ARETORT

I am sorry to trouble my readers with a matter so personal as the present subject. It has been found out that I am not infallible. Like my fellow-mortals, I can fall into error. I have to acknowledge and regret a stupid blunder, perceived, alas! too late (p. 15 of the Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ; also p. 419, Vol. II., "Natural Genesis").

In comparing with Egyptian certain Syro-Chaldaic and Aramean words which have been left untranslated in the Greek text of the New Testament, I included the word "sent," entirely forgetting that it was English when I compared it with the Egyptian "shent," a "pool," and "sunnt," a healing bath. The nature of my inadvertence is proved in the very next lines by the remark:--"There is no need to strain a single point for the purpose of making ends meet!"

It was foolish, but such is the simple fact, and I will not seek to minimize my mistake. Any one engaged in attacking what he considers the supreme delusion of the European mind, and the crowning error of all time, ought to be free from the smallest errors himself. Would that it were possible! For the most is sure to be made by the enemy of the least lapse, more especially by those who have been consecrated to the service of falsification.

My error drew the attention of a Mr. Coleman, and induced him to write an article in the Religio-Philosophical Journal of Chicago last October, of which no copy was sent to me by the writer or publisher. To this my attention has just been called; also to a letter by the same writer which appeared in the same journal, dated February 5th, headed "Opinions of Eminent Egyptologists regarding Mr. Massey's alleged Egypto-Christian parallels." Unfortunately, the letter will necessitate a reply to the previous article. In this letter the Rev. A. H. Sayce is reported to say of me to Mr. Coleman, "Many thanks for your very thorough demolition of Mr. Massey's crudities. It is difficult to understand how a man can have the effrontery to put forward such a mass of ignorance and false quotation. You have done a real service to the cause of truth by exposing him so fully. You ask me if I can detect any errors in your essay. Errors enough on the part of Mr. Massey, but they have all been exposed impartially and mercilessly by yourself."

Mr. Coleman continues, and quotes the following from "one of the ablest Egyptologists in England," who is "now connected with the British Museum," of whom he says, "owing to the rather personal character of some of his remarks, it is thought better that his name be not published." The writer says to Mr. Coleman,--"You are right in your exposure of Mr. Massey. Some people think him dishonest; and that he is quite conscious of the ridiculous blunders which he publishes. I do not think so after having examined his large book. It is a work which I should have thought could only have been written in Bedlam. No lunatic could possibly write more wild rubbish, without the least consciousness of the incredible ignorance displayed throughout. The man is AT ONCE an ignoramus of the worst kind, viz., not in the least being aware of his ignorance, and he has the pretension of explaining things which cannot be understood (except by trusting other persons) without a considerable knowledge of different languages, which he does not possess." If the words here used have any real relationship to known facts, it seemed to me that the Egyptologist who has taken the place of the late Dr. Samuel Birch must be the writer of the letter quoted by Mr. Coleman. I wrote to Mr. Renouf stating my inference, and asking him to favor me with a denial if he were not the writer. This is Mr. Renouf's reply. The underlining is mine:--

"Sir,-- You are mistaken in thinking that the extract from Mr. Coleman's letter 'points undoubtedly' to me. There are more persons than one at the Museum besides me, to whom it might be supposed to 'point.' But whatever indiscretion there may have been till now in this matter, I am not disposed to add to it by answering any questions as to my knowledge of the authorship of the letter to which you refer.--I am, Sir, your obedient servant, P. LE PAGE RENOUF."

That answer I look upon as eminently unsatisfactory; and I think my view will be shared by others. Only one person wrote the letter; and this explanation brings at least three under suspicion, without identifying or absolving the right one. If Mr. Renouf be the writer, instead of clearing himself he has imitated the ink-fish and taken refuge in the cloud which he has cast around his confréres at the Museum. I cannot think the reply is calculated to deceive! It contains no denial, however, and perhaps the discretion shown too late may not prove to be the better part of valor; but I leave blank for the time being where I have not the absolute right to fill in a name.

We have heard the language like this of Mr. --- before (put in better English), when anything very upsetting has been presented to the world. Such damnation is dirt cheap! Also, the time has passed for denunciation to be mistaken for disproof. That is the kind of authority I had already counted on, and discounted, when I say, "They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth."

By the by I may confess to Mr. --- that I escaped from Bedlam many years ago; I would also remind him that the proper name for Bedlam is Bethlehem; a most ancient mad-house in which the patients have been confined for eighteen hundred years; and that our Bedlam also was once a "religious house." I am not mad myself; but I am possessed by the conviction that a good many other people are, and that no insanity is quite so virulent as that which dates from the ancient Bedlam. I had already warned my readers that they must expect little help from those Egyptologists and Assyriologists who are bibliolaters first and scholars afterwards. Bibliolatry puts out the eye of scholarship or causes confirmed strabismus.

I admit in the preface to my "Natural Genesis" that "as a matter of course the author will have blundered in manifold details." At the end of three years I doubt whether I have! But of course in a work of so fundamental and pioneering a nature there will be some oversights, crudities and even graver faults that cannot be avoided in a first edition. Why, 30,000 errors have had to be corrected in the latest edition of the "Word of God." And it does seem at times to be a providential part of the scheme of things that where the truths entirely fail to command attention first, the errors are sure to secure some sort of advertisement for the work. In this way, even a Coleman can be turned to account.

Madness may be a matter of opinion; but whoever charges me with intended "false quotation" lies!

I spared no time to get at my facts, and neglected no available sources of knowledge, whether directly open to myself or derivable through the minds of those who are great linguists. As I also say in my preface I took the precaution of consulting Dr. Samuel Birch for many years after he had offered, in his own words, to "keep me straight" as to my facts, obtainable from Egyptian records. He answered my questions, gave me his advice, discussed variant renderings, read whatever proofs I sent him, and corrected me where he saw I was wrong. I never could understand the interest he took in me and my work. He could have had no sympathy with my real aim and ends (which are not wholly proclaimed even on my title-page), yet he was always ready to enrich my poor means with the treasures of his knowledge, so precious for my purpose; whether by letter or in person, whenever I sought him out amongst the Mummies and

"In a corner found the toys,

Of the old Egyptian boys,"

or got my verification direct from the monuments, including the hieroglyphic texts and pictures in his own copy of the Book of the Dead.

And now for Mr. Coleman.

He has been trying to discredit my work for over three years past. His assumption of superiority is immense, and might prove imposing if his methods of attack were not so verminously mean. His latest labor-in-vain has been to try and rear a pyramid on its apex--the sole point of a single fact--which can be sent toppling over with a single kick. Where it suits his purpose he uses an imperfect report of a Lecture so that he may convict me of errors which are not to be found in the Book that he seeks to discredit, and industriously essays to damn.

In the article referred to he says: "In recent numbers of the London Medium and Daybreak there has appeared Mr. Gerald Massey's lecture on 'The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ,' as revised and corrected by the author, and as delivered by him in London not long since. In this lecture, which attempts to establish that the Jesus and the Disciples of the New Testament had no existence in the flesh, but were only personifications of Egyptian myths, we find a large number of asserted parallels between the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and certain portions of the Osirian and other myths of Egypt."

The opening paragraph contains two positive, provable, falsehoods. The version of my lecture made use of by him was a reprint from an imperfect report in the New Zealand "Rationalist," which was not revised by the author. If it had been he could only have assumed to know what he asserted without knowing. But it is not true! It is also false that in this lecture, or in my book, I try to "establish that Jesus and the disciples of the New Testament had no existence in the flesh, but were only personifications of ancient Egyptian myths"--whatever that may mean!

On the contrary, I demonstrate the existence of the only possible historic Jesus known to Celsus, to Irenæus, to the Jews, who allow that he had twelve disciples, whom they call the "twelve god ess runagates."

What I do also demonstrate is that the mythical twelve were the followers of Har-Khuti in Egypt ages earlier.

This is a prime specimen of his mode of working, and one it is well to keep in mind all along. This is the mode of demolition which Professor Sayce endorses, warrants, glorifies; and Mr. --- declares to be "quite right."

Again, I have used the Hebrew word ,vlw (Natural Genesis ii. 419), on which our learned Hebraist remarks, "This asserted Hebrew word Shiloam is a fabrication. There is no such Hebrew word in existence as Shiloam--in unpointed Hebrew Sh, L, O, M"!! "To identify Salem, or Shalem, with Siloam in Hebrew, the letter 'm' was required. There being no 'm' in the correct word, Shiloach, Mr. Massey manufactured a Hebrew word and printed it in Hebrew letters, as if to deceive the very elect."

Now, look at that for a lie! with no room left for the least little wriggle out of it!

As Mr. Coleman obviously knows nothing of Hebrew beyond the names of letters, perhaps Mr. Sayce, or Mr. --- will look it out for him in Fuerst, at page 1388, Col. 2, where the word appears with the meaning of "well" in health; and on page 1376, Col. 1, where it means Peace. It is used for the Prince of peace (Is. ix. 6). And Fuerst further says "Shiloah is cognate with ,vlw (Shlom). It is quite impossible that Mr. Sayce should not have known this at the time he gave his sanction to Mr. Coleman's falsehoods and consummate effrontery; and it was cruel not to arrest him as he was careering round in this wild way instead of tickling the poor creature's vanity with insincere applause.

The lie and libel were so unnecessary that I am compelled to regret the wanton waste of pure malignity. When I say the "Pool of Peace" is Salem, or Shloam in Hebrew, I do not say that it is the Pool of Siloam; and am only rendering the word "Peace." And as Shloam means "peace" and salem means peace, I used the alternative of "salem or shloam." I knew the two words were spelt differently, and that Shloam may be pointed Shaloam; I also knew that they were identical in meaning. Moreover, the Pool of the waters that flow softly is a form of the Pool of peace. Not that either of these was involved or at all necessary to my argument. When I say "THE Pool of Peace" is in Hebrew Salem or Shloam, I am speaking of THE mythical pool which in Egyptian is the Pool of Hept or Peace, not the topographical pool of Siloam. I was only concerned with the identity of THE mythical original which had various localizations in different lands, Judea included.

Mr. Coleman runs a long rigmarole about the goddess "Nu" and the place "Annu," in which he flounders in the bottomless bog of his own helpless ignorance, past all pulling out by those who have taken him by the hand--viz., Messrs. Sayce and --- .

He who enters this domain so unprepared and unequipped as Mr. Coleman, must be a fore-damned fool. I could have pitied his impotency but for his ineffable conceit and aggressive insolence.

Because I use the words "An" and "Annu" as synonyms, this great Egyptologist asserts that I identify the Lady of "An" with the goddess "Nu" to form the word Annu. As the monkey exclaimed when he saw the elephant taking in water at such a rate, "To drink with the tail is immense!" An and Annu are simply Egyptian variants of one word; different spellings of the same word were the result of familiarity with matters upon which my corrector is so utterly ignorant that he looks upon and denounces the variants in Egyptian spelling as my distortion of Egyptian names, and sapiently suggests that "there always appears to be an object" in my changes! He thinks the "Lady with the long hair" is Tefnut, and not the goddess Nu as I had inferred, partly because the Ritual says "The hair of the Osiris is in the shape of that of Nu" (Ch. xlii.), and partly because the Osiris ascends the heaven, or Nu, with his long hair down to his shoulders. Either way it matters very little.

What I do regret is that I could not have had the advantage of knowing what Mr. Coleman thinks about Egyptian mythology before writing my book. The opinion of such an expert on the most profoundly allusive and problematical Sayings might have seriously modified the result. He further charges me with having got certain goddesses mixed up; it being his mission to teach me how to separate them once more and distinguish between them individually. Here he tries to turn his ignorance to account by taking advantage of the reader's and producing the impression that the ignorance is mine. He throws dust in the eyes of others and then says it was I who did it. And Mr. Sayce, in a cloud of it, swears it to me!

I may admit that this parallel of the Woman at the Well, which is but one out of fifty, is the weakest one. But it is enough for my purpose to show that the Osiris or Osirified (these being identical in character) appears at the Well or Pool of Peace; that he claims to be the Well and personates the Water; that the source of this water of life given to the Son is the Father; that a well or flow of this water comes out of Osiris to him; that the well of this water comes through him (Cf. John vii. 38, and iv. 14.); that he washes in the "pool of Peace," where the Osirified are made pure or healed: where the "certain times," as I have called them (because the seasons for healing are dual in the Ritual) are detailed thus--"The Gods of the pure waters are there on the fourth hour of the night and the eighth hour of the day," saying, "pass away hence" to him who has been cured or healed.

Here it is noticeable that in the still-continued process of eliminating that which looks too mythical, this passage containing the angel descending to trouble the waters and turn them into a Pool of healing has been dropped from the latest revised version of John's Gospel.

In converting the original mythos into later history, this process of picking the owner's name or sign from stolen goods has gone on from the first, and is not yet ended!

I do not say or suppose anything so simple as that the writer of John's Gospel was copying from some "variant and obscure chapter in an ancient Egyptian papyrus." That is Mr. Coleman's foolish way of putting it. That was not exactly the way in which the Osirian legend got literalized in Rome. If it had been preserved and continued as mythos, it could not have re-appeared under the guise of historic Christianity.

The matter had to be manipulated, converted, assimilated, in which process the original features have been somewhat defaced. This has to be allowed for in judging of my parallels, comparisons, and interpretations.

There must of necessity be a wide gulf between any one who accepts the Gospel history as pure matter of fact, and one who treats it as mainly mythical. The two can only talk to different classes of minds separated for the time being by that gulf, across which they can hardly hear each other speak.

But perhaps the most perfect of all my critic's manifold errors and monstrous blunders is this.

He writes a long essay in six columns to defend a passage in the Johannine Gospel against my mythical interpretation, with the intention of demonstrating the "stupendous display of ignorance and absurdity" which he finds in my volumes. He fights tooth and nail on behalf of the historical interpretation against the mythical. His one line of argument, his raison d'être all through, is that the events under review, the woman at the well, the Christ who drinks there, and other circumstances, are historical! And yet in the opening paragraph of his article he had started with saying--"It is significant that most of these so called New Testament parallels are derived from the fourth Gospel, popularly ascribed to John. Every competent biblicist knows that the account of Jesus and his teachings given in John's Gospel differs widely from those given in the first three Gospels; and there is no reasonable doubt, in the light of historico-critical biblical science, that, while large portions of the latter are genuinely historical, the Gospel of John, as a whole, is UNHISTORICAL, MYTHICAL."

Good God! the man is here throwing away the child with the water it was washed in! If this be so, and, as I demonstrate, the mythical gospel was first, no matter how late it appeared in the canonical gospel ascribed to John, the supposed history of the Synoptics goes to the ground! Where is the sanity in supposing that the Mythical matter of John's Gospel is the result of tattooing Egyptian fables all over the face of historic fact (as previously portrayed by the Synoptics), and disfiguring the human features past all recognition? The Christ of John is indefinitely divine, and that is first: the final phase looks definitely historic. That is how the Mythology was humanized. The Myth-Makers were Fabulists, but not the forgers of facts; the forgers are they who converted the fable into historic fact. Mr. Coleman says only just what I say and show on behalf of the Mythos. But what then was the sense, or where was the sanity in laboring to prove it to be historic bit by bit, when, as a whole, it is entirely unhistorical and mythical?

Yet Messrs. Sayce and --- assure Mr. Coleman, with their compliments, that he is right.

I fancy some of my readers will suspect that he is not--quite.

And this is what it is to be demolished! This is doing a "real service to the cause of truth." So says the Rev. Mr. Sayce, and he is an authority.

Mr. Coleman charges me with limiting my quotations from the Egyptian Ritual to Dr. Birch's version of the "very corrupt Turin Text," as if he were an authority respecting the Texts!--and then of misquoting the Texts to establish my parallel. Whereas my slight departures from the Text (in Bunsen) are the result of various emendations or corrections made by the Egyptologists, such as Renouf, including Dr. Birch himself, to whom I took them for his final opinion, and with whom I have gone over Text after Text for that purpose. I neglected no available source of knowledge, early or late. Also in regarding, condensing, and connecting certain passages, I wrote with the whole matter of the Mythos in mind, and had the Ritual well-nigh by heart; which is to be at an enormous disadvantage when judged by Mr. Coleman.

In denouncing the "corrupt Turin Text" he is merely "monkeying round," by quoting the words of Mr. Renouf (Hibbert Lectures, p. 177). He consistently omits the rest of the sentence. Mr. Renouf, like M. Naville, is an expert in Textual and Verbal Criticism, and it is he who says on the same page:--

"Dr. Birch's translation, though made about thirty years ago, before some of the most important discoveries of the full meaning of words, may still be considered extremely exact as a rendering of the corrupt Turin text; and to an Englishman gives nearly as correct an impression of the original as the text itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been carefully taught the mysteries of his religion."

Mr. Coleman's method, however, is the correct one for a defender of the Great Superstition to adopt; and if he were obsessed by the spirit of some fanatical Spanish monk, one of those who urged on the Mexican massacres, dead and damned ages since for his bigotry and cruelty, and re-incarnated to continue the old battle against Truth, he could not have more cleverly struck the track of the Jesuit. It is what the Christians in all ages have done to get rid of, discredit, and mystify, the pre-Christian evidences of the mythical origins; only he lacks the requisite knowledge for doing the work.

Nor is this a matter of mere Textual interpretation; and I am calmly confident that no mere verbal changes will invalidate the fundamental facts, the true doctrines, the identifiable mythology, found in the versions of Birch, Lepsius, and Naville.

On the contrary, the closer the inspection made by men of insight the more will my interpretation of the vastest number of facts ever yet collected and collated be corroborated.

Mr. Coleman has been soliciting certificates. I will give him one written on a label bound to last and stick like pitch-plaster. It is my recognition of his claims to be

THE GENUINE GNOSTIC

He calls to Europe, high and low,

And all the Americas,--

"That is the man who does not know;

I am the man who does"!

The others join in Chorus; Oh!

They make his brain-bee buzz!

"You are right, dear friend! He does not know;

You are the man who does"!

From personal knowledge of him, and the imposture of his pretensions, I know him to be incompetent to discuss matters of Egyptology. He is not an authority in any department of literature, and has not a soul beyond the making of fly-dirts on the window to obstruct the light,--or of violating the privacy of letters so foolishly entrusted to him.

In setting himself up as a critic and corrector, mentor and censor, advocate, judge and jury, all in one, he has greatly mistaken his vocation. If he must pose as a man of letters and a symbolist, he should have been a printer's reader, allowed once a week to carry a typical banner at the tail of a Lyceum procession on Sundays. He may pass for one of the learned amongst those who know no better; in the realm of the blind the one-eyed man is a king. He shows some cleverness in writing about what he does not understand, where he is not likely to be brought to book. But he is no more capable of judging, or qualified to give a verdict, in a matter like this, than the weevil that worms its way through one of Turner's canvasses is fitted to pass an opinion on the picture.

He has an irritating itch for recognition, or notoriety, but has shown no sign of possessing, or being possessed by, the genuine passion for truth. Like an incipient Herostratus or Guiteau--the fellow who culminated as a fool gone insane with vanity--he would do anything to be talked about, or written to--even commit Massey-cre--if he were only able.*

Never did any writer known to me put forth such strenuous or futile efforts to lift himself up by his own shirt-collar and add a cubit to his stature in the eyes of the lookers on.

From the beginning to the end of his attempts, his aim and object, the total drift of all his deprecation, is to belittle my work, and make himself look large to his readers through a mist of his own making. A chief part of his criticism consists in proclaiming that he does not see! I never said he did, or could. Nelson at Copenhagen put up the glass to his one blind eye and could not perceive the signal flying. Mr. Coleman often puts his glass to two, with the same result of not seeing.

I have had to congratulate him on writing to me to set him right on the subject of astronomy, before he put his foot into it on a matter most fundamentally important to my subject; the ignorance shown by his questions being astounding.

With all his native impudence he has asserted (in the Religio-philosophical Journal), that the name of Jesus Christ was unknown until the middle of the first century A.D. (cf. the second book of Esdras--a pre-Christian book of the Secret Wisdom.)

In the same journal he classed Baring Gould as being on my side, in opposition to all other writers on the subject of Jehoshua Ben Pandira, and entirely overlooked the fact that although Baring Gould used the same Talmudic material as myself, his conclusions were totally antipodal to mine; and that he remains as orthodox to-day as were his conclusions then.

And now Mr. Coleman may pass with his certificates.

There is an American story of a dog who ran after a wolf, fast and furious at first, but before the race was over, the dog was seen to be flying still faster--a "leetle bit in front of the wolf!"

Mr. Coleman is not an authority, and has no reputation to lose. But his private backers have; and they have committed the unpardonable sin against scholarship of endorsing and justifying false statements made against me by Mr. Coleman, without taking the trouble to test the truth of his assertions or to verify the alleged facts for themselves. They were so ready to make a mountain of an underhand, underground worker's little molehill; they were so eager to have me knifed, that they have warranted a blade which was treacherously limp and leaden!

Mr. Sayce marvels at my effrontery in making assertions, some of which Mr. Coleman has so falsely put into my mouth; and then charges me with "false quotation"; and he calls Mr. Coleman's puerile performance a "very thorough demolition," and a "real service to the cause of truth." He rejoices over what he terms an impartial and merciless exposure.

* A literary correspondent writes of this Sahur:--"I know little about Egyptology, but I do know that the fellow deserves a--well, a 'serendible good drubbing' for his insolence to you. Should you reply, please give him a kick from me, if only in a foot-note."

To my thinking the Professor is rather Uriah-Heepishly thankful for exceedingly small mercies, and says grace to a miserable meal.

Mr. --- vouches for the fact that his correspondent is "quite right;" and it appears that neither of them knows better, or else their vision was overclouded with the bile of a bitter bigotry. Either way, I warn my American friends that Mr. --- has made use of the official stamp (the Hall-mark, so to say,) of the British Museum, to pass off spurious wares upon unsuspecting people in the United States! and I fancy that, for all lovers of truth, justice, and fair play, I have so far demonstrated the congenital incompetence of my critics to sit in judgment on my work.

It really makes one ashamed of scholarship to think of two reputed great scholars backing by taking shelter behind a pretender to knowledge like Mr. Coleman to discredit me and condemn my work instead of handling the matter for themselves.

My publishers tell me they sent a copy of the "Natural Genesis" to Mr. Sayce over three years ago. I have not heard that he attempted to expose my mass of ignorance and false quotation, dispute my facts, refute my interpretation, or controvert my conclusions. True, he is not an Egyptologist nor a master of mythology. But that is no excuse nor justification for the conduct which I resent. It only serves as cause for all the severer condemnation. Of course in writing a letter he might have claimed privacy for his opinions, but cannot plead that privilege now the letter is made public.

The other writer, whom I hold to be Mr. Renouf (pro. tem.), is a professed Egyptologist, a good grammarian, an expert in textual criticism. I am a devoted student of his writings in common with those of other Egyptologists. But I never could think highly of his insight or range of vision. To a mind like his, in a case like mine, the profoundest acquaintanceship with the largest mass of facts--the widest and truest generalization based on the facts, or the subtlest interpretation of them, will only look like a departure away from and a going beyond the facts as limited for him.

I have dived deeply, and he fails to see

The ocean hath its due profundity.

You may transcribe texts and decipher inscriptions, but with the light shut out all round by non-application of the comparative method, and from lack of illumination within, you cannot touch the Egyptian origins in mythology or language, time or space, or interpret the mystery of Egypt to her own forgetful self.

Every day discoveries are proving how limited has been the outlook, how non-evolutionary and untrue the interpretation of Egyptologists concerning the past of that people; and the latest discoveries made have swept away many of the mental landmarks, and effaced the limits of Egyptologists like Mr. Renouf, who have only just blazed the veriest surface of the subject. But I claim that every fresh fact made known of late years is in favor of my interpretation. In England they have been too long the victims of the Hebrew and Indo-Germanic delusions respecting the beginnings.

Mr. Renouf has declared (Hibbert Lectures, p. 243) that "neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt" (see Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and others). He thinks the "mythological symbolism" of Egypt arose from "varieties of metaphorical language" which "reacted upon thought" and "obtained the mastery" (Ib. p. 237). Following Max Müller he says, "Mythology, we know, is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture" (Ib. p. 251). Nonsense. 'Tis but a dream of the metaphysical theorist to suppose that mythology is a Disease of language, or anything else except his own brain. Mythology was a primitive mode of thinging the early thought; the beginnings of its sign-language being earlier than words. It remains the repository of man's most ancient science; and, truly interpreted once more, it is destined to be the death of all those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth.

He has said (Ib. p. 177) it is perhaps hopeless to expect that the Egyptian legends alluded to in the "Book of the Dead" will be recovered. My claim is to have recovered them, by application of the comparative process to a world-wide range of mythology; and it will be easier to denounce the audacity as lunatic than to disprove the right to make that claim. I do not pretend and I do explain. He is one of those critics who suspect error in what they do not understand--e.g. the Father-God Seb in one phase of character is the Earth. But when Seb is called the Mother, Mr. Renouf suspects an error in the text. It is only the mother who can bring forth. Hence we find the back of Seb opens to bring forth.

In his off-hand way of damning by denunciation an old friend of mine, Mr. McLennan (whose name Mr. Renouf mis-spells twice over, once as McLellan in the text (p. 30), and once as McLennon in the index), he asserts that the "representations" made in the zodiac of Denderah were "not anterior to the Christian era, or Roman domination; they were borrowed from the Greeks, and were entirely unknown to the Egyptians." (Ib. p. 30.) Whereas the inscription found at Denderah states that the Temple had been restored in accordance with a plan discovered in the writings of Kufu; whilst the chief celestial types portrayed all over the planisphere prove themselves to be solely Egyptian! When I pointed out this passage to Dr. Birch, he said, "Certainly; the types in the planisphere are not Greek. Renouf should have done as the artists did who gave the Greek on one side, the Egyptian on the other."

All that he was warranted in saying is that the mythological types, Typhon, Sut, Isis, Horus, Seb, Shu-and-Tefnut, and the rest of those that never were Greek, have been reproduced at a later period by Greco-Egyptian artists, with a few modernizations. If he intended to distinguish between the Zodiacal and extra-Zodiacal signs of the planisphere, he should have said so. But of the twelve signs the Virgin is Isis, and the Sagittarius is composed of Shu and Tefnut. He must have known, however, that when Depuis and McLennan spoke of the Zodiac of Denderah as being ancient, they meant the planisphere, and were not distinguishing the one set of signs from the other.

Rays of light from the newest dawn would bring no quickening influence to such as are mentally bound and doomed till death to remain the representatives of an expiring system of thought.

The resurrection of Egypt has brought forth a Specter that will frighten Historic Christianity to death; or haunt the minds of men till they lose their unworthy fears and listen like truth-lovers to the message which she brings to them from the Grave.

What says Professor Mahaffy, after getting a glimpse of the ghost, and finding that the dead language has come to life again? He admits that "every great and fruitful idea," "theological conception," religious and moral doctrine, now called Christian, were also Egyptian. But, he says, "I recoil from opening this great subject now; it is enough to have lifted the veil and shown the scene of many a future conflict."

I have not recoiled. The odium of opening this great subject now is mine. I am selected for the honor of receiving, not the civic wreath for crown of reward, but the first blows of the bludgeon on the head from those who raise the howl of insanity.

"You will win at last," said Captain Burton, "but 'at last' generally comes too late!" Well, I don't know. The train I ride in travels with increasing speed.

For the present I have to ask my indiscriminating assailant to assume that responsibility to which he is committed by Mr. Coleman and produce the evidence for his accusations. He says he has examined my work; now let him cross-examine me. I am scarcely mad or Quixotic enough to think he will, but should he do so, I will undertake the printing of his exposure to the extent of fifty pages, the size of the present pamphlet.

I mean business.

I court honest criticism, and welcome genuine correction. I do not mind being misunderstood, but do resent misrepresentation. I am in search of realities myself, and have no tolerance for men or things in masks. I try to follow Truth, like the old Egyptians, my masters, with all the force of sincerity, all the fervor of faith. That is comparatively easy now-a-days when bon-fires are no longer made of man or book, and the penalties are so very slight. A loaf or two of bread the less; a greeting here or there with an offensive epithet, a rotten egg, or a dead cat, are things to be smiled at when we remember our fore-runners that were her lovers from old, who beat out a pathway for us through all the long dark night of the past, and lit it with illimitable rows of their burning bodies, each turned into a flaming Torch for Truth.

GERALD MASSEY

A correspondent writes:--"I am reading this extraordinary 'Seven Souls' lecture, and have been able to follow you as far as the following statement, whereat I stick. I am compelled to trouble you for an explanation. You say: 'The Roman Cæsar, the hairy, pubescent, or anointed one, was an impersonation of this supreme soul; he happens to be the eighth by name in Octavianus!' This looks like converting history into typology. Whatever the root significance of the term 'Cæsar' may be, was it not the historical Julius Cæsar who really made, i.e., signalized it, by his deeds?--the name subsequently becoming a complimentary title assumed by the Emperors who were supposed, each in turn, to reflect the luster of the Great Julius?"

No. But this may serve as a useful illustration of the historical versus the mythical view of the Christ. I fear, however, that it is a failing of mine to make too many passing allusions, and use too few words where explanations may be most needed. I mean the Cæsar (of whom, in the case of Julius, the Roman legends related that he was born with very long hair; like the long-haired Horus, or the long-haired Christ), had a mythical origin, and bore a title that was typical. Historical rulers were invested with divinity in this way, and made into mundane representatives of the Gods. It has been my work to trace such origins on various lines of research. For these mythical origins are manifold; they can only be distinguished and determined by knowing their Genesis in natural phenomena. In the present instance, I suggest or claim that the Cæsar as well as the Ra, the Repa, the Buddha, or the Christ, was a titular representative of the eighth, the total and eternal soul--mythically the re-born Sun; mystically the re-born Spirit or glorified Ghost of Man.

THE "NATURAL GENESIS" AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

Many enquirers have asked me why the "Natural Genesis" is not in the British Museum? This question I could not understand, but a friend has verified for me the reading-room. Doubtless it is to be got at some other way known only to the initiated, but these would-be readers during three years past were simple enough to suppose that the Second Part of one and the same work would be entered along with the First Part, it having been published in 1883.

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