Clothed With The Sun: Part The First: Illuminations: No. XXX: Concerning Paul And The Disciples Of Jesus

No. XXX

CONCERNING PAUL AND THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS 2

IN a vision which was given to me last night, it was represented to me that the common view of Paul's character and position with regard to the primitive Church is a totally false one; and the persons who made the communication which I am about to relate, appeared to me to have been personally acquainted with Paul, and to be thoroughly familiar with the events occurring at the time of his apostleship. They told me, with evident indignation, that the Christian Church of to-day entirely misunderstands the relationship really existing between the apostles whom Christ had instructed and elected as his

the scheme of the Atonement.' For us and our Master there had been no 'scheme'; God was reconciled to man by love, and not by sacrifice. But Paul would have a 'new religion,' 1 and a creed hard to understand; and he left to the world a Christianity of his own which we knew not, but which is yours to-day. And in this he did us greater evil and detriment than if he had persecuted and slain us all physically. For by his false conversion he deceived the world and drowned the truth by a flood of strange doctrines. For this we were all against him, and never acknowledged his apostleship, being persuaded that he knew not Christ nor the faith which Christ taught. Had he

I was further told, that on the night before Paul's escape in the basket let down from the wall of Damascus, a violent altercation had taken place between him and the brethren, in the course of which Paul had maintained that the only chance for the final triumph of the Gospel lay in its erection into a system, and one that must of necessity be sacrificial. They then challenged him upon the point, but he insisted that he saw further into the matter than they did, and that his special mission lay in the elaboration of the plan he had conceived with regard to Christ's position as a mediator between God and man.

[The vision was entirely spontaneous and unexpected. I had not previously given any attention to the subject; nor was I aware that a similar instruction had some time previously been given to my colleague.

The personages I beheld in my vision bore no resemblance to any of the numerous representations of the apostles made by painters, but I was far from being in a sufficiently lucid condition to obtain an impression of their appearance so vivid and distinct as to enable me, as usually is the case, to make a drawing of them. Neither have I been able, with anything like my accustomed accuracy, to reproduce their words. The tone and substance, however, are faithfully rendered. The tone throughout was that of strong indignation, mingled with regret, against Paul; and of scorn at the folly of Christendom in accepting so gross and palpable a perversion of the teaching of Jesus and nature of God as that involved in the sacerdotal doctrine of vicarious atonement.] 1

Footnotes

77:2 Paris, July 17, 1877. Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, vol. i, p. 181.

78:1 The "new religion," in this context, "implies the departures made by Paul from the teaching of the original disciples" (Letter of E. M. to Light, 1889, p. 507). S. H. H.

79:1 2 Peter iii, 15, 16 (an epistle of exceedingly doubtful authority), evidently represents a desire either to compose or to ignore this feud by treating the difference as more apparent than real. E. M.