Correspondence by Rev. T. G. Healey & Thomas May | Notes by H.P.B.
The Devil! Who is He? Jesus, or the Priest? (John viii. 52; x. 20.)
There are two persons (allegorical impersonations of good and evil), called Jesus and the Devil, who hate one another exceedingly; but whilst Jesus would expose and condemn the sin and spare the sinner that he might live to repent and reform, the Priest would and did condemn Jesus, the good and just one, to be slain as a blasphemer and devil, whose blood ought to be shed for an atonement, in order to escape and save himself from being exposed as the very incarnation of Pride seeking to obtain the Almighty power and supremacy of God upon earth; even though the exalting of himself to the lofty position as our Father in God and God’s vicegerent, necessitated the slaying of thousands and tens of thousands of men, women and children, who either dared to oppose him, or refused to worship him, by refusing to profess to accept and believe his creeds and doctrines and to utter his Shibboleth.
But as condemning the blood of the good and the just one to be shed as a blasphemer on the testimony of false witnesses and without a cause, revealed the trail of the Serpent and indelibly marked the Priest as a man of blood, and a murderer; and as all the oceans of blood that he shed to exalt himself and blot out the name of Jesus utterly failed to stamp out the people’s love for Jesus, and only helped to publish throughout the whole world that the Priest was a man of blood and a murderer; therefore the Priest changed his policy. He shifted his tactics by using himself the very name of Jesus as an authority for a deep plan or scheme of salvation, by means of the blood of Jesus being offered and presented by himself as a sacrifice.
And this doctrine of the Mass the Priest has established, as necessary to be believed, by means of bribery, corruption, intimidation and violence, until there are thousands who have not only been imposed upon and enslaved to believe this doctrine to be true, but even good and noble persons have enlisted as teachers and preachers to pass it on as necessary to be believed, under fear of the Church’s wrath here, and God’s wrath hereafter, although neither they nor any human being can reconcile it to be either good or true.
And as the Priest, 1800 years ago, condemned Jesus to be crucified as a blasphemer and devil, and now use his name to condemn as infidels all who do not believe him to have been God, therefore the world is oftentimes made to blaspheme the name of Jesus through its being used as an authority for doing and teaching evil in God’s service, as of old men were made to blaspheme the name of God, because it was also used as an authority for doing evil.
And therefore it is our duty to deliver the name of Jesus from being thus unjustly used, because Jesus left nothing undone that love could do or suffer to deliver the name of God from being similarly used. And to be offended for this with the name of Jesus would be to be like to those who were offended with the name of God because unjustly used.
There are some persons who would dethrone Jesus from being looked up to as the Christ and Son of God, because they do not see their way to dethroning the spread of Romanism, except by dethroning Jesus; but Jesus and the Scriptures tell us that they were murderers who conspired to put Jesus to death (John viii. 37–59; Acts vii. 52; Acts xiii. 27; 1 Cor. ii. 7, 8). Therefore let God be manifested to be good and true, even though the truth dethrones the Priest by requiring him to confess that his doctrine of the Mass is opposed to the teaching of Jesus, and must be reformed, because Jesus taught God would have mercy and not sacrifice. If in the mind of Jesus we have seen the mind of God, then in Christ’s adversaries and slanderers, we have seen those whom we were pledged at our baptism to resist as the Devil (John xv. 24).
Rev. T. G. Headley.
Manor House, Petersham S.W.
Editors’ Note. [H.P.B.]
Amen! It is quite true that there are not a few such illogical persons who seek to dethrone Romanism and Protestantism by destroying the innocent cause of these—Jesus. But no theosophist is among that class. Theosophists, even those who are no longer, as those who never were, Christians, regard, nevertheless, Jesus, or Jehoshua as an Initiate. It is not, therefore, against the “bearer” of that name—in whom they see one of the Masters of Wisdom—that they protest, but against that name as travestied by pseudo-Christian fancy and clad in the pagan robes borrowed from heathen gods, that they have set their hearts. It is those “priests” whom our reverend correspondent denounces as “murderers” and “devils”—at the risk of finding himself confounded with them in the ungodly crowd he himself belongs to—that every true theosophist ought to be ever ready to rise against. Few of them refuse to see in Jesus a Son of God, as well as Chrestos having reached by suffering the Christos condition. All they reject is, the modern travesty of the very, very old dogma of the Son becoming one with the Father; or that this “Father” had ever anything to do with the Hebrew androgyne called Jehovah. It is not Jesus’ “Father,” who “will have mercy, and not sacrifice,” in whose nostrils the blood of even a slain animal used as a burnt offering could have ever smelt sweet. How then could the human sacrifice offered by the allegorical Christ, and described in the Epistle to the Ephesians as one that had “a sweet smelling savour,” be regarded otherwise than with horror? Theosophists can discriminate—to say the least, as much as the reverend gentleman who signs himself T. G. Headley.
[Note: in the September issue of Lucifer, a reply was made to Rev. T. G. Headley by one Thomas May, which included a footnote by Blavatsky. The full text of that reply with her footnote is as follows:]
Sir,—The Rev. T. G. Headley, who puts the above question in the August number, in the course of his remarks admits that the Devil and Jesus are simply impersonations of Good and Evil, and although it would appear he considers Jesus as an historical character yet I do not gather that he so identifies historically the person of the Devil, so that by your kind permission I will endeavour to give a reply to his question; leaving the question of the identity of Jesus for the present, although it may be that there is a great affinity between the two, and that the much-abused Devil may be transformed into an angel of Light.
The names of these so-called evil genii are, it will be found, many and varied, and the same impersonation appears under different aliases in all ages and in all countries. In Egypt it is found as the Serpent Thermuthis which the Egyptians are said to have used as a royal tiara on the statues of the Goddess Isis, and as the Areph or Serapis, whose bishops were known as Bishops of Christ; in Persia, as Agathodaemon encircling the mundane egg; as the person of Vishnu himself in Hindostan. Then as Vitzepuptzli, the great God in Mexico; and coming finally to the sacred books of the Christians, we find the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. This is the Brazen Serpent lifted up by Moses, with whom, significantly enough, Jesus identifies himself when he says, “So must I be lifted up.” So also in all varieties and modifications of the name. The serpent (the Hebrew ’nocash), the Greek “Dragon” or Οφις [ophis], the snake or the Basilisk, the Royal Serpent—the radical idea in all is one. It is the attribute of a peculiar acuteness of sight which hath, says St. John, in Hebrew his name Abaddon or Ab—ad—on, the Father, the Lord, the Being; and in Greek Apollyon, that is Apollo; as Sathen or Satan, in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, where the same is used as in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, showing that Satan and Yahou are one and the self-same being; and in Rev. xii. 9, where the writer speaks of that old serpent called the Devil and Satan. Briefly, Ophiolatry or Serpent worship was universal and symbolical of Wisdom and Eternity, its inarticulate or terrible hiss representing the voice of God, since Isaiah assures us “That the Lord will hiss for the fly (or scarabeus) of Egypt.”
The names of these so-called evil genii are, it will be found, many and varied . . . He is called Satan or Shethen—opposition—and also an Accuser—not, however, a false accuser—as, in the book ascribed to Job, he is represented as one of the Sons of God, who presents himself with the others, and as such is invested with superior wisdom, directing even the providence of God.1 In fact there is no name, attribute or title of Godhead, Power or Majesty, ascribed to God either in the Old or New Testament, but that same is the name, title and attribute of Satan.
1. This is undeniable; for we find stated in the Zohar that the “Ancient of all the Ancients” (Ain-soph, the Kabalists say, the Logos or At-tee-kah, also Hokhmah, or Wisdom, the Occultists maintain) having evolved or “created” Torah (the law, or Dharma) hitherto hidden, Torah forthwith addressed It (the Ancient of all the Ancients) in these words: “It, that wishes to arrange in order other things, should first arrange Itself in its (to it pertaining) Forms.” And the “For ever concealed” did follow Torah’s advice and did so arrange its forms as to become manifested as the Universe. And if Torah, why not Satan?—Ed. [H.P.B.]
The “Devil” is the Accuser or Tempter. But so also we read that God tempted Abraham, and in the prayer we beseech God “to lead us not into temptation.” He is the Adversary or “stander over against,” or Diabolus, the opposite; hence the French Diable, and as our text says, “Your Adversary, the Devil.” Now, briefly, tabulating all the names of the Devil which occur in Scripture, and all the attributes ascribed to him, they will be found to be the common names and attributes of the Supreme God as follows:
Baal-Shaddai God Almighty Bel-Aitan The Mighty Lord Bel-Geh The Lord of Health Bel-Ial (Belial) Lord of the Opposite Baal-Zebub Lord of the Scorpion Baal-Berith Lord of the Covenant Baal-Peor Lord of the Opening Baal-Perazim Lord of the Divisions Baal-Zephon Lord of the North Baal-Samen Lord of Heaven Adoni-Bezeck Lord of Glory Moloch-Zedeck King of Righteousness Lucifer Son of the Morning; or, as in the margin, Isaiah xiv. 12, Day Star, the very name of Jesus Christ in the Testament: “The Day Star from on high hath visited and redeemed his people.”
It is corroborated in Revelation xxii, “I Jesus am the bright and morning star,” or Day Star (xxii. 15); or plainly, I Jesus am Lucifer; that is, I am Satan, also the Devil. And so, as the “initiated” apostle truly states, “Satan is transformed into an angel of Light.”Having therefore in this note briefly shown the dual character of the Devil and Yahou, or God, and seeing this curious and unedifying intermingling of the attributes of the Supreme, amidst and with the accumulation of centuries of theological confusion, contradictions, and contrarieties, passing before our mind, we are constrained in the strength of the Spirit of Truth to cut the Gordian Knot.
As the Rev. T. G. Headley says, there appear to be two powers at work, Good and Evil, or the Devil and Jesus. But, in their esse, they are but one and the same; the Prince or Power of Darkness is the adversary—the opposite—or opponent of the Prince of Light, and constantly follows or persecutes him, as day and night, and as the cold and cheerless reign of winter succeeds the summer, as the earth revolving in space presents its whole surface successively to the sun. So the illuminated half was the Kingdom of Heaven, while the adverse, diabolically adverse, symbolically represented Hades, Darkness, the Under World, Bottomless Pit, Hell, &c., which the blackness of infinite space readily realizes. And, as the Hebrew word, and the Greek, for both a Dragon and a Serpent are derived from words which signify the eye, and in all the languages of Asia, the same word expresses the Eye and the Sun, so Milton’s Adam, addressing the sun, says, “Thou sun of this great world, both eye and soul,” so all the names that have been given him either in Pagan or Christian Mythology are but the names and personifications of his different supposed attributes: as, Lovely in Spring, Powerful in Summer, Beneficent in Autumn, and Terrible in Winter. So that whatever be the name, whether Jupiter, Pluto, Dionysius, God, Devil, Christ, Satan, Demon, or Angel, it is ever as that famous verse of the Orphic song truly says: “One Jupiter, one Pluto, one Apollo, one Bacchus. It is but the One God in them all.” So also our Christian poet sings:
“These as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the Varied God: the rolling year
Is full of Thee: forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love,
Then comes thy glory in the Summer months
With light and heat refulgent.
Thy beauty shines in Autumn unconfined
And spreads a common feast for all that live.
In Winter, awful thou with clouds and storms.
Riding sublime, thou bidst the World adore
And humblest nature with thy northern blast.”To conclude, if we carefully investigate the origin and derivation of the various names by which this Evil (d’evil) or dark genius has been known in all ages, we shall discover that they one and all turn upon the phenomena of darkness and light, day and night, summer and winter. Bearing this in mind, the apparent contradiction, and yet dual characters and natures, of the Devil and Jesus, or God, as pourtrayed in the Christian sacred books, and which is so perplexing to the ordinary reader, becomes clear and distinct. As the seasons and periods of time revolve, so naturally does the One Esse or Source of all, by the reflection of which these seasons or shadows thrown upon our mentality, become alternately Day, Night, Summer and Winter, &c., correspondingly God, Devil, Christ, and Satan, &c.; hence, outside these phenomena which are many and varied, the Divine Esse or God is but One and Supreme and All, even as the seven colours of the Sun’s rays appear but as one.
Thomas May.
Chelsea, S.W., Aug. 22, 1888.
[Note: the above elicited a response from Rev. T. G. Headley in the October issue of Lucifer, which contains several Editor’s Notes by Blavatsky. The following is the full text with all notes.]
Sir,—Mr. Thomas May (under the above title) tells your readers in the September number of Lucifer that, with the accumulation of centuries, a very Gordian knot of theological confusion, contradictions, and contrarieties has been made, which has caused an unedifying intermingling of the attributes of “the Supreme,” and that he, Mr. Thomas May, can cut this knot in a moment, by simply telling your readers that the Devil and Jesus, or the Devil and God, are one and the same Supreme being or person, only seen under different aspects at different periods of time.1
And with this simple statement that two contradictory ideas have only one and the same supreme being or person for their origin, Mr. May seems to imagine that he has at once removed all the theological confusion, contradictions, and contrarieties, which for centuries have accumulated and perplexed mankind respecting Jesus and the Devil, God and Satan, good and evil.
But when it is conceded to Mr. May that there is but one Supreme being or person: it yet remains to be determined, revealed, or understood what “the Supreme” is? and whether “the Supreme” is good, or evil.
Mr. May in his letter would seem to imply that “the Supreme” is both evil and good, in like manner as a period of 24 hours, which we call a day, is partly light and partly dark.2
But then this dark period of the day, which we call night, is not evil, but, on the contrary, it is a period of beneficial rest for recruiting and renewing the strength of our bodies in sleep.
And it is possible that Mr. May might also say that what is commonly called evil is also not evil, but is only a course of educational training which is highly beneficial for our spiritual growth and strength.
But when good and evil are thus intermingled as being one and the same, the danger immediately arises of creating theological confusion, contradictions and contrarieties. And I do not learn from Mr. May’s letter that he has avoided this religious difficulty,3 but that he has himself created it, by speaking of good and evil as being one and the same.
For although Isaiah tells us that God alone is the Supreme Creator both of good and evil, yet it is only in a corrective sense, as a Father would correct his child, that Isaiah intends to speak of God as creating evil; because the whole burden of Isaiah’s writing is to reproach those who called the good evil, the evil good, and the doing of evil doing good.
And it is because this intermingling of God and the Devil, and of good and evil, as being one and the same, made it such a complicated question, that therefore the Scriptures were written in order to make manifest what is good and what is evil.4 And in the Scriptures it is recorded that so great had become the power of those who made the Word of God of none effect by their evil traditions that they conspired to betray “the Son of Man,” who would reconcile the ways of God as being good and not evil, to be crucified as a devil.
And it is the true lesson which is to be learnt (when freedom in the Church can be obtained to teach it) from the Crucifixion of “the Son of Man,” which can alone remove the religious difficulty which disturbs both the Christian and the Jewish World: because it is not true, as Mr. May asserts, that good and evil, or Jesus and the Devil, are one and the same.5
Rev. T. G. Headley.
Manor House, Petersham, S.W.
Editors’ Notes. [H.P.B.]
1. This idea is not original with Mr. May. Lactantius, one of the Fathers of the Church, expressed it in no equivocal language, for he states that the “Word” (or Logos), is the “first-born brother of Satan” (Vide Inst. div. Book ii., c. viii.); for Satan is “a Son of God” (Vide Job, ii., 1).
2. The “Supreme,” if it is infinite and omnipresent, cannot be anything but that. It must be “good and evil,” “light and darkness,” etc., for if it is omnipresent it has to be present in a vessel of dishonour as well as in one of honour, in an atom of dirt as in the atom of the purest essence. The whole trouble is that theology and the (even militant) clergy are not consistent in their claims; they would force people to believe in an infinite and absolute deity, and dwarf this deity at the same time by making of it a personal being with attributes, a double claim mutually destructive, and as absurd philosophically as it is grotesque and soul-killing.
3. The fact then that by showing good and evil intermingled in the deity creates “religious difficulty,” i.e., “theological confusion,” is the fault of and rests with the clergy and theology, and not at all with Mr. May. Let them drop their idea of a personal god with human attributes, and the difficulty will disappear.
4. The Scriptures were written to conceal the underlying allegories of cosmogonical and anthropological mysteries, and not at all “to make manifest what is good and what is evil.” If our respected and reverend Correspondent accepts Eden and the apple au sérieux, then why should he not accept “Crucifixion,” as taught by his church, also? “To be crucified as a devil” is a queer phrase. We have heard of several “Sons of God” crucified, but never yet of one single devil. On the other hand, if Christians accepted, as seriously as they do the “apple and the rib,” the simple and impressive words of their Christ on the Mount, who says: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you, falsely, for my sake,”—then they would abstain from reviling and persecuting and saying all manner of evil against the poor Devil; who, if he is to be regarded as a personality, is sure to be “blessed,” as no one from the beginning of Christianity has ever been more reviled and falsely persecuted than was that scapegoat for the sins of man! Finally:
5. If one takes “good and Evil, or Jesus and the Devil,” for personalities, then as no personality from the beginning of the world was free from evil, Mr. May’s proposition must prove correct and the Reverend Mr. Headley be shown in a vicious circle of his own making. Demon est Deus inversus is said of a manifested, differentiated deity, or of the Universe of Matter. That which is Absolute cannot even be homogeneous, it is Ain—nothing—or No-thing; and if men of finite intellects will insist upon speculating upon the infinite, and therefore to them unreachable and incomprehensible, otherwise than as a necessary philosophical postulate, then they must expect to be worsted by that same philosophy.
[Note: the above elicited another response from Rev. T. G. Headley in the December issue of Lucifer, which likewise contains several Editor’s Notes by Blavatsky. The following is the full text with all notes.]
Sir,
As I consider the criticism upon my letter in your issue of October altogether unjustified, I trust you will allow me space for a few lines in reply thereto.
There is one thing absolutely necessary to be observed in discussion in order for it to be of any profit, either to the parties themselves or to any one else who may either hear or read of it. And the one thing necessary in discussion is that the parties to the discussion should first understand and accept the premises upon which the argument is intended to be built, or the conclusion is intended to be drawn.
For if, in a written discussion, the critic assumes the writer to have taken certain dogmas or premises as the basis of his argument which he never dreamt of taking, and upon this erroneous assumption the critic then proceeds to ridicule the argument of the writer as though the writer’s argument had been based on the critic’s erroneous conception of his premises, such discussion and criticism is profitable to no one, and amuses no one but the superficial reader who is unable to see the delusion.
And that there may, at least, be no excuse in future for misapprehending my views, I may say that I know of, and believe in, no such person as the Devil, in the commonly reputed Orthodox sense. But surely those who speak evil of God or their neighbours would be justly entitled to the name.
And, with respect to Jesus, I know nothing of Jesus, excepting that as a Man (whether historical or allegorical) he is the most Christ-like I can conceive, and therefore to me he is the Christ, and likewise therefore “the Son of God according to the spirit of holiness,” whom to know and love is to know and love God, and whom, therefore, to revile and reject, is to reject and hate God. And as I understood that Theosophists (in December No. of Lucifer) accepted this view of Jesus being the Christ, and his practical religion, therefore I am surprised that things should be thrown in my face as accepted by me which I have nowhere in any wise professed to accept. And I should think it as foolish to be offended with what is good in the Scriptures because of there being something hard to accept, as it would be to be offended with the nut and milk of the cocoa-nut only because the shell and the husk could not be eaten also.
And if Theosophists are obliged to admit that philosophical postulates are absolutely necessary to be accepted as a basis of argument, I only ask the same; but I cannot see the need of taking offence at my having spoken of the Son of Man having been crucified as a devil. Surely, if he was condemned to be a deceiver, a blasphemer and a devil, and to be therefore slain, it cannot be incorrect to say he was crucified as a blasphemer, or a devil, just as we speak of the martyrs having been burnt as heretics. I have been a friend to Lucifer, both in word and deed, but with such hostile criticism as there is in the October number, one would suppose I had fallen into the midst of enemies.
Rev. T. G. Headley
Petersham, S.W.
[Reply by H.P.B.]
We feel sorry for having unintentionally given offence to our reverend friend and contributor; but we would have been still more sorry to publish in our magazine an unjust fling at another contributor’s ideas and to have facts denied—without entering a protest. Our magazine is essentially controversial, and was founded for the purpose of throwing light upon “the hidden things of darkness”—of religious superstition pre-eminently. And what superstition can be compared to that which accepts a “personal” God, or a “personal” devil? He who objects to have his views controverted and criticized must not write for Lucifer. Neither Mr. May’s nor the editor’s remarks were personal, and were concerned with the peculiar views about God and Devil made by Mr. Headley, and not at all with the reverend gentleman himself.
Moreover, we have given good proofs of our impartiality. We published articles and letters criticizing not alone our personal theosophical and philosophical views, but discussing upon subjects directly concerned with our personal honour and reputation; reviving the infamous calumnies in which not simple doubts, but distinctly formulated charges of dishonesty were cast into our teeth and our private character was torn to shreds (vide “A Glance at Theosophy from the Outside,” Lucifer for October, 1888). And if the editor will never shrink from what she considers her duty to her readers, and that she is prepared to throw every possible light upon mooted questions in order that truth should shine bright and hideous lies and superstitions be shown under their true colours—why should our contributors prove themselves so thin-skinned? Magna est veritas et prævalebit [Truth is great, and it will prevail]. Every hitherto far-hidden truth, whether concealed out of sight by Nature’s secretiveness or human craft, must and shall be unveiled some day or other. Meanwhile, we do our best to help poor, shivering, naked Truth in her arduous progress, by cutting paths for her through the inextricable jungle of theological and social shams and lies. The best means of doing it is to open the pages of our magazine to free controversy and discussion, regardless of personalities or prejudices—though some of our friends may object to such modes of excavating far-hidden truths. They are wrong, evidently. It is by this means alone that he who holds correct views has a chance of proving them, hence of seeing them accepted and firmly established; and he who is mistaken of being benefited by having his better senses awakened and directed to the other side of the question he sees but in one of its aspects. Logic, Milton says to us, teaches us “that contraries laid together more evidently appear; it follows, then, that all controversy being permitted, falsehood will appear more false, and truth the more true; which must needs conduce much to the general confirmation of an implicit truth.” Again, “if it (controversy) be profitable for one man to read, why should it not at least be tolerable and free for his adversary to write?”
Why then should Mr. Headley address his opponent, while saying: “it is not true, as Mr. May asserts, that good and evil, or Jesus and the Devil, are one and the same,” instead of taking to task for it Lactantius, the Church Father, who was the first to say so more than a millennium ago, by stating that the Logos or Christ was “the first-born brother of Satan”? Or why, again, should not our reverend friend explain to us the real meaning of that verse in Revelation (xxii. 15) which makes Jesus say: “I, Jesus, am the bright and morning Star,” i.e., Phosphoros and Lucifer respectively in the Greek and Latin texts—and thus give the lie to the editor of Revelation, instead of giving it to Mr. May? Nor does this gentleman say anywhere, as Mr. Headley accuses him of saying, that he regards God (“the Supreme Being or Person”) as a person. Finally, to our humble mind, there is more truth and philosophy in Mr. May’s closing sentence, namely: “the divine Esse or God is but One Supreme and All, even as the seven colours of the Sun’s rays appear but as one”—than in all the ecclesiastical theology put together, modern reformations included.
To close: we deny that our criticism of Mr. Headley’s letter was in any way “hostile,” and we can but regret that the reverend gentleman should labour under the very erroneous impression that he has “fallen in the midst of enemies.” We repeat again: Lucifer has a settled and plainly outlined policy of its own, and those who write for it have either to accept it, or—turn their backs on our magazine. No discourteous epithets or vulgar abuse of personalities shall ever be allowed in our Monthly. We should be very sorry to follow in the usual track of the English dailies, which—even those claiming to be considered as leading organs of the press, high-principled and high-toned—are ever indulging in personal attacks, not only on their political opponents, but, pandering to the public, even upon unpopular characters. No individual—friend or foe—risks being called in our journal “adventurer,” “hallucinated lunatic,” “impostor and free lover,” “charlatan,” or “credulous fool,” as the leading theosophists of England and America are repeatedly referred to by the highly cultured and learned editors of not only political, but even drawing-room, “Society” papers on both sides of the Atlantic—save a few honourable exceptions.
But, on the other hand, no one—of whatever rank or influence—nor anything however “time-honoured,” shall ever be pandered to or propitiated in our magazine. Never shall any error, sham or superstition be daubed with the whitewash of propriety, or passed over in prudent silence. As our journal was not established for a money-making enterprise, but verily as a champion for every fact and truth, however tabooed and unpopular—it need pander to no lie or absurd superstition. For this policy the Theosophical Publishing Co. is, already, several hundred pounds out of pocket. The editor invites free criticism upon everything that is said in Lucifer; and while protecting every contributor from direct personalities is quite willing to accept any amount of such against herself, and promises to answer each and all to the best of her ability. Fas est ab hoste doceri [It is right to learn even from an enemy].
“Fais que dois, advienne que pourra.” [Do thy duty, come what may]
H. P. B.