How far greater a Gospel than the one of modern days! Placed beside that grandiose ideal of esoteric Christianity, the exoteric teaching of the churches seems narrow and poor indeed.
Chapter IX.
THE TRINITY.
All fruitful study of the Divine Existence must start from the affirmation that it is One. All the Sages have thus proclaimed It; every religion has thus affirmed It; every philosophy thus posits It—"One only without a second."[255] "Hear, O Israel!" cried Moses, "The Lord our God is one Lord."[256] "To us there is but one God,"[257] declares S. Paul. "There is no God but God," affirms the founder of Islâm, and makes the phrase the symbol of his faith. One Existence unbounded, known in Its fulness only to Itself—the word It seems more reverent and inclusive than He, and is therefore used. That is the Eternal Darkness, out of which is born the Light.
But as the Manifested God, the One appears as Three. A Trinity of Divine Beings, One as God, Three as manifested Powers. This also has ever been declared, and the truth is so vital in its relation to man and his evolution that it is one which ever forms an essential part of the Lesser Mysteries.
Among the Hebrews, in consequence of their anthropomorphising tendencies, the doctrine was kept secret, but the Rabbis studied and worshipped the Ancient of Days, from whom came forth the Wisdom, from whom the Understanding—Kether, Chochmah, Binah, these formed the Supreme Trinity, the shining forth in time of the One beyond time. The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon refers to this teaching, making Wisdom a Being. "According to Maurice, 'The first Sephira, who is denominated Kether the Crown, Kadmon the pure Light, and En Soph the Infinite,[258] is the omnipotent