The ancient smiled approvingly, and replied: "Thou art altogether in the right, my son. Many of the gods in which the nations believe were born long after the records kept by the Egyptian priests began; but all were born of the myths which Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian priests wove about the grand, primitive conception of one dual God. The idolaters of other lands received in various forms the mythologies which the priests wove about the most ancient, simple faith, which was primarily the same for all, only the children of Abraham refused to add anything to the original conception, clinging obstinately to the primitive monotheistic idea; and yet Moses designates the one God by his name of _Adonai_, the plural number of a Hebrew noun; and when the one God speaks of himself he uses the words ’we,’ ’our,’ and ’us’: _Let us make man in our own image and likeness_. Thou seest that it would be contrary to reason that the original utterance of every faith should be the affirmation of God that was one, and yet more than one, unless the divine being is spiritually hermaphrodite, having a double spiritual sexhood. Thou seest that, if this were not so, Moses could not have used the plural number to designate one God. Thou seest that, if it were not so, the only act possible to God would have been creation, not generation; and thy faith in ’the only-begotten Son’ must have been false; and the very ancientest forms of faith would have been demonstrated to be merely impossible falsehood--impossible, because there can not be a falsehood which does not originate in and grow out of a truth; for falsehood is a perversion or misconception of the truth; for falsehood is not that which hath no existence, but is the wrong statement or conception of that which doth exist. If it were not so, my son, thy faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, would be merest polytheism, for three are not one, nor is one three; but the three may be one divine nature and family. For the one God was always conceived of by the primary faiths as a dual being, possessed of both elements of spiritual sexhood perfectly; and ’begotten’ is a proper thing to say of one side of the dual God, and ’conceived’ is a proper thing to say of the other; and so thou mayst believe, without any imputation of polytheism, in Christ, as a being ’begotten,’ not created; ’conceived,’ not made. Would that I knew that Jesus of Nazareth is he!"