spel to every
creature"[1]--though admittedly of doubtful authenticity--has been
interpreted as forbidding the teaching of the Gnosis to a few, and has
apparently erased the less popular saying of the same Great Teacher:
"Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your
pearls before swine."[2]

This spurious sentimentality--which refuses to recognise the obvious
inequalities of intelligence and morality, and thereby reduces the
teaching of the highly developed to the level attainable by the least
evolved, sacrificing the higher to the lower in a way that injures
both--had no place in the virile common sense of the early Christians.
S. Clement of Alexandria says quite bluntly, after alluding to the
Mysteries: "Even now I fear, as it is said, 'to cast the pearls before
swine, lest they tread them underfoot, and turn and rend us.' For it is
difficult to exhibit the really pure and transparent words respecting
the true Light to swinish and untrained hearers."[3]

If true knowledge, the Gnosis, is again to form a part of Christian
teachings, it can only be under the old restrictions, and the idea of
levelling down to the capacities of the least developed must be
definitely surrendered. Only by teaching above the grasp of the little
evolved can the way be opened up for a restoration of arcane knowledge,
and the study of the Lesser Mysteries must precede that of the Greater.
The Greater will never be published through the printing-press; they can
only be given by Teacher to pupil, "from mouth to ear." But the Lesser
Mysteries, the partial unveiling of deep truths, can even now be
restored, and such a volume as the present is intended to outline these,
and to show the _nature_ of the teachings which have to be mastered.
Where only hints are given, quiet meditation on the truths hinted at
will cause their outlines to become visible, and the clearer light
obtained by continued meditation will gradually show them more fully.
For meditation quiets the lower mind, ever engaged in thinking about
external objects, and when the lower mind is tranquil then only can it
be illuminated by the Spirit. Knowledge of spiritual truths must be thus
obtained, from within and not from without, from the divine Spirit whose
temple we are[4] and not from an external Teacher. These things are
"spiritually discerned" by that divine indwelling Spirit, that "mind of
Christ," whereof speaks the Great Apostle,[5] and that inner light is
s