This religion, therefore, which, by the intention of its founder, should have formed the Jews into the wisest and most intelligent of nations, made them by its injudicious application the most ignorant and unreasonable of all. Instead of the knowledge of nature being combined with the knowledge of religion, and the former subordinated to the latter merely as the material to the formal, the former was altogether neglected; and the principle, maintained in its mere abstractness, continued without any application.
Mysteries of religion are objects and acts, which are adapted to ideas and principles, and the inner meaning of which is of great importance, but which have in their outward form something unseemly or ridiculous or otherwise objectionable. They must therefore, even in regard to their outward form, be kept concealed from the vulgar eye, which cannot penetrate into the inner meaning of anything; and accordingly for it they must be a double mystery. That is to say, the objects or acts themselves constitute the lesser mysteries, and their inner meaning the greater mysteries.
Of this sort, for example, among the Jews, in the tabernacle, and afterwards in the Holy of Holies in the temple, was the ark of the covenant, which, according to the testimony of renowned authors, showed much resemblance to the sacred chest in the innermost shrine of some heathen temples. Thus we find among the Egyptians the casket of Apis, that concealed from the vulgar eye this dead animal, which as a symbol indeed had an important meaning, but in itself presented a repulsive aspect. The ark of the covenant in the first temple contained, it is true, according to the testimony of Holy Scripture, nothing besides the two tables of the law; but of the ark in the second temple, built after the Babylonian captivity, I find in the Talmud a passage which is too remarkable not to be adduced. According to this passage the enemies, who seized the temple, found in the Holy of Holies the likeness of two persons of different sex embracing, and profaned the sacred object by a crass exposition of its inner meaning. This likeness was said to be a vivid sensible representation of the union between the nation and God, and, in order to guard against abuse, had to be withdrawn from the eye of the common people, who cling to the symbol, but do not penetrate to its inner meaning. For the same reason the _cherubim_ also were concealed behind the veil.