d it was written! "In the golden
highest sheath dwells the stainless, changeless Brahman; It is the
radiant white Light of lights, known to the knowers of the Self."[35]
"When the seer sees the golden-coloured Creator, the Lord, the Spirit,
whose womb is Brahman, then, having thrown away merit and demerit,
stainless, the wise one reaches the highest union."[36]

Nor were the Hebrews without their secret knowledge and their Schools of
Initiation. The company of prophets at Naioth presided over by
Samuel[37] formed such a School, and the oral teaching was handed down
by them. Similar Schools existed at Bethel and Jericho,[38] and in
Cruden's _Concordance_[39] there is the following interesting note: "The
Schools or Colleges of the prophets are the first [schools] of which we
have any account in Scripture; where the children of the prophets, that
is, their disciples, lived in the exercises of a retired and austere
life, in study and meditation, and reading of the law of God.... These
Schools, or Societies, of the prophets were succeeded by the
Synagogues." The _Kabbala_, which contains the semi-public teaching, is,
as it now stands, a modern compilation, part of it being the work of
Rabbi Moses de Leon, who died A.D. 1305. It consists of five books,
Bahir, Zohar, Sepher Sephiroth, Sepher Yetzirah, and Asch Metzareth, and
is asserted to have been transmitted orally from very ancient times--as
antiquity is reckoned historically. Dr. Wynn Westcott says that "Hebrew
tradition assigns the oldest parts of the Zohar to a date antecedent to
the building of the second Temple;" and Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai is said
to have written down some of it in the first century A.D. The Sepher
Yetzirah is spoken of by Saadjah Gaon, who died A.D. 940, as "very
ancient."[40] Some portions of the ancient oral teaching have been
incorporated in the _Kabbala_ as it now stands, but the true archaic
wisdom of the Hebrews remains in the guardianship of a few of the true
sons of Israel.

Brief as is this outline, it is sufficient to show the existence of a
hidden side in the religions of the world outside Christianity, and we
may now examine the question whether Christianity was an exception to
this universal rule.

CHAPTER II.

THE HIDDEN SIDE OF CHRISTIANITY.

_(a)_ THE TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURES.

Having seen that the religions of the past claimed with one voice to
have a hidden side, to be custodians of "Mysteries," and that this clai