could find it. Here is another sense of Pausanias regarding the Mystic Garden. Again, it is no task of mine to qualify the abuses of the old systems; it is sufficient that a knowledge of what is called the lineal path is a very old scientia sapientiæ. I do not think that, in any exclusive, invariable, or even general sense, it was preserved among the priesthood, though it usually wore this aspect, and in some cases existed within it. It passed over in Greece to philosophy, and it seems to have been sustained and extended therein when little remained but the forms in official sanctuaries. There came that saving and enlightening time when all the old external theogonies dissolved before the doctrine of Christ, and were fulfilled rather than destroyed therein. During the Christian centuries I believe that the way was always known to a peculiar people, who, with the whole sincerity of detachment, did not merely render to Cæsar the things that belonged to Cæsar, but all that they claimed in the outward ways to pope and patriarch and priest.

Well, the Secret Doctrine was a mystery of going back on physical generation and being reborn into another Garden, which was not that of Venus. In the sense of sentimental symbolism, this was a Garden of Spiritual Flowers, but in better terminology the correspondence between the two ideas is like that of the House of God as it was externally built by Solomon and

Solomon's Temple Spiritualised. The mystery is one of rebirth, and it is separable into two modes, the first being that of its formal expression by means of doctrine, and, at a greater distance, by means of type and fable; but the second was the process by which the mystery itself was melted in experience and the epopt did actually return and enter what I have called-not that the phraseology satisfies me that other and spiritual garden. He remembered whence he came and he found whither he was going; he was regenerated in the consciousness of the soul, in that state which is apart from the bondage of mortality. There is an almost generic distinction between this process and that which passes in the modern and reformed world under the name of conversion, although the experience of conversion is good, true and real experience, after its own manner. The one is like the firstfruits of redemption, the other is redemption realised.

It will be seen that the root-matter of the Secret Doctrine rests in the pre-existence of man's spiritual part, which, so long as it is distinguished from the material and arbitrary systems of metempsychosis and other forms of reincarnation, is not of necessity foreign matter to official Christian theology. It should be understood further, that although the theosophies and mystical schools of the East and West have very strangely divided and sub-divided the spiritual part of man, all the distinctions and all the shades of distinction

are referable to stages of consciousness. It is a question of opening successively the closed doors within us, and it is in this manner that we reach what is called in mysticism the Palace of the King, the Holy Palace at the Centre, wherein we cease from our travellings, having reached the term of all; and seeing that the Presence, which is Divine Immanence in Nature, is also a Presence in us, it is at this term that the Divine Immanence is in fine withdrawn into the Divine Transcendence, and the soul passes with the one that it may attain the other. This is Divine Union ; it is also the exaltation of Christ on the Cross, that He may carry all things after Him.

VIII

HAVING spoken with all sincerity, to the full extent of my power, on that subject apart from which the present book would have no title to existence, nor could its existence seem possible, there is one branch of the instituted Mysteries of which something remains to be said, and because of its relation to the subject it has been reserved till this stage. The Secret Doctrine has within Masonry in one sense, and yet not exactly of or belonging thereto, another form of enshrinement which constitutes not only the most luminous veil of the Doctrine but contains an explanation in transcension of the Craft symbolism itself. It is a Secret Rite, and any allusions thereto must, for this reason, be very carefully worded; it communicates a number of Degrees, arising one out of another in an ordered sequence and

ordered

forming thus an integral and inseparable whole. For the purpose of the present allusion I need, however, mention five grades only, as follows:

1. That which is in correspondence unaware with the Masonic Grade of Neophyte : it symbolises the birth of the soul in the consciousness of the intellectual understanding.

2. That which responds to the Grade of Fellow-Craft, wherein the Mysteries of Spiritual Nature and Concealed Knowledge open like an immeasurable region-as they are indeed-outside of time and space-before the soul on its return journey and ascent.

3. That which stands by itself, apart from all things in the Craft and with no real correspondence anywhere in the High Grades, though it offers shadows of resemblance, as of great things with small, to those of which something has been said in their place—to the legend which affirms that the Master was found, not dead but sleeping; to that also which intimates that he lived for many years after his ordeal and sacrifice in the further East. This is the mystery of Him concerning whom it has been said, in many regions of the universe, and in many religions of the inmost heart, that passus et sepultus est. But it is death in the grace of the Lord, and a mystery of that sleep which comes by a gift to the beloved. It is the sleep of Christ in the new tomb of a garden in Calvary. It is, moreover, a macro