying the Mosaic Law, he was so far Jewish that tradition afterwards attributed to him the composition of the Apocalypse in the New Testament. Yet he taught a Christ-doctrine. According to Cerinthus, Jesus (whom he could not believe to be born of a virgin) excelled in virtue, and at baptism the Christ-power descended upon him, and endued him with the gift of miracle. The mystic influence, however, departed before the crucifixion took place; and, though Jesus died and rose again, it was as man pure and simple. ‡ Saturninus, a native of Antioch, spread the Gnostic gospel in Syria in the early part of the second century. The scheme of Saturninus placed an Unknown Father behind and before all created things. He made angels, archangels, powers, and principalities. Seven angels, who * King's "Gnostics and their Remains," section on ism." "Simonian. + H. L. Mansel's "Gnostics in the Second Century," lecture vi. Kurtz's "History," vol. i., section 27; Mansel's "Gnostics." |