in the portion which relates to morals, any handle to his Jewish subjects for committing evil; nor yet giving to the few individuals who were endowed with greater WISDOM, and who were capable of investigating his meaning, a treatise devoid of material for speculation." (Origen "Against Celsus," bk. i., ch. xviii). That is to say, the Hebrew delivered his fictions in the guise of moral precepts, while the pagan Greeks were not so particular.
It is well known to many people that certain numbers had an important place in the philosophical and theological system of the ancients. The Pythagoreans concealed their doctrines in a numerical and geometric system, which was the only form of their philosophy given to the outer world. The Jewish priests also elaborated an extensive system of numeration in the Cabala, and the Rabbis frequently make use of it in the Talmudic commentaries on the Scriptures. The early fathers of the church have preserved considerable expositions of the system in their books controverting the heretical opinions of the various sects of Christian Gnostics. But the purport of all these theories of numbers has ceased to be understood, together with the greater part of the doctrines of the ancient mysteries of which this numerical philosophy formed a part. The oldest use of numbers as symbols of an esoteric doctrine is to be found in Egypt, from whence it was derived by the Greeks, and transmitted by them to the modern world. Although we have, unfortunately, no direct evidence of how the mysterious people of Egypt actually made use of their numbers, it would appear that their numerical system formed a part of the dogma in those laws, referred to by Plato as having been ten thousand years old, and was perpetuated, as one
