tablish us in this relation of life and harmony with God, and must entrust ourselves to its cleansing power. This is only another way of saying that we must believe in the power of the indwelling Christ to save us from sin. Only as we so believe will it be done unto us according to our faith.

CHRISTIANITY versus THEOSOPHY.

In the May number of The Path, which is the organ of the Theosophical Society in this country, there is a brief critical notice by "A. F." of this magazine. The writer regards us as in touch at some points with Theosophy, and as having taken some unconscious draughts at its fountain of wisdom, but deprecates our devotion to Evangelical doctrines and to "Bible texts as the boundaries of truth," and declares that if we would only rid ourselves of these bonds, we might "emerge into a new and exhaustless range of fact, and find satisfactions inexpressibly richer than in the harmonizing of Saints Paul and James."

We have made ourselves somewhat familiar with the writings of theosophists. When we have found in them that which seems to be true and approved by reason, and conscience and Scripture, we have not hesitated to accept it. Truth is truth, from whatever source it comes and by whomsoever held. Our readers know that we find a point of agreement in the doctrine of re-incarnation. We did not obtain the doctrine from them, and are far from holding it in the extreme and unchristian form in which they have derived it through heathen channels. We found the germs of it in what the Bible teaches of the solidarity of

the race, and in the way it connects past with future generations in character and destiny. It seemed to us, also, a necessary supplement to the scientific doctrine of evolution.

But from whatever source acquired, we have not hesitated to accord fellowship in the truth to any and to all men so far as we recognize it in them. And just as strongly would we repudiate and condemn what seems to us to

be their errors.

The notice in The Path raises at once the issue between Christianity and Theosophy. Theosophists claim that their wisdom-religion embraces all that is true in Christianity, rejecting only its accretions. But our critic goes further. He affirms that its higher wisdom far transcends the narrow boundaries of Bible texts. He urges us to let go the doctrine of salvation by faith, and "seize the doctrine of Karma." In brief, he asks us to accord to Jesus merely the honor due to one of the great leaders and adepts who have become incarnate in order to show mankind the path of life, and to give up our Christian faith that He is the Son of God manifested to destroy the works of the devil and to take away the sin of the world, and that there is "none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."

For our part we desire to affirm here and again that to us Christ is the one power of God unto salvation, that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. There is nothing true in theosophy which is not in Christianity, rightly understood, and just where theosophy breaks down, and proposes to give to the people a stone, Christianity gives them bread; just where it seeks to peer through the world's night for some trace of the distant

dawn, there Christianity breaks through the darkness with the light of a great hope, and with divine assurance that "the night is far spent, the day at hand," and that now is our salvation near.

Let us look for a little at its chief doctrines of Karma and re-incarnation. Theosophy teaches that the law of progress for human souls binds them to an almost endless cycle of incarnations before they can reach Nirvana or rest in God, and that they can advance only by their good works and according to an unchanging law of deeds done. Christianity recognizes re-incarnation only as it recognizes evolution. It admits it as the probable method by which the natural man, so long as he remains on the animal plane, is advanced to a higher level until he reaches the spiritual plane. But it has no use for it beyond that. For just at the point that this process of judgment in the flesh issues in teaching man to live unto God in the spirit, the power of Christ takes hold of him and lifts him on to a higher plane of being, from which he is raised above the conditions of earthy manhood into the heavenly. Re-incarnation therefore is a merciful provision for lost souls, not for souls who are saved. It is a door of hope for those who have lost personality in a second death, but it is no way of salvation for those who "lose their souls" in Christ. These find their lives again restored in Him, and placed forever beyond the power of death. The re-incarnation therefore of the theosophists becomes a great error at the point where they fail to recognize the work of Christ in human salvation. They push this principle to a point where they nullify the mission of Him who is the great Emancipator of the race from the grinding operation of

it. Their doctrine of re-incarnation also is defective in that it fails to embrace that wider operation of the law recognized in Scripture, by which one victorious soul may carry a whole group in his train and become their deliverer. A man in the flesh may represent not only a separate soul who lived and failed in the past, but a group of kindred souls may be attached to him in his conflict. Just as Christ, the supreme example of a triumphant Son of Man, unlocked hades and set free a multitude of captives who waited for His salvation, so every son of man in whom Christ is formed may end his conflict in the flesh by a similar triumph. In this way imperfect souls in whom the spiritual life was quickened may reach their goal without the humiliation of another separate earthly trial. know not what possibilities are involved in the great principle that we are members one of another, and mutual burden-bearers. This whole wide arena of flesh and blood is the sphere in which the outcast spirits and unhoused souls of past generations are struggling back into the light of life.

We

There is a whole range of truth here which Christianity might teach theosophy if it would only humble itself to the Great Teacher sent from God.

And so with regard to its kindred law of Karma, which is right so far as it accords with the Christian principle that whatsoever a man soweth, that must he also reap. But it is immensely wrong in denying that beyond the operation of this principle there is a region where faith becomes effective for man's salvation.

Christianity is the gracious revelation of a new and living way to God. Instead of salvation to be attained at

the end of an almost endless Karmic progress, it shows how men can leap where theosophy bids them creep. Their faith is counted for righteousness. For what is salvation, but harmonization, the right rhythm of being between man and God? From this point of view faith works in man righteousness because it is the supremely righteous act; it sets up at once the true tone of being between the soul and God. It implies submission, obedience, fellowship. Christianity then does not violate the eternal law that men must reap as they have sown it enables the man of faith to at once accept and submit to that law, to yield himself to the death it exacts for sin, and so out of and beyond this death to begin his life anew. Theosophy despises the means by which God in the gospel of His Son has kindled in humanity, stupefied and despairing under its long and dreary bondage to the law, the principle of faith and invested it with saving power. No! it has no use for Christ except as an adept, and yields Him no honor as the Redeemer of the world, the new Head of humanity, the quickener of the dead, the Prince of Life, the Lord of the new heavens and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

The indictment of Christianity against theosophy therefore is that it denies to the sinful world a Saviour, and to the dead world a Life-giver. It leaves the race to flounder through the endless mire under the operation of eternal law (which on the whole is beneficent indeed), but without the arm of divine strength and human tenderness which Christ reaches down to us out of heaven. If no other proof were afforded of the sluggish help to human souls this Gentile faith supplies as compared with the stimulus of the Christian faith, the proof of history is enough. Is