(who had been initiated at Eleusis before he became a Christian), Lucian, Apuleius, Macrobius and other writers give some slight information, directly or indirectly, on these mystical ceremonies. Besides these, there is a treatise by Jamblichus pretending to expound the whole subject of the mysteries, but this work has been composed with such careful and scrupulous obscurity, that few people have found themselves much the wiser after reading it. There is also the Jewish Cabala, containing an explanation of the priestly secrets and mysteries of the Hebrews, but no one at the present day can fully understand it. There are the works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus preserved by the Neo-Platonists, written in the same philosophical jargon used by Jamblichus and the rest; and there are the references to the doctrines of the heretical Christians called Gnostics, preserved in the controversial works of the early fathers. These are some of the most direct sources of information on the mystical doctrines common to the Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, and Christian religions.
But turning from these obscure and fragmentary references, the law of the Hebrew Scriptures and the extensive commentaries of the Talmud, the Gospel with the offices and ritual of the Church, are each an epitome, in its most complete form, of those mysteries for the expounding of which they were severally created; if these works were clearly understood the difficulty would be cleared up. The deplorable fact, which we have now to regret is, that the priests who ought to be able to tell us the meaning of the Scriptures, which they undertake to expound, know nothing whatever of their real significance. It is probable, that there is not a single Christian priest who knows what the Canon of the Church is, or why a certain office or literary ar-
