We read in the Acts of the Apostles that St. Paul at Ephesus collected all the books which treated of things curious and burnt them in public. The reference is no doubt to the old Göetic texts, or works of necromancy. The loss is regrettable assuredly, since even from the memorials of error there may shine some rays of truth, while information may consequently be derived which will prove precious to science.[118] It is a matter of general knowledge that at the advent of Christ Jesus the oracles were silenced everywhere, and a voice went wailing over the sea, crying: “Great Pan is dead.” A pagan writer, who takes exception to the report, declares on his own part that the oracles did not cease, but in a little while no one was found to consult them. The rectification is valuable, for such an attempted justification is more conclusive than the pretended calumny. Much the same thing should be said concerning the works of wonder, which fell into contempt in the presence of real miracles. As a fact, if the higher laws of Nature are obedient to true moral superiority, miracles become supernatural like the virtues which produce them. This theory detracts nothing from the power of God, while the fact that the Astral Light is obedient to the superior Light of Grace signifies in reality for us that the old serpent of allegory places its vanquished head beneath the foot of the Queen of Heaven. CHAPTER II THE WITNESS OF MAGIC TO CHRISTIANITY Magic, being the science of universal equilibrium and having the truth, reality and reason of being for its absolute principle, accounts for all the antinomies and reconciles all actualities which are in conflict one with another by the one generating principle of every synthesis—that harmony results from the analogy of opposites. For the initiate of this science religion is not in doubt because it exists, and we do not deny what is. Being is being— אהיה אשר אהיה. The apparent opposition of religion and reason is the strength of both, establishing each in its distinct domain and fructifying the negative side of each by the positive side of the other: as we have just said, it is the attainment of agreement by the correspondence between things that are contrary. The cause of all religious errors and confusions is that, in ignorance of this great law, it has been sought to make religion a philosophy and philosophy in its turn a religion, subjecting matters of faith to the processes of science, which is no less ridiculous than the subjection of science to the blind obedience of faith. It is no more the province of a theologian to affirm a mathematical absurdity or reject the demonstration of a theorem than it is the province of a man of learning, in the name of science, to oppose or maintain the mysteries of dogma.