his hands the key of that kingdom of heaven, and you will find that as they stood before him he told them that only those who for a long time had been conscious of no transgression might come and learn the teaching which Jesus gave secretly to His disciples. Those were the old words of challenge ere the door of that kingdom of heaven was flung open, and only to such men and women was admission to the Mysteries possible. There they learned the inner secret teachings, those that are indicated in the Gospel story; for you remember how it was written of the Christ: “For without a parable spake He not unto them”; you remember how, when the disciples asked for explanation, His answer was: “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, but to others in parables.” You may remember, again, how it was said that when His disciples were with Him in the house, then He told them things which to the multitude without He refused to reveal; and you may remember the further promise that He left, when He knew that His own earthly life was drawing to a close: “I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now.” The Christian tradition of the Mysteries declared that those many things were told afterwards, when the disciples were more ready to receive, when the pupils were fitter to be taught. Origen tells us that all those teachings were kept in the Christian Mysteries, and made the secret teachings of the Church, given only to those who were worthy. In those days when many knew, when many understood, a distinction was drawn between Jesus and Christ. I alluded to it, you remember, in the first of this course of lectures; and I did so deliberately, intending to return to it when, having dealt with the many intermediate questions, I should arrive at the lecture on the Coming Christ. For there was a difference between the human body of the mighty disciple Jesus, born in Bethlehem, and the divine Power that came down upon that body at the point of time marked as the Baptism, when it is written, the Spirit of God came down upon Him and abode with Him; there you have marked the Coming of the Christ, the consecration of the Supreme Teacher. That distinction you find recognised in the Epistles, though no attention is drawn to it further in the Gospels after that startling and suggestive statement; but if you take the Pauline epistles you find yourself in quite a different atmosphere from that of the history as told in the Gospels; you find there the name of Christ in a new meaning, a mystical meaning of profoundest import; you find S. Paul declaring that he does not ask to know Him after the flesh, it is the inner Christ he seeks; you find him saying of that mystic Christ that He has to be born in the believer—a statement that could never have been made of the physical body of Jesus. You find him declaring that that mystic birth of the Christ in human souls is to be followed by a growth of the mystic Christ within