rotects them against earthquake and famine, but he
who in some sense saves their souls. He reveals to them the _Gnosis
Theou_, the Knowledge of God. The 'knowledge' in question is not a mere
intellectual knowledge. It is a complete union, a merging of beings.
And, as we have always to keep reminding our cold modern intelligence,
he who has 'known' God is himself thereby deified. He is the Image of
God, the Son of God, in a sense he _is_ God.[161:1] The stratum of ideas
described in the first of the studies will explain the ease with which
transition took place. The worshipper of Bacchos became Bacchos simply
enough, because in reality the God Bacchos was originally only the
projection of the human Bacchoi. And in the Hellenistic age the notion
of these secondary mediating gods was made easier by the analogy of the
human interpreters. Of course, we have abundant instances of actual
preachers and miracle-workers who on their own authority posed, and were
accepted, as gods. The adventure of Paul and Barnabas at Lystra[161:2]
shows how easily such things could happen. But as a rule, I suspect, the
most zealous priest or preacher preferred to have his God in the
background. He preaches, he heals the sick and casts out devils, not in
his own name but in the name of One who sent him. This actual present
priest who initiates you or me is himself already an Image of God; but
above him there are greater and wiser priests, above them others, and
above all there is the one eternal Divine Mediator, who being in
perfection both man and God can alone fully reveal God to man, and lead
man's soul up the heavenly path, beyond Change and Fate and the Houses
of the Seven Rulers, to its ultimate peace. I have seen somewhere a
Gnostic or early Christian emblem which indicates this doctrine. Some
Shepherd or Saviour stands, his feet on the earth, his head towering
above the planets, lifting his follower in his outstretched arms.

The Gnostics are still commonly thought of as a body of Christian
heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the
Hellenistic world before Christianity as well as after. They must have
been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the days
of Paul or Apollos. Their Saviour, like the Jewish Messiah, was
established in men's minds before the Saviour of the Christians. 'If we
look close', says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with great
clearness, that the figure of the Redeemer as