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198
HISTORY OF THE ROSICRUCIANS.
and present, of that art prophetic which is represented by
Baxter and Gumming. We know the value of all the mul-
titudinous speculations in the theological no-man's land of
the Apocalypse. We do not expect a new Star of Jacob to
rise out of the Galilee of religious intolerance, and out of the
frantic folly of sectarian squabblings. We do not calculate
the number of the beast, we do not denounce the Jesuits,
we are not obsessed by an infectious terror of papal power
and its possible agressions ; on the contrary, we respect the
associations connected with sovereign pontiffs, grand lamas,
and chief patriarchs. We have, most of us, decided that
the pope is neither God's vicar nor the Man of Sin ; we
persistently refuse our adherence to any theory
which con-
nects the little horn with Prince Jerome Napoleon, and we
are not open to any positive convictions on the identity
of the Scarlet Woman,
or of the lost tribes of Israel. All
persons possessed of such positive convictions we justifiably
regard as fanatics, and after due and deliberate considera-
tion of the Eosi crucian manifestoes, we do not feel able to
make an exception in favour of this Fraternity, whose
" Manners have not that repose
Which marks the caste of Vere de Vere. "
In other words, we find them intemperate in their language,
rabid in their religious prejudices, and, instead of towering
giant-like above the intellectual average of their age, we see
them buffeted by the same passions and identified with all the
opinions of the men by whom they were environed. The voice
which addresses us behind the mystical mask of the Eose-
Cross does not come from an intellectual throne, erected on
the pinnacles of high thinking and surrounded by the serene
and sunny atmosphere of a far-sighted tolerance ; it comes