Once during the wanderings before my marriage, and while I was in Hindustan, I met an old man of unprepossessing figure, whose faded eyes no sooner rested on me than he said:
"You are he of whom Mendocus told me, and charged me concerning, saying 'tell him certain things for me.' This I will do. Young man, your life shall be sad and bitter on Earth, but sweet after that. Things will transpire because of which your animal soul shall embrace itself and say, 'This is joy.' But immediately the still voice of the human soul in you shall say, 'This joy is but a Sodom apple,' and in that moment you will know that it is so. Hence you will have ever a war between your animal soul, which is innate depravity, and. your spirit, which is of God, Brahma, the One. See in it the allegory of Adam and original sin; it pulls your human soul down to death; the other, the Spirit, draws the human upward. Attend then its sayings; I will render them for you:
"Before your eyes can see God they must be incapable of shedding tears for any suffering of your own. Before your ears can hear, they must have lost sensitiveness. Your voice may not speak eternal wisdom until it has no power to wound. Before your self can stand in the presence of the Eternal, its feet must have been bathed in the blood of suffering, penance, restitution. Then kill the ambition to excel in the poor paths of Fame. Cease to regard this life as your best possession.
"Then work for God as earnestly as others work for Mammon; and respect thy life as those respect life who treasure it most, and be happy as those who live for happiness. In the hearts of all is the source of all error, in disciple as well as in the man of desire. Study a plant of mustard, witness it grow and bud. But if thou shalt hew it down so that it never beareth seed, behold a strange thing, it will sprout again
and grow through the years, if it never beareth. And this although it is only a material form. Now, therefore, if a human soul shall not be cut down, yet shall not enter into life as a creator by reason that it wills not, then the Spirit of life everlasting shall go into it, and it shall contain itself, and therefore live forever. Study the truth of mustard life. Only the strong in God can act upon this teaching and hold the lower nature. The weak must wait its maturity and then will come their struggle. It will strive to keep the feet from the Path; and may succeed. But if once all its power be wiped out; if once thou doest the will of the Father earnestly, is His obedient child, that is the atonement, for it shall give strength to do every work of the Creator of Being. It will seem to take the very life. That is because it takes the animal soul and throttles it. But the human soul will recover, and the Spirit come into it. This is the time of the Silence of the Soul. Then it shall be clear to you how dark are the lives of those who are around you and have no goal of union with the Spirit towards which to race. And you will see and know karma. Also you will. see that because of your past incarnations your karma is inextricably interwoven with the karma of the world. This is that saying which the Nazarene answered when it was asked of Him, 'Who is my neighbor?' If, Walter Pierson, you shall once be able to know the Peace of Silence, you shall then learn of all things about you, for the Earth is Brahm's, and all in it teaches His works."
I was surprised at being called by name, and also of being told of Mendocus. The old man said further:
"If your soul once knows this Peace, no storm of sin or of sorrow can ever more ward you far aside from the Path, for its knowledge is an abiding wisdom. Heed also the words of Mendocus, read your Bible, read the Vedas, read Manu; and study. It shall all be a staff to your hand and a lamp to your feet. Peace be with you."
"And to you, peace," I replied as he turned and walked away into the crowd, for we had stood by a public drinking fountain.
Now that Elizabeth was found and was my wife, I pondered deeply these things I had heard of the occult lore. Not that she had connection with it. But because, as the years went by, I found she knew and cared little about these abstruse studies, which I did. So our lives drew apart. But she was oblivious of this fact, and I was glad because she was. She had her churchwork and I aided her in all her sweet charities. To us came two lovely little daughters, the greatest treasures of our lives, and oh, so carefully taught regarding life and shielded from its dangers. So long as these little ones were with us, I was content. And yet I felt, in an ill-defined sorrow, that Earth's experiences were but Sodom apples.
Sometimes I found my lonelier hours disturbed by a strange voice which whispered to my inner consciousness. As time passed it grew stronger, and one day it appeared before my sight as a wraith. The Shape talked. What it said made me eager to hear more, so I cultivated it. It became thenceforth a regular visitor, and from that to being always present when I was otherwise alone was but a step. It spoke of having been on a distant planet which it called "Pertoz," sometimes "Hesperus," again "Venus." It spoke of persons whose names were strange, calling one "Mol Lang", another "Sohma" and a third "Phyris." Then it described these people, and I listened eagerly. Who were they, and what human soul was this which had gone to Venus? The ghost looked marvelously like myself. But my slumbers at night were as sound as if it visited me not.
I called it my ghost. How unconsciously true It told of everything related to my being with Mol Lang, and in Venus; it drew my mind's eye to the psychic scene in the bed of the Atlantic. It told of a visit to the sun with Sohma, of which I neglected mention in sequence. Briefly, Sohma went with me to the sun, and showed me that it was a vibrant body of less size than astronomers believe, but of enormous density. I saw its oceans--they were heavier than Mercury. But it had no life forms which I took as such. Yet life of some
sort there is everywhere. Perhaps, indeed, not animal, nor vegetable, but from the high standpoint of those who know much of the works of the All-Father, forms that no earthly man would call life are such, nevertheless. But the sun is a force of such fearful vibrative pulsing that even my subtle astral body was not unaffected. Sohma said of it:
"See the immediate center of our solar system. Thou wouldst call it a dynamo, the great dynamo of the system. Right wouldst thou be, and wrong also. The attempt to define the sun as an analogue to a dynamo-electric machine has much to support it. But to define it as identical is erroneous. The trouble with that theory is the trouble which lies at the root of and weakens all other theories to account for sun-heat and sun-light. It is that science does not assign a sufficiently high value to the sun. The combustion theory is invalid; the solar mass contraction theory is but partially tenable and meteoric showers do not account better than the first two. Neither does the electric-dynamo theory. Truly, the latter explains how sun-heat and sun-light may coexist and not be inharmonious with the awful degree of cold between earth, the planets and the sun. It explains that which denies the simple combustion theory so completely, viz. that the farther one goes from the earth center, either in a balloon or on a high mountain, the colder and darker the air gets, so that inter-stellar space is several hundred degrees below zero, and black as midnight, with the sun a luminous disc, without rays. But the dynamo theory does not explain the solar spectrum, nor the bands of spectra, nor coronal 'flames,' nor 'sun spots,' nor solar nor lunar eclipses."
The above statements were made by Sohma, as will be remembered by the reader, while I was still-in the Hesperian astral state and for the time was unconscious of a previous terrene existence. I had therefore no memory of the mundane knowledge and was unbiased in my judgment of the remarks of my friend. He had ceased to speak after uttering the word "eclipses." I waited for him to continue, but as be
did not, I finally interrogated, "Well, what does explain all? What is the truth?" Thus questioned, he resumed:
"I have said that the value accorded by astronomers is too small. Seeing a fire, they would seek to explain by its means the sun. Finding this untenable, and aware that a contracting mass gives off heat, they next essay explanation on that hypothesis. But this will not do, nor will meteoric showers, nor any hypothesis based on facts now known, all are too low in aim; the Infinite cannot be explained by the finite, nor will less explain greater; fire is energy, and electricity is energy, and God is energy. But fire will not solve the query, 'What is electricity?' nor will electricity answer 'What is God?' but God will explain both the others, for the sum of the parts is equal to the whole. But a man does not know the full number of the parts, the partial sum he does know will not explain God."
Sohma ceased again. But I, filled with some vagrant earth memory, allowed no time of pause; I was too eager to wait, and I said:
"But this does not tell me what the solar puzzle is."
"Thou art impatient, my brother; know then, what was at one time known upon the earth, but is now for ages forgotten; that Nature has a dual aspect, is double, is positive and negative; that the great positive side is the side known to mundane science, while the other or negative, or 'Night Side,' or, as it was once known in the earth by the men of Atla, 'Navaz,' is a side all unknown, and scarcely guessed in the most exceeding flights of speculation, left unbroached, secretly kept by a few, who know not that they entertain an angel, an angelic wisdom that in a century more, yea, less time! shall overturn much of the face of terrene things, shall bestow aerial vessels, and all else once known to those men of Atl of whom I spoke. Thou. dost not yet understand?"
I said that I did not; that I thought he referred to some domain of the physical forces not yet known; but what had this to do with the sun?
"This: the suns of systems are centers of forces of the Night Side of Nature whereof I spoke, and are force, and matter of a higher value than are planets and satellites, just as water above a cataract is water, truly, but being above and mobile, flows over and down, developing energy. In other words, out of the cold, dark, negative side, or 'night side,' force emerges, drawn to the positive polarity which constitutes in its outgoing flow that termed Nature, and develops in its fall, magnetism, electricity, light, color, heat and sound, in order of descent, and lastly solid matter, for this latter is a child of energy, not its parent. When the Navaz forces drop to light, if the light waves enter a spectroscope, they will emerge as colors; these correspond to the various spectrum bands, and will, as the descent progresses, give the noted fines of the solar spectrum, as the great 'B' line of oxygen, the conspicuous '1474' line, and the brilliant 'H' and 'K' violet bands."
I thought I now saw the truth; but I saw only a part; a grand vista was yet to open. I saw it when my companion resumed:
"Thus the evidence of flames, and metals on fire, and all that leads astronomers to think sun and stars flaming hells. But their 'fires' will not decrease, for the Father is immanent, and the forces of 'Navaz' are perpetually fed by Him. The graphic picture of a 'burned-out sun' is a dream, never to be fulfilled. A day will come again in the earth when instruments will be made which Atlantis once well knew, when the prismatic rays from a spectroscope will be found to be a source of heat, and of sound, so that the so-called 'flames' of the sun, and of the stars will produce music, harmonies divine. 1 Yea, further, for going on down, the dark green solar spectrum of iron will be made to yield iron for use in the arts, and so with the other bands and lines, the intense greens, blues, and blue-greens give copper, lead, antimony and so on. It is by these Navaz currents that the circulation in the universe is kept up, as blood in a man's arteries. The suns are the systemic hearts. But thou art tired, my brother, or I would
explain yet more, that the planets which receive all these currents must return their equivalent. And thus would another vast field open before thy sight. This last would explain that which so worries science on earth, the molten terrene interior. That also is something of an error. All the phenomena which seem to declare the earth to be in a melted condition inside do not prove it so in truth; all point to the return currents, the positive; all exhibit the venous currents of our universe, back to its hearts."
Sohma concluded with an apostrophe to the leading minds of the Earth which was beautiful indeed:
"O Science of Earth, in thee is the hope of the world, when thou shalt become handmaiden of God. Look up, value His works highly, and thou shalt read clearly many things which now puzzle thee sadly. Thou art the Joseph, and Religion the Mary, and ye twain shall show forth the Light of Life. Blessed art thou."
When my "ghost" retold me this conversation I seized my hat and went out to look sunwards and marvel if all were true, and astounded, reflect again, "Who is this Sohma?"
The puzzle grew, and my discontent with life grew; the lump was becoming leavened. The more I studied the truth of the mustard plant, the clearer grew my perceptions, and I knew that never in my present body could I attain much progress, for in our union Elizabeth and I had passed by the mustard unheeding, writing another karmic chapter.
For a time my "ghost" was amenable to my will as regarded its comings and goings; but it now seemed to have entered in and coalesced with me. I no longer heard or saw it, but instead was often one with it, and saw and heard its visions and perceptions as if they were my own; and indeed, as you know, this was a fact. It was in verity the record of my visit to Pertoz, and was a true cast in all ways of my life there.
Ofttimes my soul was torn by steadfastness to the duty of life as pointed out by Mendocus. And then my only escape from trouble was to allow myself to rest in the Hesperian astral to the exclusion of that of Earth. At such times I was
living again the life with Phyris and the loved ones of Pertoz. Elizabeth sorrowed over this aberration, as she thought it; and my blessed little daughters grew to regard "papa" as "funny" and I was held in awe. Not a pleasant experience, my friends. My wife would look at me sadly and I know she wept when alone because I often absently called her "Phyris." Indeed, Elizabeth was my closest realization of the Phyris of whom I knew but could not find on Earth. Under all this I grew thin and pale, and aimlessly wandered about possessed of a huge disgust for worldly interests or amusements, filled with sorrow for the sorrow I saw the world held, and yearning for the high plane which I at last knew was not a fantasy, and where Phyris was, and Sohma, and Mol Lang. But I could not get there; and they came not to me, therefore I studied the rules of the Path, because torn with crazed regret when the lower nature triumphed and I fell in sinful error, but although I fell, I rose again. Then the effect this had on my sweet, loving wife came home to me. Was this doing as I would be done by? No. So I set my will in firm resolve and subdued my own sorrows, and made my nature a tool for my soul, not a master over me.
Then once again I smiled, and the color and flesh came back to me. So Elizabeth was happy once more; and I? I had found the true Path at last. Service. I no longer wept for myself; my ears were no more sensitive, my tongue no longer wounded any one with its morose utterances; chiefest triumph of all, my feet were bathed in the life blood of the animal nature, so that I lived unselfishly, my whole being bent on doing my best, living as happily as if solely for happiness, as earnestly as if for ambitious motives. Then it was that the Peace of the Silence came, and I waited for the Savior to take me and fight in me and do His work with my hands. The Paraclete was come into my life.
It was a sad blow when my little daughters died of epidemic scarlatina in the year 1878. Thereafter I used my life to comfort the sweet woman whose vital breath nearly died in that cruel loss. I think Elizabeth never cared for anything in life
after that, except my loving devotion. And I gave it, for I knew Phyris would have me do so, and I waited on Earth now only to make it tolerable for the woman I had sworn to cherish. She waited in anticipation of rejoining her children in heaven, and meanwhile devoted all her time and energy, with feverish application, to doing all the good she could, using our unlimited money for the purpose. How exultant I was that the money was drawn from the gravel of the mines, and not come to me from harassed debtors.
It was less than two years after Dora and Maydie, our two little girls, had gone to the Summerland, ere Elizabeth followed after them.
I felt the need of a radical change in living methods for the sake of my health, and so, under an assumed name, secured a situation as mate on an American sailer, a splendid vessel. My purpose was to expose myself to the toil of a sea life for a season in the idea of recuperation coming from active duty.
Nothing would satisfy Elizabeth, except going as a passenger on the same vessel; she refused to leave me out of her care. The captain knew her relation to me, so did the crew, so that her being a passenger was natural.
Near the Bermudas a terrible storm came up, and I ordered the sails close reefed; then the squall struck, the mainmast went over, the vessel sprang a leak, the pumps were inadequate, and the boats were swamped, all but one, as fast as they were lowered. Into that went the crew, and I would have put Elizabeth in, but the men, seeing the boat full, pushed off and left her, Captain Washburne and me to our fate. Hardly five minutes elapsed when our noble vessel pitched bows on under the engulfing waves, carrying us with it.
I had lashed myself to the deck cleats to avoid being washed overboard. So now I was doomed to die--and was glad. As the waters swept overhead, I called out in my soul: "Phyris! at last! at last I come!" I saw Mendocus as I lost consciousness, and when I next came to knowledge, I found myself in the Sagum in California. Yet my body drowned off Bermuda's .coast! Here was Phyris, and--yes! Mol Lang. It was not long
ere I again bade Mendocus farewell, and with Phyris and Mol Lang went home to Pertoz, home now, my own attained plane, and "Earth with its dark and dreadful ills" left behind forever, but not Earth with its mighty secrets of life. Yes, Terre, is. if insignificant, a point whence the Human soul reaches out into the boundless sidereal universe and formulates its laws, knows them, and is greater than all. I was come to leave the Earth where so many incarnations had known me.
'Twas a time
For memory and for tears. Within the deep
Still chambers of the heart a specter dim,
Whose voice was like the wizard tones of Time
Heard from the Tomb of Ages, points its cold
And solemn finger to the beautiful
And holy visions that have passed away,
And left no shadow of their loveliness
On the dead waste of life. That specter lifts
The coffin lid of Hope and Joy and Love."
O Earth! point in the heavens, yet type of all the stellar universe.
Shall I descend a moment to figures? Shall I speak numbers almost inconceivable? I will. Just for a moment think of what we have come to know in the schools of Earth, think of our human civilization that permits us new comprehensions, see the parallel of how we measure time and distance compared to the Indian, who measures one by "moons" and the other by "looks," one being the interval between one full, or new moon and the next; the other being how far he can look and distinguish a man. Civilized man measures by years and by miles, and science by "light-years." "How much is a light-year? In the time of one second light travels one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles, approximately. In one year there are thirty-one million, five hundred and fifty-six thousand, nine hundred and twenty-nine seconds; hence the distance of a light-year is the multiplied product of one figure by the other, briefly, the inconceivable distance of sixty trillion, five hundred and fifty-three billion, ten hundred and fifty thousand miles. All that, and yet we see a star in the northern heavens said to be one hundred and eighty-one light-years distant from
the earth around which our own sun revolves, one of its satellites, as the moon is satellite to the earth. Such is the material universe, an infinitude, one of God's Works, but only one, and yet it is comprehensible mechanism, not, from the material point of view, comparable to the value of one soul of Man. Why do I thus digress? Friends, to let you know what proud place Man occupies. Think of all that nearly interminable distance to Arcturus, and then reflect that that bright member of the constellation Bootes is only a little way out in the boundless universe! That vast bulk of matter, capable of being seen nearly one hundred and twenty million times farther than the distance between the earth and the sun. How great is that bulk? Estimated by comparison it is more than half a thousand million times larger than the combined mass of the Earth, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Neptune and Mercury. And yet the human mind reaches into this almost infinite thing called the universe and grapples understandingly with its problems of matter, force, time, space, eternity, infinity! Laus Deo! Thus Arcturus is our yardstick in the sidereal universe, which in itself is in the House of our Father only one mansion! Besides it are "many mansions," and, friends, there is one mansion of the many to which I have called your attention, that of the Soul. The Soul is not material, and one loved one who shall go away out of your home into the "Unknown Country" is farther away from you than Arcturus, for it is in another condition of being. Wondrous privilege. You stand on the threshold, for you are embodied children of the Creator. You can learn His Ways, and go unto the loved ones gone before; or you can leave matter behind and go into the psychic mansion, and reenter matter wheresoever you will; be in the World one instant, in the astral the next and in Arcturus the next I speak no idle tales--who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
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Now I had left the world for a new life, a new vantage point. So far I had lived a life purely one of sacrifice to duty sad that duty one to Elizabeth, all the later while knowing
myself, through my other astral, to be far from home and Phyris and knowledge. And now the release had come; my sacrifice to Elizabeth was completed, my charity had covered a multitude of sins, oh! many more than I knew at the time of the completed sacrifice. And yet, I had not quite atoned for all the weary errors of past incarnations. Almost free, however, almost free!
While yet living with Elizabeth, my obedience to the rules of which I have spoken and others of which I have not spoken, all from Mol Lang and Mendocus, had given me insight into somewhat of the past. Thus I had learned a little of the dead personality known to the reader as Zailm of Poseid. I knew that Zailm's spirit, human soul, his individuality, were also mine; that I, Pierson, had been Zailm. I was able to form a fair remembering of Zailm's life, and of its events and his friends. I knew that the acts he did and the sins he committed were my inheritance and that I was responsible for them, because though his personality was not my personality, his individuality was, and is, mine. Although I knew not who Lolix was, or that she lived, yet for Zailm's (my) sin with her and for her tragic death, I must atone. To whom? Anybody in the Earth whom I could serve as CHRIST had said in declaring, "Even unto the least of these." I served with the sacrifice of my living happiness the duty I contracted to Elizabeth, by living for her, and dying on my ship that she might have the chance to escape. I had rescued her from a nameless sin of life in ---------- City, and brought her to saving faith in JESUS, THE CHRIST. If as Zailm, I, the Me, had tripped with Lolix, I, as Walter Pierson, had arisen with another (?) soul to salvation. So karma balanced there. Karma, self-made fate, binds the soul to make reparation in some life or lives for its sins in others. It bound me; I paid the debt. It binds you for debts contracted sometime, somewhere, and will you not follow the Path, and after paying the debt, be with the free forever more? Charity is great: its
least worthy aspect alms giving, for although I give all my goods to feed the poor, and have not (that) charity (which is love) it profiteth me nothing."
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I have said that my wife, Elizabeth, cared little for my esoteric studies. But to infer that she cared nothing would be wrong. She once found me in my library, using an occult needle. This was a steel bar seven inches long, square, and one-third of an inch thick, pointed quadramidally, with gold tips. It swung in a glass case suspended by a hair over the symbol.
Could you have been gifted with clairvoyant sight, and have looked upon me as Elizabeth found me, you would have seen that needle hanging motionless, and all about it a golden light or aura. From either end went a beam of this odic luminosity -one to me, and one to a distance. Looking along the latter you could have seen at its end a man, standing beside a dining room sideboard; in his hand a glass of brandy. That man was a dear friend of mine, with but one grave fault, inebriety. As he poised the cup to drink I said firmly:
"No! 'Touch not, taste not, handle not!' Neither now nor henceforth! Heed my voice, or you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
Willis Murchison, the would-be drinker, let the glass fall to the floor, where it broke to fragments. A day or so later I met him, and he related that he had had a vision, and heard a voice from God, saying that he should no more drink lest he lose his chance of heaven. He never did touch liquor again. He heard the mysterious voice and heeded; yet he had not heeded his friends. By the occult secret of that aurant tipped needle whose power enlisted the service of spirits not human, I held mesmeric power over him. Herein is the peril of letting the masses know these things, for had I been unscrupulous, lawless, a sorcerer, I could as easily have moved Murchison to any crime.
Elizabeth asked what I was doing there in the dark. Having achieved my purpose with my friend, I said to my wife, "Let me tell you certain things." I told her of the law of karma, and much besides. When nearly through, I willed the gold pointed needle to connect her mind psychically with mine. Between us the line of light was established. I whispered then:
"Look! See your past life on earth, and know it. Then tell me, nor forget what you learn."
She was silent for a few moments, then her breath came as in sleep. Presently she said:
"A noble, wonderful man is guiding me. I see him seemingly uncover a remote age of the world; it is the day of a mighty nation, who sail the air in what they call 'Vailx.' A splendid city is about me. Now I am in a vast temple; the interior of it is ornamented with real stalactites. I stand by a large cube of crystal quartz, and on this is a strange flame which burns without fuel. I see a young couple whom a grave, priestly man is uniting in marriage. Ah, it seems as if I loved the one to be wed better than I love life! I implore the one in the assemblage who seems to be a ruler of the nation to prohibit the wedding. Then the priest turns to me, now he looks at me, and, oh! my God! his look chills me in death! I seem to rise above the scene and yet my body still stands in a stony, petrified rigidity.--------Now it seems some time elapses, and I see the young man who was to be wed. I see the Monarch, too, and they are both in the temple. Now the young man lifts the--my body of stone, and lets it drop into the Light on the great quartz cube, and it disappears instantly. But a foot was broken off, and this the young man hides in his mantle and carries away. It seems all this was due to some evil done by him, and by me through love of him. I--ah-h-h!"
Elizabeth sighed and then awoke to her surroundings. I lighted the study-lamp, and she watched me curiously. Suddenly she said:
"Why, husband, that young man I saw was--was you! Oh, I believe now in all these things you have told, but which I never believed till now I have seen this."
This experience had a great effect on her, so that she looked more and more into the strange learning, and as a result redoubled her efforts to do good in the world. Thus did she observe the Scripture, "Be ye doers of the word, not hearers only," for strange though this learning seemeth, it is not so to Christian Esoterists, but only to mere bearers, and in a less measure to doers on the exterior plane of Christian service. Thus had I, who led Lolix astray, led Elizabeth back into His deeper Path. But I first had to travel in it somewhat myself, ere I could guide her. This occurred only a few months before her last voyage with me, the Bermuda trip. But she had learned enough to know we were both doomed on the occasion of the wreck, and when I would have placed her in the boat, she said:
"Husband! Walter! I will not go into that boat, for out of the past I know that now we change. I have come to know that in esoterically doing His word, and not hearing it only, is there alone Life. Now I see again into a past age. And you and I are together, and a little babe is before us, wailing to us. You take it bleeding, into your arms, and me also you clasp. Then you ask God for mercy. Generously you took all the blame; yet I, too, having broken the law, had to share the penalty. Then said One who was verily the Christ, although then we knew it not, Therefore in a far day thou shalt gather a sorrowful harvest of woe, and repay all thou art, indebted. When thou art come again, also she with thee, and again are ready to go into Navazzamin, thou wilt find thyselves free of Earth forever: My dear, dear friend, it must be that we both die now; I fear not, for we will of necessity meet again. Farewell, my love, till then; kiss me. Is not my karma paid in full, so far as Lolix's error is? More even, possibly? And Christ, shall He not receive me now?"
And I said: "Yes, dear wife, it must be! Good-by, and God bless you, for we will truly meet again, beyond the great deep River, with Him." And so in death I held her close.
Do you longer marvel at her contented smile in the photographically true picture of the death scene executed by
Phyris? And I, friend? Was not the special crime of Zailm atoned for, in that I brought her to know God's law, karma, and in making my life a living sacrifice for, and at the last dying in an effort to save her to happiness and enlightenment, was that score not requited, fulfilled, and Jesus the Christ obeyed? Sins, evil deeds, lies, thefts, adulteries, murders even, axe in themselves only the shadows of lives turned to face away from God into outer darkness; they are weak places in the chain of character; unsymmetrical places in what Christ our Lord would have perfect, even as He is perfect. For in Him, the Perfect One, are none of these things, nor shadow of turning. He beseeches us, saying, "Be ye likewise perfect." "Come unto Me, all ye weary, and I will give you rest." So, in His divine love He proposes Himself to take all these (to Him) shadows that to us are so horribly real. Of ourselves we can do nothing, for as we undo through the lapse of ages, we also do fresh evil. Not shadows to us. But He is the Light of the world. So the glooms we see while we look from His way, will cease to be if we turn to His following. If we have kept a the laws from youth upwards, yet, that is but doing no sin of commission. Behind is an unrequited eternity. And, brethren, friends, the time is short (Cor. vii: 29.) He will take these sins, and it shall be to us as if we took a boxful of shadow from a cellar and opened it out in the noontide rays of the sun. But while the sins are all by Him atoned; while when the days mount to years, the one robbed or tied about, or otherwise injured, finds the Father's laws have made it a up to him, if he only also knows that Father too, still we have a work. Jesus, the Great Master, took all when we, aweary, asked him. But we, while doing these crimes, walked in darkness. The tree of our lives could grow nothing but sickly growths, pale leaves, dwarfed buds, blighted fruits, in that darkness of the soul. We may have ever seemed righteous to others; may have even cried "Lord, Lord" with our lips. But if our deeds knew Him not we were growing our life-tree with fair bark, but decayed wood. So, after He has taken on Himself our sins, and they are ceased, yet with our faces
to Himwards, we see our tree of character, pale, sickly, with few leaves, and no fruit, standing in God's karmic light. Will we work to make green leaves, and fruit in plenty? If we follow Him, yes. For He always said in language unmistakable to those having ears to hear, that only those who obeyed the Father's law, God's Will, could hope to win salvation. He will remove our burdens; will mediate and atone, but we must undo the errors with the strength He gives; we must take each our cross and follow Him, and He, the Good Shepherd, will lead us Home, to the immortal heights, where is no more death, nor sin, nor suffering, neither parting. In Him we have, all of us, time, strength, opportunity to undo, after He has atoned and shown us the way. He is that Way. And we, letting Him dwell in us, make our life the Path. Them can be no homegoing till, in Him, we become our own Path. If there was another way, I would tell you. For I am come before His second coming. It is near. Beware, lest night find you idle. Say not I knew Him not, either as Zailm, or as Pierson. To know Him by lip service is one; to know Him by life lived as He bade us, is another. Having lived, now I speak. Be ye doers of the Word, not hearers only.
365:1 Job xxxviii, 7.