Orange County observer. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1880-1918, 1909-04-08

III C1uLuS Vi lsSkIt I0l1S1Ou. JuSllU
made some differences from the Bible
in the direction of faith. He laid
great stress. upon the argument from
prophecy, and had much to say about
devils, with whom he Identifies the
gods of the Pagan world, and he be-
lieved in a literal millennium. There
was a lack or order and formality in
the church, but they took collections,
he says, and describes a service at
which there was a reading of the
Bible, a long prayer, a hymn and a
sacramental feast of bread and wine.
The second antagonist of the
Christian faith was Heresy. The time
| came when men of education and
learning began to be attracted toward
| the Christian religion, and there was
a natural desire on the part Of Chris
| tian teachers to prove the Christian
| religion to those persons, to make it
reasonable to their cultivated minds,
| and the result was sometimes heresy.
/ Heresy, I suppose, is almost always
the result of that kind of purpose.
These heretics were the Gnostics,
whose aim it was to make some kind
of a combination between Christian
truth and the other kinds of truths
floating about in the minds OF smen.
Gnostics found two great difficulties
in religion: One, the difficulty of re-
conciling the New Testament with the
Old Te.tament, partly on the ground
of morality, which is taught from so
much higher a plane in the New
Testament than in the Old Testament,
the difficulty emphasized by the
teaching Of st. Paul, wherein he
seemed to set a new system of grace
over against the old system of works.
How to reconcile these discrepancies
between the Old and New Testaments
perplexed them. And the other per-
plexity was, how to reconcile the bad
world with the good and mighty God.
These they met with q series of prop
O%sitions. "
They said there are two antagon-
istic facts. There is matter which
is esse .tially evil, and there is a spir-
it which !, essentially divine" They
also said, There are two worlds:
the lower world, in which we live,
clothed in matter, and thereby hav.
ing our spirit hindered by this envir.
onment Of evil; and a higher world
where God dwells, remotely distant
and having between Him and us q
long series Of spiritual being, ema.
nations from Him, called aeons, and
at the end Of this long line Of aeons
reaching down is the Demiurge, 8
pretty poor kind Of aeon" The Dem.
urge was the maker of the world
} and he was responsible for all this
evil matter, and the Demiurge wa.
: the God of the Old Testament. Every
: thing that takes place in the Ole
Testament is under the control of The
l lDemiurge, not Of the Supreme God
. 1onA rro anol x~,{4Lr - ~vi*1> clI ~.
8 freedom we like The Supreme Aeon
t they said, was the Christ who cam,
!, to redeem man from the tyranny o
e the Demiurge; and Christ redeemct
man. not by the sacrifice Of His dealt
, upon the cross, because, matter beini
e evil, Christ had no body. That wa
y only an appearance. There was n
5 incarnation, no resurrection, or an
9 Of the rest of it. He saves man, no
= by the death of the cross, but b
illumination, by the shining in q
His Spirit upon the spirit of a
= The third antagonist Of the fait
: was Competition. There came int
: existence two great new religions, o
= the one side the religion of Plato {
s revival of philosophy, and on til
:. other side the religion OF Mithras. {
= revival Of Paganism). These can
= in the way Of a revolt from the prt
- sale religion OF the Roman Emp1r'
- 20 It had in It no emotion. It was
bare contract between man and Go,
wherein man said, up and down. :
will give you a certain amount
= ritual If you will give me a CORE
ponding amount Of protection"
. had in it no sense Of mystery.
- was just as commonplace as the mo
- - atty. Now, the world was longir
for some appeal to emotion, for son
satisfaction Of It's sense of myster
and these two religions came at tt
place to do that work. Neoplato
- ism, a revival Of philosophy, four
=, :: it's exponent in Plotinus. From fra
!; ments of books he wrote we get son
=. Idea how he tried to bind togeth
AZ all the truth there was INTO one BY
tenn, except the truth of Christian1t
]. And then opposed to Neoplatonis
q was an ideal, an ideal and not a pc
ls- son. Mithraism was the most fo
u midable competitor that Christian
OF ever had. It seemed at one time