regarded as an external Saviour, by
whose imputed righteousness men were to be saved from divine wrath.
There was current in the Church the glorious and inspiring teaching that
He was but the first fruits of humanity, the model that every man should
reproduce in himself, the life that all should share. The Initiates have
ever been regarded as these first fruits, the promise of a race made
perfect. To the early Christian, Christ was the living symbol of his own
divinity, the glorious fruit of the seed he bore in his own heart. Not
to be saved by an external Christ, but to be glorified into an inner
Christ, was the teaching of esoteric Christianity, of the Lesser
Mysteries. The stage of discipleship was to pass into that of Sonship.
The life of the Son was to be lived among men till it was closed by the
Resurrection, and the glorified Christ became one of the perfected
Saviours of the world.

How far greater a Gospel than the one of modern days! Placed beside that
grandiose ideal of esoteric Christianity, the exoteric teaching of the
churches seems narrow and poor indeed.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TRINITY.

All fruitful study of the Divine Existence must start from the
affirmation that it is One. All the Sages have thus proclaimed It; every
religion has thus affirmed It; every philosophy thus posits It--"One
only without a second."[255] "Hear, O Israel!" cried Moses, "The Lord
our God is one Lord."[256] "To us there is but one God,"[257] declares
S. Paul. "There is no God but God," affirms the founder of Islam, and
makes the phrase the symbol of his faith. One Existence unbounded, known
in Its fulness only to Itself--the word It seems more reverent and
inclusive than He, and is therefore used. That is the Eternal Darkness,
out of which is born the Light.

But as the Manifested God, the One appears as Three. A Trinity of Divine
Beings, One as God, Three as manifested Powers. This also has ever been
declared, and the truth is so vital in its relation to man and his
evolution that it is one which ever forms an essential part of the
Lesser Mysteries.

Among the Hebrews, in consequence of their anthropomorphising
tendencies, the doctrine was kept secret, but the Rabbis studied and
worshipped the Ancient of Days, from whom came forth the Wisdom, from
whom the Understanding--Kether, Chochmah, Binah, these formed the
Supreme Trinity, the shining forth in time of the One beyond time. The
Book of the Wisdom of Solomon refer