The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)
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The translator’s English as printed (A. E. Waite). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
These types and similitudes were given to us on account of our human infirmity, which prevents us from understanding and picturing to ourselves the things of heaven. And since it is God's wont to reveal His mind in parables and /feures, we can but regard it as of a piece with all the other dealings of God, that the Chief Good, His Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who by His obedience saved all mankind from eternal death and restored to us the Kingdom of Heaven, should have expressed His nature in a concrete bodily form. This is the greatest mystery of Almighty God, and the highest and worthiest object of knowledge. [Ephes. iii. Coli Isaiah xlv.: '* Lez Zhe Leaveus drop down Jrom above, and let the skies pour down righteousness. Let ihe earth open and bring forth the Saviour."|
And although this great Good had been prefigured to us in the Old Testament by types such as the sacrifice of Isaac, the ladder of Jacob, the betrayal and wonderful exaltation of Joseph the brazen serpent, Samson, David, and Jonah ; yet, besides all these, Almighty God deigned to give us a fuller revelation and a corporal, visible, and apprehensible Idea of His heavenly trea- .sures and gifts in the Person of His Son. This earthly and bodily manifestation He plainly toretold in the Prophet Isaiah (cp. xxviii): *Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a corner stone, a tried stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. To the same effect the Royal Seer David speaks, through the Holy Spirit, in Psalm cxviii.: * The Stone which the builders rejected is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." This type, the aforesaid Corner Stone, Christ applies to Himself (Matth. cp. xxi) when He says: * Have ye never read in the Scriptures? The Stone that the builders rejected is become the chief stone of the corner. ^ This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. And whosoever shall fall on this Stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall it shall grind him to powder. And Peter (Acts, cp. iv.) and Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (cp. ix.) repeat almost the same words.
This tried, blessed, and heavenly Stone Jesus Christ was longingly expected from the beginning of the world by the Fathers and Holy Patriarchs ; God-enlightened men prayed that they might be accounted worthy to see the promised Christ in His bodily and visible form. And if they rightly knew Him by the Holy Spirit, they were comforted by His presence in their lives, and had an invisible Friend on whom they could stay themselves, as upon a spiritual fulcrum, in trouble and danger even unto the end of their life.
But although that heavenly Stone was bestowed by God as a free gift on the whole human race, the rich as well as the poor (Matth. xi., 6.) ; yettothis very day comparatively few have been able to know and apprehend Him. To the majority of mankind He has always been a hidden secret, and a grievous stumbling block, as Isaiah foretold in his eighth chapter: * He shall be for a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence, a gin and a snare, so that many shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken." Thesamevwas revealed to the aged Simeon, when he spake thus to Mary, the Mother of the Corner Stone : * Behold, He shall be for a fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be spoken against" To this S. Paul also bears witness (ad. Rom. ix.): * They fell from the Stone of offence, and the rock of stumbling. He that believes in Him shall not be confounded." "This Stone is precious to them that believe, but to the unbelieving *a stone of offence and stumbling, seeing that they are broken against the word, and believe not in Him on whom they are founded (Eccl xliii)" In all these respects the Precious, Blessed, and Heavenly Stone agrees most wonderfully with our earthly, corporal, and philosophical Stone ; and it is, therefore, well worth our while to compare our Stone with its Heavenly prototype. We shall thus understand that the earthly philosophical Stone is the true image of the real, spiritual, and heavenly Stone Jesus Christ.