of a spiritual outpouring,
there was a real mysticism that could present the Authentic Spectacle
and could utter comfortable words in tongues not of this world utterly.
There was a Gnosis that strove to give the Peace of God to those within
and to those without, because in Peace all things were made, that
yearned to bring forth children, quickened fiery souls, aeons, gods, in
bodies of light for the love of God; that saw in all things Grace, the
Sponsa Dei, the Mother most pure and immaculate. "No creature was ever
wronged of Thee," no spark ever quenched, no hope defrauded and hurled
eternally from the sky with shattered wings by Thee. Such is the fair
Faith that chanted its prayer beneath a heaven set with such strange
galaxies, and whispers to us now through the disremembered symbols of a
forgotten book.

It is pleasant, in these days of strife, to be able to quote Dr
Schmidt's appreciation of the _Untitled Apocalypse_ with a cordial
agreement:

"What a different world, on the contrary, meets us in our thirty-one
leaves! We find ourselves in the pure spheres of the highest Pleroma;
we see, step by step, this world, so rich in heavenly beings, coming
into existence before our eyes; each individual space with all its
inmates is minutely described, so that we can form for ourselves a
living picture of the glory and splendour of this Gnostic heaven. The
speculations are not so confused and fantastic as those of the Pistis
Sophia and our two Books of Jeu.... The author is imbued with the
Greek spirit, equipped with a full knowledge of Greek philosophy, full
of the doctrine of the Platonic ideas, an adherent of Plato's view of
the origin of evil--that is to say, Hyle.... We possess in these
leaves a magnificently conceived work by an old Gnostic philosopher,
and we stand astonished, marvelling at the boldness of the
speculations, dazzled by the richness of the thought, touched by the
depth of soul of the author. This is not, like the Pistis Sophia, the
product of declining Gnosticism, but dates from a period when Gnostic
genius, like a mighty eagle, left the world behind it and soared in
wide and ever wider circles towards pure light, towards pure knowledge,
in which it lost itself in ecstasy.

"In one word, we possess in this Gnostic work, as regards age and
contents, a work of the very highest importance, which takes us into a
period of Gnosticism, and therefore of Christianity, of which very
little knowledge