days on earth; and, in a general summing up of the blessings and curses
to be enjoyed or suffered, for the observance or violation of the laws,
as recorded in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, it will be seen they
are all of a temporal character only. At the beginning of the Christian
era there were still in existence a sect of Jews known as Sadducees,
who were strict adherents to the primitive form of worship, and their
belief relative to the state of the dead we find recorded in
Ecclesiastes xii., 7, which reads: "Then shall the dust return to earth
as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it."

For ages the doctrine of soul absorption, immediately after death,
constituted the belief of mankind; but ultimately recognizing the fact
that the temporal punishments of the existing laws were wholly
inadequate to the prevention of crime, and conceiving the idea that the
ignorant and vicious masses could be governed with a surer hand by
appealing to the sentiments of hope and fear in relation to the rewards
and punishments of an imaginary future life, the ancient Astrologers
resolved to remodel the dogmatic elements of religion so as to include
that doctrine. But realizing the necessity, of suppressing the belief
in the absorption of all souls, immediately after death, they ceased to
teach it, and ultimately it was embodied in that secret and unwritten
system known as the Esoteric philosophy, in which the Astrologers
formulated their own private belief, and which for many centuries was
kept from the knowledge of the uninitiated by their successors in the
priestly office. As they were the sole custodians of the Scriptures,
they made do change in their verbiage, but, adding the doctrine of
future rewards and punishments to that written and openly taught system
of faith known as the Exoteric creed, they made it the more impressive
by instituting a system of imposing rites and ceremonies, which they
designated as Mysteries, into which they initiated the neophytes, and