Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

And so we come to the end of our tentative classification ; with the full conviction, however, that as no one at the time when the literature was extant in a number of Corpora and collections of all sorts attempted to classify it, so now that we have only the flotsam and jetsam of this once abundantly rich cargo before us, no inventory can be made that is of the slightest scientific value, and we can at best offer the reader a few sorted heaps of disjecta membra of varying dates.

OF JUDGMENTS OF VALUE

We now approach the conclusion of our task, but with the feeling that the whole matter should be put aside for years before any attempt be made to set down any judgments of value. We are as yet too much involved in a maze of details to be able to extricate ourselves into the clear space in which we can walk at ease round the labyrinth and view it from a general and detached point of view.

Nevertheless, we will endeavour to set down some general impressions of our experiences in the labyrinth — of the many windings we have had to traverse, and the many places with no way out into which we have been led by following the paths of history and criticism ; out of which there has been time and again no egress, even when holding fast to the thread of light woven out of the illuminating rays of the doctrines of the tradition.

It is indeed a difficult task to stand with the feet of the mind set firm on the surface of objectivity, and with the head and heart of it in the heights and depths of the subjective and unmanifest. And yet this almost superhuman task is the Great Work set before every scholar of the Gnosis — the man who would think truly and judge justly, viewing the matter from all standpoints, and appraising it from without and within, from above and below, endeavouring to unite centre and circumference in a blended intuitional sense that transcends our divided senses and intellect.

The Trismegistic literature is scripture, and to its understanding we must bring all and every faculty that the best minds of to-day are bringing to bear upon the special scripture which each one may believe to be the most precious legacy from the Past to the Present.

Now the application of what is called " criticism " to scripture is the wielding of a two-edged sword ; this sword is not only two-edged, but it is fiery. If it is rightly used, it will disperse the hosts of error and hew a path into the Paradise of Truth ; but if it is wrongly used, it will react on the daring soul that attempts to grasp it, and he will find in it the flaming brand in the hands of the Angel-Warden that keeps him from the Gate of Heaven.

Criticism, which is regarded with such fear and trembling by some, and is sneered at and despised by others, is the sword that the Christ has brought on earth in these latter days. There is now war in the members of the faithful, war within them, such war as they cannot escape, if God has given them a mind with which to reason. Every man of intelligence who loves his own special scripture, is keenly aware of the war within his members — head against heart and heart against head, form against substance and substance against form. This is keenly felt by those who love their own special Bible; but how few can enter into the feelings of another who loves with equal fervour some other Bible? Who can be really fair to any other man's religion? And by this we do not mean an absolutely lifeless indifference, in which the head alone is concerned — for there are not a few men of this type who deal with the comparative science of religion — but a lively sympathy that knows that the other man's religion is the highest thing on earth for him, and the light-giving revelation of God's Wisdom.

THE SONS OF GOD