The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)

Now if the Word is pure and undefiled, the hearing, too, may be pure and undefiled, and the faith which comes of such hearing will also be true, and show itself by love and humble obedience to the will of God 1n prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. It will also find expression in all good works towards our neighbour. To the exercise of this love Christ exhorts us in His long valedictory discourse (John xiii.) and leaves it with us as His farewell saying : * This is my commandment that ye love each other, even as I also loved you." * If any one say, I know God, and love not his brother, he is aliar, and the truth is not in him. But he who keeps the Word of God, in him the love of God is perfected " (I. John, ii). And again (I. John, iv.): * God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him." From these passages we learn that love is the bond of perfection by which we are united to Christ, and by which we are in Him, He in His Father, and His Father in Him. *If any one," says Christ, *will keep my word, this is he that loves me, and I will love

IIO THE HERMETIC MUSEUM.

him, and we will come to him and take up our abode with him." Again: *If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love | But this our love to God must also find expression towards our neighbour. For *ifany one love not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God, whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have of Him, that he that loves God love his brother also.^ — The nature ofthis love is described by S. Paul (1. Cor. xiii.) in the following words : * Love suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, and never fails" — Hence it appears that there is no true love which does not show itself in works of kindness towards our fellow men ; and hence also it appears that the good works which are acceptable to God cannot precede faith, but are its outgrowth and precious fruit ; works do not make faith good and acceptable, but it is faith that gives their real value to works— for we are justified and obtain eternal life by faith alone. And if a regenerate man bear himself thus lovingly and humbly in all his life, he will never lack fruit in due season. For such a man is placed by God in the furnace of affliction, and (like the hermetic compound) is purged with the fire of suffering until the old Adam is dead, and there arises a new man created after God in righteousness and true holiness, as S. Paul says(Rom.vi.): * We are buried with Christ by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life ^ When this has been accomplished, and a man is no longer under the dominion of sin, then there begins in him something analogous to the solution of the gold added to the substance of our chemical process. — The old nature is destroyed, dissolved, decomposed, and, in a longer or shorter period of time, transmuted into something else. Sucha man is so well digested and melted in the fire of affliction that he despairs of his own strength and looks for help and comfort to the mercy of God alone. In this furnace of the Cross, a man, like earthly gold, attains to the true black «Raven's Head, ze, loses all beauty and reputation in the eyes of the world; and that not only during forty days and nights, or forty years, but often during his whole life, which is thus often more full of sorrow and suffering than of comfort and joy. And, through this spiritual dying, his soul is taken from him, and lifted up on high ;

TIEDE) SQUID OEDYT QD DII

. while his body is still upon earth, his spirit and heart are already in his eternal Fatherland ; and all his actions have a heavenly source, and seem no longer to belong to this earth. For he lives no longer according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, not in the unfruitful works of darkness, but in the light and in the day—in works that stand the test of fire. "This separation of body and soul is brought about by a spiritual dying. For as the dissolution of body and soul is performed in the regenerated gold, where body and soul are separated from one another, and yet remain close together in the same phial, the soul daily refreshing the body from above, and preserving it from final destruction, until a set time: so the decaying and half-dead bodily part of man is not entirely deserted by its soul in the furnace of the Cross, but is refreshed by the spirit from above with heavenly dew, and fed and preserved with Divine nectar. (For our temporal death, which is the wages of sin, is not a. real death, but only a natural and gentle severing of body and soul). The indissoluble union and conjunction of the Spirit of God, and the soul of the Christian, are a real and abiding fact. And here again we have an analogy to the (sevenfold) ascending and descending of the soul in the chemical process. For the tribulations and temporal sufferings of God's people have now lasted six thousand years ; but during this whole time, men have again and again been refreshed, comforted, and strengthened by the Spirit of God—and so it is now, and ever will be, until the great universal Sabbath and rest-day of the seventh millenium. ^ Then this occasional spiritual refreshing will cease, and everlasting joy will reign, since God will be all in all.