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214 nothing of founder or origins. In spite of its hatred of the Judaism of Jerusalem and its definite preference for the Persian idea of redemption, the Mandæan religion seems to have stood very close to the popular beliefs of Syrian Jewry. One after another, pieces of its wonderful documents are becoming available, and they consistently show us a "Him," a Son of Man, a Redeemer who is sent down into the depths, who himself must be redeemed and is the goal of man's expectations. In the Book of John, the Father high upraised in the House of Fulfilment, bathed in light, says to his only begotten Son: "My Son, be to me an ambassador; go into the world of darkness, where no ray of light is." And the Son calls up to him: "Father, in what have I sinned that thou hast sent me into the darkness?" And finally: "Without sin did I ascend and there was no sin and defect in me."

All the characters of the great prophetic religions and of the whole store of profound glimpses and visions later collected into apocalypses are seen here as foundations. Of Classical thought and feeling not a breath reached this Magian underworld. No doubt the beginnings of the new religion are lost irrevocably. But one historical figure of Mandæanism stands forth with startling distinctness, as tragic in his purpose and his downfall as Jesus himself — John the Baptist. He, almost emancipated from Judaism, and filled with the as mighty a hatred of the Jerusalem spirit as that of primitive Russia for Petersburg, preached the end of the world and the coming of the Barnasha, the Son of Man, who is no longer the longed-for national Messiah of the Jews, but the bringer of the world-conflagration. To him came Jesus and was his disciple. He was thirty years old when the awakening came over him. Thenceforth the apocalyptic, and in particular the Mandæan, thought-world filled his whole being. The other world of historical actuality lying round him was to him as something sham, alien, void of significance. That "He" would now come and make an end