11. MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT

WE have now to consider a mysterious and deeply interesting subject, and in order to understand it must carefully examine the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse. In that famous passage we shall find a vision which closely affects ourselves: for, among other things, it foreshadows a mighty convulsion, the premonitory rumblings of which seem to be even now forcing themselves upon our ears, and threatening the present generation with the terrific violence of its shock. Of the particulars which are revealed, we wish, in the first place, to call attention to the following:—

That for a time the Roman Empire would cease to exist as a united and secular power; but that, in the meanwhile, its parts would be held together and dominated by an ecclesiastical system which would rule from its ancient seat of government, the city of Rome.

That this system would grievously persecute and destroy the saints of God.

That, in the end, secular factions would gather strength, and, after a fearful struggle, overthrow the

MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT.

ecclesiastical power amid scenes of the greatest violence and cruelty.

And that, at the same time, the Roman Empire, arranged in Ten Kingdoms, would be openly re-united under a great emperor, a re-incarnated spirit, beneath whose sway it had already once bowed before the time of the vision.

In the beginning of the chapter, John is bidden to come into the wilderness that he may see the judgment of the great Whore, or Babylonian false Church, and to his amazement she appears mounted upon the Beast! We can easily enter into his feelings; for up to that time there had been only war between the Church and the world, and the Master had declared that so it should be until the end. Well, therefore, might he be bewildered when he saw her who pretended to be a Church, not merely suffering herself to be upheld by the Christ-hating World-power, but actually rejoicing to sit as a queen and direct its course, though it was still as ever in its fallen and bestial condition. The apostle was gazing upon the depths of Satan, learning something of those wondrous counterfeits and phantoms by means of which the god of this age deludes our feeble intellects and diseased spirits, and allures into the dismal swamp of Death all those who are willing to abandon the King's highway.

On looking at the Beast, John observed that neither its heads nor its horns were crowned: it was, therefore, exhibited to him at a time when its ruling powers would neither be any of the seven heads, nor the eighth emperor with his confederate kings, but the ecclesiastical system symbolized by the Woman. And it needs but little study of the Bible to teach us that the ngure of a whore would scarcely be used of a system *avowedly* hostile to Christ; but rather of one which gives itself out to be the Church, though its doctrines and practices are altogether opposed to its claim, and it may not even care to disguise its hatred of true believers.

The name, Mystery, Babylon the Great, intimates that in some enigmatical sense the Woman is Babylon, although we are afterwards told in plain terms that she is Rome. But with our present knowledge the riddle is quickly solved, and we find that each of the two great cities was in its turn the seat of her power, so that she was identified with one of them in earlier times, and with the other in a later age. For we have here exhibited to us that great organization, that instrument of Satan for deceiving and enslaving the hearts of men, of which, in Old Testament days, it was said, "The nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad":¹ while, in the New Testament, the same power is depicted as a Woman who is called "the Mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth."²

Of her long concealed history, which has been at last brought to the light by the discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon, our limits will permit no more than a slight sketch. It appears that a secret organization of unbelievers was formed soon after the death of Nimrod, at a time when open apostasy was dangerous, and that its members established their headquarters at Babylon. From that centre they laboured, with ceaseless activity, to confuse and destroy the knowledge of Jehovah in the world, and to bring men under the yoke of demon-

¹ Jer. li. 7.

² Rev. xvii. 5.

MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT.

gods. They soon became a powerful and influential body, but found their original method of procedure so effective that, even when they had altogether forgotten the fear which suggested their precautions, and were, indeed, likely soon to be supreme in every land, they, nevertheless, did not change the character of their corporation, but continued to be a secret society. Those who wished to share their power and privileges could only do so by passing through the ordeal of initiation, which included a baptism, after which the initiate was termed twice-born, or regenerate (διφυής).

Their worship was originally offered to a Trinity consisting of father, mother, and son. But the first person was very commonly confused with the third, and at last almost entirely forgotten; so that the prominent deities were the mother and son. Of these, the former was by far the most popular, and has been known, according to time and place, as Queen of Heaven, Mother of the Gods, Mylitta, Astarte, Diana of Ephesus, Aphrodite, Venus, Isis, and the Blessed Virgin.¹

The earthly head of the society was a priest-king, who thus usurped a dignity which God will permit to

¹ Mary is never called "the Virgin" in the Bible after the birth of her first-born Son, but always "the Lord's mother," or "His mother." How completely the identification of the Romish Virgin Mary with the Egyptian Isis has been demonstrated, may be seen by the following extracts from King's "Gnostics and their Remains" (pages 71, 72). "To this period belongs a beautiful sard in my collection, representing Serapis seated with his attributes, as Macrobius had seen him, whilst before him stands Isis, holding in one hand the sistrum, in the other a wheatsheaf, with the legend ἡ κυρία "Ἰσις ἀγνῆ," Immaculate is our lady Isis,' the very terms applied afterwards to that personage who succeeded to her form, titles, symbols, rites, and ceremonies. Thus her devotees carried into the new priesthood the former no one until He come Whose right it is, and Who shall be a Priest upon His Throne.¹

Babylon, as we have before said, was the ancient seat of this rebellious confederation, and from thence its influence was disseminated throughout the world. But, after the capture of the city of Nebuchadnezzar by the Medo-Persians, its leaders, driven from that stronghold, removed their headquarters to Pergamos, and remained there for some centuries.³ badges of their profession, the obligation to celibacy, the tonsure, and the surplice, omitting, unfortunately, the frequent ablutions prescribed by the ancient creed. The sacred image still moves in procession as when Juvenal laughed at it (vi. 530)—

'— grege linigero circumdatus et grege calvo.'

'Escorted by the tonsured surpliced train.'

Her proper title, Domina, the exact translation of the Sanscrit Isi, survives with slight change in the modern Madonna."

Mr. King goes on to explain that the lotus of Isis is re-named the lily for the later goddess: and that the tinkling sound of the sistrum is replaced by that of the bell, which latter instrument "came directly from the Buddhist religious usages, where it forms as essential an element as of yore in early Celtic Christianity, when the holy bell was the actual type of the Godhead to the new converts." In a note he adds that "the 'Black Virgins,' so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals during the long night of the Middle Ages, proved, when at last examined critically, to be basalt figures of Isis."

¹ Zech. vi. 13.

² "Where Satan's throne is." Rev. ii. 13.

³ Possibly the dispersion consequent upon the fall of Babylon may have given an impetus to the missionary efforts of the initiated, and caused the revival of their rites and doctrines in many parts of the world. In less than a century after the death of Belshazzar a new or rather a reformed faith was spreading in India, the Buddhist religion, which is but a slightly changed Babylonianism, and bears the strongest resemblance to Romanism. Indeed, Professor Max Müller has lately pointed out that Buddha himself is actually a saint in the Roman Catholic Calendar, under the name of St. Josaphat. For the story of Josaphat and Barlaam, which first appears in the works of John of Damascus, a theologian of the early part of the eighth century, and became extremely popular in the Middle Ages, has now been certainly

MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT.

Meanwhile the fourth Gentile power was rapidly overshadowing the world, and, unlike the Persian kingdom of Cyrus, professed the faith of the Chaldeans. For the religion of Rome was instituted by the Etrurian, Numa Pompilius, its second king; and recent researches prove that the Etrurians were a colony, either from Babylonia itself, or from some identified with that of Buddha. According to it, a devout monk named Barlaam received a Divine command, and, in obedience to it, travelled to India disguised as a merchant. There, having gained access to the young prince who afterwards became the founder of Buddhism, he unfolded his dogmas to him, and especially the blessings of a monastic life. (See Yule's "Marco Polo," vol. ii., pp. 304-309.)

But it must not be forgotten that Buddhism was merely a reformation by which the original faith, corrupted through the priestcraft of the Brahmans, was restored to something like the form in which the Aryan emigrants had brought it from Babylon after the confusion of tongues.

To pass to another quarter of the world, Prescott tells us that, when the Spaniards conquered Mexico, they were astonished to find stone crosses set up on the roads, and were easily able to convert the Mexicans to Popery, because the difference between it and the Aztec system was but slight. Mr. Pascoe, who has been long a missionary in the country, declares that the Mexican religion was purely Chaldean, and substantiates his assertion by the most startling particulars. He says;—"They had a regular priesthood, gorgeous temples, and convents: they had processions in which crosses, and even red crosses, were carried; and incense, flowers, and fruit-offerings, were employed in their worship. They confessed to their priests, and generally confessed only once, receiving a written absolution, which served for the remainder of their lives as an effectual safeguard against punishment, even for crimes committed after receiving the said absolution. They worshipped, and afterwards ate, a wafer-god, an idol made of flour and honey, which they called 'the god of penitence'; and they always ate him fasting. They also venerated the black calf, or bull, and adored a goddess-mother with an infant son in her arms. They sacrificed human victims to the god of hell, of whom they considered the cross to be a symbol, and to whom human victims were sacrificed by laying them on a great black stone and tearing out their hearts." (Speech at the Mildmay Conference, 1876.)

neighbouring country which had adopted the Chaldean creed. And so it happened that the authority of Pergamos was never disputed by the Pontiffs of the seven-hilled city; and at last Attalus the Third, at his decease, left his royal priesthood, his dominion, and his vast wealth, to the Roman people. Since, however, their government was a republic, they had no citizen who could undertake the kingly functions of Attalus, until Julius Cæsar, who had been previously elected Pontifex Maximus, became emperor also, and was thus enabled to succeed to all the dignity of the Babylonian Pontiff. Forthwith he declared himself to be a descendant of the goddess Venus: and from that time the Roman emperor was styled "divus," or "divine," and was adored as a god.

The vast World-power of Rome had thus been mounted by the Babylonian Woman before Christ appeared, and, at her instigation, the whole machinery of the Empire was set in motion to crush His Church, and persecution followed persecution in bloody succession. But it was only after the failure of these efforts that she exhibited herself as the Harlot by a false profession of allegiance to that Jesus Whom she had persecuted. By open violence she had effected nothing: she tried hypocrisy and corruption, and in an incredibly short space of time the Christian Church was completely Heathenized, and persuaded to receive all the old deities under the new name of Saints, together with the doctrines, ritual, and vestments of Paganism. And finally, in A.D. 366, by skilful manœuvring and not a little violence, Damasus, a leader of the conspirators, was pushed into the bishopric of Rome, and, having thus become the head of the Christian Church,

THE SEVEN KINGS AND THE EIGHTH.

was also elected Pontifex Maximus of the Heathen world. The Pagans could have no further scruple. They flocked into the Church in crowds; the amalgamation was soon completed, and its result was the Church of Rome, whose chief ruler, under the old title of Pontifex Maximus, which he retains to this day, soon towered above all secular monarchs, and claimed supremacy over Christendom.

Such, then, is the history of the Babylonian Society, which after swaying the first World-empire, and probably having much to do with the third, had, in the time of John, made itself mistress of the fourth; so that the Woman, by governing the world from the seven-hilled city, had become identified with Rome, and the angel was able to describe her as "the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth."¹ But she was exhibited to the apostle as she would be at a later stage in her history, when, partially disguised beneath a robe stolen from the Church of Christ, she would have ceased to govern secretly through the medium of the secular powers, and would have openly placed herself above them, and be ruling with supreme authority. And, accordingly, in this vision, the Beast, which always stands for the secular power, appears crownless, wearing diadems neither upon his heads nor his horns, but ridden and directed by the Woman.

X.