Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

Eeitzenstein (p. 195) thinks that our sermon must be an extract from a longer one, because he cannot bring himself to believe that so short a treatise could have been found in immediate connection (as the opening words suggest) with so lengthy and detailed a tractate as the " Perfect Sermon." This may be so ; and yet the formal beginning and ending of our sermon would seem to suggest that we are dealing with a complete tractate and not with an extract.

The doctrine that in men " sense - and - thought " together constitutes human " sense " throws some light on the meaning of the term " sense " as used elsewhere in the Trismegistic literature, where we should expect to find " mind " employed, and that, too, in the sense of the higher mind.

Normal human " thought," then, is, so to say, sensible, entirely bound up in sense-impressions ; it is the mind alone that can soar beyond the senses, for it alone can be "illumined by God's Light" (§ 3).

The mind is, as it were, a womb or woman, that can be impregnated either by the " Seeds of God " or by the " Daimonial Energy " ; she thus conceives and brings forth virtues or vices.

All of this is precisely the same doctrine as Philo preaches, as may be seen by the passages we have quoted in the " Prolegomena " on the subject of the " Sacred Marriage."

The Seeds of God are Virtue and Self-control and Devotion or Piety; and Devotion in its true sense 2is God-gnosis, or Knowledge of God. The Gnostics, then, " they who are in Gnosis " — a curious expression — because of their natural divorcement from the " world," " please not the many, nor the many them."

"They are thought mad and laughed at; they're hated and despised, and sometimes even put to death."

Mark the impersonal note, the calm laying down of the causes of misunderstanding between the " many " and the "few''; and compare this with the more personal note of the saying underlying the following Synoptic accommodations :

" Blessed are ye when men hate you and excommunicate you, and revile and expel your Name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake" (Luke vi. 22).

It is clear, at least it seems so to me, that " Luke " has kept closer to the original, and that that original was addressed not only to the members of a community, but to those who had been cast forth from some other community " for the sake of the Son of Man " — that is, because of the immediate inspiration of the Logos, which doubtless did not pay sufficient attention to the prejudices of the " many " of that community.

" Matthew," on the contrary, seems to have adapted the Saying for general purposes and the necessities of the Cult of Jesus.1

Excellent also is the doctrine that the true " Gnostic," the man who is consciously growing into the stature of 3the Christ, the true " Devotee of God/' " will bear with all," for he is beginning to know the Keason of things.

" For such an one all things, e'en though they be for others bad, are for him good ; deliberately he doth refer them all unto the Gnosis."

He sees the Good, he sees God, in all things. He is the true Alchemist. For "thing most marvellous, 'tis he alone who maketh bad things good " ; by spiritual alchemy he transmutes the evil of the world to good ; he drains the " cup of bitterness " unto the dregs, and transmutes it into the pure Water of Life.

Evil, however, is not a permanent thing; it is but the process of " becoming good," the productive side of things (§5).