Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer | Page 9

call justice) of their God."
In another place Shelley is equally descriptive of the early stages of Jewish history, and makes the following observations on the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, which rearing high its thousand golden domes to heaven, exposed its glory to the face of day:
"Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane; and many a father, Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life, To soothe a dotard's vanity. There an inhuman and uncultured race Howl'd hideous praises to their demon--God; They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb The unborn child--old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends, And what was he who taught them that the God Of nature and benevolence had given A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing Itself into forgetfulness."
With the enlightenment of the present century in every department of knowledge, so has a corresponding degree of advancement been thrown on the science of history, which Shelley only partially apprehended. An enormous amount of new information is now to be gleaned from the writings of Ewald, Fergusson, Bunsen, Deutsch, Max Muller, Baring-Gould, Stanley, and other scholars of Orientation, which shows that the Hebrews, like every other nation, passed through the various phases of Nomadism and Pastoralism, to that of offensive and defensive war. The same as other races, they came through the usual steps in religious progress--Fetishism, Astrolatry, Polytheism and Monotheism. During phases in their history they participated in the various forms of tree and serpent, Phallic, or fire-worship. They had, as the Talmud, Targums, and the Old Testament show, a knowledge of the Egyptian or Chaldaic account of the creation and fall, the latter still to be seen on the walls of the temple of Osiris at Philae. They had much knowledge of the Cabala, through their great prophet Moses, who was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and, like Pythagoras, had been initiated into their mysteries, and who both imparted the knowledge in part to their compatriots, on which they both founded systems.
A great traveler, and most learned modern writer on Occultism, who claims, on good grounds, to have been received into the ancient branch of the Rosie Cross in the far East, Madame Helena P. de Blavatsky, imparts the following particulars: "The first Cabala in which a mortal man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the universe, and show the keys to those masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, through which no mortal can ever pass without rousing dread sentries never seen upon this side her wall, was compiled by a certain Simeon Ben Jochai, who lived at the time of the second temple's destruction. Only about thirty years after the death of this renowned Cabalist, his MSS. and written explanations, which had till then remained in his possession as a most precious secret, were used by his son, Rabbi Elizzar, and other learned men. Making a compilation of the whole, they so produced the famous work called Zohar (God's splendor). This book proved an inexhaustible mine for all the subsequent Cabalists, their source of information and knowledge, and all more recent and genuine Cabalas were all more or less carefully copied from the former. Before that, all the mysterious doctrines had come down in an unbroken line of merely oral tradition as far back as man could trace himself on earth. They were scrupulously and jealously guarded by the wise men of Chaldea, India, Persia and Egypt, and passed from one initiate to another, in the same purity of form as when handed down to the first man by the angels, students of God's great Theosophic seminary."
Many Free Thinkers, in their anxiety to crush everything belonging to Christianity, often forget that, in throwing aside the Hebrew records as utterly worthless, they are getting rid of one of the most ancient literatures in the world. They also do not remember the history of a peculiar nation, strangely preserved amid the fluctuations of time, the purity and excellence of the Book of Job, the Psalms, and others which I could name. They cast unmerited contempt on these compilations, when, at the same time, they will throw themselves, with almost Fetish reverence, and apparently rapt adoration, before the Institutes of Menu, the Bhagvat-Geeta, the morals of Chaoung-Fou-Tszee, the Zend-Avesta, the Rig-Veda, the Oracles of Zoroaster, the Book of the Dead, the Puranas, the Shastras, and the like.
Well may the