for it does borrow, and that very considerably; especially in the opinion of those who, ignorant of its symbolical meaning and of the universality of the truths underlying and concealed in it, are able to judge only from its dead‐letter appearance. It is a grand volume, a master‐piece composed of clever, ingenious fables containing great verities; but it reveals the latter only to those who, like the Initiates, have a key to its inner meaning; a tale sublime in its morality and didactics truly—still a tale and an allegory; a repertory of invented personages in its older Jewish portions, and of dark sayings and parables in its later additions, and thus quite misleading to anyone ignorant of its Esotericism. Moreover it is Astrolatry and Sabæan worship, pure and simple, that is to be found in the _Pentateuch_ when it is read exoterically, and Archaic Science and Astronomy to a most wonderful degree, when interpreted—Esoterically. SECTION VIII. THE BOOK OF ENOCH THE ORIGIN AND THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY. While making a good deal of the _Mercavah_, the Jews, or rather their synagogues, rejected the _Book of Enoch_, either because it was not included from the first in the Hebrew Canon, or else, as Tertullian thought, it was Disavowed by the Jews like all other Scripture which speaks of Christ.(135) But neither of these reasons was the real one. The Synedrion would have nothing to do with it, simply because it was more of a magic than a purely kabalistic work. The present day Theologians of both Latin and Protestant Churches class it among apocryphal productions. Nevertheless the _New Testament_, especially in the _Acts_ and _Epistles_, teems with ideas and doctrines, now accepted and established as dogmas by the infallible Roman and other Churches, and even with whole sentences taken bodily from Enoch, or the “pseudo‐Enoch,” who wrote under that name in Aramaic or Syro‐ Chaldaic, as asserted by Bishop Laurence, the translator of the Ethiopian text. The plagiarisms are so glaring that the author of _The Evolution of Christianity_, who edited Bishop Laurence’s translation, was compelled to make some suggestive remarks in his Introduction. On internal evidence(136) this book is found to have been written before the Christian period (whether two or twenty centuries does not matter). As correctly argued by the Editor, it is