breathed in the masses of Mozart, the sonatas of Beethoven, the
oratorios of Handel, the fugues of Bach, the austere splendour of
Brahms. His the Presence that cheered the solitary mystics, the hunted
occultists, the patient seekers after truth. By persuasion and by
menace, by the eloquence of a S. Francis and by the gibes of a Voltaire,
by the sweet submission of a Thomas a Kempis, and the rough virility of
a Luther, He sought to instruct and awaken, to win into holiness or to
scourge from evil. Through the long centuries He has striven and
laboured, and, with all the mighty burden of the Churches to carry, He
has never left uncared for or unsolaced one human heart that cried to
Him for help. And now He is striving to turn to the benefit of
Christendom part of the great flood of the Wisdom poured out for the
refreshing of the world, and He is seeking through the Churches for some
who have ears to hear the Wisdom, and who will answer to His appeal for
messengers to carry it to His flock: "Here am I; send me."

CHAPTER V.

THE MYTHIC CHRIST.

We have already seen the use that is made of Comparative Mythology
against Religion, and some of its most destructive attacks have been
levelled against the Christ. His birth of a Virgin at "Christmas," the
slaughter of the Innocents, His wonder-working and His teachings, His
crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension--all these events in the story
of His life are pointed to in the stories of other lives, and His
historical existence is challenged on the strength of these identities.
So far as the wonder-working and the teachings are concerned, we may
briefly dismiss these first with the acknowledgment that most great
Teachers have wrought works which, on the physical plane, appear as
miracles in the sight of their contemporaries, but are known by
occultists to be done by the exercise of powers possessed by all
Initiates above a certain grade. The teachings He gave may also be
acknowledged to be non-original; but where the student of Comparative
Mythology thinks that he has proved that none is divinely inspired, when
he shows that similar moral teachings fell from the lips of Manu, from
the lips of the Buddha, from the lips of Jesus, the occultist says that
certainly Jesus must have repeated the teachings of His predecessors,
since He was a messenger from the same Lodge. The profound verities
touching the divine and the human Spirit were as much truths twenty
thousand years