SINCE preparing Chapter XI., on _The Ideal Christ_, and quoting freely from Mr. Gerald Massey regarding the Gnostics, some doubts have been suggested as to the soundness of his views. We have therefore carefully reviewed this matter, and can find no reason to abate one tittle from the conclusions presented by this painstaking and able writer. The word _gnosis_, meaning _knowledge_, does not apply exclusively to a party or sect The Gnostics were not distinguished from Christians at first by sectarian lines. The Epistles of Paul, both genuine and spurious, recognize the gnosis, and there were Gnostic sects, as well as individual Gnostics, both before and after the Christian era. The gnosis consisted in knowing, and mainly in not accepting as historical and literal what was really only allegorical. The chief Gnostic sects held as _secret_ their essential doctrines, and at the same time they had an exoteric statement which they gave to the common people. Even Paul, who seems to have been a first-class Gnostic, preached one gospel publicly to the Gentiles, and another which he gave “privately to them that were of reputation” (Gal. 2: 2). His teachings were highly _Cabalistic_, and he seems to have delighted in “mysteries.” He had no conference with any of the other apostles as to what he should teach, but went to Arabia, where he doubtless met the Essenean brotherhood, and probably learned from them instead of the Judean teachers. The Essenes were famous for the cultivation of sacred literature, and had their _personified_ Christ, as we have reason to believe. Mr. C. Staniland Wake thinks, with good reason, that the Essenes were Mithrasts, and that they worshipped the sun, and Mithras, the Persian savior, was a personification of the sun. The Essenes, according to Josephus, treated the sun with great veneration, and offered certain prayers early in the morning, as if they made supplication for its rising. The Essenes and Mithrasts were Gnostics in that they held to a personified savior, and not a literal man of flesh and blood. The symbolism of the universe afforded models for the secrets of their religion, and their rites were introduced into every part of the Roman empire—of course including Palestine—and for nearly four centuries the Mithraic religion wellnigh overshadowed Christianity. Much that was written of Jesus indicates the characteristics of the secret initiations. It may appear strange to the superficially informed when we affirm, as heretofore, that many of those matters which Paul set forth with such seeming literalness were in fact mystic and arcane, the transcript of older doctrines, and were made up throughout of astrological symbolism.