Collected Works (Vol. III)

ELEUSIS 22% dominance is the complement of his natural slavishness. So the blind groveller, Mr. Conformity, and his twin, Mr. Nonconformity, agree to pretend that initiates are always either dupes or impostors; they deny that| man can see God and live. Look! There goes John Compromise to church, speculat- ing, like Lot’s wife, on the probable slump in sulphur and the gloomy outlook for the Insurance Companies. It will never do for his Christ to be a man of like passions with himself, else people might expect him to aim at a life like Christ's. He wants to wallow and swill, and hope for an impos sible heaven. So that it will be imprudent of you (if you want to be asked out to dinner) to poin out that if you tell the story of the life of Christ, without mentioning names, to a Musulman, he will ask, ‘‘ What was the name of that great sheikh?” to a Hindu, ‘‘Who was this venerable Yogi?” to a Buddhist, ‘‘ Haven’t you made a’ mistake or two? It wasn’t a dove, but an ele- phant with six tusks: and He died of dysentery.” The fact being that it is within the personal experience of all these persons that men yet live and walk this earth who live in all essentials the life that Christ lived, to whom all His miracles are commonplace, who die His death daily, and partake daily in the Mysteries of His resurrection and ascen- sion. Whether this is scientifically so or not is of no importance to the argument. I am not addressing the man of science, but the man of intelligence: and the scientist himself will back me when I say that the evidence for the one is just as strong and as weak as again disappears. ‘There is in all this a curious secretiveness of which one has repeated examples in his life.’ Whether he went to Dublin on that occasion, or why he wanted to go, does not appear.” [2] ‘‘ abhor business, and especially to have to do with great persons and great aftairs.”’ [3] ‘‘ Suddenly, and without the least previous notice of pain, he was removed to the enjoy- ment of eternal rewards, and although all possible means were instantly used, no symp- tom of life ever appeared after; nor could the physicians assign any cause for his death.” It is surely beyond doubt that Berkeley con- templated some operation of a similar charac- ter to that of Abramelin. Operation . . . the period of the Six Moons being expired, the Lord granted unto me His grace... ‘fa solitary life, which is the source of all good . once thou shalt have obtained the sacred science and magic the love for retirement will come to thee of its own.accord, and thou wilt voluntarily shun the commerce and conversa- tion of men, &c,” ‘‘a good death in His holy Kingdom.” the Father of Lights,’? suggests an actual phrase perhaps used as an exclamation at the Note the extreme | moment of a Vision to express, however feebly, anxiety which he displays. What lesser matter its nature, rather than the phrase of a reasoner could so have stirred the placid and angelic exercising his reason. soul of Berkeley? On what he urges upon his brother? less urgent, grounds would he have agreed to the decep-| tions (harmless enough though they are) that This mysterious letter which so puzzles his biographer is in fact the key to his whole char- acter, life, and opinions. This is no place to labour the point; I have That he at one time or another achieved }at hand none of the necessary documents; but . . - . ~ success is certain from the universal report of his holiness and from the nature of his writings. The repeated phrase in the Optics, ‘‘ God is 1 The italics are ours.—Epb. it might be worth the research of a scholar to trace Berkeley’s progress through the grades of the Great Order.—A. C. 2 It occurs in James i. 17.