Religion in the Heavens; Or, Mythology Unveiled in a Series of Lectures

by Logan Mitchell

LECTURE SECOND. CHRISTIAN SUPERNATURALISM FURTHER CONSIDERED

"Lest you start at these bold truths, and fly
These lines, as maxims of impiety,
Consider that Religion did, and will
CONTRIVE, PROMOTE, and ACT the greatest ill."
Lucretius.

IN the foregoing Lecture, it has been shown that the Jewish deity of Moses, on his being adopted and continued in power by the early sect of Christians, who were themselves Jews, was induced by his new hierarchy, as soon as they were established, to make a new Will (the old Jewish one not being altogether sufficient for their ends), into which they gradually, as occasion required, foisted different codicils, by which they multiplied the objects of worship, by introducing into partnership with him two colleagues, who, being each no other than himself, the three, quite arithmetically, made but "one God." But by this cunning and masterly manoeuvre, he soon found himself fairly outwitted by his priests, who were the sole gainers by this poly-theistical stratagem; whilst the supremacy which he held in the time of Moses dwindled into division, and he was obliged to share with the other two, and even with the mother* of one of them, the worship of his new votaries. Even the gods themselves, when Juno, the sister and wife of Jupiter, had divine honors paid to her; why then refuse the same to the mother of one of the "Christian Gods?"

* When the people of Ephesus were informed that the Fathers
of the Council had declared they might call the Virgin Mary
"The Mother of God" they were transported with joy; they
kissed the hands of the bishops—they embraced their knees,
and the whole city resounded with acclamations! St. Cyrils
Letter.

When they get entangled in the meshes of priestcraft, are seldom able to burst the trammels; and so it has happened in the case before us. The "New Will" was a most ingenious invention on the part of the Fathers of Christianism, as it afforded them an opportunity not only of re-modelling their deity, in person and family, but of abrogating or amending all such of his old laws as no longer suited the times or their views; and of making every change that was necessary to establish the new hierarchy in riches and power. The tithe of industry and settled money revenues must now be substituted for the bloody altars, and delectable viands of Jehovah's former priests; and as he was precisely a personification of the interests of these, so has he continued to be of those of their successors, who, having that object alone in view, have been but little solicitous about rendering him either more consistent or amiable; but on the contrary, they have sublimated his cruelty, by the invention of eternal fire torments, an idea so enormously absurd and wicked, that it never entered his head while he was merely Theocrat of the Jews.

Matters being thus settled by the rejection of the numerous theogony of which Jupiter was the head, and the adoption of unity in the godhead, under the Jehovah of the Jews, it was still considered necessary, in order to reconcile the polytheists, to preserve some vestiges of polytheism; and these were readily suggested by the waking dreams and spiritual speculations of Plato, whose "three hypostases" seemed wonderfully well adapted to form the basis of our triune mythology. Hence the divinity of Plato.

As the third part of that godhead which is now worshipped in modern Europe, was, as well as the other parts, borrowed from the heathen trinity, and forms an important dogma in our superstition, a sketch of its history may not be unnecessary. Like the metaphysical invention of the soul's immortality, it is altogether unacknowledged in the Old Testament, as a personified deity; for the "spirit of the Lord," if rightly translated, merely signifies wind of the gods, or wind that has a genial and salutary influence, as that of summer. This addition made to the Christian mythology by the Platonist writers of the New Testament, was eagerly embraced and improved upon by the Fathers, as the grand source, or fountain head, from whence they could continually draw their infallible inspirations. In accordance with its occult sense in the mysteries of the Gentile trinity, they very properly made their holy ghost "proceed from" the other two "persons," though he more immediately emanates from the "son" (i. e. the sun), and, by the apotheosis, they armed him with authority; but as a regularly constituted and personified god, he did not come fairly into play until the beginning of the fifth century, when he came in for his third share of godhead thus:—From council to council, new creeds and dogmas were hatched; and in that of Chalcedon, in 401, the first New Testament was set in the midst of the assembly, as the great appeal. The ecclesiastics who composed this council, found considerable difficulty in adding this third apotheosis to complete their trinity, until a priest, more cunning and more deceitful than the others, suggested an expedient, which was nothing less than to add to the beginning of St. John's Gospel that passage from Plato which now forms its first verse.

In the occult sense in which this windy metaphor is used in the New Testament, it is allegorical of the first winds of summer, "proceeding from" the increased power of the sun, which have a vivifying and salutary influence upon all animal and, vegetable life. The writer of the Gospel attributed to St. John astro-nomises, perhaps, a little too openly in chap. 7, v. 39, by declaring: "For as yet there was no Holy Ghost, because Jesus was not yet glorified."*

* This is the true translation from the Greek.

Here is a plain and unequivocal admission that even the very existence of the Holy Ghost depended on the glorification of Christ, the solution of which enigma is, that May was not then come, for it was not until about the middle of that month that the Hely, or Holy wind of Helios, that is, God the Sun, was said to commence; and this constituted, and is the only Holy Ghost. But before that period, as the sun is not sufficiently elevated and clear, or in other words, clarified (glorified) from the denser clouds and contagious vapors of early spring, his personification, Christ, could not be said to be glorified.* Hence the Holy Ghost is an annual visitor, and with his benign influence, comes with the festival of Whitsuntide or Pentecost; but not till that is "fully come."** It was then that, symbolised in the blessed, holy, sun-heated wind, he was said to descend on the apostles, giving them "the gift of tongues," which gifts seem to have been quite in character, and fleeting as the wind, for they soon evaporated, leaving the possessors "unlearned and ignorant men."