The teacher, therefore, must be in a position to give or to withhold; promulgate or conceal; teach or refuse to teach; governed solely by Truth and Law, and the solemn obligation under which he has himself received it.
The meaning of the saying, “strait is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be who find it,” may thus be made apparent.
Fragments of this wisdom are found scattered through the ages, with here and there one who has achieved it.
For two or three centuries the early Christian Church undertook to work on these lines, and instituted three degrees, as abundantly shown in the writings of many of the so-called “Christian, or Church Fathers.”
Jesus said to his disciples, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” And again, “The works that I do, ye shall do also, and greater things than these shall ye do, because I go to the Father.” And again, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them who are without, it is not given.”
Mysteries, indeed, to the ignorant monks who were already wrangling over creed, and dogmas, and who, in 325 at the First Council at Nice, fought it out surrounded by the soldiers of the Pagan Emperor, Constantine; and thus settled the “orthodox interpretation,” of what they were wholly incompetent to understand. Their successors are still engaged in the same wrangle of interpretation, so far as the “Infallible Pope,” and dogma of obedience, at Rome has been unable to suppress it.
Somewhere between the middle of the first and second centuries, an effort at union and reconciliation arose from another quarter. Ammonius Saccas, a Neo-Platonist, endeavored to unite men of different cults and beliefs on the lines of the Great Work, precisely as the Philalethean Society is doing in New York to-day; but his movement was soon engulfed and lost sight of by the tide of Ecclesiasticism, or suppressed by the soldiers of Constantine.
I am not attempting a history, for that would fill volumes. I am only giving a few sidelights of the Great Work.
In the Tenth Century, at Baghdad, a society was formed admitting Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, and atheists, with a similar purpose.
During the time of Martin Luther, John Reuchlin made a similar attempt. Both Reuchlin and Luther were pupils of Trithemius, the Abbot of St. Jacob’s at Würzburg, one of whose books I possess, printed in the year 1600, and also another book, “The Theosophical Transactions of the Philadelphian Society,” printed in London in 1697. Browning’s “Paracelsus” gives a splendid outline of the philosophy and teachings of Trithemius, and rescues Paracelsus with all who can understand, from the vile slanders of his monkish enemies; and Robert Browning wrote his “Paracelsus” at the age of twenty-three! Can you wonder why so few “understand Browning”?