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The Third Lesson: The Mystic Youth of Jesus.963
days the obligatory ceremonies were performed. Each family made the
offering of the sacrificial lamb—each family baked and ate the unleavened
bread. The beautiful idea of the Passover had degenerated into a horrible
feast of blood, for it is related that upon these occasions over a quartermillion
of poor innocent lambs were slaughtered and offered up as a
sacrifice pleasing to Jehovah, who was supposed to delight in this flood
of the blood of innocents. In pursuance of this barbarous idea, the altars
and courts of the Temple of the Living God ran red with the life-blood of
these poor creatures, and the hands and garments of the anointed priests of
Jehovah were stained like those of butchers, that the vanity of a barbarous
conception of Deity might be fed.
All this for “the Glory of God!” Think of it! And think of the feeling that
must have been aroused in the mystic mind of Jesus at this horrible sight.
How His soul must have been outraged at this prostitution of the sacred
rite! And what would have been His thoughts had He known that centuries
after, a great religion would stand, bearing His name, the followers of which
would be carried away with this same false idea of sacrificial blood, which
would be voiced in hymns about “A fountain filled with blood, flowing from
Immanuel’s veins,” and about “sinners plunged beneath that bloody flood
losing all their guilty stains?” Alas, for the prostitution of sacred truths and
teachings. No wonder that a people so saturated with the abominable ideas
of a Deity delighting in this flow of blood should have afterward put to death
the greatest man of their race—a Being who came to bring them the highest
mystic and occult truths. And their prototypes have survived through the
centuries, even unto today, insisting upon this idea of blood sacrifice and
death atonement, unworthy of any people except the worshipers of some
heathen devil-god in the remote sections of darkest Africa.
Disgusted and outraged by this barbarous sight, Jesus, the boy, stole
away from the side of His parents, and sought the remote chambers and
corridors of the Temple where were to be found the great teachers of the
Law and of the Kaballah, surrounded by their students. Here the boy sat and