erm, "The Perfect," was used by the
Essenes, who had three orders in their communities: the Neophytes, the
Brethren, and the Perfect--the latter being Initiates; and it is
employed generally in that sense in old writings. "The Little Child" was
the ordinary name for a candidate just initiated, _i.e._, who had just
taken his "second birth."

When we know this use, many obscure and otherwise harsh passages become
intelligible. "Then said one unto Him: Lord, are there few that be
saved? And He said unto them: Strive to enter in at the strait gate; for
many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not be able."[47]
If this be applied in the ordinary Protestant way to salvation from
everlasting hell-fire, the statement becomes incredible, shocking. No
Saviour of the world can be supposed to assert that many will seek to
avoid hell and enter heaven, but will not be able to do so. But as
applied to the narrow gateway of Initiation and to salvation from
rebirth, it is perfectly true and natural. So again: "Enter ye in at the
strait gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is
the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life; and few there be
that find it."[48] The warning which immediately follows against the
false prophets, the teachers of the dark Mysteries, is most apposite in
this connection. No student can miss the familiar ring of these words
used in this same sense in other writings. The "ancient narrow way" is
familiar to all; the path "difficult to tread as the sharp edge of a
razor,"[49] already mentioned; the going "from death to death" of those
who follow the flower-strewn path of desires, who do not know God; for
those men only become immortal and escape from the wide mouth of death,
from ever repeated destruction, who have quitted all desires.[50] The
allusion to death is, of course, to the repeated births of the soul into
gross material existence, regarded always as "death" compared to the
"life" of the higher and subtler worlds.

This "Strait Gate" was the gateway of Initiation, and through it a
candidate entered "The Kingdom." And it ever has been, and must be, true
that only a few can enter that gateway, though myriads--an exceedingly
"great multitude, which no man could number,"[51] not a few--enter into
the happiness of the heaven-world. So also spoke another great Teacher,
nearly three thousand years earl