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(August-September 1890)
Publications:
- The Path, vol. V, nos. 5-6, August-September 1890, pp. 137-148, 169-176
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Title for references: Fullerton A - Theosophy the Religion of Jesus
Short description: Argues that Theosophy and the teaching of Jesus share the same fundamental doctrines — the universal...
137
Part I.
It is not strange that ordinary Christians should look upon Theosophy with distrust and dislike, nor should one condemn them therefor. Those of us—and there are many—who once stood upon the Orthodox platform, perfectly understand that aspect of other faiths which from it is inevitable. We have, we believe, risen to higher ground and attained to fuller truths, appreciating better what of merit there is in the ground vacated, and certainly perceiving how much it is complemented by what we have since learned, yet not at all forgetting what was our former attitude, or failing to note that the attitude was consistent with and consequent upon the platform.
Every "orthodox" Christian holds of necessity the following convictions: 1st, that there is and can be but one true religion—the Christian; 2d, that only those forms of that one can be true which are included in the term "orthodox"; 3d, that any spiritual system disavowing the title "Christian", or treating all religions as variant expressions of a common thought, must be false; and 4th, that the adherents to such errorists are not merely in opinion, but are justly open to moral opprobrium. Nor are the 3d and 4th convictions illogical. If the Supreme Being has revealed one religion to man as containing His truth and His power, any other is an impertinence; and if a human being presumes either to alter the revelation or to reject it, he has not only erred, he has sinned. Granting the premises, the conclusion is immediate.
138But there are several patent facts which congregate before a Christian and will not be dismissed. One is that, although 18 centuries have passed since the asserted revelation, less than one-third of humanity accepts it. Another is that by far the largest part of that third,—the Roman Catholics, the Russo and other Greeks, and the Unitarians, is thoroughly unorthodox, and consequently not to be classed with true believers. Still another is that, among nations outside of Christianity as well as in these unorthodox bodies, are many individuals of profoundly religious convictions and lives. A fourth is that the influence of even orthodox beliefs upon communities holding them is far less than is necessitated by their supposed Divine origin, the peaceableness, truthfulness, honesty, conscientiousness of Christians not being at all what the theory demands. A fifth is that such beliefs not only give no sign of conquering the world, but are even exhibiting such weakness and decay as to arouse anxious questionings in religious bodies over "What is to stem the tide of worldliness and unbelief" and "How can Christianity be made to reach the masses". And a sixth—by no means the least—is that not a few sincere and devout souls, of undeniable intelligence and motive, have quitted the orthodox doctrines of their early training and convictions, and have avowedly accepted others as being more consonant with reason and more congenial to spirituality.
Waiving for the time being all prejudice or partisanship, a thoughtful Christian, intent only on truth, must see that these unquestionable facts demand the following equally unquestionable inferences. 1st, That Christianity cannot claim exclusive title to Divine origin when, after 1800 years, it has failed to pervade the globe. 2d, That no one section of it can claim title to "orthodoxy" when that claim is denied by an enormous majority equally claiming it. 3d, That its certain influence on morals and manners cannot be conceded in face of the facts exhibited by Christendom. 4th, That its indispensableness to the production of real devotion cannot be upheld when that devotion is produced under some other system, and when competent testers of both adopt the latter. And from these conjoined inferences arise two probabilities worth examination: 1st, That religion may be a force too diffused, too world-wide, to be monopolized by any one creed; 1392d, That the inadequacy of any one form of it to conquer existing evils may be due to mistake of its spirit or omission of its essentials.
Now this position, reached by the successive steps above taken, is precisely that already occupied by the Theosophist. The notion that he is a contemner of religion, that he has only virulent hatred for Christianity in particular, that he would suppress every church and ritual and priest, is grotesquely absurd. It is because of his faith in religion that he is anxious to give it the most intelligent and influential expression; it is because of his desire to ensure to the spiritual principle the most unrestricted sweep that he seeks to remove every clog upon its progress; it is because of his knowledge of the enormous reformatory power latent in certain neglected truths that he is eager to see them again adopted and employed. His is not the rôle of the sceptic or the infidel or the agnostic; he may have to employ destructive methods, but only so far as they are needful to clear the way for the march of Truth; to represent him as an iconoclastic zealot is wholly to misconstrue his spirit and purpose.
Nor is it the fact that the Theosophist seeks to dislodge from its shrine in human hearts the sacred figure of Jesus, or to belittle the character and life which must ever remain a model. Why should he? He and the founder of the Christian faith hold the same belief in the Divine origin of humanity, the same reverence for it as having its source in the one Fatherhood, the same confidence in its inherent capabilities and potencies, the same reliance on the motives which can ennoble and uplift it, the same conviction as to the course which alone can conduct it to its goal, the same foresight of what that goal shall be. More than this, I make bold to say, the very doctrines which underlie the preaching of the Galilean Prophet are those which the Theosophist is voicing as those upon which must rest every true plan for the regeneration of society; and the very impulse which swayed the life and sanctified the death of the one, is that which is proclaimed by the other as the only impulse which can ever make human life worth the living and human death a passport to a life more Divine. Nor is even this all. For the very power over Nature which has seemed to apologists conclusive proof of a supernatural origin, the control of physical forces and diseases and movements, does not separate the two, for the Theosophist recognizes such as possible to a trained and enlightened humanity, and accepts, as perhaps no orthodox Christian has ever done, the literal exactness of the words "Greater works than these shall ye do".
It is true, no doubt, that between the Jesus of the Churches and the Theosophist there is a gulf,—though not more so, perhaps, than between the Jesus of the Churches and the Jesus of the Gospels. But it is with the Jesus of the Gospels that the true comparison must be made. The other is an artificial character slowly formed through many centuries of fierce schol140astic controversy, a character pieced and moulded and colored by hands intent only on carrying out the designs of minds lost to spiritual intuitions and filled with metaphysical speculations or party dogmas, a character made up of ecclesiastical fictions and voided of rational life and import. Undoubtedly in the Jesus of dogma, the Jesus of creeds and Councils and confessions, the Theosophist has little interest. But to the Jesus of St. Luke, the Jesus—I might almost say—of the New Testament, his feeling is very different.
That religion "is a force too diffused, two world-wide, to be monopolized by any one creed" is unqualifiedly stated by St. Paul, who says that "in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him". Reverence and obedience being the conditions of acceptance, and not the holding of any particular dogma, we can easily see not only how independent of dogma is the religious instinct, but also how wrong would be the refusal to recognize that instinct when not in combination with the dogma held by oneself. If a Theosophist would err in denying religiousness to a Christian because the latter's views of God, spiritual culture, and destiny differ from his own, not less would a Christian err in denying religiousness to a Theosophist on the same ground. In so doing, each would contradict the spirit, as well as the teachings, of his own creed.
That "the inadequacy of any one form of religion to conquer existing evils may be due to mistake of its spirit or omission of its essentials" is the emphatic assertion of Theosophy. As it is so much easier to uphold intellectual propositions than to maintain spiritual life, the world's great faiths have insensibly lapsed into the petrifaction of a creed and the formality of a cult. Some central thought—the unity of God, the mission of an Avatar, the need of reform—was the nucleus of the force, but as time went on and surrounding influences changed the direction and character of the movement, the first impulse died out, the motive altered, the effect weakened. So long as this has been the case with Christianity. Preëminently was the distinct teaching of Jesus—love to God and love to man—was the essence of missionary zeal, so long was the Church pure and its work efficient. But as application of his teaching cooled before speculation on his personality, as devoutness became subordinated to belief and a creed took the place of a life, the religion lost its power to advance or to mould. Thus we see to-day the whole of Christendom separated into numberless sects, its forces expended on doctrinal maintenance and disputation, its reformatory power paralyzed, and its expansive possibilities ended. Nations learn war as earnestly as in any former era, the teachings of Jesus are wholly unthought of in legislation or jurisprudence, civil government and private life go on precisely as if neither his name nor his mission had ever been heard of. The spirit has been mistaken, the essentials have dropped 141from sight. And all this is because the Christian Religion has been substituted for the Religion of Christ.
In the apathy and the error and the evil of this 19th century, the Theosophist appears upon the stage and sounds a cry for renovation and reform. He is not the apostle of a new faith. He does not present a novel creed or a fresh organization. He disclaims any monopoly of truth, any recent discovery, any Divine commission. He invites no personal following, organizes no Church, enjoins no obedience. He repudiates a crusade against established beliefs or a revolution in the social order. There is nothing alarming or anarchistic in his utterances, however pungently they express the need for change or prompt to instant action. Why? Because he holds that there is enough of truth and motive already known, if only we can be induced to use it. Piercing through the layers of dogma and custom with which time has overlaid every religion, he goes to the very substratum of all religions and finds there the one common principle which is ample for all exigencies and all wants. Recalling long-forgotten truths, he shows how these, if given sway, are potent to correct all the evils of private life, of national wrong, of international rivalry. Pointing out that true progress must be in harmony with law and not in contravention of law, he carries history back to periods undreamed of by the ordinary publicist, and makes its one unvarying lesson the spur to present effort. Emphasizing freedom, freedom from prejudice, freedom from traditional superstitions, dead-letter interpretations, the whole artificial system by which conscience has been fettered and aspiration checked, he proclaims the emancipation of the human mind and of the human soul. He clears away the stifling encumbrances of centuries, knocks down the barriers long keeping out the light of heaven, and floods men's intellects and consciences with truth and motive from every quarter. And this he does in the name of human Brotherhood. "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."
In thus advocating reform of thought and method, the Theosophist is of course confronted with the Christian who endorses Christianity as it is and who does not admit either that the mission of Christ has been misconceived or that he himself has misconceived it. But with the thoughtful Christian, intent only on truth, and willing to admit the two probabilities heretofore stated, why should there be conflict? The Theosophist does not insist that he shall abandon his God, his Christ, or his Church, but only that he shall inquire if his conception of them may not properly be enlarged, and also if he may not have omitted certain truths which all experience shows to be indispensable to a reformatory mission.
The two great truths more particularly referred to are Karma and Reincarnation. The first is that moral law which prescribes that as a man sows, 142so shall he reap, the law that every good or evil deed receives exactly its award, that a man's condition and character and experiences are precisely what he has made them by his acts. It is, in short, the application of inflexible justice to the minutest detail of human record. The other is the fact that, in the slow process of evolutionary development up to the Divine, man is born many times into physical life, reaping the results of these careers as he goes along, and finally surmounting them when discipline and development have been accomplished. Each doctrine is a complement of the other; the two are the justification, the explanation, the solvent of human life.
If either doctrine was incompatible with real Christianity, a Christian could hardly be blamed for rejecting it. But such is not the fact. Divesting Christianity of its historical excrescences and restoring it to the pattern of its Founder, one finds that Karma and Reincarnation not only harmonize with the rest but that the rest is incomplete without them. Paper II will illustrate the fact. But meantime there are certain truths which may be pondered upon as essential to any scheme for the cure of human ills through religion.
The first is that Karma and Reincarnation are the oldest beliefs in the world. Theosophists hold that their origin was synchronous with the origin of intelligent humanity. Certainly they antedate any historical religion, are traceable as far back as is the expression of religious sentiment, are plain in the writings of the world's great seers and prophets. Obscured in eras and localities, as in our own, they ever reappear in time, vindicating themselves to the thoughtful and the unprejudiced, challenging the belief of those who seek a better explanation of life's problems than is given by any conventional scientist or conventional theologian. In this our day they have asserted themselves again, and the wide-spread welcome they are receiving from the intelligent and the devout is one of the phenomena of the closing century.
The second is that these are the only doctrines which give a rational solution to the perplexities of existence. Sin and sorrow and suffering are otherwise hopeless of explanation. The theory of accident satisfies no real thinker; the theory of Divine pleasure revolts every reverent heart. And yet, other than the Theosophic, there is no third. Search in every direction and to every depth, and you come finally either to the doctrine of casualty or to the doctrine of caprice. Karma and Reincarnation explode both. They teach that human ill is the consequence, and the consequence only, of human deed, and that the opportunity offered in rebirth for its cure is the only one which can be effectual or permanent.
143The third is that no other doctrines have ever been sufficient to restrain the vehemence of passion and selfishness in either nations or individuals. Make a man thoroughly to understand that he creates his own future, that every thought and word and deed rebound upon himself by a law which never can be evaded or defied, that not a right or a wrong is ever forgotten or ignored, that you give a check absent from all theories of a changeable account or a placable Deity. The essential justice of the proposition enforces its acceptance. And so with nations. Let it be seen that aggression, conquest, tyranny bring inflexibly their punishment, and you end the belief that a wrong may yet be made to pay. Time is no bar, delay confers no immunity, as to either communities or persons. The Divine edict that "as a man sows, so shall he reap" overlies all regions and pervades all recesses of human action, and in the clearness with which it is perceived, the cogency with which it is operative, rests the assurance that conduct will be swayed by a consideration from which every element of uncertainty or mistake has been wholly expunged.
Alexander Fullerton.
Part II.
169The last part of the 19th century is much like the last part of the century preceding the mission of Jesus. Both are marked by intense earnestness in all that concerns purely material life, by selfish and hostile national policies, by a decay of the highest spiritual principle, and by a transmutation of such spiritual vigor as exists into assertion of religious dogmas and maintenance of ecclesiastical organization. But both are also marked by indications of widespread unrest under the dominant religionism, of a suspicion that a different and more potent motive is needed for human melioration, of a growing distrust by the intellectual for conventional doctrine and of distaste by the devout for conventional morals. In both, moreover, we find a vague belief that some other system is about to appear in the world, some other light to shine in the darkness which shrouds so much of human life and thought and purpose. Is it strange, then, that these many analogies should find their culmination in the fact that in each case the system has 170actually appeared, the light has actually shone? If not, it can hardly be strange that the systems should be substantially the same, one. Nor yet can it be strange that both should disclaim novelty, affirming again and again that they are but re-assertions of old and long-known truths, pointing out that there is no new way to happiness but that the only one has been obstructed, that resolution, not revelation, is what is needed for men's advance.
Some fifteen years ago rumors passed through the Western hemisphere that a singular religious philosophy was emerging from the East, its immemorial home. In course of time more and more of its particulars reached the West, successive books presented it with more fulness, and a copious literature now renders it everywhere accessible. It was known as Theosophy, or The Wisdom-Religion. It was a universal or all-embracing Science, for no truth was beyond its ramifications, but as a system of practical religious life it voiced these three very simple doctrines: 1st, that all men have a common Divine origin, and therefore are really a Universal Fraternity; 2nd, that their elevation to the Divine is through a series of earth-lives during which every lower and selfish principle is to be overcome and the spiritual nature attain full sway; 3rd, that the responsibility for action, rests on each man individually, and consequently his award, every part of it in accordance with his deeds. Theosophy asserted that these doctrines had been the property of man from its very origin, however at times obscured or forgotten, and that as they were carried out the reign of the Divine expanded. They met with no small welcome from the earnest and the devout, and rapidly spread through the reading world. Theosophy established no Church, but formed a simple Society for conference, mutual help, and the more systematic furtherance of truth. It disavowed all coercive or persuasive proselytism, providing only for the widest proclamation of fact, and leaving acceptance to the enlightened conscience of hearers. It insisted upon no one's abandoning his ancestral or personal faith, but urged a loftier spirituality, a finer motive, a heartier endeavor. For its aim was not the upbuilding of a sect, but the renovation of a principle.
Some 1800 years ago rumors passed through Judea of the sermons and influence of a mighty Prophet. As he traversed the land and discoursed to its multitudes, his teaching unfolded itself more and more as a pungent appeal to the oldest of all truths and of all motives. Waiving secular and social problems as outside his range, he addressed himself directly to the spiritual instinct and forced home upon it the burning stimulus of eloquence and pathos. Reduced to its elements, this teaching was three-fold: 1st, the common Fatherhood of God and hence the common brotherhood of men; 1712nd, their restoration to the Divine likeness through the gradual triumph of the spiritual over the carnal nature; 3rd, the rigorous application to human affairs of the principle that whatsoever a man sows, that also shall he reap. He claimed no novelty in his instruction, asserting that such had always been the Law and the Prophets, but only that it had been overgrown with human invention, and that, to be once more active, it must be purified and cleansed. To such straight-forward, vivid appeal the conscience of many responded, and these Teacher associated with himself, giving them other teachers and providing for the circulation of truth through the world. Yet he established no ecclesiastical machinery, incited no crusade against existing creeds, and desired no accessions save from such as should "believe". For his aim was not the aggrandizement of a Church, but the effectuation of a life.
If the record of his discourses had been contemporaneously and copiously made, our acquaintance with his doctrine, and particularly as it bore upon his own mission, would be far more exact. But all reports were of much later date, of somewhat uncertain origin, were fragmentary and incomplete, and have been unquestionably tampered with by subsequent transcribers. The attempt to treat the record as exhaustive is expressly reprobated by his own Apostle (St. John XXI, 25), and the further attempt to educe from it a connected scheme of dogmatic theology is wholly to mistake its history, its genius, its purpose. Yet its features are so distinct that it is not difficult to etch the main doctrines which Jesus held and taught.
First, then, he most explicitly held to the universal Fatherhood of God, a fact referred to over and over again, and pervading the thought of every discourse. Second, as its consequence, to the brotherhood of all men. The Parable of the Good Samaritan was given as a definition of "neighbor" in the injunction "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself" (St. Luke X, 27); and of this injunction he elsewhere says (St. Math. XXII, 40) that upon it hangs the whole of morals and ethics. But the Universal Brotherhood involves the largest range of charity and kindness. "Love your enemies" (St. Luke VI, 27). "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" (St. Math. VII, 12). Third, that verbal homage was worthless, only sincere service being acceptable. "Not every one that saith unto me 'Lord, Lord' shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (St. Math. VII, 21). Fourth, the precise return to every man of the exact value of his deeds. "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" (St. Math. VII, 2). "Judge not and ye shall not be judged" (St. Luke VI, 37). Fifth, the conditioning of the future existence upon the acts, not the opinions, in this. "If thou wilt enter into life, 172keep the commandments" (St. Math. XIX, 17). Parable of the sheep and the goats (St. Math. XXV.) "Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you" (St. Math. VII, 7). Sixth, the abnegation of self as the essence of spiritual progress. "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (St. Math. X, 39). "Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (St. Luke XIV, 11). Seventh, the absolute relentlessness of law. "Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt not come out thence till thou has paid the uttermost farthing" (St. Math. V, 26). "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail" (St. Luke XVI, 17). Eighth, the fact of reincarnation. "But I say unto you that Elias is come already, and they knew him not but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. * * * * He spake unto them of John the Baptist" (St. Math. XVII, 12 & 13). Ninth, his own life as a model. "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" (St. Math. XX, 28). Tenth, that where I am, there ye may be also" (St. John XIV, 3). Eleventh, that his whole doctrine was the old heritage of man, not at all an inferior or unwelcome invention. "No man having drunk old wine straightway desireth new, for he saith, The old is better" (St. Luke V, 39).
If a Theosophist to-day was to preach to the multitudes as Jesus did, these would be the lines upon which his thought must run. He would, indeed, expound more fully the fact of reincarnation, for that is not now a common belief as in the time of Jesus (St. John IX, 2), but otherwise the fundamental positions, the motives appealed to, the method and process of spiritual development, the doctrine of the certitude of Karmic effects and of destiny as the alone determination of character, would be the same. Without any one of these truths, the others would be disconnected. Human fraternity, apart from the one origin, is a beautiful sentiment. Persistent effort, if any easier mode exists for surmounting the evils of the flesh and reaching the heights of immortality, is a needless toil. The sowing of only good seed, apart from the certainty that whatsoever is sown shall be reaped, is superfluous caution. Indifference to life as compared with principle, but for the fact that other lives remain for experience and justification, might be recklessness. Cultivation of selflessness, if there is no evolutionary process by which the self is to be merged in the all, would be meaningless. Indeed, the whole teaching is so joined and braced together by the relation of its various parts that therein lie its unity and its consistency. Why? Because Jesus was a Theosophist.
173Except for the unusual conjunction of words, there is nothing in this that need surprise. He expressly disclaimed originality;—"My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me" (St. John VII, 16); and the very form of this declaration is the same that was used in all times by the messengers of righteousness coming out among men. He was but voicing the old truths, learned from the one source of all truth, as with the other great Teachers and Reformers of men. Who were his immediate preceptors must be mainly conjectural. Yet there are two probabilities which may give the clue. One is his membership in the reforming sect of the Essenes, a conviction reached by some of the most competent examiners into his habits, expressions, and affiliations. The other arises from the large part of his life unaccounted for—from the age of 12, at which time occurred the only recorded incident of his childhood, to that of 30, when his active ministry began, the narrative of the Gospels is void. That preparation for so exceptional a ministry consisted in eighteen years of work as a carpenter is incredible. Far more likely is it that he betook himself either to Egypt or to the group of Initiates understood to have then existed to the East or north-east of Palestine, even as St. Paul retired to Arabia for nearly three years before beginning his functions as Apostle (Gal. I, 17). It is even possible that he may have travelled to the home of the very Magi who had brought presents to his cradle. (St. Math. II, 11). In any one of these three regions he would have had the advantage of communion and tuition from the highest spiritual authorities, and many of his recorded sayings would thus be explained. Now these authorities were all Theosophists, i. e. they held the very doctrines held by Theosophists now. If Jesus, as is probable, was their pupil, his identity of belief was most natural.
But we have looked thus far at little more than the ethical quality of his teachings. Yet behind and below them, their base and source and essence, are those everlasting principles of pervading Law without which religion would be but a sentiment and ethics be destitute of the philosophy needed to make them stable. For the Universe is One, its varied life the manifestation of a single force, and he who would truly expound the nature of any part must know the unity of the law which reigns alike in all, determining the fall of the sparrow no less than the action of conscience in the soul. Modern science is steadily advancing towards that conception of unity, and even now hints that but one substance underlies the matter of its experiments, but one force thrills through the thousand activities in Nature. And this force, as the keen-eyed are perceiving, is no mere physical potency developing in matter, but an outcome from the ultimate home of being, diffusing itself as it penetrates more deeply into the material universe, but ever changeless in its nature and ever showing that the root of natural law is spiritual law. And if the solution of all problems in all 174spheres is to be sought in the one principle which stands behind them, and if therefore a true Religion must be a true Philosophy as well, and if right thought and right aspiration and right living can come only from that perception of Law which senses it as universal, we may expect to find substantial oneness in all religious teachings which have spiritual vigor enough to make them effective and scientific truth enough to make them lasting.
Students far advanced in occult learning, comprehending well that profound Science of God and Nature and Man which for untold ages has been possessed in silence and by few, assert that the words of Jesus which carry but superficial meaning to the ordinary reader, they see that deep acquaintance with Occult things which transforms them from mere ethical counsels into precepts embodying the philosophy of a universal knowledge. Therein they trace the differentiation into its thousand forms of the Akasa or original fount of Life and Light, the law of action and reaction as it sweeps from spiritual to material planes, the mighty fact of the evolution of the Divine principle in man through all its junction with lower elements till it emerges enriched and ready for its permanent restoration, the upward trend of the whole Universe as the spiritual impulse refines it for its future of unimaginable glory. But we, without that deeper insight, that knowledge transmitted from Initiates, can yet see in the story of Jesus something of the method and the doctrine which demonstrate his identity with them, and demonstrate also his hold of great truths which Esoteric Philosophy has always grasped and modern science is now suspecting.
"Except a man be born again," said Jesus, "he cannot see the kingdom of God." This is far more than a vivid metaphor of religious life. It is not even a mere assertion that there is an inflexible law of spiritual rebirth, the law that the carnal nature must be made to die and all vitality be translated to the Higher Self. It was the central doctrine, the culminating revelation, in the Eleusinian and other Mysteries, that indicated the last grades of initiation that had passed the lower Initiation and were then and thus admitted to the Epoptai. The use of the phrase showed a knowledge of the great Mystery, a knowledge attainable only by the one path.
But rebirth is only the beginning of evolution. Its end is restoration to unity with Godhood. Humanity can advance to Divine perfection. "Be ye therefore perfect," urged Jesus, "even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." "Every one that is perfect shall be as his master". Modern Christianity, as well as all other religions disclaiming the old Esoteric doctrine, places the limit of human evolution short of Divinity. Jesus struck down that limit and cleared the way to union with the Divine Pleroma, restoring the original belief and placing himself among the Masters who had proclaimed it.
175To the Divine vision purity is essential. It is "the pure in heart" who "shall see God". The soul spark must vibrate so high as to throw off all impurity of substance, and thus vibrate in unison with the highest Light called "Chrestos". Every dissonance from lower passion or desire must fade out, till the upper principles, the Spiritual and the Manasic, are in entire accord. Then, and not till then, as Jesus and all Initiates held, would come the beatific vision.
Jesus formed a chosen circle of inner pupils, and revealed to them his more recondite teachings. "When they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples." "Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without all these things are done in parables." All real Masters teach esoterically as well as exoterically, the interior principles, the true disclosure, being only for those tried and fitted to receive it. This was the uniform practice of those who had preceded him, it is conspicuous in the history of even the Philosophers of antiquity, and it is but the law understood in Occult Science from immemorial time. For the secret sense, not the verbal form, of all holy teaching, oral or scriptural, is that spirit which maketh alive, and this only the sympathetic could detect.
In the recorded career of Jesus, nothing, save his flawless character, is so conspicuous as his deeds of healing and power. That he controlled diseases, storms, and unseen spirits is detailed by each Evangelist. This record is susceptible of, and has received, two precisely opposite treatments. The one, the orthodox, regards it as a demonstration of his Divine nature, considering it proof that he was incarnate God. The other, the rationalistic, considering it proof of the marvellous, manifesting itself along the lines usual in an uncritical age and when superstition was general. Yet is adhesion to either necessitated? Is there no middle ground between a theological inference and an historical denial? Theosophy proffers one at once. It holds that the upward progress of man towards the Divine, as the Ego frees itself from fleshly bonds and learns the life of supersensuous realms, it acquires vast range of fact and power unknown to ordinary men, and, together with insight into Nature's mysterious forces, gains control of them. Fitted by discipline and character to wield powers, they are given it. Occasionally in history such exalted men may be discerned; occasionally, recently, in the re-awakening of interest and inquiry, abundant evidence of their present existence and capacities has been disclosed. To a Theosophist, understanding what are the genius and goal of spiritual development, there is nothing strange in the supposition that Jesus, evidently an 176Initiate, may have been a lofty Adept, relieving at once both the ignorance and the suffering of his hearers. Exceptional Power is not an abnormal accompaniment to exceptional Wisdom. May it not be that the cordial recognition Theosophy gives to both can prove the meeting-ground of the antagonistic schools, and that the Rationalist may concede a fact unprovable by conventional methods, and the Orthodox may waive a dogma sustained only by tradition or by Councils? And if the sacred figure of Jesus, no longer the center for inflamed contention or for sceptical indifference, should become the common reverence of sincere devotion and of intelligent belief, would not the dissolution of creeds and contentions in the presence of one great resolution to imitate his spirit and exemplify his ideal, restore again the fraternity of his early followers and repeat the story of their zeal and their reforms?
The hopefulness of any missionary effort lies in the simplicity of its essential truths and the intensity of its unselfish aim. Theosophy has come to a very wearied humanity in a very hopeless age. The problems of life never seemed more insoluble, and the very question "Is life worth living?" is mooted around. The old styptics to thought are impatiently waived away, and theological balms have no avail. Men shake off dusty, thread-bare dogmas, void of human interest or worth. Living issues, vital queries start up in every quarter. "What are we here for?" "What to do?"—these are the cries which pursue the thinker as he passes through the throng. Nothing that is flimsy or inconsequent, nothing merely hoary or traditional, will be accepted. Theory of the universe and of man must have some adequacy and some life. Theosophy meets these demands in full. Its exhaustless science gives limitless scope to the insatiate student, its disclosure of an infinite ascent thrills the spirit of the mystic, and the philanthropist finds in its doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation the implement for his work of social melioration. When the devout soul cries for some exemplar of faith and life, it points him to the great Teachers of humanity, Teachers fitted for their function through many aeons of determined progress, and shows how all have passed through one common experience, drawn from one common source of illumination, and expound one common truth to the world. And so whether that Teacher be named Jesus or Buddha, Confucius or Zoroaster, there pour through him the Divine light and the fraternal warmth which the impulse to a reformed humanity, and wherever his true pupils disperse the message he enjoined, there spring up the same blessings which he himself conferred through Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion.
Alexander Fullerton.
Footnotes