After emblazoning in his visions the pantacles and hieroglyphs of esoteric science; after exhibiting wheels revolving within wheels; after picturing living eyes turning to all the spheres; after deploying the beating wings of the four mysterious living creatures—Ezekiel, the most profound Kabalist of the ancient prophets, beholds nothing but a plain strewn with dry bones. At his word they are covered with flesh and so is form restored to them. A pitiful beauty invests these remnants of death, but that beauty is cold and lifeless. Of such were the doctrines and mythologies of the elder world, when a breath of love descended upon them from heaven. Then the dead shapes rose up; the wraiths of philosophy gave place to men of true wisdom; the Word was incarnate and alive; it was no longer the day of abstractions but one of reality. That faith which is proved by works replaced the hypotheses which ended in nothing but fables. Magic was transformed into sanctity, wonders became miracles, the common people—excluded by ancient initiation—were called to the royalty and priesthood of virtue. Realisation is thus of the essence of Christian religion, and its doctrine gives a body even to the most obvious allegories. The house of the young man who had great possessions is still shewn in Jerusalem, and it might be in no sense impossible for careful research to discover a lamp which, by a similar tradition, once belonged to one of the foolish virgins. Such ingenuous credulities are fundamentally not very dangerous; indeed they prove only the living and realising power of the Christian faith. The Jews accused that faith of having materialised belief and idealised earthly things. In our _Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic_ we have recited the scandalous parable of the _Sepher Toldos Jeshu_ which was invented to support the accusation. It is related in the _Talmud_ that Jesus ben Sabta, or the son of the divorced woman, having studied profane mysteries in Egypt, set up a false stone in Israel and led the people into idolatry. It was acknowledged notwithstanding that the Jewish priesthood did wrong when it cursed him with both hands, and it is in this connection that we find in the _Talmud_ one beautiful precept which is destined hereafter to unite Christendom and Israel: “Never curse with both hands, so that one of them may always be free to forgive and to bless.” As a fact, the priesthood was guilty of injustice towards that peace-bringing Master who counselled his disciples to obey the constituted hierarchy. “They are in the seat of Moses,” the Saviour said; “Do therefore that which they tell you but not as they do themselves.” On another occasion he commanded ten lepers to shew their persons to the priests, and they were cured on the road: what touching abnegation in the Divine Worker of miracles, Who thus ascribed to His most deadly enemies the very honour of His miracles. For the rest, were those who accused Christ