 |
vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
< Hurrichand Chintaman. (continued from page 8-245) >
Poor, wronged Hurrichand! He did not yield without a struggle. He left no string untuned to sing his woes and his wrongs. With this laudable object he wrote several letters and sent them abroad to Europe and America. The following is one of them:—
Bombay, 24th March 1879.
Dear Brother,
I have received your letter, and in reply thereto I can only state for the present, that through sheer disgust, at the conduct of the members of the Arya Samaj, I have retired from the Presidentship. It is with equal regret I have also to inform you, that the friendly relations subsisting between myself and H. P. Blavatsky, who I am sorry has an ungovernable temper, have likewise ceased to exist. I do not know to what end matters may go. But I pray to suspend your judgement till you hear my defence. I have worked disinterestedly, assiduously and manfully for the good of the Arya Samaj and the Theosophical Society, and it is to me a matter of the deepest pain that all my efforts in doing good should terminate in the propagation of slander and general calumny on which it is needless that I should dwell for the present. Begging you will kindly give the necessary information to all the Fellows of the Theosophical Society,
This letter is a model of skilful pleading and making worse appear the better reason. But it will not much avail Hurrichand. He says he retired from the Presidentship of the Arya Samaj in sheer disgust at the conduct of its members; whereas everybody knows for a fact that the members expelled him in sheer disgust. He alludes to the ungovernable temper of Madame Blavatsky. We can easily imagine that this lady had very natural reason to be wrath at the impudent and cool villainy of the man. Further comments are useless. We are likely to have an ungovernable temper, too; and the name of Hurrichand must put every honest man in a passion.
The Theosophical Society.
Those who were in doubt as to what the Theosophical Society is, can have their doubts easily set at rest by borrowing a copy of the Address by their President.
He thus speaks of the Son of God:—“Why should we accept Jesus rather than Vashishta, Goutam or Zoroaster? Until the close of the second century no sect (!) believed him to be more than a man, ‘a good and just man,’ as James, his alleged brother, is made to call him. Every (!) student of history is aware that when the polite and learned Gnostics of that period were exposing the pious frauds and the chicanery of the early Christian writers, and riddling their mythical tales of Jesus and the Apostles, Irenæus, that arch plotter and forger; produced the Fourth Gospel according to John, and converted the previously accepted man Jesus, who contained within his form the heaven-descended Logos of Philo, to the God Jesus, the equivalent of the second person of the Platonic Trinity, and who, being ‘Very God,’ was the equal of the Deity in every essential attribute.”
He informs us that Christianity is a ‘secondary’ faith, “which can only live by the destruction of every other, and which finds no room in the love, mercy, or justice of its God for men who never heard of Jesus, nor even read a passage of its Bible.”
The assumption and the ignorance displayed in these extracts are of the same nature as those of which we have already complained in the effusions of “W. W.” and the Swedenborgian Hindoo.
But the Principles, Rules, and By-Laws (sic) give us a poor idea of the practical use of the Society. To join it as a probationer a man must pay a pound sterling, and then wait till he has demonstrated “his ability to conquer evil habits and unwarrantable prejudices.” This seems a mistake; the unwarrantable prejudices against the only religion which supplies grace to conquer evil habits should surely be entered as an exception.
As a specimen of Theosophic history, we are informed that one of the ancestors of the President-Founder left England in 1635 “to seek in the savage wilderness of America that freedom to worship the Jewish Jehovah which he could not have at home under the Restoration.” We were not aware of such a striking instance of foresight on the part of one of the Pilgrim Fathers.
If we might offer the Theosophical Society any advice, we could only venture to address them in their President-Founder’s own words:—“Begin with the first pettiness you can find in yourself and remove that. It may be a . . . strong antipathy for some one thing, person, caste; or a supercilious self-sufficiency that prevents your forming a fair judgment of other men’s . . . ideas. * * It matters not; if it stands in the way of your perfect and absolute enfranchisement from the rule of this sensuous world, ‘pluck it out and cast it from thee.’ This done, you may pass on.”
Editor's notes
- ↑ The Theosophical Society. by unknown author, Bombay Church Chronicle, The, May 31, 1879
- ↑ Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy by unknown author. H. P. Blavatsky added the handwritten label “Theosophical Society” over the building sign and “Theosophists” across the printed word “AGENTS” on the sack at left.