Gospel of Interpretation, or the New Gospel of Interpretation, is the name of the philosophical and religious message of Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland - It is the rescue of the original Christianity, with the true interpretation of the symbols of the Christian scriptures and the rescue of the necessary union of Christianity with Buddhism.

Faith Without Understanding Is Credulity

“True it is ‘faith that saves,’ but the faith that is without understanding is not faith, but credulity.” (Edward Maitland. The Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation, xi; emphasis added)

Two Things About the Christian Religion

“At the present moment there are two things about the Christian religion which must be obvious to every percipient person; one, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.” (Matthew Arnold, quoted in The Perfect Way, 6. See also: Selected Texts, Quotes and Glossary; emphasis added)

The Interpretation of Your Bibles

“That which you need on Earth is the interpretation of your Bibles, and of all the Scriptures which contain the hidden wisdom, the mystery of which St. Paul so often speaks as existing from the foundation of the world.” (As in Romans 16:25) (A Message to Earth. Edited by Edward Maitland, 69. See also: Selected Texts, Quotes and Glossary; emphasis added)

Once the Veil of Symbolism Is Lifted All Churches Are Akin, and the Basic Doctrine of All Is Identical

“Once the veil of symbolism is lifted from the divine face of Truth, all Churches are akin, and the basic doctrine of all is identical (…). Greek, Hermetic, Buddhist, Vedantist, (1) Christian – all these Lodges of the Mysteries are fundamentally one and identical in doctrine. (…)

We hold that no single ecclesiastical creed is comprehensible by itself alone, uninterpreted by its predecessors and its contemporaries.

Students, for example, of Christian theology will only learn to understand and to appreciate the true value and significance of the symbols familiar to them, by the study of Eastern Philosophy and Pagan Idealism.

For Christianity is the heir of these, and she draws her best blood from their veins. And, forasmuch as all her great ancestors hid beneath their exoteric formulas and rites – themselves mere husks and shells to amuse the simple-minded – the esoteric or concealed verities reserved for the initiate, so also she reserves for earnest seekers and deep thinkers the true interior Mysteries which are one and eternal in all creeds and Churches from the foundation of the world.

This true, interior, transcendental meaning is the Real Presence, veiled in the Elements of the Divine Sacrament: the mystical Substance and Truth figured beneath the Bread and the Wine of the ancient Bacchic orgies, and now of our own Catholic Church.

To the unwise, the unthinking, the superstitious, the gross Elements are the objects of the rite; to the initiate, the seer, the son of Hermes, they are but the outward and visible signs of that which is ever and of necessity, inward, spiritual, and occult.

NOTE (1) A careful and an erudite student of the Hindû Scriptures said that The Perfect Way contained “passages identical with some which he had rendered from the Upanishads, but of which no translation had ever been published; and he accounted for the coincidence by supposing an identical illumination of both” (Life of A.K., Vol. II, p. 310). Edward Maitland says: “Whenever the highest plane of consciousness has been attained, and entrance won to the ‘kingdom within,’ the doctrine discerned has been one and the same – to the mind a necessity, and to the soul a reality: and has always been that of the Gnosis, variously termed, by the Gentiles, Hermetic, and by Hebrews, Kabbalistic.” (Edward Maitland, quoted by Samuel Hopgood Hart, in his Preface to the Fifth Edition, xii-xiii, to the work The Perfect Way. Quotation from The Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol. II, pp. 123-124; emphasis added)

Christianity and Buddhism Are Parts of One Continuous, Harmonious Whole

“Christianity, then, was introduced into the world with a special relation to the great religions of the East, and under the same divine control. And so far from being intended as a rival and supplanter of Buddhism, it was the direct and necessary sequel to that system; and the two are but parts of one continuous, harmonious whole, whereof the later division is but the indispensable supplement and complement of the earlier.” (Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. The Perfect Way, pp. 250-251; emphasis added)

In the Union of Buddha and Christ the World’s Coming Redemption

“Of the spiritual union in the one faith of Buddha and Christ, will be born the world’s coming redemption.” (Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. The Perfect Way, p. 252; emphasis added)

At Some Distant Day It Will Become a Religion of Great Nations

“I know that at some distant day, now, indeed, perhaps very remote, the message we preach in a corner will become a religion of great nations.” (Anna Kingsford. Addresses and Essays on Vegetarianism, p. 1; emphasis added)