long as man stands under the influence of this matter, he is in the hands of evil and knows no freedom.  Redemption can only reach him through those higher beings of light, which free man from the power of matter and translate him into the kingdom of light.  According to the Gnostic teaching, Christ is one of these beings of light; he is one of the highest who appeared on earth, and is transformed into a mythical, allegorical being, with his human nature, his sufferings and death completely suppressed.  The redeemed soul is then as a kind of angel, or ideal being, brought in triumph into the idealistic realm of light as soon as it has purified itself to the nature of a spirit, by means of penitence, chastisements, and finally the death of the physical body.  Hence the Gnostics attached little importance to the means of mercy in the Church, to the Bible, or the sacraments; they allowed the Church teaching to exist as a necessary conception for the people, but they placed their own teachings far above it as mysterious or secret teachings.  As regards their morals and mode of life, the Gnostics generally went to extremes.  It was due to Gnosticism that art and science found an entrance into the Church.  It preserved the Church from becoming stereotyped in form; but, built up entirely on ideas and not on historical facts, it died from its own hollowness and eccentricity.

We still possess the traces of the Gnostic astrology in a number of amulets and engraved gems, with the word Abraxas or rather Abrasax and other emblems of their superstition, which they kept as charms against diseases and evil spirits.  The word Abrasax may be translated Hurt me not.  To their mystic rites we may trace many of the reproaches thrown upon Christianity, such as that the Christians worshipped the head of an ass, using the animal’s Koptic name Eeo, to represent the name of IAn, or Jahveh.  To the same source we may also trace some of the peculiarities of the Christian fathers, such as St. Ambrose calling Jesus “the good scarabaeus, who rolled up before him the hitherto un-shapen mud of our bodies;” a thought which seems to have been borrowed as much from the hieroglyphics as from the insect’s habits; and perhaps from the Egyptian priests in some cases, using the scarabous to denote the god Horus-Ra, and sometimes the word only begotten.  We trace this thought on the Gnostic gems where Ave see a winged griffin rolling before him a wheel, the emblem of eternity.  He sits like a conqueror on horseback, trampling under foot the serpent of old, the spirit of sin and death.  His horse is in the form of a ram, with an eagle’s head and the crowned asp or basilisk for its tail.  Before him stands the figure of victory giving him a crown; above are written the words Alpha and Omega, and below perhaps the word [IAH], Jahveh.