Concerning Christian Pantheism

No. XXVII

CONCERNING CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM ³

THE crucifixion of Jesus was an actual fact, but it had also a spiritual signification; and it is to this spiritual meaning, and not to the physical fact, that the whole of the mystical writings of the Christians refer.

The fundamental truth embodied in the crucifixion is Pantheism. God is in all creatures; and the stage of purification by fire, through which all being is now passing, is the crucifixion of

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[paragraph continues] God. Jesus, as the most perfect of initiates, is selected by the Christian mystics as the representative of God. He is for them, as Buddha for the Buddhist mystics, God manifest in the flesh. In his crucifixion, therefore, is the symbol and type of the continual crucifixion of God in his suffering creatures, which crucifixion is the means and cause of their purification, and thus of their redemption. "These," says God, "are the wounds wherewith I was wounded in the house of My friends." ¹ Which means, "I am wounded in the body or person of all creatures who are Mine--who are sealed unto Me." For "the house of my friends" is nothing more than the mystical phrase for the temple of the body of others. "Enter thou into my house, O Lord!" cries the holy soul who desires to be visited while in the body by the Divine Presence. And the Man-God, showing His five mystical wounds to the Angels, thus declares, "These are the wounds of My crucifixion wherewith I am wounded continually in the persons of those who are Mine. For I and My brethren are one, as God is One in Me."

Footnotes

70:3 Received in sleep. Paris, June 22, 1879. Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, vol. i, pp. 305, 309-310.

71:1 Zech. xiii, 6. judged by the context, either the passage is corrupt or the citation is from some Scripture not now extant.    E. M.