Spiritual Discovery

INFIDEL! The name has been bestowed on me by several Christian gentlemen as a reproach, but to my ears it has a quaint and not unpleasing sound. Infidel! "The notorious infidel editor of the Clarion" is the form used by one True Believer. The words recurred to my mind suddenly, while I was taking my favourite black pipe for a walk along "the pleasant Strand," and I felt a smile glimmer within as I repeated them.

Nowhere is the influence of sex more plainly manifested than in the formulation of religious conceptions and creeds. With the rise of male power and dominion, and the corresponding repression of the natural female instincts, the principles which originally constituted the God-idea gradually gave place to a Deity better suited to the peculiar bias which had been given to the male organism.

Is John, the author of the Apocalypse, the Apostle, the Beloved, still walking the earth as a teacher of mysteries? This book about one man's encounter with a Master of Wisdom will "make a believer out of you."

The first part-The Jew-has a somewhat curious history. Burton collected most of the materials for writing it from 1869 to 1871, when he was Consul at Damascus. His intimate knowledge of Eastern races and languages, and his sympathy with Oriental habits and lines of thought, gave him exceptional facilities for ethnological studies of this kind. Disguised as a native, and unknown to any living soul except his wife, the British Consul mingled freely with the motley populations of Damascus, and inspected every quarter of the city-Muslim, Christian, and Jewish.

A description of the localities, surroundings, employments, and conditions in the spheres.

There are those whose feet are firmly on The Path, who are known as 'Old Souls' and who possess inner knowledge. They are aware of Truth, they have no need of a book such as this. But for the vast majority, who may indeed be true seekers, because of the way we are educated in the so-called civilized world, analysis, proof, the opinion of others is often necessary. I believe this book provides what they need. It has been diligently researched, and even if some of the reports printed here are, at the least, inaccurate, that is not the fault of the author. She has merely reproduced what has been said and written about a personage who defies our present stage of understanding. It is for the reader to form his or her own opinion.

A day will come when the European God of the nineteenth century will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the Nile; when surplices and sacramental plate will be exhibited in museums; when nurses will relate to children the legends of the Christian mythology as they now tell them fairy tales.