Sens See Settee ee eine : pee corets 4 ra ‘y nity ef S a rk Uses: ers oS pret ee Lope d ee Rio oe Seite: yh th : oe thls CDE A ea Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/immortalityOOhosk _ IMMORTALITY ae te F i 5 S A me 2 a ir ' ar ‘¥ . “a. 3 ; pi ‘ + 1 1 a : “ , = « - 4 ; a J "a t a" ress ‘ + 7 - : i ALC + j *< s - E ‘ 1 « 2 x5 “ ft, “ ~*~ “25 co) ee | - _, © — : . 1 x a 4 a <= : Be are oo Pd ‘ . - . ¥ \ ‘ ¥ is od > x iat H : The great spiral nebula in Canes Venatici (M. 51), showing the two arms. Immortality By H. C. ‘"HOSKIER 1925 THE STRATFORD COMPANY, Publishers Boston, MASSACHUSETTS Copyright 1925 Sy i aoa e ‘ 9 by oS ee) Pal ao =| < Seal c=) faa} mM i=] 2s e = é : oe = ; coe ie) ) ° oO ae ee eo oS o in ond =I $7) Ay * ‘IT say to thee weapons reach not the Life; Flame burns it not, waters cannot o’erwhelm, Nor dry winds wither it. Impenetrable, Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched, Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure, Invisible, ineffable, by word And thought unecompassed, ever all itself, Thus is the Soul declared! How wilt thou then, — Knowing it so—grieve, when thou shoulds’t not grieve ? ee Ee Nesbirtiy Of living things comes unperceived; the death Comes unperceived ; between them, beings perceive: What is there sorrowful herein, dear Prince? Wonderful, wistful to contemplate! Difficult, doubtful, to speak upon ! Strange and great for tongue to relate, Mystical hearing for everyone! Nor wotteth man this, what a marvel it is, | When seeing, and saying, and hearing are done!”’ Krishna to Arjuna in the BHaAGAvapb-Gita or ‘‘The Song Celestial’’ Sir Edwin Arnold’s translation In an essay such as this, the author has been anxious to suppress references at foot and footnotes, as far as pos- sible, in order not to disturb the train of thought of the reader, as he passes over the ground. This is the author’s excuse for not using the form of a running narrative all his own, with references and quotations relegated to the foot of the page, and this his reason for incorporating into the body of the text the quotations. It will be readily appreciated that in a review of this kind, — where, for a judgement, so much knowledge of the subject is presupposed upon the part of the reader, —it was incumbent to give at some length the various supporting literature of the ages, in the very words of the respective authors, which could not be adequately or tersely transferred to the language of the essay proper. The author hopes that critics will appreciate this fea- ture, and excuse any apparent prolixness of extraneous matter, which, in the nature of things, was practically forced upon him as an historical background, and which, if space allowed, should have been still more amply re- produced. The matter of cross-correspondence at the end has, it is believed, never been published previously in full in the English language. IMMORTALITY CHAPTER I Introductory 1, Since M AN has been upon the face of the earth, he has always had an earnest desire for immortality (so- ealled), but always with a view to remaming upon the Earth ttself. In every part of the habitable globe, under every sky and in every clime, man has struggled to resist the end — Death — and to continue his life among the familiar sur- roundings of Mountain and River, Hill, Valley and Stream, which he loved so well. He never sought of himself to take wings and leave the Earth. He saw the stars in their majesty rise and pale; he saw the movements and courses of heavenly bodies ; he may have worshipped and deified some of them in a far off kind of way, but he had no desire to fly to another Globe, nor to wander amid the Ether at death. How, then, did Religion start ? He worshipped Fire in an abstract kind of way, as being the source of all good, and the energiser of all forms of earth-life, but he had no desire to go to the Sun, or to be absorbed by the great Energiser. Religion — literally the binding of man to God — must therefore have started with some kind of a revelation of the Gods to men. Some kind of a ladder must have been 1 2 IMMORTALITY set up between Heaven and Earth, for man to suppose or to know that better things were to be found outside his earthly dwelling. And such is indeed the tradition which we find among every people, irrespective of colour or locality, as far as written records or oral tradition can be trusted. 2. Beyond this simple fact, there is a concordance of ideas amongst the various world-religions and traditions, a harmony in the various world-wide folklore, which points distinctly to some common origin or similar kind of extra- terrestrial communication in the matter of man’s rela- tions with the unknown and the infinite. 3. The trouble with our education in such matters is that the Schools generally begin their history with Homer,—a mere youth in such matters. His date, of approximately 800 B. C., is far too recent to help us. By the time of Hesiod and Homer, everything pertain- ing to Gods and Goddesses was hopelessly confused and allegorical, and we must search much earlier for light on the subject. 4. By religion, we are taught that the Earth-life is tran- sient and temporary, while the Real Life lies in ‘the beyond,’ — whence we came and whither we return. (See pp. 144-149.) 5. In order that man should cease to think of this Earth- life as the main thing, with the future absolutely in doubt, some kind of Revelation was necessary, some kind of Communication essential between him and his extra- mundane Creator and Ruler, to Whom and to Whom alone, in the last analysis, he owes allegiance. Hence, see we traces of this in the relics of all religions. IMMORTALITY 3 6. It is only in the last fifty years that the Christian Church has been willing to investigate the ancient sys- tems, and even today she does not begin to give them their due, and but few of her sons have taken the trouble to familiarise themselves with the elements of what is called the study of ‘‘Comparative Religions.’’ Yet here are Keys to unlock many difficulties and many mysteries. Nothing could be clearer than the original conceptions of Chinese and Indian Wisdom, which agree at a most distant period. 7. Man has been.on this Earth for a much longer period than is usually supposed. Geology is slowly compelling the acceptance of this fact. Cataclysms there have been, and the flood-story is so universally traced that there must be truth in it. Our greatest difficulty has been in neglecting the occult character of Genesis, and what lies hidden beneath its surface. If we can divest our minds of the fixed periods of the Patriarchs as such, and see in them an elastic chronology of periods, we can advance. Hardly otherwise. As a matter of fact Berosus’ period of 432,000 years for the 10 patriarchs or demi-gods of the dim pre-historic times (86400 ‘lustres’) would about correspond with the Biblical antediluvian period of 1656 years if we turn these into Biblical ‘‘ weeks.’’ Now, where do we begin our investigations of the his- tory of Man? It will be useful to commence in Egypt, for thence radiate all the Keys. 8. As to the connection between India and Egypt, ‘‘the religion of Egypt was essentially a religion of body, as that of India was of spirit. Egypt had multifarious 4 IMMORTALITY acts of external ritual; India cultivated contemplation. God to the Hindu was an undiscoverable essence; to the Egyptian, he was manifested in every type of animal existence. To the Hindu, time was nothing; eternity, all. To the Kgyptian, every passing moment had its consecrated work. Egypt was the antipodes of India. Nevertheless, it is true that Egypt received its first religious inspiration from India, even as did Zoroaster in Persia.’’* 9. As to the Trinity: ‘‘The Trinity of Creative Power, Destructive Power, and Mediatorial Power existed in India as Brahm, Siva, Vishnu; in Egypt as Osiris, Typhon, Horus. There were many Trinities in Egyptian theology. The same existed in Persia as Ormuzd, Ahri- man, Mithra (the Reconeiler). Different parts of Egypt had their different theologies. Pthah, the Supreme Father; Ra, the Sun-God, manifestation of the Supreme ; Amun, the Unknown God, were all manifestations of the God idea.’’’ 10. Egyptian dynastic history ceases a little later than 5,000 B. C. Back of that is a confused record of the un- belevably long reigns of Gods or demi-gods. It seems clear that from India came a migration long since to Ethiopia, and thence Indian religion penetrated to Egypt and became the foundation for their system. And their system imcluded direct communication of God with man. Here Moses was educated in all the Temple-lore of the Egyptians, as was Orpheus about the same time, if we are to believe St. Yves d’Alveydre, about whose book ‘‘La Mission des Juifs’’ we shall speak later. 1 Stainton Moses’ communications, p. 224/5, ed. 1920. 2 The same, p. 224. Add as to Babylonia: Anu, Bel and Ea. As to the Phomician triad: Schama, Il and Baal. IMMORTALITY — 5 11. Back to India then go we in search of the first re- eorded communications from the outside of our World to man. And the record there is very plain. The teach- ing —as to Reincarnation, faith and works, the per- fectibility of man, the law of attraction, Universal Law and its aim: Harmony —is all summarised (at a date conceded to be somewhere between B. C. 300 and A. D. 300) in the Bhagavad-Gita. 12. And the wonderful thing is that it all harmonises and conecords with the Christian religion, as well as with other religions and is in strict accord with latter day revelation as vouchsafed to Stainton Moses, Allan Kar- dee, Bhgh Bond, Mrs. de Watteville and others. 13. Take, for example, the ‘Law of Attraction.’ This is what Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita (Edwin Ar- nold’s translation) : THE Law or ATTRACTION ... . That man alone is wise ‘“Who keeps the mastery of himself! If one ‘‘Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs ‘* Attraction; from attraction grows desire, ‘Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds ‘* Recklessness ; then the memory — all betrayed — ‘‘Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind ‘“Ti11 purpose, mind, and man are all undone.’’ and compare: ‘‘For the concord of similars and the contrariety of dissimilars effect not a few things.’’ Tamblichus, Para. 4, ch. ix. Cf. St. James, Epistle, i. 13, 14: ‘‘Let no one being tempted say that from God I am tempted. For God is untemptable of evil things, and He, Himself, tempteth no 6 IMMORTALITY one. But each one is tempted (when) from his personal desire he is drawn on and attracted; then, the Desire, having conceived, gendereth Sin, and Sin itself at its full term is delivered of (a child) Death.”’ And it is all in line with Swedenborg’s teaching, down to the latest communications from spirits in communica- tion with Mrs. de Watteville. 14. Take ‘‘ REINCARNATION. ’’ This is what Krishna says to Arjuna: ‘‘Manifold the renewals of my birth ‘‘Have been, Arjuna! And of thy births too! ‘‘But mine I know, and thine thou knowest not, ‘‘O slayer of thy foes. Albeit I be ‘Unborn, undying, indestructible, ‘“The Lord of all things living; not the less — ‘“By Maya, by my magic which I stamp ‘‘On floating Nature-forms, the primal vast — ““T come, and go, and come. When Righteousness ‘*Declines, O Bharata! When Wickedness ‘“Ts strong, I rise, from age to age, and take ‘* Visible shape, and move, a man with men, ‘*Suceouring the good, thrusting the evil back, ‘‘And setting Virtue on her seat again.’’ Then take the Christian Gospels and what find we? It is generally supposed that there is nothing in our Bible about reincarnation, but in Matthew xi. 14, Jesus IMMORTALITY 7 says (at the very first mention of the name) : ‘‘But af ye will receive it, this is Elias who was due to come (5 pedo €pxeo Oa) - ome And again: Mat.. xvii. 11, 12 and Mark ix. 13: ‘‘But I say unto you that Elias has really come and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they would. . . Then his disciples apprehended that it was about John the Baptist that he spoke to them.’’ It has been ob- jected that when John was asked if he were Elias, he said ‘‘No,’’ but he did not know.* Compare above: ‘‘ But mine I know, and thine thou knowest not.’’ (line 3.) The cardinal doctrine, not only inherited by the Theosophists of today from the India of the past, but the eardinal doctrine of all serious spirit communication of the day is this and nothing short of this, affirming the evolution of the human soul on earth through mineral, plant, and animal, but its ‘refinement’ or ‘refining evolu- tion’ during its periods of ‘‘erraticity’’ after death, until it returns no more to earth, with the notable exception of the voluntary return of messiahs from among the high 3 In this important passage it would be interesting to know.what was the exact word in Aramaic which our Lord used. The nearest we can come to it is to consult The Syriac, and there we find a very interesting state of things, for, whereas the Greek infinitive is agreed to by the Latins (with accipere, recipere, percipere, audire, scire) and by the Coptics, the Syriacs use an imperative, thus: ‘‘And if ye wish, take it (from me) that this is Elias’ . . . using accipite for accipere; and this is the very Syriac word and tense used later on in John xx. 22 for the Greek AaBere (‘‘take ye’’) when the record says: “And saying this, he breathed hard [there is no ‘apon them’ in the great majority of authorities] and said to them ‘Receive spirit holy.’ ” Thus these two important passages in the minds of the Syriac retrans- lators hang together as to the word “receive” or “take,” implying something very important and special. As a matter of fact the Greek authorities in Matt. xi.14 vary between Sé€acOat (infinitive) and Séfac@e (imperative), and we can no longer tell which is correct, as @t and € are interchangeable as an itacism. 4 This is supplemented by St. Luke, who tells us that the angel of the Lord, standing at the right of the altar of incense, definitely announced to Zacharias, in connection with the promised birth of John Baptist, that he should go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elias. (Luke i, 11-17.) Note that the Transfiguration, when Elias appeared in spirit, took place ajter the murder of John the Baptist. 8 IMMORTALITY spirits, from cycle to cycle, as their services are needed on the Earth. Note what Mrs. de Watteville’s correspondent says in one place (vol. i, p. 218) : ‘Nos ames ont toutes fait leur évolution et con- tinuent dans l’enchainement des siécles—il n’y a done ni Juifs ni Chrétiens ; il y a des Ames inearnées, tantot dans une famille Chrétienne, Musulmane, In- doue, protestante, etc., — par conséquent, la question de race n’existe pas, ou, du moins, ne s’applique qu’au corps matériel et non a l’ame.”’ 15. Take ‘‘Faith and Works’’ about which it is often supposed that St. Paul and St. James are in conflict, al- though they are not. How beautifully are these harmonized in the Bhaga- vad-Gita, as follows: Krishna: ‘‘T told thee, blameless Lord! there be two paths ‘“Shown to this world; two schools of wisdom. Sa inst ‘The Sankhya’s, which doth save in way of works ‘“Prescribed by reason; next, the Yoe, which bids ‘Attain by meditation, spiritually : ‘“ Yet these are one! No man shall ’seape from act ‘“By shunning action; nay, and none shall come ‘‘By mere renouncements unto perfectness. ‘‘Nay, and no jot of time, at any time, ‘Rests any actionless; his nature’s law ‘‘Compels him, even unwilling, into act; “|For thoucht is actainstancys) see IMMORTALITY 9 WorRKS And again: “Therefore, thy task prescribed With spirit unattached oladly perform, ‘‘Sinee in performance of plain duty, man ‘‘Mounts to his highest bliss. By works alone ‘‘Janak and ancient saints reached blessedness! ‘‘Moreover, for the upholding of thy kind, ‘* Action thou shoulds’t embrace.’’ Cf. James ii, 19, 20: ‘Thou believest that God is Unity. Well doest thou. And the daimons believe and shudder [at the Name]. But thou needest to know, oh empty- pate, that faith apart from works is dead [or, arid].’’ 16. Continue as to: Doust. ‘Believing, he receives it when the soul ‘*Masters itself, and cleaves to Truth, and comes — ‘*Possessing Knowledge — to the higher peace, ‘The uttermost repose. But those untaught, ‘‘And those without full faith, and those who fear ‘‘ Are shent; no peace is here or other where, ‘“No hope, nor happiness for whoso doubts.’’ Then compare St. James 1. 5/8: “‘If any of you lack- eth Wisdom, let him ask of God-the-Giver (who giveth) to all men liberally and is not one to east your request in your teeth, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, not weighing pros and cons, for he who is in two minds as to the result is like a wave of the sea blown on by the wind and tossed hither and thither. Let not that man imagine that he shall receive anything at all from the Lord. A double-minded man is unstable in all his paths,.’’ 10 IMMORTALITY 17. Then, as to: PERFECTIBILITY, take this: ‘‘Thou sayest, perplexed, It hath been asked be- fore ‘‘By singers and by sages, ‘ What is act, ‘‘And what inaction?’ I will teach thee this, ‘‘And, knowing, thou shalt learn which work doth Save ‘‘Needs must one rightly meditate those three — ‘* Doing, — not. doing —, and undoing. Here ‘‘Thorny and dark the path is! He who sees ‘‘How action may be rest, rest action — he ‘“Ts wisest ’mid his kind; he hath the truth! ‘‘He doeth well, acting or resting. Freed ‘Tn all his works from prickings of desire, ‘‘Burned clean in act by the white fire of truth, ‘‘The wise call that man wise; and such an one, ‘‘Renouneing fruit of deeds, always content. ‘* Always self-satisfying, if he works, ‘‘Doth nothing that shall stain his separate soul, ‘Which — quit of fear and hope — subduing self — ‘‘Rejecting outward impulse — yielding up ‘‘To body’s need nothing save body, dwells ‘‘Sinless amid all sin, with equal calm ‘‘Taking what may befall, by grief unmoved, ‘‘Unmoved by joy, unenvyingly ; the same ‘‘TIn good and evil fortunes; nowise bound ‘*By bond of deeds. .. . ‘‘But for him that makes ‘“No sacrifice, he hath nor part nor lot ‘‘Even in the present world. How should he share ‘‘ Another, O thou Glory of the Line ?”’ ‘* As the kindled flame ‘‘Heeds on the fuel till it sinks to ash ‘*So unto ash, Arjuna! unto nought ‘“The flame of Knowledge wastes works’ dross away ! ‘‘There is no purifier like thereto ‘In all this world, and he who seeketh it IMMORTALITY iA ‘Shall find it — being grown perfect — in himself.”’ Bhagavad-Gita (Arnold’s translation) And then consider the way in which the human race is urged towards the ‘perfected’ or ‘finished’ state through- out our Gospels and Epistles: Matt. v. 48: ‘‘Be ye therefore yourselves perfect as your Father who is in the Heavens is perfect.’’ Hebr. v. 14: ‘‘But for the perfect ones is the strong food, those who by reason of use have their facul- ties fully exercised for discrimination between good and evil.’”’ James i. 17: ‘‘Every good gift and every perfect oift is from above, coming down from the Father of the Orbs, with whom is no swerving, nor trace of revolution.’’ Hebr. vi. 1: ‘‘Therefore, leaving behind the word of the beginning of Christ, let us bear onward unto the perfection, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God.”’ Hebr. ii. 10: ‘‘For it was fitting for Him, by reason of Whom are all things, and by means of Whom are all things, many sons (thus) leading unto glory, to make perfect the captain of their salva- tion by means of sufferings.’’ Hebr. v. 9: “‘And being perfected, He became the prime cause of eternal salvation to all those who obey Him.’’ 1 John iv. 17, 18: ‘‘In this has been really perfected the Love with us, that we may have boldness in the day of Judgement, because just as That One is, we also are in this world. Fear there is not in this Love, but perfected Love outeasteth fear, for fear hath pain. He that feareth is not definitely per- VeECtcds a 12 IMMORTALITY Then consider this communication from ‘‘ Krastes’’ to Allan Kardee (‘‘The Medium’s Book,’’ English edition, leew iss 0s CATADS) & ‘‘Men are prone to exaggeration in everything; some (and I am not now alluding to professed materialists) deny that animals have a soul, while others insist upon it that they have a soul like ours. Why will they confound what is perfectible with what is not? Be quitesure of this, viz., that the fire which animates the beasts, the breath which makes them act, move, and speak in their special language, has not, in their present phase of development, any aptitude for mingling, uniting, blending, with the divine breath, the ethereal soul, in a word, the spirit, which animates the essentially perfectible being, MAN, the king of terrestrial creatures. Is it not this very quality of perfectibility that constitutes the superiority of the human race over the other terres- trial species? Let it, then, be distinctly understood that you cannot assimilate to man, who is perfectible in himself and in his works, any individual of the other races living upon the earth. .... ‘From the onward movement of the human race — constant, invincible, undeniable — and from the persistently stationary position of the other spe- cies of animated beings, you should conclude, with me, that, while certain principles, viz., breath and matter, are common to all that live and move upon the earth, it is none the less true that you alone, you spirits incarnated in earthly bodies, are placed under the action of the inevitable law of progress which urges you, necessarily, and for ever, onward.’’ And consider this from Mrs. de Watteville’s volumes: ‘‘Lia seule chose qui soit fatale, c’est la low de perfectionnement — ceux, qui ont eu la lacheté de s’y soustraire momentanément seront forcés d’y sat- isfaire tot ou tard.’’ (Vol. 1, p. 125.) IMMORTALITY and this: Ceci vous démontre, chére amie, que chacun des défauts que nous cherchons a vaincre et a déraciner pendant l’incarnation est luiméme une source, wn germe de perfection, et ce que |’affirme — tout para- doxal que cela puisse vous paraitre — est cependant une verité absolue.’’ (Vol. 2, p. 52.) 13 CHAPTER II Harmony 18. Harmony is the Universal aim of Universal Law. Yet, through what straits the worlds all pass to attain unto it. The laws of attraction, of cohesion, of repul- sion, of gravity, of reciprocity, all tend thereto, but birth-pangs and battle sears, disintegration, death and re-birth accompany the Course of nature (cf. tov tpoxov Ths yeveoews James, lili. 6). Note in Arnold’s transla- tion of the BHAGAVAD-GITA: ‘‘They who shall keep ‘‘My ordinance thus, the wise and willing hearts, ‘‘Have quittance from all issue of their acts; ‘*But those who disregard My ordinance, ‘“Thinking they know, know naught, and fall to loss, ‘Confused and foolish. Sooth the instructed one ‘Doth of his kind, following what fits him most ; ‘* And lower creatures of their kind; in vain ‘““Contending ’gainst the Law.’’ Says Andrew Jackson Davis in his ‘‘Great Har- monia’’ (vol. 11, p. 123): ‘‘Individual harmony is essential in family har- mony ; Family harmony is essential to social harmony ; Social harmony is essential to national harmony ; and National harmony is essential to Universal harmony among the inhabitants of the Earth. The whole is a likeness of the individual.’’ 14 IMMORTALITY 15 The human soul craves harmony, hence he is at- tracted God-wards, and Davis elsewhere (p. 286) puts it thus :— ‘“‘The great vortex of celestial Pieeice Sine creat centre of eternal Love, the great nucleus of Omnipo- tence, the immortal flower of Wisdom, which breathe forth the elements of universal Harmony and the fra- erance of undying delights,—is the irresistible Magnet which attracts upward the human Soul. Henee, to the unimaginable centre of all things, the Spirit goes to commune with the one only and true God. And while the theology of the earth bids the soul to think of Deity as the child conceives of a great and powerful monarch, or as the poet dreams of the awful shadows of an unseen power—moving like a conscious, all-pervading atmos- phere upon the bosom of creation—the truly scientific, philosophical, and theological mind beholds God as an organization of unchangeable and celestial principles. Such a mind conceives of something — A SUBSTANCE —a concentrated sublimation of real elements and essences ; and thus the Deity, being familiarized with our reason and intuition, causes us to realize the truth that He has proportions, tendencies, and principles of action which he ean neither change, suspend, transcend, or destroy.’’ And elsewhere (p. 272), he adds this very simple but very necessary corollary: ‘‘Thus it is with God. He has no physical eyes, no physical ears, no physical hands and feet; but he contains the principles of Perception, of Hearing, of Feeling, and all other prin- ciples, —this constitutes his personality. Therefore, Deity is an individual in Principles, and yet not separate from or outside of Nature. The Principles of Nature, or 16 IMMORTALITY Deity, are unchangeable. Nature is the mediatorial sub- stance between the Cause and the End or Issue of Crea- tion; and it is therefore the instrumentality by which an Infinite Intelligence accomplishes infinite results.’’ Finally, as to Harmony, it must never be forgotten that Life being Motion, positive and negative are in a perpetual struggle for equilibrium and equipoise, which, when attained, is only momentary in all the several spheres and activities of the Worlds. 19. As to: ONE UNIVERSAL Law, Compare again in Bhagavad-Gita :— ‘‘All things are everywhere by Nature wrought “*In interaction of the qualities. ‘“The fool, cheated by self, thinks: ‘This I did’ ‘And: ‘That I wrought’; but—ah, thou strong-armed Prince! ‘“A better-lessoned mind, knowing the play ‘“Of visible things within the world of sense, “And how the qualities must qualify, ‘‘Standeth aloof even from his acts .. .”’ 20. As to oral transmission, note this, in the Chinese book of the Chinese sage Tehuang-tze (called by some of his disciples Tchuang-teheou) [floruit 350-400 A. D.]: “These things I learned from the son of Fu-mih, who had learned them from the grandson of Lo- tsong (sages of the mythical times) who had learned them from a spirit.’’ 21. As to Chinese ‘‘7'AO,’’ it is very difficult even for them to define. (Most of the ancient Chinese books were lost before Confucius’ birth.) It is the govern- ing principle of the Worlds, God supreme in all his essences. Laokiun thus describes it :— IMMORTALITY ey ‘‘Supreme Tao, although formless, produces and develops Heaven and Earth. Motionless, he puts in motion* the heavenly bodies. Nameless, Supreme Tao causes to exist and subsist all created things. J do not know His Name. Constrained to give Him a name, I call him TAO.® The Tao possesses the lumi- nous principle of purity, and the principle of dark- ness. He possesses the principles of motion and of rest. The Heavens are luminous and pure. The earth is obscure. The male element is luminous. The female element is obscure. The first is active. The second reposeful. Creating from above the essence, and distributing its qualities, Tao gives life to everything. The luminous principle is the source of the obscure principle. Movement is the basis of rest. On the other hand ‘7’IEN’ seems to be an appellation which may be more freely translated ‘God’ than Tao, but not always. T’ien would seem to be the exact equivalent of the Greek 75 @& of Aristotle, since the Chinese (Tchuang-tze, book III) thus speak of T’ien :— ““That which they sought was one, and that which they rejected was equally one. That which they unified in their thought was one, and that which they did not unite was equally one. That which was one came from the T’ien, and that which was not came from man.’’ On the other hand, as to ““YANG”’ and “‘YIN”’ and “KHI,’’ Trinity is thus referred to :— ‘The Tao produced one; the one produced ‘‘two; the two produced a third. The ‘‘three produced everything.”’ ‘‘Kvery being wanders from the passive * Of. in the Bhagavad-Gita ch. xiii, ‘‘Motionless yet still moving.” 5 Compare the Sanskrit ‘‘Tattwa’’ (Mahabharata, vol. ix., p. 615), ‘‘Es- sence’ or ‘‘Principle’’ and the basic appellation of the Supreme. 18 IMMORTALITY ‘‘principle yin and attaches himself to the ‘active principle yang, but the intermediate ‘‘spiritual principle Ahi establishes harmony ‘between them.’’ What is this but the Trinity of Electricity, with posi- tive and negative poles, and equipoise between them! (Comp. p. 215, §98.) 22. So we see that all the great philosophers, poets and spiritualists speak exactly the same language, from Moses and Orpheus, through Hesiod and Homer to Walt Whitman. From Pythagoras to Bahai, and from Socrates to Ruskin and Edward Carpenter, it is pre- cisely the same message, as it is from the first Indian sages to our last automatic communications, published or private. And what ought we to say of our blesséd poets? They have all caught the wondrous lilt of the Eternal verities, and added their testimony to the already rich ‘‘Akashie Records’’ of all time. The dreaming poets and prosaic spiritualists agree with the slowly accumulated wisdom of the philoso- phers, but the World as a whole will have none of it, and people with what was supposed to be an extra sense —mediums to wit—are still treated as witches, and the Common law of England is unchanged. The true reformer and deep philosopher is neces- sarily superior to his age, because he lives above it in a state combining the wisdom and experience of all the past ages. Thus Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, were all far ahead of their times. King Aknaton, in Egypt (one whom IMMORTALITY ly) ‘‘the gods loved,’’ for he died young, at about 30 years of age), was another above his age. Their value to their age consists in this very su- periority, which may, under certain circumstances, lead the nation onwards. But, in proportion as they are superior to the received and established dogmas, laws and doctrines of the day, will their position be, as a rule, misunderstood, their motives be misapprehended, their teachings be misrepresented, and their intrinsic worth unknown. The multitude, not being on a par with them, will look upon them as deceivers, or mystics, or enthusiasts, or as philosophical madmen to be discouraged at all costs, or persecuted, or even hounded to death. They are therefore pushed aside, or repulsed, disliked and calumniated, and often subjected to imprisonment and death, as was Socrates and many another. Hear what that great man Ruskin has to say as to the hidden meaning of the Poets and Teachers of all time. In a beautiful passage in ‘‘The Queen of the Air,’’ and with his usual lucidity, and grasp of fun- damentals, he writes :— ‘.. . Which is profoundly true, not of the Iliad only but of all other great art whatsoever; for all pieces of such art are didactic in the purest way, mdirectly and occultly, so that first you shall only be bettered by them if you are already hard at work in bettering yourself, and when you are bettered by them it shall be partly by a general acceptance of their influence, so constant and subtle that you shall be no more conscious of it than of the healthy diges- tion of food; and partly by a gift of wnexpected truth which you shall find only by slow mining for 20 — IMMORTALITY it;—which is withheld on purpose, and close-locked, that you may not get it till you have forged the key of it in a furnace of your own heating. And this withholding of their meaning ws continual and con- fessed, in the great poets. Thus Pindar says of him- self: ‘There is many an arrow in my quiver full of speech to the wise, but for the many, they need interpreters.’ (Olymp. Ode II, lines 83-5). And neither Pindar, nor Aeschylus, nor Hesiod, nor Homer, nor any of the greater poets, or teachers of any nation or time, ever spoke but with intentional reservation; nay beyond this, there is often a mean- ing WHICH THEY THEMSELVES CANNOT interpret,’— which it may be for ages long after them to inter- pret,—in what they said, so far as it recorded true imaginative vision. For all the greatest myths have been seen, by the men who tell them, involuntarily and passively,—seen by them with as great distinct- ness (and in some respects, though not in all, under conditions as far beyond the control of their will) as a dream sent to any of us by night when we dream clearest; and it is this veracity of vision that could not be refused, and of moral that could not be fore- seen, which in modern historical inqury has been left wholly out of account; being indeed the thing which no merely historical investigator can under- stand or even believe; .. .’’ 6 Compare Job xlii, 3, “I uttered that I understood not.” CHAPTER III Hesiod 23. What a neglected author is Hesiod. However cor- rupt may be his text, or however much the scholiasts may have added to it, the fact remains that long stretches of it are quite clear and free from taint, and this earliest writer on Purgatory or Hades has used precisely the words that Jesus uses in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, in Luke xvi. 26. They both speak of a yaopa peyoa —a great gulf or ‘chasm’ —, and while St. Luke says no one can pass from one place to an- other because of this ‘great chasm’ peragd quay Kai tuov, ‘“between us and you,’’ Hesiod speaks of €v@a kai ev@a, and St. Luke speaks of év6ev and éxeiev, Here are the passages side by side: Hesiod. Lines 740-742, in ‘‘Theogonia’’ :— Xdopa péy ovd€ xe wavta TeAeohopov eis eviavTov ovoas (KOT €i TpOTa wvAE€wv EvTode yEvoiTo, GAAG pev evOa Kai €vOa héepor Tpd OveAra OvEAXy. St. Luke xvi. 26 Kai éi rao tovtois, metas nUOv Kal buov Xdopa peya eoTypiKTat, Omws ot GOeXovTeEs dia Bnvar évOev mpos tpas py dvvwvTat pnde ot exeiPev mpos yuas duaTrepwowr, I do not think this passage is as well known as it might be. In fact the word éorypixrac used by St. Luke actually occurs in Hesiod, in line 779, in a different con- 21 22 IMMORTALITY nection, but all in the same scene in Tartarus. And a few lines further on we meet with zoAvwvvpov vdwp the famed water, borne in a golden vase by Iris, messenger on one of her rare journeys to those parts from Jove. May we not see a common allusion here as to the water which, in the parable, Dives craves from Lazarus? Here is the whole passage in Cooke’s translation (A. D. 1728), lines 1050-1111 :— “And Tart’rus; there of all the Fountains rise, ‘‘A sight detested by immortal Eyes: “A mighty Chasm, Horror and Darkness here; ‘And from the Gates the Journey of a Year: ‘‘ Here Storms in hoarse, in frightful, Murmurs play, ‘“The Seat of Night, where Mists exclude the Day. ‘Before the Gates the Son of Japhet stands, ‘‘Nor from the Skys retracts his Head or Hands; ‘“Where Night and Day their Course alternate lead; ‘“Where both their Entrance make, and both recede, ‘*Both wait the Season to direct their Way, ‘“And spread successive o’er the Earth their Sway. ‘This chears the Eyes of Mortals with her Light ; ‘“The Harbinger of Sleep pernicious Night: ‘“And here the Sons of Night their Mansion keep, “Sad Deitys, Death and his Brother Sleep ; ‘“Whom, from the Dawn to the Decline of Day, ‘“The Sun beholds not with his piercing Ray: ‘“One o’er the Land extends, and o’er the Seas, ‘“And lulls the weary’d Mind of Man to Ease; ‘That iron-hearted, and of cruel Soul, ‘‘Brasen his Breast, nor can he brook Controul, ‘“To whom, and ne’er return, all Mortals go, ‘“And even to immortal Gods a Foe. ‘Foremost th’ infernal Palaces are seen “Of Pluto, and Persephone his Queen; ‘A horrid Dog, and grim, couch’d on the Floor, ‘‘Guards, with malicious Art, the sounding Door; IMMORTALITY NS) Ww ‘*On each, who in the Entrance first appears, ‘‘He fawning wags his Tail, and cocks his Kars; ‘‘Tf any strive to measure back the Way, ‘‘Their Steps he watches, and devours his Prey. ‘‘Here Styx, a Goddess whom Immortals hate, ‘‘The first-born Fair of Ocean, keeps her State; ‘‘From Gods remote her silver Columns rise, ‘*Roof’d with large Rocks her Dome that fronts the Skys: “Here, cross the Main, swift-footed Iris brings ‘‘A Message seldom from the King of Kings; ‘‘But when among the Gods Contention spreads, ‘‘And in Debate divides immortal Heads, ‘*H'rom Jove the Goddess wings her rapid Flight ““To the fam’d River, and the Seat of Night, ‘‘Thence in a golden Vase the Water bears, ‘“By whose cool Streams each Powr immortal swears. ‘“Styx from a sacred Font her Course derives, ‘‘And far beneath the Earth her Passage drives ; ‘*H'rom a stupendous Rock descend her Waves, ‘* And the black Realms of Night her Current laves: ‘‘Could any her capacious Channels drain, ‘“They’d prove a tenth of all the spacious Main ; ‘“Nine Parts in Mazes clear as Silver glide ‘*Along the Earth, or join the Ocean’s Tide; ‘“The other from the Rock in Billows rowls, ‘*Source of Misfortune to immortal Souls. ‘“Whoe with false Oaths disgrace th’ Olympian Bowrs, ‘‘Ineur the Punishment of heav’nly Powrs: ‘“The perjur’d God, as in the Arms of Death, ‘‘Lethargic Lys, nor seems to draw his Breath, ‘‘Nor him the Nectar and Ambrosia chear, ‘While the Sun goes his Journey of a Year; ‘*Nor with the Lethargy concludes his Pain, ‘*But complicated Woes behind remain :”’’ 24 IMMORTALITY The date of Hesiod is about 800 to 850 B. C. He reproduces mythology long since handed down orally, and probably in writing, for, as Paley says in his edition of Hesiod (Preface p. xix seq.): “‘A pre- Homeric literature and language then are no vague probabilities; they must have existed in the nature of things. The progress of language is in a remarkable manner simultaneous with the progress of civilisation.