declares that Moses, besides the teachings of the covenant, communicated some very important secrets "from the hidden depths of the law" to the seventy elders. These he enjoined them to impart only to persons whom they found worthy.
St. Jerome names the Jews of Tiberias and Lydda as the only teachers of the mystical manner of interpretation. Finally, Ennemoser expresses a strong opinion that "the writings of Dionysius Areopagita have palpably been grounded on the Jewish Kabala." When we take in consideration that the Gnostics, or early Christians, were but the followers of the old Essenes under a new name, this fact is nothing to be wondered at. Professor Molitor gives the Kabala its just due. He says:
"The age of inconsequence and shallowness, in theology as well as in sciences, is past, and since that revolutionary rationalism has left nothing behind but its own emptiness, after having destroyed everything positive, it seems now to be the time to direct our attention anew to that mysterious revelation which is the living spring whence our salvation must come. . . the Mysteries of ancient Israel, which contain all secrets of modern Israel, would be particularly calculated to . . . found the fabric of theology upon its deepest theosophical principles, and to gain a firm basis to all ideal sciences. It would open a new path . . . to the obscure labyrinth of the myths, mysteries and constitutions of primitive nations. . .In these traditions alone are contained the system of the schools of the prophets, which the prophet Samuel did not found, but only restored, whose end was no other than to lead the scholars to wisdom and the highest knowledge, and when they had been found worthy, to induct them into deeper mysteries. Classed with these mysteries was magic, which was of a double nature—divine magic, and evil magic, or the black art. Each of these is again divisible into two kinds, the active and seeing; in the first, man endeavors to place himself en rapport with the world to learn hidden things; in the latter he endeavors to gain power over spirits; in the former, to perform good and beneficial acts; in the latter to do all kinds of diabolical and unnatural deeds."*
The clergy of the three most prominent Christian bodies, the Greek, Roman Catholic, and Protestant, discountenance every spiritual phenomenon manifesting itself through the so-called "mediums." A very brief period, indeed, has elapsed since both the two latter ecclesiastical corporations burned, hanged, and otherwise murdered every helpless victim through whose organism spirits—and sometimes blind and as yet unex-
* Molitor: "Philosophy of History and Traditions," Howitt's Translation, p. 285
