"This saying have I made manifest in myself, my brothers; this is the way in which your eyes of flesh behold me hanging. It figures forth the Way of the First Man. "But ye, beloved, hearing these words, and, by conversion of your nature and changing of your life, perfecting them, even as ye have turned you from that Way of Error where ye trod, unto the most sure state of Faith, so keep ye running, and strive towards the Peace that calls you from Above, living the holy life. For that the Way in which ye travel there is Christ. "Therefore with Jesus, Christ, true God, ascend the Cross. He hath been made for us the One and Only Word; whence also doth the Spirit say: 'Christ is the Word and Voice of God.' "The Word in truth is symbolled forth by that straight stem on which I hang. As for the Voice--since that voice is a thing of flesh, with features not to be ascribed unto God's nature, the cross-piece of the Cross is thought to figure forth that human nature which suffered the fault of change in the First Man, but by the help of God-and-man received again its real Mind. "Right in the centre, joining twain in one, is set the nail of discipline--conversion and repentance." (_F._, 446-449.) The interpretation becomes somewhat strained towards the end. The reversed hanging typified the man of sex, or the man still under the sway of generation, separated into male and female. Such hang head-downwards in the Great Womb of Nature, and all is reversed for them. Hanged upright, the re-generate man contains in himself in active operation the twin powers in union, now used for spiritual creation, and self-perfection. And if it be thought that there is abandonment of any thing in this consummation, then let it be known that it is only a giving up of the part for the whole, the passing from the state of separation to the realization of inexpressible bliss; for as the inspired writer of _The Untitled Apocalypse_ phrases it in an ecstasy of enthusiasm: "This is the eternal Father; this the ineffable, unthinkable, incomprehensible, untranscendible Father. He it is in whom the All became joyous; it rejoiced and was joyful, and brought forth in its joy myriads of myriads of Æons; they were called the 'Births of Joy,' because the All had joyed with the Father. "These are the worlds from which the Cross upsprang; out of these incorporeal Members did the Man arise." (_F._, 550). PRINTED BY PERCY LUND, HUMPHRIES AND CO., LTD., THE COUNTRY PRESS, BRADFORD; 3, AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C.; AND 97, BRIDGE STREET, MANCHESTER. 14887 Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. End of Project Gutenberg's The Gnostic Crucifixion, by G. R. S. Mead