But supposing we grant this, and admit that all Scriptures possess an inner meaning and lend themselves to interpretation on every plane of being and thought, who is to decide whether any particular interpretation is just or no?  Already we have writers arising, giving diametrically opposite interpretations of the same mystical narrative, and though this may be an advance on bald physical literalism, it is by no means encouraging to the instructed and philosophical mind.

If the Deity is no respecter of persons, times, or nations, and if no age is left without witness of the Divine, it would seem to be in accordance with the fitness of things that all religions in their purity are one in essence, no matter how overgrown with error they may have become through the ignorance of man.  If, again, the root of true Religion is one, and the nature of the Soul and of the inner constitution of things is identical in all climes and times, as far as its main features are concerned, no matter what terminology, allegory, and symbology may be employed to describe it; and not only this, but if it be true that such subjective things are as potent facts in human consciousness as any that exist, as indeed is evidenced by the unrivalled influence such things have had on human hearts and actions throughout the history of the world—­then we must consider that an interpretation that fits only one system and is found entirely unsuitable to the rest, is no part of universal religion, and is due rather to the ingenuity of the interpreter than to a discovery of any law of subjective nature.  The method of comparative religion alone can give us any certainty of correct interpretation, and a refusal to institute such a comparison should invalidate the reliability of all such enquiries.

Now Simon is reported to have endeavoured to find an inner meaning in scriptural narratives and mythologies, and against this method we can have nothing to say; it is only when a man twists the interpretation to suit his own prejudices that danger arises.  Simon, however, is shown to have appealed to the various sacred literatures known in his time, an eclectic and theosophical method, and one that cannot very well be longer set on one side even in our own days.

The primitive church was not so forgetful of symbology as are the majority of the Christian faith to-day.  One of the commonest representations of primitive Christian art was that of the “Four Rivers.”  As the Rev. Professor Cheetham tells us: 

We find it repeated over and over again in the catacombs, either in frescoes or in the sculptured ornaments of sarcophagi, and sometimes on the bottoms of glass cups which have been discovered therein.[135]

The interpretations given by the early divines were many and various; in nearly every case, however, it was an interpretation which applied to the Christian system alone, and accentuated external differences.