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from heaven, and he made use of the same idiom that he afterwards employed at his keeping of the passover before his martyrdom.

He declared it to be essential for immortality, that he, the man Jesus, flesh, bones, and blood should be bodily eaten, and he that did not eat him had not eternal life; if, however, he was bodily eaten, he would live in the man who had eaten him, and the man would dwell in him. This speech staggered and offended his opponents, and even his disciples, who there and then turned their backs upon him and left him. The fact is, they felt their intelligence insulted, it was so palpably absurd to suppose that the eaten man could be alive in the man who had eaten him, and at the same time that the man who had eaten the other could continue to live in the body of the one he had consumed.

Now, if we bear in mind, that the Jewish doctors, scribes, or law expounders took everything, letter by letter, dissecting every word, making even the position of a letter in a word a symbol of hidden meaning, we can then fully appreciate the nature of the trap these persecutors of Jesus fell into. Their boasted intuitive intelligence and judgment was their stumbling block. They are told that they must be cannibals, that they must eat Jesus' flesh, and drink his blood, to inherit the promised kingdom of eternal life, so suppose now that they take "these words" home, and apply their analysing powers, let them try the rabbinical tests of Gematria and Notarikon, and make what we should call anagrams of the words," Eat his flesh, and drink his blood!" He said so, but what does he mean in any shape or way? Well, but let them try the numerical value of the words, transpose them, dissect them, letter by letter, they are clever theologians, very, and are used to find hidden wisdom in their old scriptures, where there is no such meaning intended, and where it really exists they contrive to overlook it. Wisdom is justified of these her children, but, O! expounders of the sacred shasters, how have you stultified yourselves?

Jesus explains what he meant to his disciples privately. He said, "when I used the words flesh and blood, I meant

"that the words themselves must be eaten bodily, not my flesh " and blood, for my flesh and blood profiteth nothing, flesh, "blood-nourished, is mortal, and cannot convey immortality. "The words themselves that I spoke, they are spirit and "life. My words are not my own, but my Father's which "sent me," and he explained that his word was a quickening or life-giving power, because his Father's word of almighty power quickens everything that lives; so that Jesus' words were not those of the man himself, who plainly said that of himself he could do nothing, but his words were those of the omnipotent power of God, of whom he was a messenger, and these words of pro-creative force were necessary to generate concepts of truth in the minds of those who had perceptive power to understand them, and abandon their own absurd intuitions. He was the anointed Son of the everlasting WORD of generation, and he had commission to generate conviction of relationship in those who received, eat, and digested his words, but not his flesh; that was nothing to the purpose. "Who hath ears to hear the WORDS "I speak, for THEY are spirit and life."

Now the rabbins would take the WORDS, and try their Gematria and Notarikon test, and what would they make of them? The word is the word, the WORD ITSELF would bother them, because they would certainly miss the true meaning in trying to find another to fit the very term "word."

Jesus' meaning was this,

"Man shall not live by bread (perishable bread and wine) "alone, but by every word (necessary condition of existence) "that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," and thus he illustrates his mission,

I am the true Christ, or imperishable bread or word from heaven; if a man hear my voice and live by me, I will give him by it (the required condition of eternal self-existence or) immortality, and he shall not perish in eternal death.

There is one word of life for everything, and the Alpha and Omega of this divine word is the anointed Son, the only revelation in a personal being of the eternal, omni

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present, omnipotent, spirit of life, in whom all live, move and have their existence, but who is unknown and unknowable, save in, and by, and through this relation.

He that heareth my word, heareth my Father's everlasting word, and he that heareth and believeth on him that sent me hath eternal life, and escapes the universal condemnation of mankind; for in receiving my word he passes instantaneously from mortality, or from inherited death, to a higher state of existence; and the hour will come when those who are vegetating in the midst of animal life shall hear the divine word again, the voice of the living Father in the Son of Man, and those that hear that voice shall have eternal life.

The immortality of the Sons of God is by the eternal word or generation of the universal parent. There has been no knowledge of God save in and by the personality of his Son. Personality necessarily implies organization, a disembodied ghost is not an organization. The hope of humanity is for

the birth of eternal life in individual personality, and in the throes of this gestating process all nature travails and groans, poetically remarks St. Paul. But to return to the significance of Jesus' last supper. It was the Jewish passover he was keeping with his disciples in that upper room, and that passover he was abolishing, at the very moment and by the very means he used to celebrate it, and this too under the nose of the high priest and his clergy. He was superseding the Mosaic economy by his acts, as indeed he had been doing ever since he commenced his career. Aye, and the high priest, and his saints and clergy knew it, and they gnashed their teeth at their inability to stop the new heresy. What do we? said they; if we let him alone all men will believe in him, and our nationality, our establishment, and sacred callings are gone. The Jewish passover feast is the last to be consigned to the tomb of the eternal past by Jesus. The national festival that commemorated the safety of the children of Israel, when the messengers of the Lord slew Egypt's first-born, beast and man, passing by the blood-stained doors, that national festival so long

kept is now to be obliterated from the minds of Jesus' followers by another commemoration, the passover of another sacrifice, the first-born of God, the blood to be sprinkled this time, not on the door-posts of their houses, but upon their minds; those natural minds at enmity with the spirit of the Most High, minds that refuse reconciliation to God without a bloody sacrifice for that power of absolute evil which he cannot recognise. God was never estranged, and desires no man's death for evil, but rather that man should turn from his own evil consciousness and live; so God provides a sacrifice that man may feel reconciled to him. The father offers the Isaac of his love that the world may be reconciled to him, and that death for evil may ever after be abolished.

CHAPTER XV.

MOSES AND JESUS OF NAZARETH.

To form anything like an impartial estimate of the difficulties of Moses' position with a self-willed and stubborn people, there ought to be knowledge of the vast and complicated scheme of Egyptian theology, with which the mind of the Israelites had become completely saturated, and from which it was necessary to wean them. Such infantile intelligences! so long held in mental and physical bondage that they were half Egyptians in everything. As for religion, what was not Egyptianism, was love of themselves. They were worshippers of beef. Whether in the form of a living calf of Apis, or in their flesh pots, they worshipped beef. They were votaries of beef, living or dead. No marvel then that Moses lost temper in battling with such a lot, no wonder that he spoke hastily and unadvisedly. If we can imagine Sir Isaac Newton with a divine commission to lead up and teach some Choctaw Indians, we might sympathise with Moses' shortcomings, from the terribly aggravating circumstances that pressed upon him.

Egyptianism, like modern theologies, had a Janus' face; one for the priests and educated, and another for the mob. The priests of Egypt were professors, not of theistical philosophy only, but of all science, they were clever and profoundly learned men. But the study of Egyptology would exhaust the labour of a life time, for no history has suffered more frightful mutilation than that of ancient Egypt, where stolid pedantry and blind and bigoted adherence to the prepossessions

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