*THE ELIMINATOR* *or, SKELETON KEYS to SACERDOTAL SECRETS* _By_ *Richard B. Westbrook, D.D., L.L.D.* _1894_ CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION PREFACE SKELETON KEYS TO SACERDOTAL SECRETS CHAPTER I. THE WHOLE TRUTH CHAPTER II. SACERDOTALISM IMPEACHED CHAPTER III. THE FABULOUS CLAIMS OF JUDAISM CHAPTER IV. MOSES AND THE PENTATEUCH CHAPTER V. ANCIENT SYMBOLISM AND MODERN LITERALISM CHAPTER VI. ASTRAL KEYS TO BIBLE STORIES CHAPTER VII. THE FABLE OF THE FALL CHAPTER VIII. SEARCH FOR THE “LAST ADAM” CHAPTER IX. WHAT IS KNOWN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHAPTER X. THE DRAMA OF THE GOSPELS CHAPTER XI. THE IDEAL CHRIST CHAPTER XII. JESUS AND OTHER CHRISTS CHAPTER XIII. A REVERENT CRITIQUE ON JESUS CHAPTER XIV. A FEW FRAGMENTS CHAPTER XV. BLOOD-SALVATION CHAPTER XVI. THINGS THAT REMAIN INDEX PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION THE Eliminator has now been before the public nearly two years. I have seen nothing worthy of the name of criticism respecting it. A few Unitarian ministers have said that Christ must have been a person instead of a personification, for the reason that men could not have conceived of such a perfect character without a living example, and that the great influence exercised by him for so long a time, over so many people, proves him to have been an historic character. These arguments are anticipated and fully answered. (See pp. 283, 284, 306.) Our Unitarian friends are the greatest _idealists_ upon the globe! They only accept the Gospel biography of Jesus (and we have no other) just so far as the story accords with what they think it ought to be. They deny the immaculate conception and miraculous birth of the Christ, and have very great doubts about his crucifixion and resurrection. Their Christ is purely _ideal_. The fact is that Christendom has worshipped the literal Jesus for the ideal Christ for nearly twenty centuries, though their conceptions of him have been manifold and contradictory. No wonder that so many intelligent Christian sects in the early ages of the church utterly denied the existence of Jesus as an historic person. (See pp. 266, 267, 357.) But there is indubitable evidence that this _Christ character_ (called by many Unitarians the “Universal Christ”) was mainly _mythical, drawn from the astrological riddles of the older Pagan mythologies._