The Spirit of the New Testament.—By a woman. (Rockwell & Churchill, Boston, 1885.) We are informed that the author is a Theosophist and wrote this before joining the Society. It is divided into 3 parts. I, Relates to Jesus; II, The Warfare of the Truth; III, The Letters and Evidences. She adheres to the idea of the immaculate conception, while not advocating the theological dogma of the Divinity; this seems to us not to follow. We cannot help pointing out that Jesus, the subject of this book, apparently violated filial duty when he refused to recognize his mother at the time he was told that she waited without. Also on page 10, the author surmizes that “probably not more than a score of children perished” by the order of King Herod. There is no historical record of the “slaughter of the Innocents,” but it is important and ought not to be lightly passed over. A similar legend is told regarding Krishna, the Hindu incarnation, thousands of years before Jesus, for King Kausa his uncle, ordered the slaughter of all the male infants in his kingdom, but Krishna escaped to another city under the protection of the great God, (see the Mahabarata). Again Gaffarel and others say, that really it referred to the persecution of the Kabalists and wise men of Herod’s day, for they were called “innocents” and “babes.” Now this tale has an occult signification, in common with the incident of Jesus refusing to recognize his mother.
The book is an excellent one, and if christendom held the same views, the millenium would advance. The author thinks that the spirit of the work and words of Jesus, if lived up to by his followers, would raise the western world to a higher plane, and in that we agree with her. But we cannot agree that Jesus came to the whole world, or that St. John’s revelation is for humanity. Both of them were only speaking to the races they were born in, revealing again a part of the knowledge and doctrine which anciently prevailed among all peoples, and which, even in their own day, were fully known in the farther East. Each time and people has its own prophet and sacred book, but it does not follow, if the last be the best for the people to whom it is revealed, that therefore it is the best of all.
At the beginning of each Manvantara (the remanifestation of a world and man upon it), a planetary spirit appears among men, and implants the great ideas afterwards held intuitionally. They are projected with a spiritual force and power that carries them through all the ages of that manvantara, now appearing and again apparently lost to sight. The original impulse every now and then, receives additions, through beings of a lower illumination than those who started them, as: Jesus, Buddha, Confucius and others, who appear in intermediate periods.
Similarly, great events, such as the occurrences related as anterior to Krishna’s, Buddha’s and Jesus’ birth, as well as the slaughter of the innocents and the death of Osiris, have an inherent spiritual force, wherever they really took place, that carries them down the stream of time and causes them to reappear among all peoples as a part of the biographies of different sacred personages.
This author has our approval, though worth but little, for she shows a keen insight. Witness on p. 517: “Believe not those who exalt woman above man, for they are equal powers. The use of the feminine pronoun in describing the soul, the earth, the moon * * has no profound scientific or philosophical foundation.
“Believe not those who claim to give final wisdom to the world; for there must be many instruments of truth.”
And on p. 519: “Sufficient guides are in that development of seership which is the necessary and natural sequence of the ripening of the intellect and moral sense, and which must and will grow. To man’s own conscience] and judgment is left the supreme utilization of these first universal efforts at intercommunion between the material and spiritual planes of existence.”
We regret that our limited space prohibits a more extended notice.
Sinnett.—Mr. A. P. Sinnett of London, author of Esoteric Buddhism, has just brought out a new novel of a theosophical cast. We have not received a copy as there has not been time, but hope to notice it in the August number. Its title is “Union” .