"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."[174]
The hidden manna is the ambrosia of the Greeks, the kyteon of the mysteries of Eleusis, the soma of the Hindus, the eucharist of the Christians, the sacred drink offered to the disciples at Initiation, which had the Moon as its symbol, conferred the gift of divine clairvoyance and separated the soul from the body.
The "white stone" is none other than the alba petra, the white cornelian, the chalcedony, or stone of Initiation. It was given to the candidate who had successfully passed through all the preliminary tests.[175] The "Word" written on the stone is the sacred Word, the "lost Word" which Swedenborg said was to be sought for amongst the hierophants of Tartary and Tibet, whom theosophists call the Masters.
"He who overcometh" is, therefore, the disciple ready for initiation; it is of him that "a pillar in the temple of God" will be made. In esoteric language, the column signifies Man redeemed, made divine and free, who is no longer to revolve on the wheel of Rebirths, who "shall no more go out," as the Apocalypse says, i.e., shall not again leave Heaven.
If we examine the text of both Old and New Testament by the light of esoteric teaching, the dead letter, often absurd and at tunes repellent and immoral, would receive unexpected illumination, and would fully justify the words of the great rabbi, Maimonides, quoted a few pages back.[176]
Origen, the most learned of the Fathers of the Church, adds in his turn:
"If we had to limit ourselves to the letter, and understand after the fashion of the Jews or the people, what is written in the Law, I should be ashamed to proclaim aloud that it was God who gave us such laws; I should find more dignity and reason in human laws, as, for instance, in those of Athens, Rome, or Sparta...." (Homil 7. in Levit.)
Saint Jerome, in his Epistle to Paulinus, continues in similar fashion:
"Listen, brother, learn the path you must follow in studying the Holy Scriptures. Everything you read in the divine books is shining and light-giving without, but far sweeter is the heart thereof. He who would eat the nut must first break the shell."
It is because they have lost the Spirit of their Scriptures that the Christians—ever since their separation from the Gnostics—have offered the world nothing more than the outer shell of the World Religion.