essions of another, but by his own nature, a Divine
son, is in essence a form of Hindoo thought, and the recent
translations of their sacred books enable us to read that truth there.

The Jewish conception of the Deity was utterly opposed to this. In
that theology the Supreme Being was ever transcendent, and probably
Jesus, a son of Israel, was not greatly removed from this belief.
"Salvation is of the Jews," he proclaimed. Certainly there are no
indications in the three earlier gospels of any such teaching as that
of Emerson, though it is found, in suggestion at least, in the fourth
gospel. Christ is made to say in one of those lengthy speeches at the
close of the book, "If any man will keep my words, I will come to him
and my Father will come to him, and we will take up our abode with
him;" and again, "I and the Father are one". Here is a suggestion,
faint enough, of the teaching that the Divine is present in the hearts
of the just, of the ethically good, but there is a world of difference
between that and the essential Divinity of every human soul, because
part of the Over-soul, which is one in all men. No; Jesus was a son of
Israel, and his ideals were those of his race. The few words quoted
from the fourth gospel are in the spirit of the larger belief, but they
are Neo-Platonic in their origin, as is the whole Johannine gospel, and
cannot be taken as fairly representing the mind of the greatest of the
Jewish seers. If we would see the Eastern teaching in the West, we
must search, not the Old or New Testament, but the pages of the
Alexandrian School, of Philo, and above all, of Plotinus, who believed
that the supreme truths were learnt, not by study, nor by revelation
from without, but in an ecstasy of the soul, losing itself in the
contemplation of the Divine--in the "flight of the alone to the Alone".

Now, that which Plotinus considered an extraordinary occurrence, an
experience perhaps only possible to elect spirits, men at length began
to look upon as the truth of the normal relations between their Maker
and themselves. Of course, so stupendous a change took centuries in
evolution, and, naturally, the Christian Church and its clergymen gave
it no sort of encouragement. It would never do to preach abroad that
every man was his own priest, and so we wade through the whole of
mediaevalism without finding any recognition of the great teaching. It
is only when we are in the comparatively modern epoch of th