The hidden side of Christian festivals

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THE HIDDEN SIDE OF
CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS

THE HIDDEN SIDE OF
CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS

BY

CHARLES W. LEADBEATER

Regionarg Bishop of
The Liberal Catholic Churoh for Australasia

^

1

THE ST. ALBAN PRESS
Los Angeles : London : Sydney

1920

THE NEW YORK
f'UBLIC LIBRARY

583

ASTOPf. LENOX AND
iI-D;2N FOUNDATION

CONTENTS

Foreword
Introduction :
Chapter 1 —
Chapter II —
Chapter HI—
Chapter lY —
Chapter V —
Chapter VI —
Chapter YII-

Chapter VIII-
Chapter IX —
Chapter X —
Chapter XI —
Chapter XII—
Chapter XIII-

Chapter XIV—

PART ONE

The Church 's Year

Advent

Christnuis

New Year 's Day

The Epiphany , .

The Baptism of Our Lord

The Transfiguration

Lent

Our Attitude Towards Lent

The Sundays in Lent
Eefreshment Sunday

Holy Week . .

The Services in Holy Week
Pabii Sunday
Maundy Thursday . .
Good Friday
Holy Saturday
Easter

Ascension Day
Whitsun-Day
Trinity Sunday
Corpus Christi
Feasts of our Lady

The Mother of Jesus

The A'irgin Matter

The Feminine Aspect of the Deity
The Festival of the Angels

The Higher Angels . .

The LoAver Angels

Chapter XV — Festivals of the Saints

Our Attitude Towards the Saiuts . .

Patron Saints
Chapter XVI — Brief Notes Upon Some of the Saints

St. Alban

St. George

St. Patrick

St. Mark
Chapter XVII— All Saints' Day
Chapter XVIII— All Souls ' Day • •

PART TWO
^OtttB ^aus of Special ^nitni

Page

290
290
299
305
305
311
319
323
324
330

Chapter XIX—

The Faith of Our Fathers

Chapter XX —

Our Attitude Towards Life

Chapter XXI—

The Greatest of These . .

Chapter XXII—

Discernment

Chapter XXIII—

Wisdom . .

Chapter XXIV—

Self -Dedication • •

Chapter XXV—

Perseverance

Chapter XXVI—

Good Works

Chapter XXVII-

-God as Light

Chapter XXVIII

Forethought

347
355
370
384
395
402
413
419
426
441

PART THREE
^bhressejg Burut^ x\\t J3Iar

Chapter XXIX— The Truth About the War . . • • 451

Chapter XXX — On the Anniversary of the Outbreak

of War 480

Chapter XXXI— On God's Side 487

Chapter XXXII— The Future 493

Index 500

FOREWORD

These notes on the Church's Year were originally
intended to be a chapter in the first volume of this
series, The Science of the Sacraments. It was found,
however, that that book was alread}- becoming un-
Tvdeldy, aud that there was more to be said about
the ecclesiastical year than could be compressed into
a single chapter; so it seemed best to devote a
separate volume to its consideration. This lias also
made it possible to add to it a few miscellaneous
addresses on points of importance.

The book is to a large extent the reproduction
of a series of sermons given for the instruction of
a congregation to whose members the ideas con-
tained in it were novel. Amid much pressure of
work along other lines I have not had leisure to weld
these into a continuous treatise; and as it is not
probable that in this incarnation I shall have that
leisure, and as other congregations desire informa-
tion on these subjects, it seems best to let tlie sermons
go forth with but little correction or addition.
Occasional repetitions and colloquialisms will no
dou^bt be found in the book, therefore; but I hope
that it may nevertheless be not without some vahie
to students of liberal Christianity, and indeed of
religion in general.

C.W.L.

Part 1

THE FESTIVALS

INTEODUCTION

THE CHURCH'S YEAR

God has a plan for man, and that plan is evolii>
tion. We have come forth from Him, and to Him
we are to return. The oriental philosophers tell us
that we are on the nivritti marga, or path of return,
and a modern poet puts the same idea in other
words: ''AH the aim of life is just climbing back
to God." Christ's Church exists solely to help man-
kind in this process, and she has many ingenious
methods of offering that help. One of them is the
arrangement of the ecclesiastical year, which differs
somewhat from that of civil life.

Broadly speaking, it divides itself into two parts,
the first of which is devoted to setting before us
dramatically the various stages of the path we have
to tread, and the second to the practical applica-
tion of what has been taught. Through both parts
are scattered various festivals, each of which is
intended to remind us of some point which it is
useful for us to remember, and to call upon us to
make a special effort in connection with it; and to
make this easier, extra outpourings of force from
the higher world are arranged for such occasions.
As it is put in our Liturgy: "The first portion of
the Church's year, from Advent to Whitsuntide, is
devoted to the commemoration of the various scenes
in the Mysteiy-Drama of the life of the Christ, which
in itself is typical of the life of every Christian, as
Origen pointed out."

11

12 ^he Christian Festivals

There are four principal stages in that progress.
Those who have studied these things from another
point of view know that in oriental religions those
four stages are called the four great Initiations.
These appear in Christianity also, but the terms are
different. The first of them is symbolized by the
Birth of the Christ — that first great Initiation which
is the birth of the man into the great White
Brotherhood, which is always called in the gospels
the kingdom of heaven. We cannot understand
those gospels, we cannot make coherent or reason-
able sense out of them, if we take the kingdom of
heaven to mean the heaven- world after death. If
we understand that the kingdom of heaven is a
great living community, we shall see why it is diffi-
cult for the rich man to enter into it; we shall see
how all the promises made about it are literally
accurate; otherwise they make no sense at all.

In that first Initiation also the birth of the Christ-
Principle takes place in the man, for the Monad
and the ego — the spirit and the soul, to use the
Christian terms — become one for a wonderful
moment.

The second of those great stages is symbolized by
the Baptism of our Lord. We must not confuse
this with the baptism which brings every child into
the Church of Christ. It is that of which John the
Baptist spoke when he said: ''I indeed baptize you
with water, but He that oometh after me shall
baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with Fire."
There is an outpouring from the Initiator to the
candidate at that second great ceremony which hag
indeed all the appearance of a baptism of fire.

me Church's Year 13

The Transfiguration is the representation of the
third of these great Initiations, for in that truly the
Monad, the spirit, transfigures the soul, and the soul
in its turn transfigures the body down here — the
personality, as we often call it. All these are won-
derfully apt illustrations. "When we come to the
fourth, we find what many people think a truly
terrible Initiation, though sureh^ it is also one of
the greatest glory; for then the candidate suffers
what is imaged by the Crucifixion, though if he
passes the test successfully it is always followed by
the victory of the Resurrection.

If we read the account of the life of any mystic
who has passed through that wonderful stage we
shall notice how closely these events follow one an-
other, and how truly the Christian story mirrors
them. "We shall see that there is usually some small
earthly triumph like that of the Christ on Palm
Sunda}^, and after that there is always the com-
bination of enemies to disgrace the candidate; there
is always the misunderstanding and the contumely
thrown upon him, and then after all that comes the
great and glorious resurrection out of that suffer-
ing into life eternal — eternal as regards this world
at any rate, for the man who has taken that step
need never again be reborn here on earth.

Then after that comes the fifth step — the last of
all, that which takes the man out of humanity and
makes him a superman. That is aptly symbolized
by the Ascension from earth to heaven, and the
downpouring of the Holy Spirit comes upon him
and upon others in consequence of that his ascent
— all truly as it is mirrored in the gospel story.

14 ^he Christian Festivals

There is an immense amount of detail into which
I cannot pretend to go now; but it will be seen that
the symbolical interpretation is at least coherent,
reasonable and defensible. There is no argument
against it, whereas the contention that the account
is historical can be overthrown at every point;
therefore those who pin their faith to that histori-
cal idea must shut their eyes to a vast amount of
what they cannot but know to be the truth, whereas
those who are prepared to accept the higher and
inner meaning will find that their faith is founded
upon a rock.

In drawing up the calendar for the Liberal
Catholic Church we have ventured upon a slight re-
arrangement of some of the minor festivals in order
to bring forth this inner meaning somewhat more
clearly. At Christmas, with all the world, we cele-
brate the Birth of the Christ. There is no special
festival appointed in the ordinary Catholic calendar
as an anniversary of the Baptism of our Lord,
though many have celebrated it along with the Epi-
phany. We therefore have ventured to set apart an-
other day for this celebration, somewhat later than
the Epiphany; and because the Transfiguration (sym-
bolizing the third Initiation) comes out of its due
place when kept on the 6th August, we have also
transferred that, and we keep it between the Baptism
(which represents the second Initiation) and Easter
(which represents the fourth). So once more these
four stages will be restored in our calendar to a
coherent whole, and put in the right order.

There is no tradition in the Church as to the
actual anniversary of either the Baptism or the

The Church's Year 15

Transfiguration. The custom of celebrating the
latter on the 6th August was introduced at a com-
paratively late date; I think the first time we find
it mentioned is in the year 850 a.d._, and even then
it seems to have been only locally observed. It was
not until the year 1456 that its extension to the
universal Church was decreed in commemoration of
a great victory gained over the Turks on that day.
So as the original date is not known, we have not,
I think, committed any great breach of propriety
in putting these celebrations in their true order, so
that the sj^mbolism shall be clear to our brethren.

Many of the events described as having hap-
pened in the last life of the Christ are commemor-
ated on the days when they are actually supposed
to have occurred, although on this subject there has
been in ecclesiastical history considerable difference
of opinion. The great group of festivals whose dates
are determined by that of Easter fall on different
days of the month in different years; but they are
all decided with reference to the Paschal full moon,
just as the old Jewish Passover used to be.

The other group of festivals, being dependent
upon Christmas, have fixed dates — the Annunciation
on March 25th, Christmas Day itself, the festival of
the Epiphany twelve days later, and the Presenta-
tion of Christ in the temple, which is commonly
called Candlemas Day. There is little reason to
suppose that any of these dates are historically cor-
rect, but they are arranged to be consistent one with
another.

CHAPTER I
ADVENT

With us, as with the Churches of Rome and of
England, Advent Sunday is what may be called the
ecclesiastical New Year's Day. The Holy Eastern
Church (the Church of Greece and of Russia)
observes the same custom, but she clings to the
unrevised calendar, and so she begins all her com-
memorations twelve days later than we do.

The first great feast of the Church's year is that
of the Birth of the Christ, which corresponds to,
and teaches us of, the first of the great Initiations.
But the Church in her wisdom has ordered that for
each of her greater festivals there shall be a
certain time of preparation, and consequently before
the feast of Christmas we have the season of Advent
— which has indeed a double aspect, but its first is
that of a time of preparation for the due celebration
of Christmas.

It is not a mere fashion of speech to say that we
ought during the season of Advent to be making
ourselves ready for that festival. Christmas is not
only a birthday, not only a commemoration of the
nativity of our Lord; it is also a time of the special
outpouring of spiritual force. Such great festivals
as Easter and Christmas, in the rejoicing connected
with which we all join so eagerly when they come
round, are definitely occasions for what is commonly
called the shedding of grace from on high; and in
order that we may be able to avail ourselves to
the full of such an outpouring, it is well that we

16

Advent 17

should take advantage of the season of adjustment.
We receive more if we prepare ourselves properly;
so we should accustom ourselves during Advent to
think daily of the Coming of the Lord, and of tlie
Initiation which it typifies.

The four Sundays in Advent are devoted by the
mystics of the Inner School of Christianity to the
contemplation of the four qualifications for the
first Initiation — Discrimination, Desirelessness, Good
Conduct and Love; but no trace of that arrange-
ment remains in the modern Church services, unless
it be the old custom of substituting rose for violet
as the colour for the third Sunday. As is explained
in our Liturgy (and more fully in the first book of
this series. Tine Science of the Sacraments) the
Church utilizes different rates of vibration, which
show themselves to our eyes as colours, to assist in
impressing upon her members the various lessons to
be learnt successively in the course of her year. In
the preparation-periods (Advent, Lent and the
vigils of Saints' Days) the colour chosen as most
helpful is purple, because of its actinic, piercing and
cleansing properties. Approximately in the middle
of Advent and of Lent we find a Sunday on which
rose is prescribed; and for this various reasons have
been suggested. Through certain curious misunder-
standings these preparatory periods came to be con-
sidered as penitential and sorrowful, and it was sup-
posed that the rose-coloured Sunday was introduced
as a kind of mitigation of grief — a momentary relief
in the midst of austerities. A truer theory is that,
as the one efficient motive for our attempt at self-
purification is our love for God, this dramatic
change of colour in the midst of the season is

18 The Christian Festivals

intended to remind us of that deep and true affec-
tion which must underlie and permeate every effort
that we make, if there is to be any hope of its per-
manent success. At least this much remains of the
joyousness which should characterize the whole
season; for it is not hy fruitlessly mourning over
our sins, but by earnestly resolving to forsake them,
that we can fit ourselves to make the best use of
the glorious festival which is approaching.

The Church Catholic has always recognized the
dual nature of the Advent season — that it is a pre-
paration for the next Coming of the Christ, as well
as for the celebration of His birth in His last life
on earth. The Churches of Rome and England
speak of that second Coming, and adjure their
people to be ready for it; and yet there is a vast
amount of serious misunderstanding a'bout it. In
the Christian scriptures it is entangled with the
idea of the end of the world, so that people who
look for the second Coming of the Christ generally
think of it as also the end of all the order that they
know, and so most of them fear it. In the sermons
and hymns connected with the Coming there still
lingers a flavour of fearful anticipation of an awful
descent from the physical sky, acccompanied by
appalling meteorological phenomena. The general
attitude is far too much that expressed in some of
the Advent hymns which such people sing:
Tho ungodly, filled with g"uilty fear8,

Behold his Tvrath prevailing;
In woe they rise, but all their tears

And sighs are unavailing.

And they talk of them as ''deeply wailing," **in
deep abasement bending," and so on. Now it should

Advent 19

be very clearly understood that all this sort of thing
is not only silly, but definitely wicked and blas-
phemous; and the men who teach such a horrible
misrepresentation of true Christian doctrine under-
take a very serious responsibility, for surely to
slander our heavenly Father and to degrade His
children's conception of Him is a crime of no small
magnitude. There is of course nothing whatever of
that sort among true mystics, who have always
known that God is Love, and have never feared any
manifestation of His Presence, for they know that
whether they see Him or not He is always with
them even unto the end of the age.

All fear of God comes from a misunderstanding.
The Coming of Christ is indeed connected with an
end; it is not the end of the world, but the end of
an age or dispensation. The Greek word is aioUy
which is the same as agon in English; and jnst as
Christ said two thousand years ago that the dispen-
sation of the Jewish law had come to an end —
because He had come to found a new dispensation,
that of the gospel — so will the gospel dispensation
come to an end when He comes again and founds
yet another. He will give the same great teaching;
the teaching musi be the same, for there is only one
Truth, though perhaps it may be put a little more
clearly for us now, because we know a little more.
It will be promulgated in some fresh dress, per-
haps, with some beauty of expression which will be
exactly suited to us in this present day; there will
be some statement of it which will appeal to a large
number oi' people.

It will certainly be the same, because it has ap-
peared in all the existing faiths. They have differed

20 ^he Christian Festivals

mucli in their method of presenting it, but they all
agree absolutely in the life which they ask their
followers to live. We find considerable difference
between the external teachings of Christianity,
Buddhism, Hinduism, and Muhammadanism ; but if
we examine the good men of any one of those reli-
gions and enquire into their daily practice, we shall
find that they are all leading precisely the same life
— ^that they all agree as to the virtues a good man
must possess, and they all agree as to the evils he
must avoid. They all tell us that a man must be
charitable, truthful, kindly, honourable, helpful to
the poor; they all tell us that a man who is hard
and grasping and cruel, a man wlio is untruthful
and dishonourable, is making no progress and has
no chance of success until he changes his ways. As
practical people we must recognize that the things
of real importance in any religion are not the vague
metaphysical speculations on matters of which no
one can really know anything for certain, for these
can have no influence upon our conduct ; the important
things are the precepts which affect our daily lives,
which make us this kind of man or that kind of
man in our relations with our fellow-men. Those
precepts are the same in all existing religions; thej^
will be the same in the new teaching, whatever it
may be.

Perhaps we may go a little further than that in
predicting what He will teach, because there are
some other avenues of information open to us. One
of these is the study of the previous teachings which
He has given. Students will remember that before
this World-Teacher took up the office it was held by
the Lord Gautama, Whom men call the Buddha. His

Advent 21

especial title was the Lord of Wisdom. He gave
many teachings, but they all centred round the idea
tliat knowledge meant salvation — that the evils of
the world came from ignorance, and that through
ignorance men were led into desire, and by that into
all kinds of sins and sorrows; but that if the igno-
rance of man was dispelled, and he came into pos-
session of perfect knowledge, he would thereby come
to the perfect life, and to the perfect attitude to-
wards all men and all circumstances, and so would
escape from the wheel of birth and death.

Our present World- Teacher bears the name
Maitreya, which means kindliness or compassion,
and just as the Lord Buddlia was called the Lord of
Wisdom, so is the Lord Maitreya called the Lord of
Love or of Compassion. The great central truth
which He will emphasize is that the evils of the
world come from the lack of love and brotherliness
— that if man will learn to love and to adopt the
brotherly attitude, all evil will pass away and the
golden age will dawn upon us. Not immediately —
we cannot hope for that; but at least men will begin
to see for themselves, and to understand how much
more is to be gained along that line than the other.
We may see how prominently that doctrine came
forward in His previous lives.

Twice He has appeared — as Krishna in the Indian
plains, and as Christ amid the hills of Palestine. In
the incarnation as Krishna the great feature was
always love; the child Krishna drew round Him
people who felt for him the deepest, the most intense
affection. Even now the religion which He founded
perpetuates itself in the most touching devotion, the
most wonderful attraction to the child Krishna. All

22 ^he Christian Festivals

over the south of India mari}^ millions of followers
still worship Him, and it is of the essence of their
v/orship to feel for him the deepest affection — a
devotion more touching, more intense, I think, than
any that I have seen even in the monastic communi-
ties of Christianity.

Again in His birth in Palestine, love was the
central feature of His teaching. He said: ''This
new commandment I give unto you, that ye love
one another as I have loved you." He asked that
His disciples might all be one in Him even as He
was one with the Father. His closest disciple, St.
John, insisted most strongly upon the same idea:
"He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is
love." St. John lived to a great age (over a hun-
dred), and when in the days of extreme old age and
feebleness he could no longer deliver long sermons,
as he was carried about in a chair among the younger
people, his word to them always was: ''Little
children, love one another." So v/e have some evi-
dence from the two previous births of the great
World-Teacher that the central idea of love will
dominate His utterances now.

In a certain little book called At the Feet of the
Master we have some teaching given to a young
Indian pupil (whom I knew well) by one of the
INIasters of the Wisdom who is Himself a disciple of
the World-Teacher. Its especial object is to set
forth in the simplest possible form the qualifications
required for Initiation. There is no mystery as to
those qualifications, for they are given in books be-
longing to various religions, and are well known to
all who make a study of such subjects. In these
different presentations, however, there is room for

Advent 23

considerable variety, both in the method of teaching
and in the translation of some of the technical terms
employed. In this little book to which I have re-
ferred we get the presentation of those qualifications
by one who is so close a follower of the World-
Teacher that we may feel sure that it is practically
His presentation. That book clearly does not con-
tain the whole of what He will teach, but we may
certainly take it that there is nothing in it of which
He disapproves. In reading it we cannot fail to be
struck by the fact that it is most strongly permeated
with this same spirit of love. The final qualifica-
tion, the intense desire for union with the Supreme,
is given in that book as Love, on the ground that the
Supreme with Whom the man wishes to be one is
Himself Love; and therefore he who wishes to join
with Him must first develop that love within him-
self. I strongly recommend that little book to the
notice of ever>^ member of our Church; it will be
found in many ways a most useful manual, for it
shows us clearly in how many ways our present
methods of life fall far sliort of that high ideal of
love.

In reading the Christian bible we should, I think,
remember that its language is largely symbolical.
I do not mean to say that all the writers knew
exactly what it meant. I do not think they
did. I think they also were in many cases deceived,
because they put into the mouth of the Christ
words which represent Him as expecting to come
back quite shortly. Again and again He is made to
state: ''There are many standing here who will not
pass away until I come again," whereas we know
that two thousand years have passed since then.

24 ^he Christian Festivals

That idea of the destruction of the world is a
mistake. It may be said: ''All the Christian world
takes it literally; how do we know that it is a mis-
take?" In this Liberal Catholic Church we worship
and we follow the living Christ. Not a Christ of
two thousand years ago only, but a Christ Who lives
and inspires His Church now; in this day also He
has His prophets who know and declare His Will,
and those who know have told us that He will come
again even as He has said, and that that Coming
will be soon now, as we count earthly time. It will
indeed begin a new era for those who are willing
to receive it. It will be a great change, but it will
be a mental and a moral change. He spoke, in that
previous visit of His, of the signs which should
foretell His second Coming. If we read what is
written, we shall see that the great war has been
one of those signs; and we can also 'see that much
will be possible in the way of reconstruction after
it which would not have been practicable before.
Let it be clearly in our minds that He comes not
to destroy the world, but to teach us, even as He
came before. He comes to reign indeed, but He
comes to reign in our hearts, for His kingdom is
not of this world.

How shall we prepare ourselves then for this His
Coming? Chiefly by unselfishness and by service to
others for Him and in His Name. The virtues of
devotion, of steadfastness and of gentleness need
developing in us all, as is stated clearly by the
Order of the Star in the East, a Society which exists
to prepare the way for His second Coming, to help
us to fit ourselves to receive Him, and so far as may
be to help to make others ready as well.

Advent 25

This time, as indeed He is said to have foretold,
there will be many who will not heed, many who
will be wrapped np in business and in pleasure. He
quotes the legendary story of Noah, that men were
going on with their work and their play and pay-
ing no attention to the prophecies, and the flood
came suddenly and destroyed them all. This is the
legend of the sinking of Atlantis — a historical fact,
though it did not occur exactly as described in the
traditions. Christ is reported to have said that
just as it was then, so it will be when the Son of
Man shall come again. The people will be fully
occupied v/ith their business and pleasure, and not
thinking in the least of Him, and so they will not
know Him; they will not identify Him or recog-
nize Him. We at least must be wiser than that, we
who are trying to study the inner meaning of all
these things; we must make ourselves ready to re-
ceive Him; and for those who will so prepare them-
selves, be sure that a wonderful and a glorious time
will come.

We hardly realize, perhaps, how stupendous is the
privilege of being born at this time, of having been
able to take part (for we all have taken part in
one way or another, I hope and believe) in the great
war of right against wrong, which has so recently
drawn to a close; and even more than that, we who
live now may hope to see the second Coming of the
Christ among us. And think what that should mean
to us, if we recognize Him.

For He Whom now we trust in

Shall then be seen and known,
And they who know and serve Him

Shall have Him for their own.

26 ^he Christian Festivals

They shall know the truth and the truth shall
make them free, for in His service there is perfect
freedom. And He has told us that whosoever does
service unto one of the least of His brethren, does
it unto IJim. That must be our preparation.

For us who know the nearness of His Coming,
Advent is a time not of fear, but of joyous recol-
lection and of still more joyous anticipation. Our
attitude is well expressed in the ancient hymn:
Rejoice! rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

At the season of Advent we should have much in
our minds the necessity of the quality of discrimin-
ation in making ready for our own Initiation, and
also for the Coming of the Lord. It would be
useful for us to think carefully how that great
quality can be displayed in our efforts to spread
the knowledge of that near Coming — how in our
w^ork of preparation we can display the wisdom
of the serpent as well as the harmlessness of
the dove. "With these thoughts in our minds
"well may we rejoice and sing," as our hymn
tells us, for "we are waiting with a hope that
cannot fail." Brethren, the Coming of the Lord
draweth nigh; yea, it is even at the doors.
Already the dawn is lightening; soon shall be the
rising of the sun.

Coming! in the opening East
Herald brightness slowly swells;

Coming! 0 mj glorious Priest,
Hear we not Thy golden bells?

CHAPTER II

CHRISTMAS

Christmas is one of the greatest of the festivals
of the Church; it is perhaps surpassed only by
Easter, for on this day we celebrate the birth of the
Sun-God, as on that day we celebrate His victor;y
over the powers of darkness. Christianity, like all
the other religions, was founded in the northern
hemisphere, and consequently its festivals all fall at.
inappropriate times so far as the southern hemi-
sphere is concerned. The rebirth of the Sun-God
after the eclipse of winter was celebrated on the
first day which was definitely longer both in the
morning and in the evening, immediately after the
winter solstice, the point at which the earth turns
in its circuit round the sun, and begins to pass away
from him instead of drawing towards him. In the
same way the victory of the Sun-God over the
powers of darkness was celebrated as soon as the
equinox had passed — as soon as the day was
definitely longer than the night. These festivals of
the Sun-God had been kept for thousands of years
before the birth of Jesus, so that it was quite
natural for the early Church to adopt their dates
for its celebrations.

The actual date of the birth of Jesus is not known,
but from various indications it seems probable that
it was some time in the spring. The 25th of Decem-
ber was, however, selected fairly early in ecclesiasti-
cal history, because it coincided with that great
Sun-festival, and it was naturally convenient to

27

28 Whe Christian Festivals

take advantage of what was already a public holi-
day. Those who do not recognize the symbolical
meaning of the life of the Christ naturally suppose
all these ecclesiastical commemorations to be merely
historical; but we, who are trying to delve a little
deeper into the truths of nature, shall none the less
find it interesting to look for other and deeper signi-
fications as well.

What are the points of which the great Christmas
celebration reminds the Liberal Catholic? It seems
to me that there are no less than seven of these
points, and I will ivy to explain them one by one.

1. We must certainly not ignore the historic aspect
of the day, even though we know that it is not an
actual anniversary. In precisely the same manner,
it is agreed that a certain convenient da}^ shall be
celebrated each year as the birthday of King George,
although it may not be the anniversary of his
coming into the world in this incarnation; but it
would be both foolish and improper to decline to
observe it on that account. Unquestionably, there-
fore, we are called upon on Christmas Day to look
back to that descent of the great disciple Jesus, and
to thank him for it, and for all that has since come
to the world in consequence of it. It was he who
lent his body to the Great Teacher in order that
He might come and found His religion and preach
His gospel upon earth.

That may seem a new and strange idea to some,
but it is one quite commonly understood by those
who grasp the facts of reincarnation — those who
know something of the might and the power and the
dignity of the Great One Whom we call the World-

Christmas 29

Teaclier. We know that it would not be economy
for Him, it would not be a good use of His stupen-
dous power, that He should occupy a human body
through all the period of its birth and growth, the
earlier stages of its life. Therefore one of His dis-
ciples takes charge of all that for Him, and He
steps into the full-grown and fully-prepared body
when He is ready to do so, and uses it for the pur-
pose for which alone He takes it over. For He
Himself lives habitually upon a plane far higher,
and carries on there a work so magnificent, so be-
yond our conception, that it is little use for us to
try to grasp it, except in the merest outline.

In this particular case an advanced disciple of
the Lord Christ took birth in the year 105 B.C. among
the descendants of King David, as a son of Joseph
and Mary; and to him was given the name of Jesus.
He remained in charge of that body until it was
about thirty years of age, and then handed it over
to the Christ, Who occupied it for the three years
of His earthly ministry. The disciple Jesus was
reborn as Apollonius of Tyana just about the date
UvSually assigned to the beginning of the Christian
era; and a thousand years later he appeared as the
great teacher Ramanujacharya, who left so deep an
impression upon Indian thought. In due course he
received the reward of his self-sacrifice, and attained
the Asekha Initiation, thereby becoming one of the
Masters of the Wisdom. We reverence Him now,
therefore, no longer as the disciple, but the Master
Jesus.

Therefore it is well that we should sing our
Christmas hymns and carols, and perpetuate the
beautiful traditions which have gathered round the

30 ^he Christian Festivals

birth of the Master Jesus. We do not necessarily
thereby assert our belief in their historical ac-
curacy; for indeed the same lovely legends hang
round other births of the World-Teacher, and it is
perhaps difficult to suppose that they were literally
true on all these various occasions. But we cer-
tainly need not doubt that each such birth is a
great occasion, and is attended with unusual
phenomena upon higher planes, which may have been
seen by some at least of those Avho were at that
period living in physical bodies.

2. We call to mind upon this occasion the descent
of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity into
matter; and, just as in the smaller cycle we owe
deep thankfulness to our great World-Teacher for
His descent into a human body in order to help
and to guide us, so should we also feel profound
gratitude to the great Solar Deity Himself for that
willing limitation of His power and His glory which
has brought us into existence.

There are many in the world who might say that
they feel no gratitude for having been brought into
existence — that life is to them more sorrow than joy,
and if they could have been consulted they would
have preferred not to be. But any who speak thus
are thinking only of the very little that they see
and know of the great cycle of life; they know no-
thing whatever of the glory that lies before us; they
have realized nothing of the mighty plan of which
they are an infinitesimal part. Those of us who
are happy enough to know a little of that glorious
design cannot but be filled with vivid though humble
admiration for it; for we see beyond our present

Christmas 31

inefficiency to the wonder and the beauty of
the future. We realize something of the splen-
did scheme in which His marvellous love is
manifested, and when we catch even a glimpse of
that, we cannot but feel strongly moved and full of
gratitude that we should have been permitted so
wondrous a privilege as that of taking a part, how-
ever small, in the glory and the perfection that is
to be. Let us show that gratitude, then, by
endeavouring to comprehend His manifestation so
far as we may, and intelligently to co-operate with it.
3. Yet again, as we have already said, Christmas
Day reminds us of that first of the great Initiations,
of which it is a symbol in the carefully arranged
syllabus of the Church's Year. We should think,
then, what this first Initiation means for us — hovv'
it is indeed a second birth — a birth into the great
White Brotherhood. During the preparatory season
of Advent we have been considering the qualifica-
tions needed for it; now we should contemplate the
thing itself and its results. We should realize how
one who has taken that step has become safe for
ever, and therefore may truly look upon the great
World-Teacher as his Saviour — though not indeed
from the mediaeval myth of everlasting torture.
There is no such thing as that in nature, and there
never has been; the whole thing is a frightful bogy
which men have allowed to grow up and to terrify
them. There is no eternal damnation to be saved
from; the world needs a saviour from such a hor-
rible idea, but not from the fact, because it is not
a fact at all. Such a delusion is part of the error
and the ignorance which causes all the trouble and
all the suffering which we see around us. Verily is

32 ^he Christian Festivals

the World-Teacher a Saviour, not only for the
Initiate, but for all of us; for it is His instruction
which saves us from our own error and ignorance,
and therefore from much of sorrow and of suffer-
ing, which are the necessary consequences of that
ignorance.

Not only should we look forward to the time
when this wonderful Initiation shall be ours, but we
should also make this an occasion of grateful re-
joicing that for some it has already come. We thank
God for His saints — for the elevation vdiich they
have given to humanity, not orAy by the encourage-
ment of the example which they set before us, but
by the actual uplift to the whole which each one of
them has given in his own attainment. This uplift
is a reality, by no means to be despised or for-
gotten; humanity is a brotherhood, little as most
men recognize that fact, and the unity is so real
that whenever one man attains, all the rest are
definitely helped and raised by that attainment. So
that should be another aspect of our Christmas joy.

I know that it comes as a shock to many good
and earnest Christians to be told that the gospel
story is not history, but truly myth. When one says
that, people think at once: "You are taking away
from us our Jesus, our Saviour. You are denying
His historic existence." We are not denying that
at all, but we do hold that the gospel history as it
is now written is not, and furthermore was never
intended to be, an actual account of the life of that
great World-Teacher, the Christ. We know but
little of His true life-story. It seems certain that
some parts of it were interwoven into this myth; it
seems certain that some at least of the sayings

Christmas 33

which in the gospels are credited to the Lord Christ
were really spoken by Him. But it is a matter of
equal certainty that some of the others were not;
and it is also plain to anyone who understands the
subject, and has read something of comparative re-
ligion, that the whole account is cast in that allegori-
cal form intentionally — that it represents not the
life-history of any one man, but the spiritual history
of every true follower of the Christ. It is obviously
not a history, but a drama — a collection of episodes,
arranged as though for presentation on a stage.

This idea, which seems so new to many, is not
really new at all. It was quite manifest to the
greatest of the Church Fathers. It is strange only
to us, and it is strange because we inherit a great
deal of the darkness of the Middle Ages. In these
days we can no longer give blind faith to something
which our reason shows us to be an impossibility.
We need to comprehend what this beautiful story
means, and it is quite easy to follow that. Origen,
the greatest of the early Christian writers, explains
the thing most lucidly. He says that there were in
his time (and there certainly are now) two kinds
of Christians. There were those whom he called the
believers in "somatic" Christianity, which means
bodily or physical Christianity. He makes it per-
fectly clear that by that expression he means those
who believe in the story as a story, and he says of
their doctrine: "What better could you have for the
instruction of the masses?" But he makes it abun-
dantly evident that the spiritual Christian holds an
altogether higher form of Christianity, in which he
understands the inner meaning of all these allegories.
Christ in each of His parables is represented to

34 The Christian Festivals

have told a story which had within it two inner
meanings. First there was the purely physical tale
for children, which described (for example) how
the sower went forth to sow; secondly there was an
intellectual explanation, whereby the seed is the
word of God, the sower is the preacher, and the dif-
ferent sorts of ground are the different kinds of hearts
on which it falls. Thirdly, there is always an inner
and a still more spiritual signification which is not
given out, which in this particular case is the pour-
ing out of the divine life in many planes and into
many worlds.

Origen holds that, just as the words of the Christ
bear an inner interpretation, so does the whole nar-
rative of the Christ bear an inner interpretation,
that can be seen only if we study its similarity
to the other presentations of the same great allegory.
He insists that all this takes place not in the fleet-
ing world of shadows, but in the eternal counsels
of the Most High. He says that so long as we
understand the universal truths which are revealed
by the story, the storj^ itself is of no importance.
Its meaning is clear, it describes tlie progress which
lies before every Christian man. People who study
these matters deeply are sometimes disturbed to
find the close resemblance which exists betv/een the
Christian legend and those of other Saviours long
before — pagan Christs, as Robertson calls Theni in
his book on the subject. It is true that all the
details of the life of the Christ are to be paralleled
by anecdotes of other Teachers Who were unques-
tionably far older in time than He, so that either
we must accept the idea of a wholesale plagiarism
by the Christian writers from those earlier authors,

Christmas 35

or else we must suppose that all of them are trying
to set forth the same great truth, but are setting it
forth each in his own way. That explanation is not
without confirmation even in the existing scriptures,
for St. Paul himself is made to say in how many
ways, and at how many different times revelations
have been made. He writes to the Hebrews: '^God
Who at sundry times and in divers manners spake
in time past unto our fathers by the prophets"
(meaning not those few local Jewish prophets, but
all the great prophetai, the great teachers of the
world) "hath in these last days spoken unto us
by His Son.''

We want to get our people to take a more
rational view of religion than many of our fellow
Christians take to-day. They are unfortunately
obsessed with the idea that Christianity is the
only religion, and that all the others are just
a set of heathen superstitions. That is a most
illiterate and ignorant attitude to take, and it shows
that they know nothing whatever of these other re-
ligions. That should not be so. Religious people
should take an interest in all presentations of reli-
gion. It happens (it is not a mere happening, for
it is a matter of our destiny and our deserts)
that we have been born into this race, and into a
country where the recognized religion is Christianity.
That is not a mere chance. We were born there
because we deserved to be; because the best oppor-
tunity for us is to come into this particular set of
environments ; but other people in every way as good
as ourselves, and as far advanced as ourselves, are
born into quite a different environment, and we
must trv to realize that to them their religion is

36 The Christian Festivals

just as natural as ours is to us. We probably can-
not imagine that we could have been born into any
other religion, just as a man feels that he never
could have taken birth as a woman, or a woman as
a man. But that is of course mere illusion; the
soul has neither sex nor race, and we take these dif-
ferent births according to what is best for our
development.

All religions alike are statements of the same
great truth, and each of those religions has a special
variant or facet of that truth to present to us.
There is the religion of Hinduism, a religion at pre-
sent professed by three hundred millions of people,
and professed by their ancestors (for one must be
born into this religion in order to belong to it) back
through long periods of high civilization — a civili-
zation that was already at its height when our fore-
fathers, the ancient Britons, were running about
naked in the woods and painting themselves blue.
Their religion has for its greatest feature the idea
of duty — dharma, they call it. Their one remedy
for every ill is: "Let a man do his duty;
each man is born in a particular place with
a particular duty to do, let him do it"; and
they dwell very greatly on the immanence of God.
In Ancient Egypt another mighty civilization was
running its course at the same time. The great
central point of its religion was what we should
now call science — that is to say the mastery of
nature by knowing all about it ; and the Egyptians
laid the foundation of a great deal of our modern
science. The very name by which they called their
country, Khem, gave the name to our science of
chemistry.

Christmas 37

In ancient Persia they had another great reli-
gian, Zoroastrianism. It has sometimes been called
sun-worship, but we must not be misled by a popular
title of that sort, for no one ever worshipped the
sun as such, but the sun as a manifestation of the
great power behind it. Their cliief idea was purity.
They wished above all things else to emphasize
purity in thought and word and act. Coming
further down the stream oi; time there was the reli-
gion of Greece, the main point of which was beauty.
The endeavour of the Greeks was to impress upon
people beauty in their lives, beauty in their sur-
roundings, in everything they had about them:
beauty of character as well as of form and colour.
Then came Rome with its great religion, enforcing
the idea of law and discipline, insisting always upon
duty to the community — a very fine idea. Then
there was the teaching of the Buddha; in His great
religion He also preaches the law, but not quite in
tJie same sense. When He speaks of the law He
means not man-made law at all. but the order of
nature, and He says that all the mistakes which
men make come from their ignorance. If they will
only study the divine scheme and live accordingly,
all will go well.

Then comes our religion of Christianity ; its
great central idea is self-sacrifice — the thought that
the greatest among us shall be he w^ho serveth best.
You know the highest title of a bishop is Serviis
servorum Dei, ^^ Servant of the servants of God."
That is the great point that Christianity has to
emphasize. All these religions come at different
times, each when its particular quality is most
needed in the world. Surely any one can see that

38 The Christian Festivals

that is a far grander conception than the orthodox
theory that all these other religions are feeble or
evil superstitions, and that the only people who can
be saved are those who happen to come into touch
with the Christian faith. This latter seems a
strange and ridiculous idea, but it is of a piece with
the self-conceit which made men think that this tiny
planet is the centre of the universe; that this par-
ticular little speck of mud is the hub of creation,
and that all these tremendous stars and suns are
circling round it; that God Himself came down to
live and die upon it in order that its comparatively
insignificant population might be saved, and that all
the other populations of those far more magnificent
worlds are left to take care of themselves.

No one need be in the least distressed to find the
same truths taught in other religions. It is what
we should expect, as soon as we get rid of this amaz-
ing exclusive idea that we are the only people who
ever heard the truth — that of all the countless mil-
lions of men who have ever lived on earth, the few
generations from the time of Jesus are the only
men to whom God thought it worth while to make
any revelation of Himself at all. If we can put
aside that astounding unreasonableness we shall rea-
lize that there have been many presentations of the
truth, which are all alike in many respects, though
each is put in the way most suitable for the people
at the time. Therefore, instead of being alarmed
at these likenesses, let us welcome them; let us com-
pare all the different accounts, and so learn from
them more of the truth that lies behind them all.

We need never fear that we shall lose anything
by understanding the inner meaning of the gospel

Christmas 39

story; on the contrary we shall gain much. In
this Liberal Catholic Church we lay no injunction
upon men as to what they shall believe. We put
before them the Creed as worthy of study, and we
say to them that they may interpret it literally, if
they like. That is their affair. Or they may take
the higher symbolical interpretation whi'^h we offer
them if they prefer it. Whatever they may elect
to believe, there can be no harm at least in their
knowing the inner meaning, so that they may have
it before their minds, in order that if they hear the
historical theory overthrown by argument, they may
understand that there is another and more spiritual
interpretation to which exception cannot be taken.
We shall keep our feasts better, and not worse, if
we have a fuller and clearer understanding of all
that they mean. By all means let those who wish
to do so hold to the physical record; but let them
remember also that behind that earthly story there
is always a heavenly meaning. We may think of
it as existing for the sake of the heavenly meaning
if we like, which is what I myself believe as re-
garding it. Or we may accept it as having actually
taken place, and suppose that this inner and beauti-
ful explanation has been invented to fit it. It does
not matter. It is for each man alone to decide what
form of faith he will hold with regard to all this,
so long as he understands the high, spiritual, glorious
meaning, and so long as he tries to live up to all
that it involves.

4. Through the Advent season the Church looks
forward to the next Coming of our Lord; at Christ-
mas that expectation culminates, and her celebration

40 The Christian Festivals

is one of gratitude not only for His last Coming, but
also for favours yet to come. We cannot but think
of that greater Christmas when He shall again
appear among us on the physical plane in a body
that can be seen of all. For He Himself, the very
same Great One Who took the body of Jesus two
thousand years ago, is ready soon to come again,
and to bless the world once more with His teaching
and His help, as He blessed it before. The voice
which spake as never man spake will speak again
in the ears of men now living, and at no great dis-
tance of time from the present day. Those of us
who hold that belief are naturally eager to do what
we can to prepare ourselves and others for His
Coming, and to try to spread the news of it in the
outer world.

It is not for us to criticize, or even to marvel
at, the arrangements made when last He came
to earth; but it can hardly be unseemly for
us to note that little was then done (per-
haps little could be done) in the way of pre-
paration in the outer world. There seems to have
been a general expectation of the coming of some
Great One, as there is now; but there was only one
John the Baptist, so far as we know. This time the
conditions in the world are in every w^ay so different
that preparation may be usefully attempted on a
somewhat wider scale, and every one who, having
examined the evidence, sees reason to expect the
near Coming of the Lord should do what he can to
prepare His way and make His paths straight.

The idea of the second Coming of Christ takes on
a different aspect when we realize that the world is
steadily evolving and that the Christ is a mighty

Christmas 41

Official Who is in charge of its religious thought,
and either comes Himself or sends one of His pupils
as a teacher whenever He thinks that such a visit
will help it in its evolution. I know how strange
that idea must seem to many people who have been
brought up in the belief that there is only one reli-
gion in the world — that there are a few heathen
superstitions somewhere or other in far-off comers
of the earth, but that our only duty with regard to
them is to try to convert the poor heathen .from
the error of their ways, and to give them the truth
which has been revealed to us alone. I suppose it
has never occurred to some people that it would be
rather strange that we, of all the people in all ages,
alone should have a monopoly of the truth. There
have been mighty sages, great saints, magnificent
thinkers, who had not this truth, which has been
given exclusively to a small handful of us. They
apparently had not these advantages, and they
seem to have done remarkably well without them.
Surely it is more reasonable to believe that there
are many great religions in the world, and that they
are all equally paths which lead up the same great
mountain of truth.

I mean that all the great religions come from the
same central source; that this World-Teacher and
His Department are responsible for all of them. I
do not say that He is responsible for the vagaries
of the individual believer. Men have corrupted and
distorted His teaching ; that is true of every religion.
That these faiths as originally founded are all
statements of the same eternal truth, we can see for
ourselves, if we will take the trouble to study com-
parative religion. Unfortunately we inherit the

42 The Christian Festivals

ignorance of the period called the dark ages in
Europe — a time in which few people seem to have
known anything worth knowing; and as far as reli-
gious matters are concerned, many people have not
tried yet to come up out of that darkness. We do
realize that to practise the so-called science of the
Middle Ages would be ridiculous. We know a great
deal more now; we know that to live according to
the hygiene of the Middle Ages would lay us open
to awful epidemics; but most people have not rea-
lized that the religion of the Middle Ages was
equally defective in its statement. Our mediasval
ancestors did not understand Christianity; they
took it in the narrowest and most bigoted way, where-
as it is capable of an interpretation more useful,
wider and more tolerant in every way. And that is
the interpretation we try to put upon it to-day.

In one of the Indian Scriptures, the World-Teacher
is represented as saying that whenever the world
falls into great sorrow and misery, whenever it
seems that unbelief and evil are triumphant, then
He comes to present the eternal truth in some new
way which shall to some extent take the place of
His previous statements, which have been distorted.
This may seem strange to some, but let us take it
for the moment and think of it — that all these
various presentations differ because they are offered
to different people at different ages of the world,
at different stages of the progress of human
thought. Let us grasp that idea, and we shall see
that no one of them can be expected to be eternal
— that, on the contrary, everyone of them must in
time become more or less corrupted, more or less
distorted; and therefore, just because it is cor-

Christmas 43

rupted, iinsuitecl for the needs of the world. The
world is advancing, and a new presentation from
time to time is an absolute necessity. What was
appropriate for people two thousand years ago
cannot be fully suited for us in the present day.
A vast deal more is known on many subjects than
was known then, and any statement of truth that
was fitted for people then will need considerable
revision and addition before it can be made suit-
able for us. On the other hand, a presentation of
liie truth such as would now be absolutely suitable
for us. would have been insanity, would have been
utterly inappropriate, at that time. It may well be
that it is thought that a restatement of the same
great truths would be beneficial and helpful.

We can see if we look around us that our churches
are not being attended by the people as a whole.
We hear that in the Middle Ages everyone took
part in the devotional spirit of the time, but most
assuredly that is not so now. Not a tenth part of
the population of an^^ so-called Christian country
takes part in its religious observances ; I suppose
the proportion is probably much less than that.
That does mean (and it is no use trying to avoid
the issue) that the religion as now stated has lost
its hold on the bulk of the population. When that
is the case, one way of dealing with the difficulty
might well be a restatement; we should call it, per-
haps, a new religion. That is not a good phrase,
because it implies much more than the mere restate-
ment of the same truths.

The truths of religion are eternal truths; they
may be distorted ; they may be misrepresented —
they certainly have been; but the fundamental basis

44 The Christian Festivals

of all the religions represents eternal verity, which
cannot be changed, though it may be more fully
stated; it may be put in some new way, which may
appeal to the modern spirit. But the great facts
are the same. I do not mean that we must believe
in any particular name, or in any particular cere-
mony, but in the real basic facts that in order to
progress a man must be a good man, that he must
live a high and pure and noble life, that he must
practise the virtues which every religion in the
world without exception recommends to him —
charity, nobility, self-control, temperance, patience,
and love.

I have already referred to the weird entangle-
ment of the teaching of the Christ with unscien-
tific ideas about the end of the world. It is curious
to see how ready the ignorant still are to create
bugbears for themselves. There was an announce-
ment in the newspapers only a few months ago
that the end of the world might be expected on a
certain day, because the planets were in a certain
position. It is absolutely amazing that sane people
could be induced to believe such nonsense. The
planets have been in a similar position many thou-
sands of times, and it has not been the end of this
world or of any other. Men do not seem to under-
stand how insignificant is the combined weight of
those planets in comparison with the weight of the
sun; they might about as sensibly expect that a
cart could be upset because a fly settled on the rim
of the wheel. Popular ignorance is a very strange
thing. We make our children's lives a burden to
them with what is miscalled education, and yet this
is the practical result of it all.

Christmas 45

Men sometimes say, ''The second Coming of the
Christ has been known, and people have been look-
ing forward to it for a long time; why should we
be specially preparing for it now?" There are
many reasons for that — some of them external rea-
sons, and some which are much more private and
intimate. There is a new race developing in the
world. We ought to know something about that
here in Australasia, because this is one of the coun-
tries in which this new race is showing itself. If
Vv^e look round us we shall see that there are still
many people who are distinctively English or Scotch
or Irish, who belong to the old races; but we shall
also see many, especially among the children and
young people, w^ho do not belong to any of these;
w^e shall see a new race springing up which is not
English, or Scotch, or Irish, but Australian.

In America there are even more people in pro-
portion who do not belong to any of the races which
go to make up that great nation, but are distinctly
men with new qualities and recognizably new physi-
cal appearance. It is an intellectual race ; it is a
strong-willed race; the study of it is wonderfully
interesting. Now all through history wherever a
nev/ race has arisen there has been a new religion to
fit it. It is probable that there will be a new religion
to fit this race, and if it is to do good it m.ust arise
tolerably soon.

We are a great civilization — at least we think
ourselves so — and yet there is a vast amount of
misery in the world; we are badly in need of some
sort of change. There is unrest everywhere; it
would seem that the system on which we have been
relying for some ceniunes is breaking down all

46 The Christian Festivals

round us. Something new is wanted; new develop-
ments are turning up in all directions. The spread
of science is wonderful; the advance in knowledge
within recent years is very great — in chemistry, in
mechanics, in everything. There is a new time com-
ing. The old civilization has done its work, and T^e
want, we must have, something new.

There is an expectation of the Coming of the
Christ all over the world. All these religions of
which I spoke, so far as they are active, are expect-
ing Him. The Hindus look forward to the Kalki
Avatara; the Buddhists to-day are awaiting the
Lord .Maitreya, which is their name for the great
World-Teacher Whom we call the Christ. Among
the Muhammadans, when a pretender started up not
long ago in Africa, he gained an immense follow-;
ing because he proclaimed himself to be the Imam
Mahdi, the Saviour for whom they wait. He was
not, but many believed it. In Zoroastrianism there
is also a tradition of a great One AVho is to come.
Among ourselves there are the Seventh-Day
Adventists and other similar societies; and we have
in our midst the Order of the Star in the East,
which is trying to prepare its members (and also
outsiders) for the near Coming of the World-
Teacher.

Why is there such a wide expectation of the Com-
ing of the Lord? We who study the inner side of
things know that it is the reflection in the minds of
men of the knov>^ledge of greater Beings, the know-
ledge of Adepts and Angels. They know that the
Christ is coming soon, and Their knowledge is in
the mental atmosphere; it communicates itself to
our mental bodies by sympathetic vibration, and it

Christmas 47

gives us this great expectation. It is the reflection
of the thoughts of the higher Beings Who know.

Assuredly the need of the world is great. None
can deny that; and we may remember in a scripture
which is older than any of ours, the World-Teacher
is represented as saying: ^'When evil triumphs,
then I come to help." It is not that we do not
know what we ought to do. We know the principles
of right and wrong as well as anyone, but we do
not apply them. It is not new truth that we want,
but new inspiration to practise the old truth. There
is a great desire to help among many people. That
is one of the signs of the times; but they do not
know how to begin. Each tries his own little
panacea, and perhaps it succeeds a little, but on the
whole it fails. They will welcome the idea of one
who knows, and who can teach.

Some of us have been studying this thing, and
similar things, for many years. I myself have been
working at this inner side of things under definite
instruction for thirty-seven years, and on my own
account twenty years before that. Some of us in
the course of such study have been led to the feet
of those Great Ones who do knov/ about these things,
those who are in charge of the world's evolution;
therefore we can with confidence repeat that which
we hear from them, that the Coming of the Lord
draweth nigh, that it will not be long now, as we
measure earthly time, before He shall appear
amongst us. We cannot pretend to tell to a year
or two, because what is told to us is always to this
ejffect: "When the earth is ready by your exertions,
I shall come;" and it must be soon, because the
need is so great. That, of course, is no proof to

48 The Christian Festivals

others. So far as they know, we may be dreaming;
we may be altogether in error in what we think; but
I would suggest that at least we give direct testi-
mony, which is comparatively rare in religious mat-
ters, and so what we say constitutes a piece of
evidence that ought to be taken into account.

Look round the world and see how wide-spread is
the expectation; see how great is the need; see the
new race waiting for the religion which shall fit it
as it grows up. There are plenty of indications
to enable us to understand that this Advent is not
far away.* Although what we see and know for our-
selves is no proof to any one else, we do our duty at
any rate in announcing the Coming.

Let us then make as determined an effort as we
can to get ready for the Christ; let us try to purify
ourselves, try to make ourselves what we wish to
be if He is to come; and let us help to prepare His
way. Long ago, when He came in Judaea, there was
one John the Baptist. Let us, everyone of us ac-
cording to his power and opportunity, be John the
Baptists. This time let Him come not with one
herald only; let there be thousands of us trying to
prepare the way of the Lord and to make His paths
straight. For when the world is ready He will
come. So let us join in the work of the Order of
the Star in the East or of the Liberal Catholic
Church; let each work in his own way for a better
time, a tim.e of brotherhood and love, for that is
what the Christ will preach to us when He comes.
Let us cultivate brotherhood and love in order that
we may be ready to receive Him, in order that we
may profit by what He has to tell us, and to offer

♦See A World Expectant, by A. E. Wodehouse.

Christmas 49

our hearts, our hands, our speech, to help Him in
the work He is to do.

5. We must not forget that there is another aspect
of the Coming of the Christ — the coming within the
heart of each individual, the development of the
Christ-principle within us. A great and glorious
mystery underlies all this — the wonderful, and yet
most intimate, connection between the Second Person
of the Ever-Blessed Trinity and the great World-
Teacher, and in turn the link joining both of These
to that Christ-principle within man to which we
often give the name of intuition. Yet indeed it
means much more than intuition; it means the
wisdom that knows, not by process of reasoning but
by utter inner certainty. That development must
come to every man. That Christ-principle is in
every one of us; it can be awakened — it is being
awakened among us even now, and as it unfolds we
realize the true brotherhood of man, because we
realize the Fatherhood of God. We come to know
that our separate consciousness is nothing but an
illusion — that we are one in Him. First, one with
all who know Him and love Him; and then secondly,
by a still greater extension, with all the world,
whether as yet they know it or not. To touch that
wonderful consciousness, to realize the Christ with-
in us, is not so impossible, for it is being done even
now by some. Gleams of its glory sometimes mani-
fest themselves; flashes of wonderful peace and
uplifting, so that at least for a few moments we
know. And those of us to whom these glimpses
have come can never forget them; however much
afterwards doubt and uncertainty, sorrow and even
despair may overwhelm us, ive have known, and

50 The Christian Festivals

therefore inside we still know, and that certainty
nothing can shake.

True, most who touch that glory for a moment
touch it unconsciously, not knowing what it is, not
realizing the 'intensity of its splendour, not seeing
whither it would lead them. They know that they
have moments of ecstasy, moments in which the love
of God reaches them in a way which they never
imagined before, a greater intensity of bliss which
touches them, which is far beyond all earthly things.
But as we progress that certainty will come oftener
and more fully, and will remain with us longer,
until at last that higher consciousness will be ours
in perpetuity — ^Christ in us and we in Him. For
there are those who set themselves deliberately to
gain this glory and this splendour, who endeavour
to deal with it scientifically, and so to let knowledge
grow more and more until they consciously enter
into the glory and the fullness of the Christ Him-
self, realizing the God in man, because they them-
selves are consciously part of that God. That is the
birth of Christ within the heart of man, and as-
suredly it is a very real thing. Truly in that sense
we may say that Christ is the Saviour of the World,
for it is through that experience only that man can
attain that which God means him to attain.

To develop oneself intentionally as described above
is the shortest and the most direct route to such
awakening. I do not say it is the only route. One
can gain that elevation by intense intellectual ab-
sorption, b}' long-continued hard work and the
practice of virtue. But the shortest, the most direct
method of attaining the highest rapidly is the
deliberate awakening of the Christ within the human

Christmas 51

heart. For this and for its glorious possibility we
also give thanks at the holy season of Christmas.

How shall we know whether we are on the way
to this glorious consummation? What can we do
to bring nearer that supreme bliss? If Christ is to
be born within our hearts, we must be living the
life of the Christ; we must show forth His spirit
to those around us. And the Christ-spirit is first
of all love and brotherhood. The man in whom it
is developing will assuredly exliibit love, kindliness,
tolerance, comprehension — a general growth all
round, an increase of the quality which for want of
a better word we often call bigness. We speak of
a man as great when he is of wide tolerance, of open
heart, great in his character; and just those quali-
ties are the result of the unfolding of this Christ-
principle.

They show themselves in daily life in various
ways; prominently in that the man begins to
take the best view of people and of things instead
of the worst, that he makes a practice of
putting the best construction possible upon the
words and actions of his fellow-men instead of (as
I am afraid we so often do) the worst possible. We
shall find that constantly when we think of the
actions of a man, we attribute them to some weak-
ness or defect in him; we assign to him a motive
of some sort. If we were in a position (most of us
are not) to get behind the thought of that man, and
find out really why he did or said a certain thing,
we should find that our attribution of motive was
in most cases absolutely incorrect and unjust, that
his reason for doing what he did was much more
creditable than we were ready to suppose, and that

52 The Christian Festivals

he had some thought in his mind which never even
occurred to us. This assigning of a motive is a
habit; we all find ourselves doing it, until by steady
practice and care we learn not to do it, but to
attribute to another nothing but the highest and the
best thoughts. In doing that we may sometimes be
deceived, but it is better a thousand times to form
a wrong estimate in that direction, than once to do
a man the injustice of attributing to him a lower
motive and a lower plane of thought than that which
is really his. A man in whom this wondrous un-
foldment is beginning abandons all unnecessary
criticism, and learns to see the good in everything,
even when it needs a little search to find it, when
it is not as obvious as the more objectionable
characteristics.

Another infallible sign of the growth of the
Christ-principle in a man is unselfishness, for that
is the key to all, the central virtue which gives birth
to all the others.

We can see at once what a change it would make
in the world if feelings of that kind were widely
spread. How different everything would be if each
man thought first of others — if each man were will-
ing to take the wider and more tolerant view, and
to attribute the best possible motives instead of
always evil ones ! Perhaps we cannot hope that any
large number of people will attain to that level just
at present, for it would obviously need the evolu-
tion 'of thousands of years ; yet there is a factor com-
ing into the case for whwh a large allowance will
have to be made by those who try to forecast the
future ; and that is the actual physical coming of the
Chi-ist, the World- Teacher, to be among us and help

Christmas S3

us once more. We cannot tell to what extent His
presence may affect the people. An influence so
tremendous as His; the persuasive power of the
voice that spake as never man spake; the facts that
His teaching will be simultaneously reported all over
the world, and that He Himself will probably visit
all the countries of the v^^orld in succession; all
these considerations show us that here is a factor
whose influence is incalculable. He may well pre-
cipitate the time when an unselfish attitude will
become far more general than it now seems reason-
able to hope.

It may be that the world in general is not so far
as we think from that higher and grander attitude.
It is undoubtedly^ full of bitter selfishness and un-
reason, as may be clearly seen from the prevalence
of strikes, struggles and disorder everywhere. Most
of the words and deeds of the average man are
selfish; and yet that average man — a perfectly ordi-
nary specimen — has again and again been found
capable in a great emergency of suddenly rising to
heights of heroism of which we might have supposed
him to be quite incapable. A man, apparently just
like his fellows, a rough and common sort of man,
will deliberately sacrifice his life to save a comrade.
That shows that there are the seeds of right feeling
in every man, and that, given the right power applied
at the right time and in the right way, the ordinary
man may be raised to great heights.

In the great war thousands of men came forward
voluntarily to risk their lives, to fight for an ideal,
for the maintenance of a treaty, because our coun-
try's word was pledged. Those who fought had
nothing to do with the pledging of that word, but

54 The Christian Festivals

tliey were willing to devote themselves to the utter-
most to redeem their country's guarantee. That
has a hopeful side; that is a good augury for the
future; for the man who is willing to give his life
for an ideal now may very likely be willing to spend
his life in following an ideal when he comes back in
another incarnation. So the world at large may be
more ready than we think to respond to the mighty
influence which the great Teacher brings.

Few can form any conception of what that influ-
ence will be. Only those who have come into contact
with some of the great Adepts can estimate the
power of the Master of Masters; and even they can
only faintly adumbrate the tremendous radiation of
love and of strength which will come from that
mighty Personality. It may well be that in His
presence what would otherwise be hopeless and im-
possible may be found to be easy of achievement;
it may be that under that marvellous influence men
will wake up and bring their common sense to bear
upon the various problems which come before them.
There is nothing too great to hope from such a power
as that.

All this separateness is an illusion; we are
one in Christ; and to know and realize that fully
is to awaken the Christ within us. Remember
how it is written in the scripture: ''Christ in
you, the hope of glory." It is precisely the
presence of that Christ-principle within us that
brings the hope of glory to every human soul.
Without that we should be lost indeed; that is
the true Christ, belief in "Whom is necessary for
salvation — not salvation from a mythical hell, but
from the wheel of ever-recurring birth and death.

Christmas 55

To escape from that wheel is to avoid the broad and
easy road that leads to death (and birth and death
and birth over and over again) and to take the
narrow and more difficult path which leads to the
kingdom of heaven, where death is a ridiculous
impossibility — where life, and the increase of life
and power and love, and all that that means, con-
stitute the only possible future before the sons of
men. The way of escape lies in this development.
Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
But not within thyself, thy soul shall be forlorn.

6. All great festivals have another aspect, and this
one has it among the rest — ^perhaps even this has it
pre-eminently. They are all special channels of
force — occasions upon which a greater outpouring of
divine power takes place — greater, I mean, than in
ordinary times. Let not this thought seem strange
to US; let us not imagine it as a limitation of God's
Omnipotence. For God Himself works by means,
and takes advantage of opportunities; and this
wondrous creation of His is so utterly one in Him,
so mystically inter-related, that as the stars move
through their courses there are certain times when
certain energies are more readily available than at
others — when the bridges are clear, the channels are
open; and Christmas is such a time. These special
occasions, these great festivals, are not mere com-
memorations; they indicate definite actions on the
part of the Living Christ AVho is tlie Head of His
Church. All the members of the Church are mem-
bers of Christ, and are definitely linked to Him
through baptism and through confirmation, and still
more through the most \io\j Sacrament of His Love;
so they are always to some extent under His in-

56 The Christian Festivals

fluence. But He has ordained certain methods for
the pouring down of His influence upon His Church,
and the greatest of all is the Sacrament of the Holy
Eucharist. Therefore there are special times and
special conditions under which the outpouring is
more definitely available. Always, everyone of us
is in link with the Christ, and yet we all know that
we are more closely linked with Him — that the link
is more alive, is more vivid — ^when we come to His
Church, v/hen we kneel before His very Presence
in the Bread and Wine which He has chosen to be
His vehicle, through which He represents Himself
to our outward senses.

Just in the same way as that is a more intimate
Presence than the Presence which is always with us,
so have we an extraordinary outpouring of power at
certain times and seasons. There is definitely a
greater, a more universally assimilable outpouring
on such days as Christmas, Easter, the Ascension,
Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday; each of these has its
own special character. Such a day as this great
Feast of Christmas is a real opportunity for each one
of us, for there is a stronger and more definite out-
flow of divine power then, just because the whole
world is more prepared to receive it.

It is well for the student to cast aside old pre-
conceptions and prejudices and make a determined
effort to understand the principle which underlies
the whole of this question of the effusion of helpful
force from higher planes. That principle is simple
and scientific, but most people have to rearrange
their thought upon religious matters before they
can grasp it. Stupendous as is the force available
for the spiritual helping of man, it is nevertheless

Christmas 57

an absolute and immutable law that it shall never
be wasted — that it shall be used to the best advan-
tage. This holds good at all levels. In the most
wonderful Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist we have
the privilege of calling in great Angels to help, and
the central point of the whole ceremony, the Con-
secration, is the act of our Lord Himself through
the Angel of the Presence; yet the whole of this tre-
mendous outpouring is made dependent upon our
initiative. It is the fact that a priest is ready to
celebrate which gives the opportunity, which sets all
this marvellous celestial machinery in motion, which
makes it (if we may say so with the deepest rever-
ence) "worth while" for our Lord and for His
Angels to do this particular thing in this particular
way. The Lord Christ is a great official of the
Hierarchy, and as such He is always pouring out
those wonderful forces at His own high level.

It is an axiom that the highest work which any
one can do is especially and essentially the work
appointed for him. For example, those of us who
can work in the astral world spend our nights in
trying to do the work of invisible helpers, to help
people in sorrow and suffering. We want to do
whatever we can. Unquestionably one of our
Masters or one of the great saints could do far more
in such work than any of us can do, and yet he
would not do it, because he can do a hundred-fold
more effective work on higher planes, and the fact
that he can do that work marks him out for it,
so that for him to do this lower work would be a
waste of force.

If a man takes the trouble to qualify himself to
do research work in connection with a great univer-

58 The Christian Festivals

sity, it would obviously be a waste of his force to
set him to reap a field or mend a road, even though
he would probably do it better and more intelli-
gently than the people to whom that work is usually
assigned; but it is obviously best for the community
as a whole that each man should be doing his
highest work.

That holds good all the way through. For the
World-Teacher, Who can wield powers beyond those
of any other of the Masters or saints, it would be
a waste of time to do the work which they are
habitually doing, because He can do something far
grander still. Therefore it is best that each Master
and saint should do the work he can do, and that
above him the World-Teacher should be doing His
best work, and down here we should be doing such
work as at our level we can do. There is only one
point of view that the Great Ones hold with regard
to work, and that is that the greatest possible amount
of it shall be done under the most economical con-
ditions, so that the power may go further.

The Lord would not turn aside from the higher
work He is doing, in order to do anything that we
can do, unless it were made profitable from the
point of view of the progress of the whole that He
should do that. If the world is to be helped, certain
work must be done at the lower levels as well as
at the higher. For Him to force His power through
from above into the world below would mean a
great outlay of His energy, and economically the
result produced would not be *' worth His while,"
if we may venture to put it so. He could do far
more with the same amount of force at the higher
level; but if we provide the channels for Him, it is

Christmas 59

''worth His while" to do the work through us, be-
cause a little force from above can do a great deal
down here if the channel is provided for it.

When the congregation of a church provides the
love, devotion and enthusiasm with which the won-
derful eucharistic edifice can be built, it is worth the
while of the great Angels to come down and help,
because the material is already given. It would not
be worth their while, so closely are these things
balanced, if they had to provide the material on
the lower plane, for that would be to them a great
trouble, because a descent into physical matter would
be necessary; it would not be an economical use of
their power. But when we provide the material, it
is ''worth their while" to intensify it; after they
have raised and intensified it, it then becomes
"worth the while" of the Christ to make a tre-
mendous outpouring of His power; but it would not
be economical for Him to do this unless these con-
ditions had been provided.

What I have written above about the eucharistic
service is equally true of the special outpouring of
divine energy at these great festivals. On the
higher level the divine force is ever streaming forth
and doing its appointed work; when men are to an
unusual degree ready to take advantage of it, it be-
comes "worth while" to transmute a large amount
of this force that it may be applicable to the lower
level. So once more the initiative is left with us;
when we provide the conditions, advantage is at
once taken of them.

The sun is always shining, but he is not always
visible to us on earth, because earth-made clouds
get in the way*and shut him out. Just so the divine

60 The Christian Festivals

Christ is always pouring forth, but we sometimes
make our own clouds, which get in the way and
prevent that divine power from influencing our
lives for the time. That is not the fault of the
Christ, but our fault. And so in His lovingkindness
— because there are so many of His people who are
not yet able to touch these higher planes, far above
all earthly clouds, where the sunlight of His Pre-
sence is always vivid — He has arranged times when
it shall be easier for men to draw closer to Him. If
we but knew it, we are all close to Hira always, but
still we feel it more at certain times than at others.
When any one man is in a condition of great love,
great devotion, great happiness, he sends up what
is very literally a spire of devotion, and that breaks
through into the higher planes, and there comes
down upon that man a response of love and bless-
ing commensurate with his own feeling. Some
people might say, not understanding: "But why
should not such an outpouring come always?" Be-
cause he is not always ready to receive it. I sup-
pose that it might have been so arranged in nature
that the sun should be strong enough to lick up
and drive away any possible cloud. I do not know
that it would have been a good thing for agricul-
ture if that had been so; at any rate, that is not the
plan upon which the world is working. The clouds
do not keep back the whole of the life, the strength,
that is being poured out by the sun; they keep back
just a part of it, and a larger part of his light, but
not the force which keeps his worlds alive; and
the same is true of his great prototype, the Lord
Himsolf. When a man breaks through his self-
made clouds he is able to receive this downpouring

Christmas 61

of divine blessing; otherwise he would not be able
to receive it, it would have to be forced upon him,
and that is not God's way of dealing with man.
He never forces Himself upon us. There is very
good reason for that; it would not help our evolu-
tion if He did. That is the law, and if we want
to receive His grace we must lay ourselves open to
its influence. An individual can do that to some
extent; but when thousands upon thousands of
people all combine to do it, we see at once how great
an opportunity there is for this downpouring of
what we must call Grace, Strength, Power and Love,
which is always streaming forth.

Christmas is a time when that opportunity is near
and vivid; but the extent to which we can avail
ourselves of it depends upon several factors. First,
and most of all, it depends upon how far the Christ-
mas spirit has entered our hearts. If we are filled
v/ith the peace and goodwill of Christmas, the good-
will of the Christ Himself can reach our hearts.

It depends also upon how far we have used the
season of Advent as a special time of preparation.
There are certain virtues which we should have
tried to cultivate within us, certain vices we should
have repressed; if this has been done, we are the
more ready to take advantage of this great seasonal
outpouring of definite power. Be sure that this
power is a real thing. What we sometimes call the
grace of God is just as definite and as real a force
as electricity or steam; but it is dealing with higher
matter. To say that is not to materialize a spiritual
conception; it is rather an effort to bring a great
truth down to our comprehension, to make it clear
and real to us. We are material creatures; we still

62 The Christian Festivals

have bodies; not only the physical body which all
see, but the emotional body and the mental body.
But all of those are material. There is a spirit
which lies behind it all — a spirit which none can see,
which none can touch; but that is far above us yet,
and when we can realize it perfectly, we shall be
hid with Christ in God. But now, and in the mean-
time, we live in bodies; and it is through and by
means of these bodies that we must be affected.
Therefore the Christ Himself pours down influence
veiled in material forms in order that it may help
us. Otherwise it would pass above us and beyond
us, and to us would be as though it were not. And
so He sets apart certain times such as Christmas in
which this outpouring may descend to the lower level
and more readily influence us; He sets apart certain
places — such as His churches^ — in which we may be
more readily, more easily reached.

Any man, anywhere, may touch the Christ-Spirit
just in so far as the soul within him (which is the
real man) is attuned to that Christ-Spirit. But the
specially consecrated, specially magnetized places
which are set apart for His service make that work
easier, for their influence is intended to bring us
into a condition in which we can receive that help
from on high. We have only to think it over with
common sense and with reason, and we shall see that
that must be so. A church is one of the places set
apart for His service; Christmas is one of those oc-
casions on which it is easier for all to draw nigh
to Him.

Let us ivy to realize, then, that Christmas Day is
a personal opportunity for each one of us; that we
are not merely repeating an old formula when we

Christmas 63

sing: ''Unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is
given." There is actually a definite outpouring of
that divine force for each member of His Church,
and the extent to which we can partake of it, the
amount that we may gain from it, is limited only
by our power to receive. Christ is unlimited, and
His power overshines the whole world. What we
each can gain from this is our affair; it is in our
own hands. Let us open our hearts to the spirit of
the Christ-Child, to the spirit of Christmas, and
that Christ-Child will fill our hearts with His joy
and His peace.

In addition to this, we must not lose sight of the
fact that the preparation is made not by ourselves
alone on the physical plane, for on all great festi-
vals vaster crowds of Angels gather round our
altars, and the outpouring is assuredly greater in
consequence. Each Sunday Angels cluster round
every celebration, for a certain section of that glori-
ous Order has taken it as its specific task to dis-
pense this force in connection with the Christian
Church; but on such days as Christmas, Easter,
Ascension Day or Pentecost, not only that section is
in action, but for the moment almost all their Angel
brethren concentrate themselves on this special
branch of the work. Naturally that is true not of
the Christian religion only, but of other religions as
well; for example, on the great Wesak Festival of
the Buddhists it may be said that almost the entire
heavenly host is temporarily concentrated upon
work in connection with that. So it will be seen
that there is reason for the insistence of our Church
on the importance of observing the ecclesiastical
seasons, and reason also for the special request made

64 The Christian Festivals

in the prayer-book of the Church of England that
all its people shall communicate at least three times
every year, of which Easter shall be one.

7. Finally, there is an aspect of Christmas as a
season of rejoicing, apart from its religious side —
if anything connected with it can ever be apart
from that. This is the aspect which is so prominent
in the works of Charles Dickens, who paints it
always as the feast of good fellowship. The Eng-
lish-speaking world owes much to Dickens for the
lessons he taught about Christmas.

It is a time of peace to men of goodwill, and
surely at that time we all try to be men of good-
will; and it is remarkable how nearly a great many
people succeed. It is a wonderful thing, this Christ-
mas spirit, this real feeling of brotherhood that is
spread abroad on that day. There is a greater good-
will, a greater kindliness and comradeship, a truer
brotlierhood on Christmas Day than all the rest of
the year. It should not be for Christmas only, of
course; we should have that feeling always; but
since we are overwhelmed by the noise and tumult
of the world, since we cannot yet all of us feel that
noble Christmas heartiness all the while, it is at
least a good thing that there should be one day when
all the world agrees to feel it, when every man tries
to come as near as he can to the brotherhood which
ought to exist all the year round. Assuredly it is
well, too, that we should endeavour to impart our
joy to others — that a goodly custom should have
sprung up whereby on Christmas Day the poor and
the needy are helped towards the realization of the
great brotherhood of humanity, for our Christmas
joy can be perfect only in so far as we share it with

Christmas 65

others less fortunately circumstanced than our-
selves.

So let Christmas enter into our hearts and into
our souls, and let us try, everyone of us, to feel
then what the Angels sang so long ago — first "glory
to God in the highest," and then no less ''peace on
earth and goodwill to all men."

CHAPTER III

NEW YEAR'S DAY

There is no especial reason why January 1st
should be chosen as the beginning of a year, but it is
the day usually adopted by all the nations who have
inherited the great Roman civilization. The Hindus
and Buddhists choose quite a different day; and, in
fact, one day may be taken just as well as another,
because the earth is steadily moving in its orbit
round the sun all the time, and in the endless line
of that ellipse there is no reason to choose one point
as a beginning more than any other — unless it were
perhaps the aphelion, the point at which the earth,
having reached its greatest distance from the sun,
turns and begins its approach.

New Year's Day is not, strictly speaking, an ec-
clesiastical fer.tival; for us in the Church Advent
Sunday is the beginning of our j^ear, and January
1st is merely what is called Ihe octave of Christmas,
for we do not commemorate the alleged circumcision.
The outpouring of force in connection with some of
our festivals is so great that we find that it cannot
be adequately dealt with, and that full advantage
cannot be taken of it, in one day; and so the Church
has adopted the plan of devoting a week to such
feasts. She carries on the celebration until the
eighth day, which is called the octave, and any day
during that week is described as within the octave.

In mediaeval times all business stopped for each-
of the great ecclesiastical festivals, and the day was
given up entirely to observing it in what was con-

66

New Yeafs Daij 67

sidered a proper manner. There are still a few
countries in the world where this is done, but they
are hardly in the forefront as far as material wealth
and modern progress are concerned. Most nations
are far too hurried, too material, too breathless in
the excitement of the mad race after wealth, to
stop their whole machinery at irregular intervals in
this way; but they have grudgingly admitted the
necessity of a weekly pause in their activities, which
in Christian lands comes on Sunday; and it is often
only on that day that people have leisure to attend
a religious service. The plan of continuing the cele-
bration of an important day for a week ensures that
at least one Sunday shall occur within the sphere of
its influence, so that an opportunity of sharing to
some extent in its special downpouring shall be
offered to every member of the Church. So on New
Year's Day our thoughts are still turned to the great
festival of Christmas, and all that it means to us.

Nevertheless, the Church is always ready to take
up any occasion in civil life in which her people are
rightly and innocently interested, and to give it her
blessing. Therefore, on the first day of a new j^ear
we gather together in the house of God to pay Him
worship, and to take part in the great Sacrament
which He has ordained. Surely there is no better
way to begin the new year than this. I know well
that many people in our great cities have to work
hard, that holidays are comparatively rare for them,
and that when they get one they need rest, change
and fresh air; yet for all that, I think they do well
who gather in church to begin the new year by
dedicating it to our Lord. It is well to spare a little
time from our enjoyment in order that we may come

68 The Christian Festivals

before Him and express our thankfulness for the
past, our confidence for the future.

Most people who think at all seriously of the new
year regard it as an occasion for the making of good
resolutions — for a sort of mental and moral stock-
taking; they look back upon their resolves at the be-
ginning of the previous year, and usually have to
note with regret that there has been a certain gap
between promise and performance. Such contem-
plation is no doubt salutarj^; but it is useless to
waste time in vain lamentation or repentance. Note
the error by all means, but do not worry over it;
one of our great Masters has said that the only re-
pentance which is worth anything at all is the resolve
not to do it again.

In making our resolutions for the new year we
as Liberal Catholics (and therefore, I hope, earnest
students of the divine plan) must inevitably fix our
eyes upon the final goal that is set before us. We
all know that it is our duty to progress; we know
that we are intended to grow better as we grow
older. There is a mighty scheme of evolution of
which we are a part. We all came forth from God,
and to God we must all return. People sometimes
wonder why, if that be so, all this striving for
development is necessary; if we were divine in the
beginning, can we be more than divine at the end?
Is there any real progress? There is, for we came
forth from God, as it were, a nebulosity; we came
forth from Him mere sparks — albeit divine sparks;
we have to return to Him as great and glorious
lights, as veritable suns radiating His glory on all
around us, shedding help and blessing on those who
come in our way. We go back again to the same

New Year's Dap 60

God from Whom we came forth, but we return to
Him at an infinitely higher level.

If we could imagine (it may be true for anything
we know) any scheme by which each cell in our body
could personally evolve and become a man — become
the soul of a man — we should not say that in attain-
ing humanity that cell had made no progress, because
it had been a human cell to start with. We should
feel that it had made the most astounding, the most
enormous progress. That is only an analogy, and a
rough one ; but there is a certain amount of truth in
it, for there is quite that much of difference be-
tween what we have been and what we shall be,
and we may well have been cells in some divine gar-
ment in some embodiment or manifestation.

To Him we must return verily as gods ourselves.
The object of the whole of this strange and mighty
evolution was expressed by the Gnostics in this way:
"God," they said, "is Love; but love itself cannot
be made perfect unless there are tliose upon whom
it can be lavished, and by Avhom it may be returned;
therefore God Himself can express Himself more
fully, more perfectly, when we rise to the Divine,
when He can pour out the splendid flood of His
love upon us, and we in our smaller way can
definitely, clearly return it."

Our progress is a necessity to the perfection of
the evolution of this great system of which we form
a part; therefore we ought definitely to be making
some advancement both in knowledge and in char-
acter each year as it goes by. Most of us are busi-
ness people, and our time is fully occupied; but we
must not for a moment think that because of that

70 The Christian Festivals

there is no opportunity for us to evolve. In the
course of that business we are constantly meeting
vaiious people, and our attitude towards them is of
the greatest importance. We can treat them well,
kindly, gently and good-naturedly, or we can treat
them otherwise — carelessly, selfishly, without due
regard to their rights and feelings. It is certain
that as we do one or the other, so shall we ourselves
improve or deteriorate, as the case may be. It is in
daily life that we have the greatest opportunity of
changijig our character. ]\lany a man has confessed
to me that he has a bad temper, regretting it, but
regarding it apparently as a fact in nature which he
could not alter. He seemed to think of it as some
kind of dangerous animal which he had to keep and
make the best he could of it. No doubt there are
men who have a bad temper, who are readily irri-
table; but that is not because it is natural to man
to have a bad temper, but because in their case the
astral or emotional body likes excitement and dis-
turbance, and is quite willing to take it in that way.
That astral body has a life of its own, and for its
own purposes it eggs the man on to irritability. Not
that it is malignant, and wants to harm him; it is
doubtful whether it even knows of his existence;
but because it desires to stir up its surroundings in
order that it may have the pleasurable excitement
of rapid and stormy vibrations. If we find that we
are irritable, it means that in past lives we have
yielded ourselves to this emotion; we have not stood
strongly against it and realized that it was our busi-
ness to control it. It is never too late to change,
however; because in other lives we did not quite
understand our power to dominate the emotien, the

New Year's Day 71

thing has a certain hold (perhaps a very strong
hold) on US; but there is no reason why we should
not at once begin to try to grip it.

We shall have to do it some time or other, for
until we have done so we can never attain that which
God means us to attain. If we have cultivated a
certain habit (a bad habit, perhaps) for the last
twenty thousand years or so during several past
lives, it will taJ^e some time to break that habit, be-
cause of the impetus behind it. Yet we should go
to work at it at once. We- may fail; we may fall
a hundred times, but we should remember that there
is exactly the same reason for getting up and going
on at the end of the hundredth failure as there was
at the beginning. Since the reason remains exactly
the same, as sensible people we must get up and go
on. It is useless to sit down and say that we have
tried so many times, and we cannot do it. We }iave
to do it; others have done it, and so can we; it is
simply a question of determination and per-
severance.

Let me explain why it is certain that we can suc-
ceed in the end. However much force a habit has
generated, it must be a finite amount of force.
Though it has had a long time in which to gain that
strength, it cannot have gained an infinite amount.
What we have to fight, therefore, is a certain definite
amount of force. We do not know how much of
it remains; there may still be a good deal left, or
our efforts to conquer it may have so far reduced
it that we may be on the veiy brink of success. We
are in the position of a person trying to dig his
way out of prison — he never knows at what moment
the last stroke of his pick may open out the way for

72 The Christian Festivals

liim and give him the promise of freedom, but he
knows that that moment must come if he goes on
long enough. This conquest of evil is perfectly
possible. It can be done, and it will be done. It is
only a question of how long we are going to let it
take us.

What resolutions then shall we set before our-
selves for the new year? It seems a suggestive fact
that, as I have already said, New Year's Day is the
octave of Christmas; so one resolution might well be
that we v/ill try to carry on through the whole of
the year the Christmas spirit .

If during Christmas we have been more kindly,
more ready to help, more friendly, more ready to see
the best and not the worst in everything, let us go
on taking the same attitude all the year around.
Let us have the same feelings, the same uplifting,
the same realization. I think it often seems to us
that we are quite willing to be brotherly, but that
other men will not meet us half-way. If we find
that so, it does not alter our duty; it takes two
people to make a quarrel, so we should continue our
brotherly feeling; if the other poor man does not
understand and return it, that is exclusively his busi-
ness. It is unfortunate for him, but really it does
not harm us, as we shall see if we only think clearly
about it.

We should always remember that no harm can
come to us except from ourselves. Other people
may say offensive things to us or about us; they
may attack us in various waj-s; but, after all, that
need not make any difference to our feelings unless
we like to let it. What are words? Only vibrations
of the air. If we never heard of what the other man

New Year's Dav 73

has said, we should not be in the least disturbed
about it; but because we happen to hear of it, we
excite ourselves unduly and feel offended and hurt.
Think of the facts as they really are. Somebody
slanders you; he has acted the devil's part, for the
devil is the accuser of the brethren; he has spewed
forth his drop of venom, and done his filthy little
best to poison God's sweet air; but if you hear no-
thing of it you go serenely on your way; his despic-
able crime leaves you entirely unaffected. But if
you hear of the falsehood you are disturbed. The
villain has done no more now than he had before,
when you were quite at ease; the change is in your-
self, and the mistake you have made is that you
allow yourself to mind — to remember and to brood
over a foul thing which should be forgotten.

The Lord Buddha taught that Right Memory is
one of the steps of the Noble Eightfold Path which
leads to bliss. Each of these steps has many inter-
pretations at different levels of thought; but of tliis
one the straightforward meaning is that we should
know what to remember and what to forget. The
theory is that one should be able to control one's
mxcmoiy — to remember that which is pleasant and
useful, and to forget that which is useless and unde-
sirable. Really to forget; to let it be just as though
the wicked libel had never been spoken, or as though
we had never heard it. That is a hard thing to do
— not because the real self, the soul, wishes to re-
member such an abomination, but because the astral
body, one of the vehicles we are supposed to have
controlled, likes a little excitement and tries to keep
a stormy atmosphere. We must recognize that fact,
look down calmly on that restive vehicle, and say:

74 The Christian Festivals

"No, I shall not allow you to upset my arrange-
ments. I intend to keep the New Year as free from
your little interferences as I can. I decline to be
annoyed because an ignorant man has made atrocious
and foolish statements." Ignorant men are always
making foolish statements all the world over, and
it does not matter in the least — except to them, for
it makes exceedingly evil karma for them.

Let us make this New Year one long Christmas,
so that the Christ may truly be born in our hearts,
so that we may never again feel un-Christlike. That
is a high ideal to set before us, and of course some-
times we shall forget. But let us go on again and
persevere until we can do it. It is supposed to be
a characteristic of our race that we stick doggedly
to anything we have undertaken until we carry it
through. Let us show that character in religion as
well as in the battle-field, in sport, and in commerce.
Let us show it in the real life that lies behind, as
well as in that of the outer world.

Through the year which is opening before us
let us earnestly try to take everything in the
happiest and kindest spirit — to have no quarrels, to
take no offence, to make it a year of true brotherli-
ness. The majority of people in the present day
live in an atmosphere of perpetual misunderstand-
ing of others, because they are always attributing
motives to people for what they do and say. It is a
great mistake to go through life supposing that all
those round us are constantly thinking of us,
and that everything which they do or say is
definitely calculated in some way with relation to
us. The fact is quite dift'erent; each person is
usually looking upon his surroundings from his

New Yeafs Dav 75

own point of view, and his thoughts, words and
actions are likely to be, if not exactly selfish, at
any rate self-centred. Wherefore, in attributing
motives to him, we often do him grievous wrong;
and we do it because of the fact that we have
cultivated the discriminating mind at the expense
of the sympathizing and synthesizing sense, the
intuitive wisdom. The discriminating intellect is a
fine thing in its way, and I am not suggesting that
we have too much of it, or should fail to develop
it; but we often miscalculate its scope, and so exag-
gerate its value that we leave no room for faculties
unquestionably higher.

Let us then make it our rule to watch for points
of agreement rather than of disagreement, to look
for pearls rather than for flaws; to try to find in
our brethren qualities which we like, rather than to
overemphasize those which we happen to dislike. Let
us make each year a year of fraternity, of sympathy
and of mutual understanding, for in doing that we
shall go far towards ensuring that it shall be a happy
year, not only for ourselves, but for others around us.

There seems even more than the usual need for
such resolutions at this period of the world's his-
tory. Four New Years have recently passed in
which we felt but little joy, for we were in the
throes of a great world-war, and there was not much
to encourage our firm faith that all in the end must
be well. There were those of us who knew what the
end would be, but to those who did not know the
outlook must often have seemed dark and uncertain.
Suddenly, dramatically, came the end of that strife;
that alone is something for which we may well be
thankful, and when we see what happened, then

76 The Christian Festivals

we surely have good reason not only for thankful-
ness to our Lord, but for confidence in Him that
the future also shall go well; that though sometimes
dark clouds may rise, yet the sunlight of His glory
will in the end always triumph over them, and pro-
gress will be made, because that is His will, and
in the long run His will is done on earth even as
it is in heaven. So we have good reason to look
forward with confidence and with happiness.

Yet remember, if a glorious victory was won, if
we received in that way great encouragement, a
serious responsibility was thereby thrown upon us.
There is to-day an unequalled opportunity for re-
arrangement in many different ways. These years
immediately before us begin a new age — an age, 1
hope, in which men will learn to be less petty and
less selfish, to take a wider view, to act not for self
alone (nor even for that magnified self which is
called a union, a body of people all belonging to
one trade or one business) but for the community
as a whole; not for one class or party, but for all.

Much of the success of that future, much of the
extent to which men take this opportunity that
comes before us, will depend upon the way in which
we think and speak and act. Perhaps few of us
have any direct influence; that is in the hands of
politicians and party leaders. But those people,
after all, are chosen by us among others. We have
something to say in the matter, and we can use our
influence, not only by vote but by word and by deed,
by persuasion and by example. We can learn
unselfishness for ourselves, and the very fact that
we live it (so far as we can) as well as preach
it, will give our words great weight with those

New Year's Dav 77

around us. Every one of us has someone who looks
up to him or to her — someone who takes note of what
he or she says or does. Whatever influence we have,
let us most certainly try during these years of re-
construction to use it on the side of brotherhood, to
use it for mutual understanding and mutual esteem.

There are thousands of different points of view;
there are people whose ideas, on almost any subject
of which we can think, are quite different from our
own. The natural instinct of humanity seems to be
to distrust such people and to dislike them; and
with the ignorant and the uneducated such a feel-
ing of mistrust and dislike often absolutely increases
into hate. Thus arises the horrible thing we call
class-consciousness, when one class is set in mad.
indiseriminating prejudice against another class.
We cannot doubt that there has been reason in the
past for one class to distrust the other; history
shows it. Each has been selfish, each has worked
only for itself. Let us try how far it may be pos-
sible now to co-operate, and to induce others to work
towards co-operation.

The system of disunion, the system of perpetual
quarrelling and misunderstanding and suspicion has
been tried through centuries, and it has not been
a conspicuous success. Let us try now the plan of
trusting one another a little more — of giving every
man credit for the good intention which we know
that we ourselves have. Every man means well on
the whole; he thinks first of himself certainly —
though often it is of the wife and the children as
well as himself — but if facts are put before him he
is usually willing to act sensibly and reasonably.
In many cases the facts are not put before him; he

78 The Christian Festivals

gets only a distortion of the truth, and because of
that he acquires a strong conviction that everyone
is setting his hand against him, or is trying to put
upon him in some way or other, and the result is
that out of all this confusion, suspicion and hatred
are born, and agreement becomes almost impossible.
Let us strive, so far as we can, towards unity and
mutual progress. If only men understood one an-
other there would be few differences of this savage
nature. Of course, as now, there would be plenty
of differences of opinion^ but not differences leading
to distrust. A great Frenchman once said: ''Tout
comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.'' ''To under-
stand all is to forgive all." We see a man doing
something which to us seems very dreadful, utterly
improper, dangerous perhaps to ourselves or to
others. If we understood exactly why that man
did that thing, if we could see the action as he
sees it, we might not in the least agree with him,
but at least we should understand him, and we
should forgive him. It is because we will not take
the trouble to understand one another that so much
suffering comes in this world. If each one would
try to put himself in the other man's place, as
indeed a brother should do, then we should be able
to make allowance. We might still differ from him,
but we should meet and discuss matters with him
in a totally different spirit — in a spirit which would
make compromise possible; in a spirit which would
enable us to arrive at some understanding, to have
some mutual comprehension, so that we could live
together as brothers, not as ravenous animals trying
to tear one another,

New Yeafs Dav 79

Let that be one of our New Year thonglits —
brotherly love and mutual comprehension. Let us
try to understand; then we shall be able to forgive,
and often to help. There is a story told in one of
the old Jewish books that Abraham once, when
camping in the desert, was accosted late at night
by an old man who asked him for shelter and food.
Of course he at once received him, as men do in
those primitive countries, but when they came to sit
down to meat, the stranger declined to join with
him in his little grace, his little thanksgiving to God ;
and Abraham, rising angrily, drove the man forth
without food or rest, saying that he would not have
in his tent one who disbelieved in God. But that
same night God came in a vision to Abraham, and
said: "Where is the stranger whom I sent to be
your guest?" And Abraham replied in confusion:
''Lord, he believed not in Thee; he refused to give
thanks; so I drove him out into the night." But
God said: ''I have borne with that man for seventy
years; couldest not thou bear with him for one
night?" God bears with us all, because He under-
stands us all. We cannot understand as He does
as yet, but at least we can try; and be very sure
that the nearer we come to understanding and mak-
ing allowance, the nearer we come to Him and to
His Spirit.

So let each new year which opens before us be
one of brotherly love and of mutual understanding.
Let us learn to co-operate with other people, and
we shall already have achieved a long step on the
way to the final unity. Only in that way can we
hope for truly happy New Years; not years with-
out any sorrow, without any passing cloud, for that

80 The Christian Festivals

cannot be, nor indeed would such perhaps be truly
happy years for us; but years in which we shall
draw ever nearer to God, Who gives us these
opportunities.

CHAPTER IV

THE EPIPHANY

This Feast of the Epiphany is one of the most
picturesque in the Christian year. It is in the
description of the event commemorated by it that
the words first occur which are so well-known to us
all: ''We have seen His Star in the East and are
come to worship Him." The story is but briefly
told in the gospel; we hear simply that there came
Wise Men from the East to Jerusalem asking where
that child was to be born who was to be the King
of the Jews. Since the Jewish prophets had
selected for the birth of the Messiah the town of
Bethlehem, the Wise Men were directed to go there;
and it is said that on the way the Star, which had
led them from their distant homes, again appeared
to them and indicated the stable-cave in which the
child Jesus vvas lying. And so these Wise Men went
in and worshipped the Child, and offered to Him
gold and frankincense and myrrh. But meantime
Herod, who for the moment held the position of
king of the Jews, v/as somewhat disturbed to hear
of another claimant to that office; and so when the
Wise Men did not return to describe their adven-
tures, he sent down soldiers to Bethlehem, and tried
to ensure the removal of his prospective rival by
killing all the children under the age of two. Mean-
time the Wise Men had been warned in a dream to
avoid him, and in the same way Joseph and Mary
had been warned to remove the Child out of his
reach.

81

82 The Christian Festivals

This story, so simply told in the gospel, becomes
far more gorgeous, though perhaps less credible, in
ancient ecclesiastical tradition. The word ' ' Magi ' '
or Wise Men means what we should now call students
of the inner side of things, and this would certainly
in those days have included astrology ; so in that
way their extreme interest in an unusual star is
readily explained. According to the tradition these
were not merel}^ men of learning, but kings, each
ruling in his own country. The legend is not pre-
cise as to the location of the countries; but the
names of the three kings are given as Melchior, Bal-
thasar and Gaspar, and it is the universal tradition
that the third was a black man — a negro from
Africa. The suggestion seems to be that Melchior
and Balthasar were rulers of Arabian states; but
however that may be, it is stated that each king in
his own place saw this strange new Star, and decided
to set out upon a journey to see what it might
mean.

According to this legend it was only as they
approached Jerusalem, each with his own retinue,
that the three kings met; and it is suggested that
the arrival of these parties, all in warlike array,
created much doubt and excitement, and that Herod
sent out an embassy, as they drew near the city, to
ask their intentions. Then, so says the story, hav-
ing received the answer to their question, the three
kings went together to Bethlehem with only a few
personal attendants, leaving their greater retinues
encamped near Jerusalem; and each of them car-
ried many costly gifts to offer to the new-born King.
But when they reached the cave and saw the little
Child, it is said that they were so tremendously

The Epiphani; 83

impressed by the magnetism which they felt, that
they were altogether overcome with awe, and instead
of offering the great store of gifts which they^ad
brought, each took from his attendant whatever came
nearest to hand, laid it at the Child's feet and re-
tired with precipitation. And so it happened that
Melchior presented a golden cup — fabled, naturally
enough, to have been preserved by the Blessed Virgin
Mary and used by the Christ Himself at the foun-
dation of the Holy Eucharist — while Balthasar
offered a golden box containing rare incense, and
Gaspar a curiously-chased flask containing myrrh.

The Church has always mystically interpreted
these gifts, saying that the gold showed that the Child
was a King, that the offering of incense denoted His
Godhead, and that the myrrh, being one of the
spices especially used for sepulture, was a kind of
proph6ey in symbol of the death which He was pre-
sently to die. The legend puts a strange interpreta-
tion on the remark in the gospel narrative that the
three kings returned to their country by another
way; for it is said that the Star appeared to them
at the exact moment of the birth of Jesus, and yet
that they arrived at Bethlehem only twelve days
later. That is explained by the statement that their
way was in some manner miraculously smoothed for
them, and that when after their visit they under-
took to return, they found that their journey oc-
cupied many days longer than they had taken in
coming. Each, so the old story tells us, was
profoundly and permanently affected by what he
had seen; they all agreed together to resign their
respective kingdoms, and to devote themselves
entirely to the religious life. The legend makes

84 The Christian Festivals

them travel together through many countries of the
then known world, and they are supposed even-
tually to have died at the city of Cologne, where
their tomb is still shown.

What foundation there may be for this strange
old story it is impossible now to say; but at least
it has something of antique beauty, and it is not
without interest for us to know how this day was
regarded in the Middle Ages. We cannot guarantee
it as history, but as a symbol it is unexceptionable;
for those who are the true Wise Men, those who are
the true kings among the souls of men, always
recognize a great Teacher when He comes; they know
Ilim and they come and w^orship Him, and they offer
all that they have, to help Him in the work which He
comes to do.

Whether they were kings or not, it is at least
certain that the Wise Men were not Jews; and
so this day has always been regarded by the
Church as the manifestation of Christ to the
Gentiles — the first symbol appearing in the life
of the Child Jesus to show that His mission was
not to His own people alone, but to the world
at large. The World-Teacher justified His title
and His position even thus in the very begin-
ning of His life there in Judaea; and we can well
understand that that may have been necessary. For
I suppose there was never a more exclusive race
than the Jews; and since He Who was born was
of the seed of David, from which they hoped, many
of them, that their promised Messiah would come,
they would have claimed to keep Him entirely for
themselves, had there not been a clear and decided
indication that He came not for them only, but for

The Epiphanp 85

the world. He never hesitated Himself to say that
later on in His life, but it is at least significant and
beautiful that it should thus have been indicated at
its beginning — that those who were not Jews should
share in His worship even so early in His life as
this.

Unfortunately^ Christianity has inherited a great
deal from the Jews. They are a wonderful race. I
should be the last to seek to depreciate them and
their general influence in the world in any way
whatever, but the Jew of to-day is not by any
means the same man as the Jew of the time of the
Christ. That race, like all other races in the world,
has risen from a primitive beginning to its present
state of civilization. Every nation has done that; we
ourselves, the English race, are in the habit of
thinking ourselves at least as good as any other, but
we, too, began at quite a low level. Our ancestors
were not a highly evolved race; no doubt they
had their own advantages and peculiarities, but
they were certainly not advanced. Other races
mingled with them to make this strange mixture
which we now call English. Along with this
Keltic race came the Saxons, the Angles, the Jutes
from the mainland, but none of them were highly
civilized. We hear of them roasting oxen whole
and tearing them to pieces with their hands,
and drinking mightily therewith. They were not
a race of which to be proud. They had certain bar-
baric virtues; they were brave beyond all doubt;
and it is said that they treated women well when
they were not slaves. Into that Anglo-Saxon Keltic
mixture came the Norman race, and that was some-
what more civilized before it joined the rest; but

86 The Christian Festivals

still if we read any romance of mediaeval times, we
shall find that there was much to be desired in the
culture of our country.

That is the way with every race in the world.
The great Roman race that was so justly proud of
itself arose from a small Latin tribe; so we need
not hesitate to admit that the same was true of the
Jews. The Jews -in their early days were distinctly
a barbarous tribe. We have only to read their
scriptures, which contain their history, to see that.
We shall find them committing terrible crimes, whole-
sale massacres, numerous blood-sacrifices — all sorts
of horrible things were done by them, and according
to their account approved by their deity, which
shows that they were dealing with a tribal god, and
not a great deity at all.

Certain characteristics of the Jews w^ere intensely
stamped upon them, and that idea of being a chosen
people of God was one of the strongest. That is
one of the things which the Christians have inherited
from them, and it has been decidedly unfortunate.
If we could only have accepted the Christ as the
Founder of His religion and not gone back into
Judaism, but taken His teachings, we should have
done much better all through the ages. We should
then have put aside all those ideas of a jealous God,
a cruel God, a God who persecuted people to the
third or fourth generation if they happened to do
something which did not please Him. Christ
spoke very differently; He taught us of a loving
Father, and prayed that we should all be one in
Him even as He was one with the Father; He did
not talk of jealousy and cruelty and horror.

The Epiphanv 8?

The Jews were intensely self-centred and thought
that there was no salvation outside their own body.
The evangelists sometimes put words into Christ's
mouth which seem as narrow as their own ideas, for
remember they also were mostly Jews. We do not
know so much about Luke, but we know that
Matthew, Mark and John were Jews at any rate.
The speech about taking the children's bread and
casting it to dogs is hardly what a World-Saviour
would have said. But we can see the true attitude
of the Christ peeping out in various ways, even in
what is attributed to Him in the gospel. Remember
how He says: ''Other sheep I have, which are not
of this fold" — not Jews at all, not people following
Him in that incarnation — ''but them also will I
bring, and there shall be one fold and one shep-
herd." Many times He spoke of all mankind, and
not of the Jews only.

Christianity as a whole has not taken the teach-
ing of Christ as He gave it; Christianity, as it
exists to-day, is much more the work of St. Paul
than the work of Jesus. That may sound rather
strange in the ears of many, but not, I am sure,
to those who have really studied the matter.
All the complicated theology, all the difficult ques-
tions that they have argued about so much in
Church Councils, all those can be traced to St. Paul.
It was not the sayings of the Christ that made the
mystery and the trouble; He taught a perfectly
straightforward religion, and what He said, if v\^e
took that by itself, would not justify a great deal
of what we find in theology at the present day.

It is not for us to say that St. Paul was wrong
in the line that he took. But at least where he

88 The Christian Festivals

appears to differ from what the Christ said, it is
open to us to follow the teaching of the Christ
rather than that of St. Paul. The latter, however,
was not born in the Holy Land, but at Tarsus, and
he was a Roman citizen by family right, so he was
not so thoroughly imbued with the Jewish tradition
as St. Peter. We find them sometimes debating
acrimoniously (not to say quarrelling) about various
points as to whether the Jewish laws should be
enforced upon all the Christian converts. The more
conservative among the apostles were gradually
driven from that position, and they had to let in
outsiders, and to acknowledge that the teaching of
Christ was intended for all; but they came to that
only by slow degrees.

In Christianity we have still a strong touch of
that old Jewish idea. We do not make it a ques-
tion of nationality now. We do not venture to say
that only English people can be saved, or only
French, or only Italians; but anany are still apt to
suppose that only Christians can he saved, and they
base that silly idea upon one or two texts which they
misread. It is said more than once that only
through the Name of Christ can men be saved; that
men must come through Him. He Himself is re-
presented to have said: ''No man cometh to the
Father but by me." But these people do not
understand that the great Christ-idea is a complex
thing, and that it does not always mean the Teacher
Christ Jesus (the Christ using the body of the dis-
ciple Jesus), but sometimes the still greater Christ,
the Son of God, the Second Person of the Ever-
blessed Trinity.

The Epiphanu 89

It is absolutely true that a man may become one
with the Almighty Father only by first becoming
one with the Christ within the human heart, for
Christ in you is the hope of glory, and there is no
other hope of glory for anyone but to arouse, to
awaken, the Christ-principle within himself, to be-
come one with that, and through that to rise to the
great Father of all. Certainly through Christ alone
can man escape from the round of birth and death,
and reach the level where he is one with God Him-
self. That is most true, but it does not mean, as
is often supposed, that his worship must be ad-
dressed to God only through the name of the exoteric
Jesus Christ.

Men do not always understand that in those old
days the name was the poiuer; to call rightly upon
the 7iame of any Deity was to invoke the power of
that Deity, and so it was through the power of the
Christ within that a man could reach the highest,
and through that alone. It did not mean that he
must walk along this particular earthly path, and
label himself a Christian. We use the word
''Christ"; a Frenchman or an Italian would pro-
nounce that name differently. Do you suppose that
he would be any the further from salvation because
he so pronounced that name? Do you suppose that
because he called God by some other title, God would
refuse to answer? Would you refuse to answer the
appeal of your little child because he could not pro-
nounce your name? Hardly. Then why should we
think of God as so much worse than ourselves? All
true devotion comes to God by whatever name people
call Him. Some call Him le hon Dieu, some say
Shiva, some Brahma or Allah, some call Him

90 The Christian Festivals

Ahuramazda. What does it matter? The prayers
that are said will reach God; the name that is em-
ployed is but a form of words. It is a great pity
that we have inherited this idea that we as Chris-
tians (not a nation, this time, but a religion) are
those ^jhosen to be saved — that all the rest are out-
siders left at the best to the uncovenanted mercies
of God. That is a form of expression which means
that the person using it is very doubtful whether
they will find any mercy at all.

There is no need to take that uncharitable atti-
tude. Even St. Paul, who was supposed to be so
rigid, was not so bigoted as many modern Christians
are. This is shown by the special formula (I am
not now speaking of Church history, but rather of
the result of clairvoyant investigation) with which
he prefaced his epistles. It remains to us now in
only one of them, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
all commentators and biblical students are quite sure
that that is the one epistle which St. Paul did not
write! He began it with a rather remarkable
phrase. ''God, "Who at sundry times and in divers
manners spake in times past unto our fathers by
the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto
us by His Son." There are two or three points to
be noted there. We must cast aside the illusion, if
it still persists with any of us, that Christ spoke
English; He did not. He spoke what is called the
Koine, the dialect of Greek spoken by the common
people; not Aramaic, though He must also have
known that, but this dialect, somewhat broken-down,
as compared with the classical Greek. Only recently
they have found a large number of new manuscripts
in that dialect. Until then the New Testament was

The Epiphani) 91

thought to be the only book written in it, but now
we know that it was the common language of a
vast number of people. Of course He used the
idioms of the time, and we must ascertain the exact
meaning of the words, and not blindly follow those
who, before it was known that this was the common
language, twisted His words to fit preconceived
dogmas.

''God hath spoken by the prophets" has been
taken to refer only to the Jewish prophets, those
lugubrious gentlemen who were always inveighing
against the Jews. Possibly those poor Jews deserved
all the dreadful things that were said of them, but
at any rate it does not make pleasant or helpful
reading in the present day. There are magnificent
passages in the Old Testament, but there are also
passages which later editors might have omitted
without any serious loss. The word prophetai in
Greek does not mean only what we now mean by
prophets. Anyone who speaks forth or preaches is
called a prophet. When the soldiers said in mockery
to the Christ, "Prophesy," they did not ask Him
to foretell future events; they meant "G-ive us a
speech." The verb from which it is derived means
to speak out aloud as well as to foretell the future;
so prophetai is equivalent to preachers and nothing
more. St. Paul undoubtedly meant: "God in times
past has spoken to our ancestors in many ways and
at many different times by other preachers, and now
in these days He has spoken unto us by His Son"
— by One Who is a special manifestation of the
divine power. Those preachers by whom God had
spoken in the past were the Lord Buddha, Vyasa,
Zoroaster, Thoth, Orpheus — all the great men who

9^ The Christian Festivals

had founded religions. They, too, were all mani-
festations of the same mighty Teacher; they too were
messengers of God, at those other times and to those
to whom they were sent.

Mankind differs, happily; it would be a poor
world if we were all alike. In successive stages of
evolution, and in various countries, men have dif-
fered very widely. To each of those types and
classes of men appropriate religions have been
preached, each by its own preacher; but all reli-
gions point to the same rule. They all teach to
men exactly the same life. They differ in the
names that they apply to things; but we must learn
that names are external labels and do not matter.
All alike tell us that the good man is the unselfish,
the charitable, the kindly, the gentle; all alike tell
us that offences against others, murder, stealing, out-
rages of any sort upon another are the most terrible
crimes. Their teaching is identical, but they put
it in a different form according to what is most
needed at the time. And so even St. Paul tells
us that God has spoken many times to our fathers,
who assuredly were Gentiles and not Jews, and now
in these last days He has spoken to us through
this special manifestation which vv^e call His Son.

Christianity is one of the great paths up the moun-
tain of light at the summit of which sits God Him-
self. It is one of the paths, but only one, and if we
have a number of people all round the base of the
mountain, the shortest path to the top for each
man is the path which opens before him. It would
be foolish to have the idea that we must go and
drag a man all round the base of the mountain in
order to make him walk up our particular path.

The Epiphanv 93

Our efforts to convert people from other religions
and modes of worship are unnecessary and presump-
tuous. The effort to bring to the knowledge of God
people who are ignorant of His ways is a grand
and noble action; that we should by deed as well
as by word preach our belief that there is a God,
and that to live as He would have men live is the
only sure way to comfort and peace — that is a
noble work; but to try to convert a man who is
already good along his own. line in order to make
him good along ours is not a sensible thing to do.

If members of other religions acted as many of our
people do, and tried to make us worship as they
do, we should say: "What is the use of this? We
have our own ways of worship ; why should we leave
them to take up this other?" Can we not see that
they might say exactly the same to us? It is all
the result of this mad idea that our way is the
only way, that our presentation is the best pos-
sible presentation. It may be the best for us; but
why cannot we realize that the presentation which
the same God has put before them may be the best
for them? It was God and none other that decreed
that these men should be born as Buddhists and
Hindus, while He gave to us Christian bodies. How
comes it that we are here and they there? It is by
the great law which is the expression of God's will.
So let each man be fully persuaded in his own mind ;
but let each man go his own way, and not try to
interfere with those of others. All paths lead to
the top, so long as the same good life is led.

It does not matter in what words a man expresses
his belief, assuredly he shall attain. That is the
great lesson, I think, of this manifestation of Christ

94 The Christian Festivals

to the Gentiles; the Gentiles merely meaning
foreigners, those who are not Jews. Let us then
realize strongly that there are many ways; that
it is not for us to say that one way is better than
the other. No doubt it seems so to us, but it is not
necessarily so for the other man; and that is true
not only of the great religions, but even of sects
as well.

There are three hundred Christian sects and more.
They are all from God. We see the advantages of
our particular method, because we have constantly
experienced its help. We of the Liberal Catholic
Church, for instance, partake of the Holy Sacra-
ment and feel the splendid outpouring of love and
strength that we receive in this way, and we think:
"No one who does not take this or feel this can
get on nearly so well in religion." That is true for
ourselves; but we must try to realize that many of
these other people may stand on a different line,
and what appeals so strongly to us may not appeal
to a Methodist, for example. Let each man go his
own way; let us by all means recommend ours to
him, since we find it so beautiful, but in thus recom-
mending it we must always be utterly charitable
inside as well as outside. We must not only say
in words: ''I think your plan is probably as good
as mine, but it differs"; we must really feel inside
ourselves that every man has his own way, and it
is not for us to take him out of his way and put
him into another. We must not have the slightest
feeling that he is not quite up to our level,
which I think we are a little apt to feel if we are
not careful. Each man can be helped on his own
line; Jew or Gentile, what matters it? High Church,

The Epiphang 95

Low Church, we are all trying to serve God each
in his own way, and that is what we have to learn.
We have all sorts of beautiful feelings within us;
let us give the other man credit for having the
same in his own way. So shall we all, through our
recognition of the Fatherhood of God, come to feel
as true brothers to all our fellowmen, and that is
the great end and aim of it all, that we may be one
in Christ, whatever we may call Him, as He is one
with the Father.

We know that the Star in the East, whose shin-
ing we celebrate at the Epiphany, has been taken
as its standard and symbol by a world-wide Society
called the Order of the Star in the East, to which
I have already referred — an Order which especially
asks those who join it to devote themselves to the
endeavour to fit themselves for the second Coming
of the Christ, that they may know Him when He
comes and be ready to offer Him service. This
Order was not founded actually upon this festival,
but five days later, on January 11th; but on this
anniversary we may well bear it in mind. The
business of its members is also to try, so far as
may be, to prepare others too, to induce some people
at least in the midst of all the turmoil and con-
fusion of the world to pay attention to this second
Coming, which we hold will not be long delayed.
Therefore it is indeed well that we should think of
it. Those of us who are keenly interested may well
join this Order which exists to prepare His way.
It has branches in every country in the world; it
publishes many pamphlets and books, a list of which
can be obtained from its Headquarters, 314 Regent
Street, London, W. But whether we join it or not,

96 The Christian Festivals

at any rate let us think clearly and definitely of
what we shall do when He shall come.

Let us take to heart the lesson of the Star. All
through Advent we were preparing ourselves
worthily to celebrate the birth of the Christ-Child,
and this culminated at Christmas, when we thought
of all that that birth has meant to us, and expressed
our devoutest thankfulness for it in all its various
significations. Now this great festival, which comes
just twelve days later, is intended to indicate to us
the translation of all that joy into action. We
have prepared for the Coming: we have celebrated
it; now what have we to do with regard to it?
How can we share this joy with our fellowmen?
The three kings were the first Christian preachers;
the first to go forth and proclaim to the world the
birth of the new-born King — King not of provinces
and of armies, but of the hearts and souls of men.
The legend tells us that they gave up all in order
to preach His Coming. "We, in these days, are not
called upon to make so great a sacrifice, yet surely
all the more should we devote whatever time and
energy we can spare to trying to spread the good
news. Let no mere worldly business, no worldly
work or ambition come between us and the Lord
Who shall come suddenly to His Temple. Let us
be ready to recognize Him and follow Him, even as
did the Wise Men of old, and let us offer to Him
most heartily and thoroughly the gold of our love,
the frankincense of our worship, and the myrrh of
our self-sacrifice. So shall we repeat those gifts of
old at a higher and a spiritual level; so will the
Star shine not in vain for those of us who have
qualified themselves to recognize His Coming.

The Epiphanv 97

It may be very soon, so it would be unwise to
delay our preparation. There were many before
who knew nothing of His Coming; all the great
kings of the earth, all the rich men, all the most
intellectual people of Greece, of Rome and of
Egypt paid no attention to Him at all. His im-
mediate followers, if we are to believe the story,
were a few poor fishermen, and others like them,
but none of any distinction, none of great learning,
none of high position. Shall that be the same this
time? We do not know, but at least let us put our-
selves in the attitude in which we shall recognize
Him. Before, there was one forerunner to proclaim
His Coming; this time there should be many thou-
sands of us who try to prepare the way of the Lord
and make His paths straight. There surely can be
no nobler message than that; there can be nothing
more beautiful for us to put before the world.

It has sometimes been objected: ''Suppose after
all w^e should be misleading people; suppose He
should decide not to ?ome as yet." Well, even then,
have you done any harm by trying to prepare
people for His Coming? If it should be that, for
some reason known only in the counsels of the Most
High, He should postpone His Coming, to have
prepared ourselves to receive Him is still a great
and noble work. We shall be better and not worse
for having tried to put ourselves in the attitude of
receptivity to that mighty influence, and no harm
can possibly be done by such preparation; whereas
if He should come and And us unready, should we
ever cease to regret it through all the centuries yet
to come?

98 The Christian Festivals

He Himself said that before He came again there
would be much confusion and much trouble in the
world — ^that many should run to and fro, and that
there should be false Christs rising up everywhere.
So it may well be that there will be many who do
not recognize and follow Him when He shall come.
Indeed, it is certain that there will be some who in
His own name will refuse to listen to Him. They
will say: ''Christ came once two thousand years
ago; we follow the teaching which He gave us then.
We cannot be led aside from that by any other
teaching." And so in His own name, and out of
a certain kind of loyalty to Him, they will fail to
recognize Him when He shall come again.

Let that not be so with us. As the Star arose
in the sky, and led those three kings to Bethlehem,
so is there a Star which shines before all who will
see it even now, though it be no longer a physical
phenomenon. If that Star were truly visible in
the skj^ two thousand years ago, millions must have
seen it, but only three understood and followed it.
There is no information given in the story as to
whether they alone were favoured by that sight.
We cannot say; but at least it is sure that, for all
those whose inner eyes are opened, there are clear
indications now of the near Coming of the same
great World-Teacher once more. We might truly
say, as He is reported to have said when He ad-
dressed the Jews: ''There be many standing here
who shall not taste death until they see the Lord
Christ." Whether He really said that or not we
cannot say; it seems improbable, for surely He must
have known. But now, at least, the signs are clear;
now it seems that the time is drawing near. Let

The Epiphanv 99

us be ready for it; let us be prepared to receive that
greater Epiphany of the Christ. Let us be among
those Wise Men who have watched for His Coming,
who recognize Him when He does come and are
prepared to lay at His feet the gifts of their love
and devotion and service. We have indeed a gospel
to preach, just as truly as the Wise Men of old.
Let us see to it that we do not lose the won-
derful opportunity that has been offered to us
— that we do not fall short in the performance of
an obvious duty.

It is not for me to prescribe what each shall do;
each man will do what he can in his own way. But
at least let each one see to it that he is definitely
doing something. There are many ways in which
work may be done for the Star, but this much is
clear, that whatever else we may be able to do for
it in the way of active work, we at least owe it this
duty — that we should live for it. We who preach
the Star to others must assuredly show forth its
influence in our daily life, its wisdom, its strength,
its joy, its peace, its freedom and its lovingkind-
ness.* We who love the Star should ourselves be as
stars to help to illumine the world in which we
move; we must try, each according to his capacity,
to shine and to show forth in purity, in gentleness,
and in steadfastness the light that is within us. So
this day is linked with those that have preceded it,
for we cannot better show forth the glory of the
Star than by perpetuating, all through the year that
lies before us, the very attitude of kindliness and
brotherliness upon which we have already resolved.
On the day of the Star let its glory shine about us,

♦ See Starlight, by C. W. Leadbeater ,„, o o o

laO The Christian Festivals

and let us ever remember that it is with it, as with
all other good things — that only in the proportion
in which we can share it with our fellows shall we
receive its fullest blessing.

CHAPTEK V

THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

We have chosen January 15th for the celebration
of the Baptism of our Lord. It is not that we
know it in any way to be the anniversary of that
occasion, for the Church has lost the exact date, so
far as we are aware. The gospel account of that
Baptism tells us that Jesus Himself came to His
forerunner, John the Baptist, and asked for this
rite to be administered to Him. John not un-
naturally objected in his humility, and said: "I
have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou
to me?" That is to say: "Thou art much greater
and more highly developed than I, why dost Thou
want to be baptized by me?" And Jesus said:
''Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to
fulfil all righteousness." Ard so He accepted the
sacrament. "What He meant evidently was: ''This
is a mark of a certain stage. In this birth of mine
I also must fulfil the law — the normal course of all
those who try. to reach the higher levels — and there-
fore I, though I be in truth beyond all this, in the
outer world must fulfil all righteousness. I must
pass through all these stages just as anyone else."
Just so, if the greatest of saints came back to earth
and was reborn, would he pass through all the sac-
raments of the Church, through baptism and con-
firmation, though he might be far beyond what they
ordinarily mean or symbolize to us.

So Jesus passed through this, and therefore as a
perfect example showed us that we also should pass

101

102 The Christian Festivals

through all the prescribed rites, no matter whether
we feel ourselves to be beyond what they can give.
It is easy for a man to deceive himself; there have
been those who have said: ^'I do not need any
outer sacrament; I can receive no benefit from
such things." It may be so, for we all know that
any man may draw near to the Christ at any level
without an intermediary. It is possible; it has
been done, though rarely; and perhaps it is not
well rashly to decide that we can dispense with all
help. We may be great saints in disguise, but it
is better to be on the safe side.

Make no mistake as to this ; any man, at any stage,
who turns his thought towards the Christ, or sends
an aspiration to Him, will unquestionably call forth
a response, and will be the better for his effort. But
the same expenditure of force will bring a far
greater return if it be expended along the channel
already prepared by Christ for His people and desig-
nated by His Church for our use. It is much easier
to walk along a carefully levelled road than to force
one's way through the entanglements of a pathless
jungle; and when the road is already there, lovingly
provided for that especial purpose, why should one
be so ungracious as to refuse to walk in it?

If we follow the teaching and the rites of the
Church, be very sure that the}^ will do great good
to us, however advanced we may feel ourselves to
be inwardly. For the greater a man is the more
he can receive from the sacraments and the rites of
Holy Church. So we may well follow the example
of the Christ: "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it
becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." It is an
apt and beautiful symbol.

The Baptism of our Lord 103

It is well that we should think sometimes of the
path of development that lies before us. We should
note the different steps and what is required of those
who would take them, and frequently examine our-
selves and see in what way, and to what extent, we
fall short now of that which is required, because
although we may still be at some distance from
such spiritual possibilities as these, at least we
ought to be trying to qualify ourselves for this
which lies before each one of us. A man may say
humbly: ''I am not a great saint; I am very far
from that. I have all sorts of faults and failings."
No doubt; for we all have. But God does not tie us
down to a limited time. We must not think of this
one little life as all that is given to us. If so, it
would indeed be a mockery to say to us: ''Be ye
perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." How
can we be? We know how far we fall short of
it ; how can we carry out that command ? Yet would
that command have been given if it had been impos-
sible for us? It is not impossible, precisely be-
cause we have before us plenty of time for our
efforts. Never a moment to waste, but such time
as we need we shall have. If we do not succeed in
this life, we shall come back again and again until
we do succeed, exactly as a child goes to school day
after day, and in between the days of work he goes
home and takes off the clothing he has worn for
his school-life, and goes to bed and rests. Just so
we take off the robe of flesh — this physical body —
and live in the spiritual body. And then presently
we come out of that stage of rest, and come back
yet again and assume the garment of earthly life
— the physical body.

104 The Christian Festivals

That was well known in the time of Christ. We
read that He said to His disciples: ''Whom do men
say that I am?" And they answered Him: ''Some
say that Thou art the prophet Elias (Elijah) : some
say Thou art Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
And then He explained to them that John the
Baptist was Elijah, so He could not be he. He said
to them: "If ye will receive it, Elias has already
come." And then He asked whom they took Him
to be, and Peter gave the repl}^: "Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the Living God." So it is clear
that He knew, and those to whom He spoke knew,
that it was possible for people to come back again
in other bodies. Also He was asked, when they
brought to Him a man who was born blind: "Who
did sin, this man or his parents, that he was bom
blind?" How could a man have sinned and been
born blind as a punishment for it, unless the sin
had been committed in some former life? They
clearly grasped the doctrine of reincarnation, but
because that doctrine has since been dropped aside,
a great deal in the scripture and in the Creed
appears unintelligible to people. We must try to
recover this ancient doctrine and to apprehend all
that follows from it. The faith may have been
once for all delivered to the saints, but it does not
follow that it was fully understood by them. Many
advancements have been made in knowledge of all
kinds since then; perchance in religion also we may
come to comprehend much better what has been said
than some of them did.

So let us observe these different festivals. Let
us try not merely to follow these things as anniver-
saries, but to remember the symbolism and under-

The Baptism of our Lord 105

stand it; and when we have learnt the lesson which
it has to teach, let us try to live according to that
lesson. If we are some day to attain these great
stages we must live now so as to fit ourselves day
by day for this drawing nearer and nearer to the
Christlike state of mind which alone will enable us
to live the life which the Christ would have u^ live.

We must recognize from the beginning that the
requirements of the spiritual life are high, and that
no man can hope to follow his Leader up this
mighty ladder of evolution unless he is indeed will-
ing to devote himself, spirit, soul and body with all
his strength to Him. It is not necessary that he
should retire altogether from the world. That has
been a common error. The demands of the
higher spiritual development are so great that a
man may well be pardoned if he feels that he
should devote every moment of his lifetime to
them, and in the past that has been done to a
great extent. In older civilizations and in earlier
religions men almost always commenced the pur-
suit of the really higher life by becoming her-
mits or monks. A man gave up the world alto-
gether; he consigned himself to an existence of
absolute poverty, absolute chastity and self-control,
and lived altogether in the higher meditation.
Sometimes there was a slight modification of that.
In the Buddhist religion a man who becomes a monk
does not necessarily devote the whole of his life to
contemplation, but he does emphatically devote it
wholly to doing good. All through the earlier his-
tory of Christianity we find that many of its saints
did exactly the same thing. Either they became
hermits or they entered some monastery, so that

106 The Christian Festivals

their surroundings might make it comparatively
easy for them to live wholly for the spirit.

For us in these days a harder task is set. The
great keynote of our spiritual lives is to be of ser-
vice. The highest service of God is to serve Him
in the person of our feilowmen; and in order that
we may devote ourselves to that service it is neces-
sary that we should remain in the world, even
though we may not be of the world in the sense
that worldly matters bulk most largely for us. We
must not therefore feel ourselves superior to the
monk or the hermit of old. It is not true to say
that one who passed altogether out of the ordi-
nary business life of the world thought only of
himself and his own development. Such men help
greatly in the elevation of the spiritual tone of the
world as a whole. There are many people wholly
given up to business and to pleasure; in order to
balance that, it is surely well that among the human
race there should be some who give up all their
strength to the higher life of meditation, and we
must not for a moment think that these men of old
were necessarily selfish in doing that. They were
flooding the world with a higher type of spiritual
thought and devotional feeling than would have
been possible in those days for ordinary men en-
gaged in business. We should not at all think of
those people as doing nothing; but, as I have said,
a harder task is put before us — that we should re-
main in the world and still develop that higher
spiritual nature as much as we might have done if
we had retired altogether from ordinary life.

Some may object: ''But that is impracticable;
how can we be so much stronger spiritually than

The Baptism of our Lord 107

were those great men of old?" The reason is that
we, some of us, are those great men of old, come
back again in other bodies to carry our development
in the following of our Lord Christ a little further
than we carried it before. If some of us succeeded,
in that older civilization, in living the spiritual life
apart from the world, the strength that we gained
then will help us now to try to live the spiritual
life in the world. We can still flood that world
with higher thought and with the noblest devo-
tional feeling, but we can have also the inestimable
advantage of being among our fellowmen and there-
fore bringing a more direct influence to bear upon
them. Again some may think: ''That is all very
well for a preacher or a lecturer; no doubt he sheds
out a certain amount of influence, but what can
we do? We live quite ordinary lives; we have to
earn our living, and we have to keep our wives
and families; how can we shed an influence
abroad ? ' '

Every human being is doing so, all the time;
whether he knows it or whether he never thinks of
it, he is nevertheless affecting the lives of all those
about him, and not only by what he says or does;
every thought that he thinks affects other minds
around him, ever}^ word that he utters may be so
arranged as to carry a good feeling with it. A man
cannot be always preaching; but all his thoughts,
his words and his deeds should be such as to shed
a holy and Christlike influence on those about him.
That is the essence of the spiritual life; that is
what everj'one of us, at his level and in his degree,
should be doing.

108 The Christian Festivals

To attain to the level of the first great Initiation
a man must dominate his body by means of his
soul; he must so arrange that all his feelings are in
harmony with the highest feeling. When the second
of the great steps comes the same process is car-
ried a stage farther, and in the second Initiation,
of which this Baptism of our Lord is the symbol,
the man's mind, and not only his feeling, is brought
into tune with the Christ-mind. The latter is still
infinitely above it, of course, for v/e are only men,
and very frail and human, while He rises above
humanity as a Superman ; but nevertheless our
thoughts should lie along the line of His thoughts.
Just as the man who is beginning to tread the Path
says: ''In these circumstances what would the Christ
have done? let me do the same," so the man who
has passed that second stage should watch his
thought every moment and say to himself: ''What
would the Christ have thought in such a case as
this? How would this thing have envisaged itself
to Him?"

The same great thought exists in our religion as
in all the older faiths. All religions are as coloured
lenses through which shines the same bright light;
they are all statements of the same great truth;
therefore whatever is found philosophically stated
in those older faiths is to be found also represented
in this, the latest of the great religions. Because wa
are Christians we need not necessarily be ignorant,
although it is quite true that in the early days of
the Church most of the Christians were drawn from
unlearned people, and a vast heritage of misunder-
standing has come down to us from those times of
i^orance. It is for us now to add to our faith

The Baptism of our Lord 109

virtue, and to virtue knowledge, as St. Peter put
it, so that while we hold the same old faith, we may
hold it far more intelligently than did our fore-
fathers, because we know now what it symbolizes;
so instead of taking statements as literally historic
which on the face of them are incredible, we rea-
lize their meaning in this mighty myth of progress,
and therefore we learn from them instead of forc-
ing ourselves to accept them without comprehension.

Never again will a great leader of the Church say:
Credo quia impossihile, which means: ''I believe it
because it is impossible." When we find a state-
ment which on the face of it looks incredible, we
say: ''What is the meaning of this? For it must
have a meaning, and it must have a place, or we
should not find it in this our faith.'' It would
have been well if the early Church Fathers in the
Christian religion had followed the example of the
great Council of the religious Fathers of the
Buddhist religion. When those men met to formu-
late doctrine after the death of the Buddha, find-
ing many curious statem.ents and distortions of His
sayings put before them, their decision was: "No-
thing whatever which is not in accordance with
reason and common sense can be the teaching of the
Buddha." I wish the Christian Fathers had
adopted that same line of thought; it would have
saved us much trouble.

Only those who have seen one of the great Initia-
tions can say how good is the symbolism which the
Church has adopted for them. The first does dis-
tinctly symbolize a birth; the Master Who is acting
as Initiator expands His aura, His higher vehicles,
and absolutely enfolds within Himself the pupil,

no The Christian Festivals

and the pupil comes forth irorn that contact a new
man in many ways, so it may truly be described as
a birth. In the second Initiation there is a down-
pouring of force from on high which is aptly sym-
bolized by a baptism — a tremendous rush of power
down from the Initiator upon the Initiated. It is
a veritable baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire,
as the Christ described it; it is a fiery flood which
is poured down, and it has undoubtedly the appear-
ance of a stream of living light. If we realize the
symbolical meaning of all these things we shall
understand that they make a coherent sequence, and
that each year the Church in this way sets before
us the path we have to tread, in the hope that con-
templating it we shall learn to understand it, and
that we shall then develop within ourselves the re-
quirements which are needed for each of these great
steps.

There is no mystery about these requirements;
they are given in many of our books. I myself made
a list of them at the end of my little book Invisible
Helpers. I use there the • Oriental terms, but we
find the same stagas in the Christian teaciiing under
the names of Conversion, Purification, Illumination,
and Perfection. Perfection corresponds to what is
called in the East the Arhat Initiation. St. Paul
is reported to have said: ''We speak wisdom to
them that are perfect" — a remark which does not
sound particularly intelligent if we take the word
in its ordinary signification, but is luminous and
clear when we know that ''perfect" is a technical
word for a certain degree in the Christian Mysteries.
The meaning is simply "We speak of the secrets
of the higher degree only to those who have taken

The Baptism of our Lord 111

that degree." The more that we can develop of
these qualifications now, the easier will be our task
when the great time comes for us, and the sooner
will that time come. Therefore we should already
be laying a foundation even for the very highest of
the steps of the Path. We should already be
familiar with what we have to do in the unfold-
ing of our inner powers, and we should be trying
in our small way to do it. We should try with all
our hearts, with all our minds, with all our strength.

Not that we can immediately succeed, because it
is a work of a l6ng time. This evolution of man has
continued slowly and surely through thousands and
thousands of years in the past. Now it is begin-
ning to quicken, because the goal is coming in sight
— because now we are beginning to move intelli-
gently in the right direction, instead of being merely
swept hither and thither by all kinds of cross cur-
rents. Evolution is moving all the time, and
whether we take an intelligent part in it or not,
we are being steadily carried onward and upward.
But as soon as we begin to understand and to swim
for ourselves instead of drifting with the tide, our
progress becomes much more rapid, and we can co-
operate with comprehension in the mighty work
which God is doing for us. So it is worth our while
to try to understand all these stages.

The first Initiation is chiefly concerned with the
conquering of the idea of separateness and the
establishment of the man on a firm basis; the second
Initiation deals largely with the development of his
mental and psychic powers and faculties. The
actual effect of this Initiation is an enormous expan-
sion of the mental body. How much of that can

112 ^he Christian Festivals

act down here in the physical brain of the man is
quite another matter. It takes many years for the
full effect of that Initiation to show itself in the
lower life, and it is a time of considerable strain,
and even of danger for the man if he is not very
careful to keep his vibrations pure and high and
noble. That also is symbolized in the gospel drama,
for immediately after receiving this Baptism, the
Christ retires for forty days into the desert, to
strengthen and develop Himself — to adjust the
lower vehicles to what has been done with the higher
ones.

Forty days may suffice for a Christ, but for
most of us forty years would be nearer the mark.
Less than that perhaps, but not very much less will it
take us to adapt ourselves perfectly to the develop-
ment; but the work must be done. Some will not
(or possibly cannot) adjust themselves, and those
people break. To safeguard ourselves against that
disaster we must learn at an earlier stage to keep
our thoughts on a pure, high level, to be persistent
always in well-doing, to have the one unselfish
object of helping the world always before us, and
not to let ourselves be diverted from it by any sort
of prejudice, or by any sort of personal feeling or
weakness in any way. So shall our advance proceed
smoothly and steadily, and we shall progress as we
are meant to do.

Every step of the path brings its own difficulties
and its own especial strain; but everjr step of the
path also brings its own enormous accession of
strength to the soul — to the ego, the true man. Pro-
gress is always gradual, particularly at this stage
of which we are speaking now. But if the man

^he Baptism of our Lord 113

succeeds, that which is so beautifully put before us
in the Epistle for the festival of the Baptism of
our Lord becomes true of him. The Spirit of
the Lord rests upon him, because he is drawn
up to a higher level; he is now more in har-
mony with that Spirit, and is a better channel
for it. So the Spirit rests upon him, the Spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel
and of might — of great wisdom, but also of great
power; the Spirit of knowledge and of reverence to
the Lord. Those are the characteristics which
should be showing forth through the man when he
reaches that level. It is said of him: "He shall
not judge after the sight of his eyes" (that is,
after mere outer appearance), "neither reprove
after the hearing of his ears" (that is, he shall not
take anything on hearsay), "but with righteousness
shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity
for" (that is, on behalf of) "the meek of the
earth."

You will notice what great stress is laid there
upon justice, gentleness, tolerance. All those are
the characteristics of the man who is making pro-
gress, the man who is trying to bring his mind into
harmoiiv with the mind of the Christ. We are told
in another place in our scripture: "Let this mind
be in you which was also in Christ Jesus," and
that is what the man should be doing at this stage
of his Baptism with Fire. Both the Christ and
John the Baptist used that expression, the Baptism
of the Holy Ghost and of Fire, showing it to be
really a technical phrase in the Mysteries, refer-
ring to the tremendous downpouring of divine force
which come? at that second Initiation to the man
who is fortunate enough to reach it.

114 Uhe Christian Festivals

Chief among his characteristics, then, should be
righteousness, faith, fairness, and, above all, gentle-
manliness. A great poet said of the Christ that
He was the first true gentleman who ever lived. All
these things should be the characteristics of our
development on the path. It is said of the Initiate
that he shall neither hurt nor destroy in all the
holy mountain of that higher progress. There
shall be no hurt, no power or fear or even possi-
bility of hurting the feelings or the reputation of
others. Most carefully, most skilfully will the man
who is drawing thus near to higher things order his
action, his speech and his thought, so that no harm
shall be done by any of these to any living creature.
In the Hindu Scripture we find the teaching that
ahimsa or perfect harmlessness is the great charac-
teristic of the developed man; harmlessness not only
on the physical plane, but on the emotional and
mental as well — that the man shall be incapable of
harm, not only that he shall be careful not to harm.
He should have reached the stage at which he can
do only good to his fellowmen; and the reason why
he can do only good is given in the concluding
words of the Epistle — that the man is "full of the
knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
It is said there that the earth shall be so filled. It
will be a long time yet before all mankind stands
at such a level as that, before absolutely the whole
earth shall be recognizably filled with the glory of
the Lord. In truth it is filled with that glory even
now if we can only see it; but what is indicated is
a condition when all men upon earth will realize
it, when His will shall be done on earth, even as
it is in heaven.

^he Baptism of our Lord 115

We are far from that; yet perhaps we may not
be so far from it as we sometimes think. We are
only just at the end of the most awful war in the his-
tory of the world, and though that actual war is
over and justice has triumphed, there is an immense
amount of social unrest all over the world, and we
have not arrived at a millennium yet. Great changes
have come, and are in process of coming; surely
there will be on the whole a great movement to-
wards good. There may be an intermediate time
which will be very unpleasant, while things are
still settling down. It is the interval of readjust-
ment, the trough between two waves of evolution,
but out of it all, we hope and believe, will come
something grander than we have yet seen. Wliether
the best will be made out of it depends upon us, as
well as upon other people. A man may think, ''I
am not a person of any importance. I have a vote
certainly, but it is only one out of millions." That
is not the point. It is true that the actual govern-
ment of a country is in the hands of its politicians,
but any kind of constitution, any arrangement will
work well if the hearts of the people are right, and
if they have loving brotherly feeling one towards
another; and no constitution, however excellent, will
^ork satisfactorily if these feelings and conditions
are absent. So everyone of us has a share in this
future — everyone of us can distinctly help in his
own circle to make it possible for the great changes
to come smoothly, if he will follow such teaching
as is here given to us by the Church.

That is why we should be educating and train-
ing ourselves to take due part in the life that lies
before us all. This spiritual development, which

116 ^he Christian Festivals

sometimes seems rather far away and in the
clouds, is not really far from us at all, because
we gain these heights step by step, and we mus^t
be developing all these qualities in ourselves
day by day in order that we may the sooner reach
the highest, so that through us the whole world can
be helped. Those who are clairvoyant, those who
can see, know as a fact how closely the world is
knit together. The rest must take it largely on
evidence, though there is surely plenty of evidence
even for those who cannot see. No man liveth to
himself, not for a moment; always he is influencing
other people by his thought, his feelings, as well
as by what he does and what he is. Every man has
a share in the world's work, and every man must
take it. And if you who draw nearer to the Christ
will follow the Christ in your thoughts and words
and works, then shall the world all the sooner be
ready to worship at His Feet and to follow Him
whither He would lead it, when (so soon) He comes
among us once more.

Even now at our present stage we may have this
much share in this second Initiation — that we may
try to develop our minds ; we may try to under-
stand our religion intelligently. Let that then be
for you the lesson of this festival. We must be
able to give a reason for the faith that is in us.
We must try to understand what is meant by the
teachings of our religion. All religions are the
same, in that all alike teach us that the path of
holiness is the only way to reach final perfection;
but our especial line in Christianity is to try to
develop ourselves by means of service to others.

t^he Baptism of our Lord 117

realizing the truth of the words which the Christ
Himself uttered: ''Inasmuch as ye have done it unto
the least of these My little ones, ye have done it
unto Me."

CHAPTER VI
THE TRANSFIGURATION

The story of the Transfiguration is that the Christ
took the three disciples who were nearest to Him
in thought and mind up to Mount Tabor and then
was transfigured before them. He showed Him-
self to them as the radiant augoeides — as the ego
in his causal body. And there stood two typical
people beside Him, men who to the Jews repre-
sented the two sides of their religion — the law-
giving side, the side of Moses, who wrote the Penta-
teuch, and that of Elias, who was the first and
greatest, they considered, of their prophets— their
great preachers. These two men appeared and
stood talking with Him, just as materializations
might appear to-day; and then they were sur-
rounded by a luminous cloud from which came a
voice which is supposed to have been that of God
the Father, saying: ''This is my beloved Son in
Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him." A similar
phenomenon is alleged to have happened at the
Baptism of Christ; and as it is said that the Holy
Ghost simultaneously showed Himself in the shape
of a dove, that Baptism is often spoken of as the
only occasion on which the Three Persons of the
Trinity were seen together. Some have thought
that all Three also appeared at the Transfiguration,
suggesting that the luminous cloud was in this case
a manifestation of the Third Person. The story
tells us that when the cloud dissipated, onlj'' Jesus
in His ordinary appearance as man was to be seen.

118

^he transfiguration 119

When we read of the Christ as taking His chosen
disciples (those who were nearest to Him, who had
therefore the opportunity of the most rapid ad-
vancement, whether they took advantage of it or
not) and leading them up into a mountain alone,
those who are used to Oriental symbology begin to
see at once along what lines our thoughts are be-
ing directed. The mountain is neither Tabor nor
Hermon in that inner plane; it is the Mount of
Initiation — the Mount to which in the Collect for
the festival of the Transfiguration we pray that we
may all come, as indeed we must; and to climb that
holy Mount is indeed to be transfigured.

Note the description which is given of our Lord
and of those who attended upon Him. It says that
He was transfigured before them, and that His
raiment was white and glistering, and shone like the
snow. That at once suggests the augoeides — the glori-
fied man ; and that is the real man, the ego. The phy-
sical body down here at the best glows but very
faintly; the astral is of course brighter; the m^ental
brighter still. But at the level of the causal body,
man indeed looks like a great Angel, for that is
the body which passes on from life to life. In it
nothing which is evil can possibly be stored, because
that is the law of Nature.

That causal body, which is the vehicle of the soul,
is permanent from the time v/e leave the animal
kingdom until the time that we become supermen,
reaching something outside ordinary humanity. It
is built of matter so fine that it will not respond
to those grosser vibrations which always indicate
what down here we call evil. A man may have
plenty of these in his lower vehicles; he may feel

120 The Christian Festivals

evil, he may think evil, but the evil cannot harm the
soul within, though it does delay him in his pr(!)gress.
Suppose we find a well-developed selfishness in
the man down here, characterized perhaps by pride
and irritability. If we are able to look at his astral
body, we shall see clear marks there of these unde-
sirable qualities — the dull, dirty brown of selfish-
ness, the strong orange of pride and the dull red
of anger. If we are able to examine the mental
body we shall still see the same thing; the colours
are already much lighter and finer there, but still
they are the same colours. But if we look at his
causal body, just where these colours were so
prominent in the lower vehicle we shall find simply
an empty space. What then is the matter with
that man? Why is he selfish? Why is he proud?
Why is he angry? Because he has not yet built
into himself the contrary virtues. When he has
built into himself unselfishness, that will appear in
his causal body, and then if we examine the lower
bodies we shall see the same vivid colour repro-
duced there. But so long as selfishness is showing
in the lower vehicles, that clearly indicates that un-
selfishness has not been developed in the higher. If
he shows anger in the lower, then patience is not
unfolded fully in the soul. If he shows pride in
the lower, humility and right judgment are not yet
evolved as soul qualities. Most happily and for-
tunately for us, all the good that we may develop
within ourselves registers itself permanently; the
evil that appears cannot register itself at all. True,
we bring it over from another life, but that is be-
cause we bring over the permanent atom of each of
the lower planes. The soul cannot record it, and con-

Bhe transfiguration 121

sequently every vibration in the direction of good
is a step permanently taken; every slip backward
is by the law of Nature a temporary thing. This is
indeed fortunate, because otherwise in our earlier
struggles in savage lives we should assuredly have
built into ourselves so much evil that it might have
taken us many lives, perhaps even aeons, to
straighten out again.

That vision of the glorified body has often been
seen. We read stories in the traditions of the
Church of saints displaying for a time the ap-
pearance of great Angels. We may see such things
often in our Church services if we have eyes to see.
We pray in our Benediction Service that Christ
shall open His eyes in us in order that we may see
these wonderful things, these splendid shining
forms.

That Transfiguration lies before every one of us.
It is for us so to live that that splendour, that glory
which dwells within each of us even now shall
be able to show itself forth. Christ said to His
people: "Ye are gods; ye are all the children of
the most High." He did not say "You will be
gods some time"; not "You shall be," but "You
are." You are here and now divine; the spirit in
you is a spark of the divine Spirit. You have only
to let it show forth and you have won that for
which you are sent here; "you have wrought the
purpose through of that which made you man," as
another great Teacher has said.

So this festival conveys to us the lesson that every
one of us is capable of that Transfiguration; that
it will in time come inevitably to every one of u>s,
and that we must bear that great fact in mind

122 ^he Christian Festivals

and so live that we may show forth in our outward
lives the glory of the Christ Who dwells in us.

An interesting feature of the symbolism is that
which brings the commemoration of Christ's Presen-
tation in His Father's Temple just towards the end
of the week devoted to celebrating the Transfigura-
tion. According to the Jewish law every first-born
son was holy to the Lord, and was definitely devoted
to Him as His priest. I am afraid that they had
inherited the idea from a much lower condition of
civilization in which the first-born son was offered
as a sacrifice; but that does not appear even at the
time of the writing of the bible. There- it is only
said that he was holy to the Lord, and that the
father and mother therefore had to buy him back
from the Lord by offering something else instead
of him. They were to offer a lamb, but a lamb
(though not very costly) being still beyond the
means of some, they were allowed to offer two
pigeons instead, and we read in the New Testament
how the Blessed Virgin, taking the two pigeons and
the young child, went to present Him in the Temple,
and to present herself also for purification from the
unequalled nobility of motherhood.

It is a strange idea that the greatest function in
the world for woman is one from which it is neces-
sary for her afterwards to be purified. But that
idea runs through many religions. It is strong in
Hinduism; a trace of it appears in the Anglican
and Roman Churches in the curious service called
the Churching of Women. In the Liberal Catholic
Church we have dropped the custom, because we do
not think that a woman needs purification after ful-
filling the highest and noblest office open to

STze transfiguration 123

humanity — the provision of a vehicle for an evolving
ego. But still that was the law in Judsea, and
according to that law, forty days after the birth of
Jesus the Blessed Virgin brought her child to pre-
sent Him to the Lord. The story tells us that
Simeon happened to be in the Temple at the time,
and in his thankfulness for having seen the promised
Messiah he gave us the Nunc Dimittis, that beauti-
ful canticle which we still use to this day: ''Lord,
now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, ac-
cording to Thy word. For mine eyes have seen
Thy Salvation which was prepared before the face
of all people, to be a Light to lighten the Gentiles,
and to be the glory of Thy people Israel."

That is the outer story; whether it be true or
not, I do not know. But turn to its symbology;
what does it mean? As I pointed out before, all
this symbology has at least two meanings, and
sometimes more. It indicates the stages in the life
of the Initiate, but also the stages of the descent
of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity into
matter — a great system of cosmogony, which is
given in some form in every religion. Unfortu-
nately, instead of taking our own system from the
Creed, most Christians have preferred to accept
that of the Jews, enshrined in the first two chap-
ters of the book of Genesis, which is far less clear
than that given in the Gnostic teaching of the
Christian religion.

This third Initiation carries with it a certain
privilege which is symbolized in this offering in the
Temple. At that step man is changed all the way
through. The ego, the soul of the man is changed,
because it is brought into closer touch with the

124 ^he Christian Festivals

Monad, the mighty divine spark which is in every-
one of us — or rather hovers over every one of us,
Gradually we have to come into touch with it and
learn to express it, that we also may be gods, as
Christ said to His people. Then the personality in
turn, the man we know down here, is transfigured
at that Initiation, because it is brought into so
much closer touch with the soul behind. So the
operation is well symbolized as a Transfiguration.
But at that particular step not only does the man
in that way come face to face with his Father Who
is in heaven (that is to say, with the God which is
within us), but also he comes face to face with the
outer manifestation of that great Father. He
comes into touch with the Representative here in
this world of what w^e often call the Solar Deity.
There is a great Hierarchy governing the world and
directing it. The world is not left to itself; there
are ''Just Men made perfect" Who hold certain
definite offices in the inner and spiritual Govern-
ment of the world, just as Ministers of the Crown
hold definite offices in our outer Government here
on the physical plane.

There is, then, a spiritual King — a Leader of
evolution for each planet. We refer to Him in that
last Benediction, when we speak of Him as the One
Initiator, the great Head of all the Saints belong-
ing to this earth. Now it is in the Name of that
spiritual King that all Initiations are given — all
degrees are conferred, as we should put it in more
physical language — though in all the earlier stages
some one acts for Him as a deputy, His special per-
mission being given for each occasion. But the
man who is so fortunate as to reach this third stage

The Transfiguration 125

comes face to face with that spiritual King Him-
self, for it is the rule that imjnediately after this
step the neophyte must be presented to Him. Indeed,
in some special cases He Himself takes charge of
the Initiation and confers it instead of having it
conferred through a deputy.

That is why in connection with the feast of the
Transfiguration comes the feast of the Presen-
tation of Christ in the Temple, His presentation
directly to His Father, because that is what is sym-
bolized when we are taking it all to mean the
Mysterj^-Drama of the progress of man. The man
who has been transfigured is brought into the pre-
sence of the Representative of His Father in heaven.
That is a secondary meaning lying behind the fact
that he is presented to his own ^lonad, which is
truly his Father in heaven, the God within us.

I mentioned just now that this Mystery-Drama
symbolizes not only the progress of man, but also
the progress of the whole world. In Neo-Platonism
and the Greek philosophies they speak constantly of
the microcosm and the macrocosm. Cosmos is the
world or universe; micro and macro mean little and
big respectively. So we have the small world, the
world of man himself, and we have the greater world,
which is in this case the solar system. The evolu-
tion of man and that of the solar system have cer-
tain points in common which are of great interest
to the student, because if we understand one of
them, through that we may understand the other,
making certain allowances for difference of planes.
The Church's year indicates all these things, though
of course it is only one of many systems of presen-
tation. They appear even more clearly in some

126 The Christian Festivals

of the older religions — in Buddhism, in Hinduism,
in Zoroastrianism ; but the early Church Fathers
were most anxious to assert that their religion fell
in no way behind the others. ''If you have Mys-
teries" they said to those with whom they argued,
''which explain to you all these wonderful things,
we also have Mysteries which explain just the same
things to us." But unfortunately in that long
period of the dark ages, when most things were for-
gotten which were worth remembering, they con-
trived to lose all the inner meaning of these won-
derful allegories, and so consequently they are left
suspended in air with only a physical story.

If we are thinking of cosmogony (that is, of the
making of the solar system) then the Annunciation
represents the sending out of the Third Person of
the Blessed Trinity. It was the Holy Ghost which
descended on the Virgin Mary ; and that typifies that
First Outpouring of which we have read in other
books where these facts are presented more in the
Oriental form. The Holy Spirit broods over the
face of the waters, which is only another way of
saying that that First Outpouring descends into,
hovers over and penetrates the virgin seas of matter,
which are typified in the Greek system by the
Blessed Virgin Mary, whose Latin name Maria is
the plural of mare, the sea ; so that her very name
implies a symbology so patent that we can scarcely
speak of it as veiled at all.

The whole thing is a vast and beautiful allegory,
in which that first descent is symbolized by the
Annunciation, and a long time after that (the way
having been slowly prepared within the womb of
matter by that Third Aspect which we call God the

^he transfiguration 127

Holy Gliost) the Second Aspect, God the Son,
descends into matter, and Christ is born as on Christ-
mas Day. That is the Second Outpouring. But
that fructification of matter, that vivifying of it,
takes time; and so in the allegory it shows its result
forty days after the birth in the festival of the
purification of the great seas of matter, which
means their vivifying and their elevation by the
presence in them, the blossoming out through them,
of this Second great Aspect.

This result appears when the new-bom Christ is
presented to the Father — that is, when the Third
Outpouring (which comes from the First Aspect,
the First Person of the Blessed Trinity) comes upon
it; and that perfected purification of matter is
typified by the Presentation of the Christ in His
Temple to His Father. That is the presentation of
the wine in the Cup of the Holy Grail, the presen-
tation (within the cup of his causal body) of the
ego which all through this long course of evolution
lias been prepared. Then flashes down the ray of
the First Person from above, so that the ego is con-
nected with the Monad, and the Christ is presented
to His Father within the Temple of His causal
body.

On the festival of the Presentation we begin our
service in violet, to indicate the process of purifica-
tion, because that is the colour which bears the
purifjang vibrations; but when the Christ comes
into His Temple (which is symbolized by the carry-
ing in of the Host, the vehicle, the vaJian, of the
Christ) we change our frontal and vestments to
white to receive Him, and we light all the candles

128 The Christian Festivals

which have given to this festival the name of Candle-
mas Day, because Christ is the Light of the world.

It is interesting to note that in the Church, pre-
cisely as in Freemasonry, a magnificent and stately
ritual has been handed down through the centuries,
with the most meticulous care that none of its
highly significant details should be changed in the
slightest degree. It is certain that in both cases
those who so loyally fulfilled their charge had no
conception of the real meaning of the ceremonies
whose integrity they so carefully guarded; but as
a result of their faithful service we are now able
to interpret exactly the information which the
original founders of these systems intended to con-
vey to their followers.

CHAPTER YII
LENT

OUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS LENT

The word Lent means spring, for in the northern
hemisphere, where the Christian faith began, Lent
is necessarily always observed in that season of the
year, as it is the time of preparation for the Easter
festival, the date of which is determined by the
vernal equinox. This period of preparation is in-
tended to last for forty days, and as it has been made
a penitential season it was felt that the Sundays,
which are always joyous in commemoration of the
Resurrection, could not be included; so that the
first day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday,
is actually forty-six day^ before Easter. That
curious name was given to the day because of a
quaint medieval custom of smearing ashes on the
forehead on that occasion as a token of sorrow for
sin — a custom derived from the ancient Jews. Even
now in churches of the Roman obedience the sanc-
tified palm-branches which have been preserved since
Palm Sunday of the previous year are burnt on
Ash Wednesday, and the priest, dipping his thumb
into the ashes, makes a cross therewith on the fore-
head of each member of his congregation before be-
ginning the Mass. We have not adopted this custom
in our Liberal Catholic Church, as it is not in har-
mony with our attitude in these matters.

The present idea of observing the forty days of
Lent was unknown in the early Church. It began
with a celebration of forty hours — not forty days.

129
I

130 The Christian Festivals

It was calculated that the Christ — or rather His
body — lay in the sepulchre about forty hours, and
it was thought by many earnest Christians that it
was a meet and fitting thing to observe that time
during which the body of our Lord was untenanted
as a time of fasting. Fasting then probably meant
absolutely going without food; but when the idea
came to be extended to forty days, in harmony with
the alleged forty days' fasting in the wilderness,
naturally it began to be quite a different thing, and
merely to be an abstinence from certain kinds of
food, or from eating as fully as at other seasons. In
the present day, it usually means abstinence from
flesh meat, but even as to that there are many
dispensations.

Furthermore, the fast was observed in varying
degrees. For a long time the first, middle and last
weeks were kept as a fast, but not the intervening
period, so that the whole thing has not behind it
any strong apostolic or early sanction, but is simply
one of the customs which have grown up in the
Church. It has come to be regarded as a time of
self-examination and of sorrow for sin. In our
Liberal Catholic Church we take a somewhat dif-
ferent attitude with regard to all this. We do not
regard this season as a time of mourning, but as a
time of preparation for the mighty feast of Easter,
and we know that we cannot celebrate that great
feast properly and obtain from it the benefit which
the Church means us to obtain, unless we have care-
fully prepared ourselves as we are directed to do
during this season. It is not to be a time for mourn-
ing for sin, but it is to be a time of endeavouring
to shake ourselves free from sin. Assuredly we re-

Lent 131

gret our sins and we wish to become perfect, but
we feel (because we know something scientifically
about the power and the effect of thought) that it is
advisable not to dwell upon sins and to mourn over
them, but simply to make a strong short resolve not
to do that particular thing again, and then put the
thought aside. As a great Master once said: "The
only repentance which is in the least worth while is
the resolve not to do it again." That is true; that
is common sense; and that is the saner and better
way. we think, to look at these matters.

With regard to physical fasting, we leave all our
people absolutely free to practise it if they wish,
but we do not recommend it as having any virtue
in itself. Asceticism per se is of no value whatever.
The old idea about it (I am going back now to pre-
Cbristian times, although I think the influence of
the theorj^ subsisted into the Christian period too)
was that the gods were jealous of the good fortune
or happiness of men, and that the man who volun-
tarily made himself unhappy thereby escaped some-
thing of this jealousy, and prevented them from
visiting him with some evil or punishment to remind
him of their existence and their power. Then it
came to be thought that the mortification of the
body, the abstinence from pleasure of all kinds, was
in itself pleasing to God. You find that idea per-
meating Christianity very strongly in the early
days, and all through the ]\Iiddle Ages — that austeri-
ties and tortures of various kinds were in themselves
good things. It is quite certain that in themselves
they are not good things. In a much older scrip-
ture than any of ours, God speaks of those ''who
torture Me, dwelling in their bodies," realizing that

132 The Christian Festivals

they also are part of God, and that suffering in-
flicted for suffering's sake is not pleasing to Him
in any way. Another theory was that by inflicting
pain upon themselves, they escaped (by anticipat-
ing it) somewhat of the punishment which would
otherwise fall upon them. They felt that they had
done all sorts of wicked things, the result of which
must be suffering in some form, and thought that
if they punished themselves here they would perhaps
escape punishment by God hereafter.

All that is, of course, quite foreign to a sane and
common-sense way of looking at things. That we live
under a might}^ and utterly just law of cause and
effect no one who studies nature can doubt, but
''Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
That is to say, in the ordinary course of nature
each man will receive according to what he has
done whether it be bad or good, and there is no
escape from that. "Be not deceived; God is not
mocked; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also
reap."

Therefore we do not think that there is any
special merit in going without food. There are
those who think far too highly of food and of drink ;
there are gluttons, there are wine-bibbers, there are
drunkards, and for such people certainly it is well
not only in Lent, but at all times, to call a halt, and
to be sane and wise about their eating and drinking,
as about everything else. Perhaps many people eat
and drink more than they need; but that is another
matter. I am doubtful as to the use and efficacy of
fasting, especially in these days. It may have had
its use in medieval times, when people lived a much
more leisurely life, and had nothing particular to

Lent 133

do. They were in the habit of eating much coarse
food; we constantly read of an ox being roasted on
an occasion of festivity; so perhaps it did them no
harm to fast; it may even have been beneficial. But
in these days we live under high pressure and great
nervous strain, and abstinence from food is not
likely to be useful to us.

What I wish to make clearly understood is that
we do not hold that any kind of self-mortification
is pleasing to God as such. The one thing that is
pleasing to Him is that if we have made mistakes,
if we have sinned (as we all have) we should make
a real earnest endeavour not to do it again. We
need not waste our time and force being sorry
about it, but we should make a strong resolve to
avoid that weakness for the future. Even if we
fall a thousand times, we must get up aigain the
thousandth time and go on. There is just the
same reason for trying again after our thousandth
failure as there was after our first.

Yet another point: i\Iany people in old days felt
that by fasting they might gain spiritual powers
and visions. We know that people who are dying
of starvation frequently have visions of different
kinds. Undoubtedly when the physical body is
failing, the astral and the other higher bodies come
into more prominence ; so to starve oneself to the
verge of death might be one method of developing
higher faculties; but it is entirely the wrong way,
because to have such faculty in any form in which
it is really useful, the possessor must be in perfect
health. All the clairvoyance that has ever been
taught to me has required perfect physical health
and perfect balance as pre-requisites, and to culti-

134 The Christian Festivals

vate these seems to me the best and safest way to
the attainment of the higher faculties. To get
oneself into an unhealthy and pathological condition
is never the right way to any true advancement.

I have no sympathy with most of the hymns
which are generally used in Lent. They are often
full of blood and misery and cringing, and of hints
about eternal damnation. To say:

Once more the solemn season calls,

A holy fast to keep;
And now within the temple walls

Both priest and people weep.

Or

Mercy, good Lord, merey I ask

This is my humble prayer;
For mercy, Lord, in all my suit,

O let Thy mercy spare.

seems to me not only ridiculous, but nauseating. If
people would only realize how tiresome this sort of
thing must be to the Deity, they would perhaps be
less sycophantic.

It may have come in our way to try to tame an
animal; if it has been badly treated it shrinks, and
cannot be persuaded to come near. If the creature
would only come at once, the friendly human could
show his good will; but it shrinks and will not ap-
proach him, and enormous patience is needed. But
why should we take that attitude with regard to a
Loving Father? That is exactly the position which
these blasphemous hymns take all through. They
are full of cries for mercy, begging Him just to
wait a moment before He destroys His children for
ever! Think how you would like to have a child
in that attitude towards you, and perhaps you will

Lent 135

begin to see just a little how much unnecessary
trouble we give to the God and Father of us all.
If we would only trust Him, so much more could
be done; and our progress would be so much more
rapid.

I very strongly disapprove of all this cringing,
terror and fear; it may have been appropriate in
the regime of the savage and bloodthirsty Jewish
Jehovah, but it is quite out of place in the religion
established by Christ, Who came to preach a Lov-
ing Father. "Why cannot we forget the misinter-
pretations of the Jewish race and trust our own
Leader, Who tells us that God is Love, Whose one
desire for us is that we should be one with Him,
even as He is one with the Father? ''Perfect love
casteth out fear."

So the hymns sung during Lent in our Church
should be those that suggest to us what to do, and
tell us the attitude in which we should put our-
selves so as to get the greatest benefit from what
is to come. The idea of fasting as pleasing to God
or gaining higher spirituality is, I myself think, a
mistaken notion; but if anyone feels that he wishes
to fast, let him worship God in his own way if he
will; we have no objection, but we do not advise it.
Our whole attitude is different in all these things;
we consider that God, Who gave us our intellect and
common sense, expects us to use that common sense
in religion as in daily life.

The idea of self-examination is good and neces-
sary. But with that, too, we must be sane and care-
ful, otherwise it will degenerate into morbid self-
introspection, and we shall spend all our time in
picking the machinery to pieces instead of going

136 The Christian Festivals

on and doing the work. We are here in order to
serve God, and we can do Him best service when
we are ourselves perfect instruments in His hands.
Therefore it is our business when we know of weak
points in our armour to endeavour to strengthen
them; it is our business to examine ourselves to the
extent of seeing in what way we fall short, and to
make a determined endeavour not to fall short in
that way again. It is a good thing that a certain
season of the year should be set apart for that;
not that we should not always he on the watch
against weaknesses and failings, but that it is especi-
ally needed now, because Lent is a preparation for
the great festival of Easter.

On that occasion comes the greatest outpouring
of divine power during the whole of our Christian
year. In order to take advantage of it, in order to
make the best use of it, we must certainly prepare
ourselves, and so this season of Lent is arranged in
order that we should, as it were, take stock of our-
selves. Having discovered our weak points, let us
go to work with a will and cure them, for only
when we have conquered those weaknesses shall we
be able fully to observe the great feast of Easter
as it should be observed, and to gain from it all
that we ought to gain. A great writer has said:
"Any man may make a mistake, but the man who
makes the same mistake twice is a fool." All of us
make these mistakes — all without exception, how-
ever good we may be, however hard we may try;
because we are still human beings and not yet great
saints. Often we make them over and over again,
day after day. Now it would be foolish to be cast
down about that and to regard it as evidence of

Lent 137

horrible depravity. The extravagant language vrhich
is often applied in cases of this sort is entirely
out of place; it is misleading, and it is dis-
honouring both to man and God. We are far
from perfect, and quite certainly mistakes we shall
make for a long time yet, but of course it is our
business to try to make as few as possible. The per-
fection of the soul in man is like the slow growth
of a great tree — it is something not to be attained
in a moment, a day, a month, a year; it may take
many lives such as we are living now before we
reach it.

Since we all make errors, it would be natural that
we should be gentle, charitable, ready to excuse when
we see similar mistakes in others. Unfortunately
that is not our habit. There are certain special rea-
sons why such allowance is difficult for us — the
principal one being that under God's mighty law
man is evolving slowly, and the present stage of
his evolution is the development of what is called
the lower mind, the discriminating faculty in man;
we are learning to discriminate between things by
the differences between them. That is why we are
getting such a development of the intellect in science
and in other ways in this particular stage of the
world's history. Our idea of criticism is to pounce
upon the flaws in anything. That is quite wrong,
because "criticism" comes from the Greek word
kritein, which means to judge, so that ''critical"
really has the same signification as judicial, but we
do not use it so. With us it means as a rule finding
fault, because we are at that stage when that is
the natural thing for us to do. The critical faculty
is being trained in us; all the more then is it neces-

138 The Christian Festivals

sary that we should not misuse it, that we should
be on our guard not to criticize too readily. We
cannot help seeing the mistakes that other people
make; I wish we were as quick to see our own; but
at any rate it is most assuredly our duty to be criti-
cal in the true sense (that is to say, judicial) and
to withhold any decision with regard to what an-,
other man does or says until we know all about it,
and we have all the evidence before us.

It is not the custom of the world, but it ought
to be our custom, and we must try to make it so.
We must learn not to impute motives to other
people. One who happens to have developed the
faculty of clairvoyance gets many surprises in dif-
ferent directions, and one of them is that he sees
that the reasons for which people do things are
hardly ever the reasons that he would previously
have attributed to them. About nine times out of
ten we are quite wrong when we proceed to attri-
bute a motive to some other person for something
that he does. He has all sorts of considerations in
his mind that are unknown to us, and therefore we
do him gross injustice in many cases simply because
of our ignorance.

That being so, surely it would be wise, it would
be dignified (to say nothing of its being kind) that
we should suspend our judgment and say as little
as possible where we cannot approve. If one has
to pronounce judgment, one would say: "I do not
approve of such and such a thing that this man
does or that he has said, but I have no doubt that
he has his own reasons for the line he is taking, and
it is not for me to condemn him. I do not know

Lent 139

what his difficulties or his temptations may be, and
in any ease it is not my business to judge him."

We have to judge with a clearness like crystal with
regard to the things which we ourselves do or say.
Truly there also we have not always all the facts
before us: but we are bound to decide and act
upon such facts as do come before us, and it is
our duty to choose what is right, so far as we can
see it. We should, however, always remember with
humilitj^ that what we thinlv best may not be the
abstract right at all, and we may well take to heart
the advice given by the celebrated Dr. South: "By
all means follow thy conscience; yet take heed thy
conscience is not the conscience of a fool." We
must stand by what we feel to be right, yet we
must always be willing to listen and to learn.
Above all, we must try to understand that other
people also have consciences, and are trying to do
right, though they may not at all agree with us.
Hundreds and hundreds of people whom we may
have misjudged are just as keenly anxious to do
the right thing as we are ourselves. It is wrong
that we should make up our minds about what we
do not understand, and assign to them some un-
worthy motive when the real truth is that we know
nothing at all about the matter.

St. Peter is said to have remarked: ''He that
would fain see good days, let him refrain his tongue
from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile."
So it is best to talk as little as we can about other
people unless we have something good to say. Watch
for what is good and praise it — the reason for doing
so being that when we speak and think about an-
other person, the force of our thought acts upon

140 The Christian Festivals

that person. If a man lias done a good thing, and
we think of it as a good thing and are glad that
he did it, our good thought plays upon him and
strengthens that virtue, and encourages him to act
well again. If a man has made a mistake and we
think evil of him for it, we thereby intensify that
evil. The evil thought from us plays upon him, and
if he has really made that mistake we make him
more liable to repeat it. We are acting the part
of a tempter to that man, simply by our thought.

Those who have not read about these things do
not know of the immense mass of evidence of the
action of thought upon the lives of others. Let
him who doubts it study for himself. I have spent
forty years in the study of such matters, and I can
tell you that the force of thought is a very real and
powerful thing; and if you could see how it acts
you would be very careful what you think of others.

The beautiful collect which we use every day
throughout Lent is worthy of attention. ''Prevent
us, 0 Lord, in all our doings with Thy most gracious
favour." I suppose that more than half, probably
three-fourths of the people who hear those words
do not know what they mean. That word prevent
has come in these later days to have a meaning quite
different from that which it had at the time of the
so-called Reformation, when this collect was trans-
lated from the Latin. Many of us know enough
Latin to be aware that venio means / come, and
that pre is before. To prevent therefore is to come
before. We can see that a man can come before
another for various reasons. He could come before
him to get in his way and to stop him from doing
something, which is our modern meaning for the

Lent 141

word prevent. We can also see that a man
might come before another in order to prepare
his way, to make it easy for him. That is the
medigeval signification of the word prevent, and
that is what it means in this collect when we
say: "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings." Go
before us in all our doings during this season of
Lent with Thy most gracious favour, so that under
the influence of that benign favour those doings
may be what Thou wouldst have them to be — such
as may deserve the favour and not such as would
be shamed thereby. That is the meaning of those
words, and that is precisely the idea. "May God
be with us through all this time of Lent so that
our feet shall not stray from the path, so that our
words and our thoughts shall not offend."

God is indeed with us always, so perhaps we
may add another shade of meaning and say: "May
we during this period of Lent realize that God is
with us and so may He (using for the moment the
other sense of the word) prevent us from evil, may
He go before us that no evil may happen to us."
Then we add the request: "Further us with Thy
continual help." We ask not only that the thought
of Him shall go before us all the way, so that we
may do no evil, but also that we may be furthered,
pushed along, assisted by His continual help so that
we may actively do good. The first wish is pas-
sive, that we shall do no evil; the second is positive,
that we must definitely try to do good all through
this season.

Then we give our reason: "May this be done that
in all our works, begun, continued and ended in
Thee, we may glorify Thy holy Name." There our

142 The Christian Festivals

collect ends. The Latin original goes a little further
and adds yet another petition, "And finally by Thy
mercy attain everlasting life." We omit that be-
cause we know it to be unnecessary. Every one of
us will finally attain everlasting life; every one of
us will reach the glorious consummation which God
destines for all humanity. When men speak of
Christ as the Saviour of the world, and proceed to
say that He will save about one person in a million
(which is about the ordinary computation) they are
casting grave dishonour upon Him. If Christ be
the Saviour of the world — and we very fully admit
it (not that He saves it from imaginary damnation,
but that He saves it from error and ignorance by
leading it into all truth) — then it is of the whole
world and of every creature in it. There is none
that can fail, none that can set his will against
that mighty will of God which we call evolution.
And so we do not need to pray that "finally by
His mercy we may attain everlasting life."

All that comes to us is by His grace and by His
loving kindness, which is perhaps the true meaning
of that word mercy. We are ever ready to acknow-
ledge that, but we need not insult Him by asking
Him to do that which in His eternal counsels He
has already determined. Let us remember that col-
lect, and its reminder of the Presence of God with
us all the time, before and during our action and
after it; so that all our works whatever they are.
whether they are good or bad, are begun, continued
and ended in Him. Remembering that, we cannot
do works which are not good works, but shall un-
ceasingly endeavour to rise to the level of this won-
drous benefit, this eternal overshadowing Presence

Lent 143

of the Deity. Yet overshadowing, though it implies
protection, seems hardly the right word there, for
it is above all things an enlightening Presence
of the glory of God that shines upon every
action and every thought. If we can but re-
member this throughout the season of Lent, how
glorious will Easter be for us, how truly shall
we prepare ourselves for it! This great festival
will indeed be an epoch in the life of each one of
us if we can only carry out the spirit of the Lenten
Collect throughout the forty days. God is with us
all the time; we need only remember it; He stands
ever behind His people. If that thought dwells in
our minds through Lent, Easter shall be for us a
season of unimaginable glory, happiness and spiri-
tual health.

The whole of the services in Lent are aimed at
helping us in the work of curing our defects. The
very colour of violet which the Church uses is not
chosen at random; it is selected because of the pierc-
ing and purifying character of its vibrations. In
earlier times the whole of the building was hung
with the colour of the day, and not only the altar
and officiants. It was the idea that in an atmo-
sphere permeated with violet light this work of puri-
fication would be found somewhat easier.

All these things are scientific if we understand
them; but the meaning of this ritual has been for-
gotten, and it is taken to be merely a sort of ordi-
nance of the Church, and few know or care why it
was ordered. There is a real reason for it, and there
are books on such subjects for those who care for
them. Symbolically this period indicates the fourth
of the great stages of man's development; for Lent

144 The Christian Festivals

is all part of the preparation for the right celebration
of that great Initiation at Easter. That is the sym-
bolical meaning of it; but it has a practical and
every-day application to our lives as well.

THE SUNDAYS IN LENT

In the Collect, Epistle and Gospel of the First
Sunday in Lent, the necessity for self-examination
is emphasized.

The writer of the epistle says, ''Examine your-
selves whether you be in the faith, " It is one of the
many misunderstandings that have crept into Chris-
tianity during the ages which leads us to take
that word ''faith" in quite a wrong way. It has
degenerated into a purely mechanical thing — the
idea of a faith in the birth of Christ at a certain
time, faith that He is the Saviour of the world and
that we have only to cling to those two facts in
order to come through somehow. That is not in the
least what was meant by faith in the early days of
the Church. Faith is certainly a strong belief, but
it is a belief which has reason behind it. We accept
certain things because they seem to us to be reason-
able, because they seem to us to be the most probable
hypothesis where we cannot have absolute certainty.
But our faith must be based on reason, and it must
be such a faith as will lead us to act according to
it. It is no use pretending to believe a thing when
all the time we act as liiough we did not believe
it. Our faith in connection with these higher mat-
ters should be as absolutely definite a thing as our
faith on the physical plane that boiling water will
scald us or that a red-hot bar will burn us. We
believe those things, and we believe them strongly

Lent 145

enough to keep our hands out of the boiling water
and away from the red-hot bar. That is a faith
that is worth something, but a faith that is merely
up in the air and does not lead to any results is a
very poor thing indeed; I do not think it is worth
calling a faith.

Now when the writer of that epistle says: ''See
that you are in the faith," one thing that he means
quite clearly is: ''See that your faith is the Chris-
tian teaching, and that it is reasonable com-
mon sense." There is certainly a vast amount of
utter vagueness in religion, as well as a great deal
of illusion and superstition. People have certain
beliefs and they cling to them without any reason.
They may be shown quite plainly that there is no
real reason for this belief which they hold, but they
cannot get over it; in some way it is ingrained in
them and there it sticks. Now most of those super-
stitions (I think I may even say all of them) are
derogatory to the glory and love of God. The
appalling superstition of an everlasting hell, for
example, has done perhaps more harm in the world
than any other single idea. It is absolutely base-
less; it is superstition in the very clearest definition
of the word. One meaning given in the dictionary
for superstition is that it is la false and foolish be-
lief. If ever in this world there was a false and
foolish belief it is this belief in the existence of
hell. It comes largely from ignorance, from the
mistranslation of certain words and from miscon-
ception as to what our Lord meant when He made
certain statements, yet it still influences the thoughts
of millions. If there be any of us who have a
lingering fragment of that superstition, let them

146 The Christian Festivals

read Samuel Cox's book, Salvator Mnndi. They may
take it as absolutely reliable, for the man was a
good scholar; and then they will see exactly what
the Christ did mean when He spoke certain words
which have been twisted into that horrible doctrine
of hell.

Religion has so often been entirely up in the air,
not only unpractical, but non-physical and incom-
prehensible. People employ a quantity of intellec-
tual counters, and they juggle with them and set
one in opposition to another and move them about;
yet not one of them has a solid fact behind it. That
is where we have so often gone wrong, and that is
why religion has lost its hold among thinking people,
because they feel that the things which are dis-
cussed in the average religion are not facts;
they have no actual bases. We must keep our feet
on the bed-rock of fact, however far we may carry
our speculations into the realm of metaphysics. If
we have not this bed-rock of fact, the whole thing
is baseless and hopeless.

Faith is one of these terms which are really only
intellectual counters. People talk about having
faith, and they cannot define it with any ac-
curacy or certainty. What they mean, if they
do mean an3rthing, is faith in the fact that
Christ died on the cross. He did not die on
the cross, for the dates are wrong, and at the
time when the body of Jesus was put to death
the Romans had not occupied Jerusalem, and so
the Roman punishment of crucifixion was not prac-
tised. The whole thing is a beautiful myth, a
jMystery-Drama which has been degraded and twisted
into a physical life story, and the people who have

Lent 147

done that have cramped themselves hopelessly, so
that it is exceedingly difficult now to get them to
understand the higher and more beautiful meaning.

Another intellectual counter is the word salvation.
People talk about that and juggle with the idea, and
if one tries to pin them down to facts they generally
seem to mean salvation from a totally imaginary
hell. There is no foundation for the doctrine of
hell, and so there is no need to be saved from it.
The whole idea is a most regrettable and disastrous
misunderstanding. Some of them say to us: ''Have
you got salvation"? or as they put it: ''Are you
saved"? What is a sensible person to answer? One
can only say, "In the sense in which you are using
the word I do not recognize it at all. It has no
meaning; but if you say: 'Are we saved from our
own error and ignorance?' I reply that we are in
process of being saved by the knowledge which we
acquire as we draw nearer to the Christ in the
course of our evolution." "Have you found
Jesus?" shrieks some hysterical enthusiast in the
street. What reply can be given? We know prob-
dh\y a great deal more about our Lord Jesus than
the person who asks the silly question; and he is
quite incapable of grasping the truth. Yet the
enquiry is well intentioned; the poor thing really
does believe that he is in possession of some fact
that we do not know, and that our possession of it
would secure our happiness hereafter. It is a
weird theory, unthinkable to anyone who can think.
But there it is; people use these words about
faith and being saved, but they do not at?tach
any defensible idea to them. Their idea is one

148 The Christian Festivals

which can be knocked to pieces in two minutes of
argument.

Sin is another word with which people juggle.
They talk about original sin; they say that a little
baby comes into the world cursed for ever because
Adam ate an apple which Eve is said to have handed
to him. No one has ever tried to verify that story,
but they make the most appalling sentence depend
upon it. The whole thing is baseless; when we
come to look for a foundation it is all floating in
the air; it means nothing at all. Belief in such
nonsense is not faith; it is absolutely irrational; it
is mere stupidity.

This idea of sin has been erected into a frightful
bugbear, a sort of awful curse from which it is only
with incredible difficulty that men can escape at all.
There is no such thing in this world. We are all
evolving, and some of us, I freely admit, are evolv-
ing slowly; in the process of that slow evolution we
make mistakes, we do things we should not do.
We may call those mistakes sin if we like. It
is a word I avoid, because it has such horrible
connotations. Then further we are told that we
should have the conviction of sin and feel that
we are worms and not men, all of which is
really dishonouring to God, though it is done in
the name of religion. When we make a bad mis-
take and look back and recognize it, we do feel
rather small, and realize that w^e ought to have
known a great deal better than that. It is quite
salutary for us to think so for a moment because it
may help us not to make the same mistake again,
but the idea of erecting that mistake into a fright-
ful nightmare, by labelling it as a deadly sin and

Lent 149

saying we must be convicted of it, is not only useless
but is also hypocrisy. No one who is normal ever
does feel that he is hopelessly evil; if he does he
is very much in error and in need of help and en-
couragement from someone who knows better. The
Christ is within everyone of us, sinners though we
may be, and that Christ in us is our hope of glory,
and it is by means of that, and through that, that we
shall rise out of this condition of error which we
call sin into a condition of righteousness where such
slips are rare.

People talk about the forgiveness of sin, and make
a fetish of it. The theory of the forgiveness of sin
commonly held appears to be something like wiping
writing off a slate. We have done wrong; we have
only to say we are sorry and believe in Jesus, and
it is all rubbed out. I am not going to say that I
wish it could be done as easily as that; because, it'
it were, the laws of the universe would be upset.
There is an absolute law of cause and effect, and no
one can do wrong without suffering the consequences
of that wrong, without having to atone for it in the
sense of making up for it as far as he can. The truth
underlying absolution is not that our sin is for-
given, but that the distortion which is produced by
putting ourselves wrong can be straightened out and
put right for us.

Did you ever think how weird is the doctrine of
the forgiveness of sins as commonly held? The per-
son asks God to forgive him, and expects that He
will do so. Suppose he did not ask God? The sug-
gestion is that He would bear a grudge against the
man. Is that a thing we have any right to say
against our loving Father? We should not hold a

150 The Christian Festivals

grudge against a tiny child because he did not ask
us to forgive him. We could not be so wicked as
that. We should probably say: ''Poor little fellow;
I daresay he is sorry by this time, I hope he will
not do it again." And we should try to arrange
things so that he would not. The idea of God hold-
ing a grudge against us and needing to be asked to
forgive us is an outrage on the Fatherhood of God.
Then people talk about ''the fear of God," and
that is a very sad thing. The whole idea of the fear
of God is a horror which should be cast out. Have
we not been told to love God and that God is love;
that perfect love casteth out fear? When people
talk about a God-fearing man they are probably
thinking of various texts in the bible in which the
Greek word theoseheia is translated fear of God. The
true meaning is deep reverence for God. There is
a text: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom." Substituting reverence for fear, I
entirely agree with that; unless we know some-
thing of God, unless we feel reverence for Him
we are far from being wise, but to say we should
fear the loving Father is an outrage; it is a wrong
use of the term. Christ taught us that God is a
loving Father; I think we may accept His statement.

In the same way "the grace of God" is distorted.
They are nearer to facts there, but if we try to treat
their notions scientifically people rise in their wrath
and say that we are blaspheming, that we are
materializing the idea. The grace of God is a mighty
spiritual power in the same definite sense that
physical forces are powers, but it works in finer
matter. It is a measurable force, a force of w^hich
more or less can be poured out upon us. It has not

Lent 151

been the fashion to be scientific about religion, but
it is necessary that we should be scientific ; it is time
that we examined ourselves as to our faith and
tried to know what we believe and why, and on
what we base our belief. We are called upon to
obey and follow our Lord the Christ, but it is not
because of any fear of Him or of the consequences if
we did not follow; it is the love of Christ which
constraineth us, as we are told in the Epistle for the
first Sunday in Lent. It is because of our love and
gratitude to Him that we must follow Him, that we
must strain every nerve to make ourselves like Him.
That is our reason — not fear but love.

On the other Sundays in Lent we take up some
of the different mistakes we often make — the mis-
take of evil thinking and evil speaking, the mistake
of gossiping, the mistake of pride. So let us take
the Lenten idea to our hearts, let us examine our-
selves and put right v/hatever we can find that is
wrong; so shall we be able fully to enjoy and benefit
by that mighty outpouring of the Resurrection — so
shall we be able to enjoy a happy Easter in the
true sense of the old greeting for Easter Day; so
shall Christ rise within our hearts as well as in the
outer world.

EEFEESHMENT SUNDAY.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent is usually called
Refreshment Sunday — a name which was given to
it in the Middle Ages for two reasons. First, be-
cause it is the middle point of Lent — la mi-careme
as they call it in French — and therefore it was the
custom to allow a certain amelioration of the rigours
of the fast. Another reason for the name was the

132 The Christian Festivals

gospel appointed for this day — the gospel which tells
the story of the feeding of the five thousand men
with five barley loaves and two small fishes. Whether
that story is historically accurate or not does not
concern us in the least. The thing is not an impos-
sibility; it has been done in" India by professors of
quite another faith. It is simply a question of
materialization — of the multiplying of matter. It
may have happened in Palestine; whether it did or
not I do not know, nor is it really of any impor-
tance. At any rate, it is a beautiful symbol of the
way in which Christ does feed His people with liv-
ing bread of which, however little there seemp to be,
there is yet enough for all.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent is one of the two
days in the year on which the lovely rose-coloured
vestments are worn, to give us the atmosphere of
that tender and all-embracing love which must be
the central quality underlying all our preparation
for the reception of divine grace. Many people who
do not understand, who have not taken the trouble
to study, or in whose way it has not come to study,
are disposed to cavil at the arrangement of the
Church, at the vestments which its ministers wear,
at the sequence of its year and of its services, and
so on. They do not realize that there is a science of
all these things, and that every one of them is cal-
culated to produce a definite effect. They should
not, however, make the mistake of regarding every-
one as of the same disposition as themselves. It
is not without reason that violet is used during
Lent, and white at Easter. As I have already said,
it is all part of a scheme; it is a question of rates
of vibration, and of the influence which it is desired

Lent 153

to radiate. Some are far more sensitive than
others to all these things; there are those who are
impatient of them, but there are also those upon
whom all these influences play with eifect, and so
they find that the services of the Church help them.
They fit in wonderfully with their moods, and they
uplift them. It is exactly what they are calculated
to do.

In these days of the development of the lower
mind our feelings are somewhat in abeyance. In
the Middle Ages, when people were not developing
the lower mind in the same way, their feelings were
much more prominent, and they sensed such influ-
ences more. Whether we individually feel these
things or not, there are thousands who do, and it is
ridiculous that men who do not understand a particu-
lar line should condemn others who comprehend it
and find it helpful. We cannot all travel by the
same road; some go one way and some another, and
these paths to God are like so many languages in
which we can express the same thing in various ways.
It may be our way to express ourselves by devotion;
it may be another man's way to express the highest
and best of himself by profound thought, by the
development of wisdom. Yet another may develop
himself best by outer work, by activity. All these
are paths, and they all lead to God. Why should a
man who has found one of them, revile others
who are not doing exactly what he is doing, but
are going some other way? God inspires all these,
and God receives them all into Himself, and it
matters little by which of the paths men draw near
to Him so long as they do approach Him.

154 The Christian Festivals

The Sundays towards the end of the period of
Lent have each a name of their own. The fifth
Sunday is called Passion Sunday, and there is for it
a special and beautiful Roman Office Hymn, Vexilla
Regis prodeunt, ^'The Eoyal banners forward go, the
Cross shines forth in mystic glow." For those who
hold what the great doctor Origen called the somatic
view of Christianity, the celebration of Lent is
steadily darkening towards its terrible close. The
week following that fifth Sunday is called Passion
Week, and then we come to Palm Sunday, which is
the Sunday next before Easter, and after that comes
the Holy Week in which occur Maundy Thursday
and Good Friday.

HOLY WEEK

In the Liberal Catholic Church we lay no obliga-
tion whatever upon any member of the congregation
in the matter of belief; all are perfectly free to
take any of the old stories just as they choose —
literally or symbolically; that does not matter in the
least to us, the clergy, though we have quite definite
opinions of our own. People attend church to be
helped, and we try through the sacraments which
the Christ has ordained to give the help required.
What they believe is their affair and not ours, and
that is the only basis of perfect freedom of thought.
That the Liberal Catholic Church gives to all her
members without stint and without question.

Our Christian brothers in other branches of the
Church make this period of the Passion and the
Resurrection the commemoration of terrible physical
sufferings; and they read the detailed story of those
sufferings of the Christ, dwelling upon their grue-

Holy Week 155

some details in order to rouse in their people feel-
ings of pity, devotion and gratitude to the
Christ "Who bore so much for them. We know
through clairvoyant investigation that these events
are not historical, and that therefore all through
the ages a vast amount of the deepest sympathy and
pity has been lavished upon a dream — upon some-
thing that, as it is generally understood, did not
happen at all, for the body of the disciple Jesus
was killed by stoning, and not by crucifixion.
Whether on the whole that story has done more
harm than good, it is not so easy for us to say. I
cannot but feel it to have been responsible for a
vast amount of harm; but on the other hand I see
that the legend was in its way a noble legend, and
that many may have been helped and benefited
thereby.

Yet surely the truth is nobler and far more
beautiful, for all of this is a splendid piece of
allegory. The suffering, the cross, the passion, the
death, the burial, the resurrection — all of these are
symbols of what happens at the fourth of the great
Initiations, that of the Arhat. I do not in the least
deny, I do not wish for a moment to minimize, the
suffering and the crucifixion that come as part of
that great step; not physical suffering truly, but
none the less real and terrible. But when we under-
stand what it means we shall regard that suf-
fering from a very different point of view. It is
true enough, it is terrible enough, and it will come
to every one of us just as it came in His time to the
Christ Himself. Remember what our hymn tells

US:

And on tlie Holy Cross Christ liangeth but in vain,
Unless within our hearts it be set up again.

156 The Christian Festivals

But surely we should look at that just as our sol-
diers looked at the ghastliness of the great war. It
would be difficult for us to exaggerate, or even to
imagine, the horrors through which men had to go
there on the battle-front; yet they did not emphasize
those horrors ; they took them as coming in the day 's
work, as part of a terrible duty that had to be done.
They thought always of the end for which they were
fighting — the deliverance of the world from the in-
carnated hosts of evil, the peace, the happiness, the
freedom which were to be gained by that fight. So
when we look forward (as well we maj^ as indeed we
are intended to do) through this period of the cele-
bration of the Passion to the great Initiation through
which one day we shall have to pass like all others,
while we know of the sufi'ering, surely we too shall
count it as joy in view of the glory and splendour
and power which it will bring us, the power to help,
the strength to forward evolution. It is for the sake
of that that we dare it, that we meet it. It is not
for us to whine over the personal sufferings or to
exaggerate the horrors, but rather to look at it from
the point of view of the good of the world.

Surely in that way we shall gain more from the
contemplation of the thought of the Passion and
the Crucifixion. Not that they are one whit less
real to us when we take the spiritual interpretation,
for we know that whether in that incarnation of the
Christ the death and the resurrection took place
literally in Palestine or not, they do take place in
the life of every^ Christian man, and it is that which
concerns us — not the particular happening in time,
but the perpetual passing of developed humanity
through these different stages. These things are

Holv Week 157

facts; they do occur in human evolution, ordained
by the unsearchable wisdom of God ; so it is well that
we should dwell upon them not from the point of
view of horror and suffering, but as remembering the
glory that lies behind and the inner meaning of it all.

I remember being taught as a child what was be-
lieved to be the sequence of events commemorated
in that Holy Week which is the culmination and
conclusion of Lent. It was explained that the popu-
lar excitement and acclamation of Palm Sunday was
the direct and immediate result of the raising of
Lazarus on the previous day. It seemed to me (and
still seems) that the exigencies of the story require
a somewhat longer interval between those two events;
but perhaps that is only another instance of the
characteristic which is so prominent in the Mystery-
Drama of the gospels — that the whole presentation is
not that of a continuous narrative, but of a number
of separate scenes intended to be acted. At any
rate those of us who know anything of the nature
of oriental races can readily understand the com-
motion and the enthusiasm which would be aroused
by the resurrection of Lazarus ; we can imagine how
people from the neighbouring villages would
eagerly crowd into Bethany and wait about for the
chance of seeing Jesus or Lazarus.

Just so they were all waiting to see Him on that
Sunday morning when He started to go into the
town, and the moment He appeared they all began to
cheer. They crowded round Him, they made a sort
of rough procession to escort Him; they tore great
palm -leaves from the trees and waved them before
Him; and as soon as the idea occurred to them that
He was a great saint, a great prophet, they took off

158 The Christian Festivals

their outer garments and threw them down in His
path — not only to do honour to Him, but to have
the garments blessed by the touch of the feet of the
Great One, or even the feet of the ass upon which
He rode. To us this seems a strange, exaggerated
action, but it is quite natural to an oriental. Of
course we must not think of our ugly modem cloth-
ing, but of the loose flowing robes of the East — the
shawl-like outer cloth which is thrown round the
shoulders. I have seen the very same thing done
before a Muhammadan saint who had the reputation
of being unusually holy; and on at least two occa-
sions the same quaint honour has been paid to me
when I delivered some lecture which specially ap-
pealed to the religious enthusiasm of an Eastern
audience.

So Jesus rode on His way, the centre of a noisy,
gesticulating crowd. Naturally people came run-
ning from all sides, asking what was happening; and
when they were told: ''This is Jesus, the prophet of
Nazareth, Who raised Lazarus from the dead," they
joined the procession, and shouted with the rest.
The Jews had always the reputation of being
a turbulent and riotous people, -and when their
authorities saw this huge, excited crowd approach-
ing the city they became alarmed and ordered
out their soldiers, fearing the beginning of a
revolution. And even when they were reassured
for the moment, their minds were still disturbed,
and they consulted together as to what should
be done with Jesus. They felt that He was
becoming altogether too popular, that He had
far too great an influence with the people — an in-
fluence which might easily be used (and. indeed had

Holij Week 159

to some extent already been used) in opposition to
theirs, so that they feared the overthrow of their
authority. They felt, too, that any one who upset
the decent conventions of ordinary life hy such a
revolutionary innovation as raising a dead man to
life was a dangerous person, who needed instant re-
pression lest He should still further disturb the
calm current of respectability which had floated
them into positions of wealth and power. So they
plotted for His removal by the simple process of
judicial murder.

His disorderly but enthusiastic little procession
reached the city, and He wended His way to the
synagogue and began to talk to the people, as was
His wont. He seems to have spent much time in
this way during Monday and Tuesday ; in fact, nearly
half of His recorded utterances are said to have been
delivered on those two days. He was something of
a popular hero, not only through what He had done
in the matter of Lazarus, but because of His fear-
less and scathing denunciations of the party in
power; so the authorities were afraid to effect His
arrest openly, lest they should provoke a rescue by
the mob. They seem to have felt it necessary to
act quickly, as huge crowds of excitable and per-
fervid pilgrims were daily pouring into the city in
preparation for the great annual feast of the Pass-
over; so they allowed it to be understood that they
were willing to pay a good price to anybody who
would arrange a convenient opportunity for His
secret and expeditious capture. This aroused the
cupidity of Judas Iscariot, who was the treasurer
of the tiny peripatetic community, and he earned
for himself the contempt and loathing of countless

160 The Christian Festivals

millions by offering to betray his Master into the
hands of that unsavoury administration. This piece
of rascality was concocted on the Wednesday, and
we used to be told that it was because of the shame
brought on humanity by that atrocious action that
the Church of England orders its lugubrious litany
to be recited on that day each week — on Wednesday
in horror of the betrayal of the Christ, and on Fri-
day because of His death. Why that most dreary of
lucubrations should also be assigned to Sunday was
not explained, unless on the theory that it was only
on that day that a sufficient number of people could
be depressed by its weird jumble of servility and
gloom.

Thursday is always regarded and celebrated as the
day of the institution of the Holy Eucharist,
although many students consider that, when one
takes into account the various happenings mentioned
in the story, it must have been after midnight when
that institution took place, and so really Good Friday
morning. Certainly according to Jewish calculations
it must have been Friday, for the Hebrew reckoned
his days from sunset to sunset. I have explained in
a previous volume of this series {The Science of the
Sacraments) that the marvellous change which is
produced in the sacred Elements by the act of con-
secration can be achieved only between the hours of
midnight and noon — a fact which tells in favour
of the ancient tradition which places the institution
after midnight. However that may be, Thursday is
commonly associated with the Holy Sacrament, so
that if a church has only one week-night service, it
is usually on that day.

Holi; Week 161

The name Maundy Thursday is a corruption
of the Latin mandatum, which is the first word of
the special antiphon of the day. It means "com-
mandment" and refers not only to the new com-
mandment 'Hhat we love one another," but also to
the order first given on that day two thousand years
ago: ''Do this is remembrance of Me."

According to the gospel story many events are
crowded into that fateful night between the Thurs-
day and the Friday — the visit to the Garden of
Gethsemane, the actual betrayal (what was com-
memorated on Wednesday was the plot for the
betrayal) the arraignment before the Sanhedrim,
before Pilate and before Herod, and the final con-
demnation. Of course as an attempt at a history of
actual happenings it is manifestly impossible, but
we must never forget that the writers had no such
intention in their minds, and would probably have
stood aghast if they could have foreseen the astound-
ing yet almost universal misinterpretation which
awaited their literary efforts. On the other hand,
if any touch of prevision came to them, they would
confidently rely on this obvious impossibility to pre-
vent so strange a mistake. If these stories had not
from the days of our childhood been surrounded for
us by a kind of glamour of sacrosanctity, we should
never have taken them for history; and when once
the idea that they are the scenes of a religious Mys-
tery-Drama is fully understood, it explains every-
thing so clearly that one cannot doubt its truth.

The evangelists disagree somewhat as to exact
hours, as well they may; but their story is that
Jesus died some time on Friday, and that His body
was buried that same evening in a rock tomb by

162 The Christian Festivals

Joseph of Arimathea. It lay there all through
Saturday, but was raised therefrom very early on
the Sunday morning — directly after midnight, ac-
cording to one tradition of the Church. This gives
the body about thirty hours in the tomb, thus just
satisfying the requirements of the statement that
''on the third day He rose from the dead," but by
no means fulfilling the prophecy that the Son of
Man should be for three days and three nights in
the heart of the earth. Other traditions extend the
time in the grave to forty hours, as has already been
said.

*' Which things are an allegory," and a remark-
ably accurate allegory. I have explained that the
whole drama is intended to put before us a vivid
presentation of the progress of the Initiate, and
that its stages indicate the great Initiations which
are, as it were, milestones on that mighty journey
of the human soul. The events attributed to the
Holy "Week and to Easter symbolize the fourth of
these steps, and indeed closely follow its essential
characteristics. Those who have passed through that
trial are bound by vows of secrecy as to detail, just
as is a Masonic neophyte; but they violate no pledge
when they tell us that this gospel story follows its
broad outline with considerable fidelity. The can-
didate seems always to meet with a certain amount
of earthly triumph and recognition, and he takes
advantage of that to do what -he can in the way of
teaching and helping others, that being the duty
laid upon him. His endeavours stir up envy, hatred
and violent opposition, and among those who have
received help from him there is always found one
who will turn upon him with treachery, bear false

Holu Week 163

witness against him, traduce his fair fame and mis-
represent his actions. Shame and obloquy of all
sorts are heaped upon him, and though modern laws
do not permit physical crucifixion, the amazing spite
and bitter vindictiveness of his persecutors show how^
gladly they would revive the fires of Smithfield if
their furious malignity were not restrained by the
advance of civilization.

Ruysbroek, the Flemish mystic of the fourteenth
century, writes of such candidates: ''Sometimes
these unhappy ones are deprived of the good things
of earth, of their friends and relations, and are
deserted by all creatures ; their holiness is mistrusted
and despised, men put a bad construction upon all
the works \)f their life, and they are rejected and
disdained by all those who surround them; and
sometimes they are afflicted by divers diseases."
And another great mystic, Madame Blavatsky, writes
even more forcibly and truly: ''Where do we find
in history that messenger, grand or humble, Initiate
or neophyte, who, when he was made the bearer of
some hitherto concealed truth, was not crucified and
rent to shreds by the dogs of envy, malice and
ignorance? Such is the terrible occult law; and he
who does not feel in himself the heart of a lion to
scorn the savage barking, and the soul of a dove to
forgive the poor ignorant fools, let him give up the
Sacred Science.'^ {The Secret Doctrine^ iii, 90.)

"When the outburst of insanity has culminated,
there comes a period of peace and obscurity, and
then (if the candidate has borne the trial satisfac-
torily) he attains the step for which he has so long
been striving, and the success which crowns his
efforts is so much greater than he has ever dreamed,

164 ^he Christian Festivals

that it is indeed a resurrection into a nobler life and
a higher world. But the poor ignorant persecutors
never know that.

The compilers of the gospels evidently knew the
Egyptian form of the fourth Initiation, for many
of its details emerge in their presentation of it. The
introduction of the cross itself is part of the Egyp-
tian symbolism, for it v/as never a Jewish method of
execution, and at the real date of the death of the
body of Jesus the Romans had not yet annexed
Palestine. The "preaching to the spirits in prison"
on Saturday also points to the plan adopted on the
banks of the Nile; but all this belongs rather to the
doctrinal explanation which I hope to give in a
later volume of this series.

THE SERVICES IN HOLY WEEK

Owing to the lamentable materialization of the
sublime allegory into physical history, the Church
services for Holy Week early took on a gloomy tinge,
and presently became so dismal and depressing that
the name ''Divine Service" could no longer in any
sense be applied to them. The Roman ceremonies
are very complicated and elaborate, and show distinct
traces of the pre-Christian worship of the Sun-God.
The Church of England has carefully eliminated all
the picturesqueness of the traditional rites, and left
us nothing but a series of long and inexpressibly
wearisome readings. Some of her more ritualistic
churches, however, have ventured to go a little
beyond the dreary prescriptions of her prayer-book
and have introduced the old office of Tenebrae.
They have also invented a new liturgical item to
commemorate the three hours from twelve to three

Holv Week 165

on Good Friday during which Jesus is supposed to
liave hung upon the cross. This usually consists of
the recitation of the seven Words or sayings to
which He is represented to have given utterance at
that time, each being followed by a short address
and the singing of a litany.

Falm Sunday

In the Liberal Catholic Church we have perpetu-
ated such of the ancient ceremonies as we can con-
scientiously use, while omitting those which lack
any rational meaning or historical justification. The
temporary triumph of Palm Sunday was an actual
occurrence in the life of Jesus, and also represents
a definite fact in the experience of every Initiate,
so we follow the traditional rites for that day, be-
ginning our chief service with the Blessing of the
Palms. Leaves or branches of the date palm (or if
it is unobtainable, of some other plant resembling it
as closely as possible) in sufficient number to provide
one for each member of the congregation, are laid
upon a side table in the chancel and covered with a
white or purple veil. The procession enters the
church as usual, and when the chancel is reached
the palm-branches are uncovered, and blessed by the
priest, who sprinkles them with holy water and
censes them. They are then distributed to the clerg^^
choir and people, and a branch is tied with violet
ribbon to the top of the processional cross. Where
congregations are large and palm-branches difficult
to obtain, it has sometimes been the custom to make
small crosses out of the leaflets of the palm, and
distribute those among the people.

166 ^he Christian Festivals

The procession is now formed in the chancel, and
moves down the nave and out at the west door, every
member of it carrying his palm. The hymn sung at
this point is usually ''Hosanna! loud hosannas the
little children sang." When the procession has
passed out into the porch the church-door is closed,
two cantors being usually left inside to direct the
singing of the congregation. The people within now
turn to the west and sing the opening verse of the
traditional Palm Sunday hymn. ''All glory, laud and
honour," which was composed for this service in the
year 810 by Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans. This
verse is repeated by those outside the door. The
two cantors and the congregation then sing the next
verse, "Thou art the King of Israel," and wait
while the refrain (which is the same as the first
verse) is sung by those without. The hymn is con-
tinued in the same way, each of the verses being
sung inside the church, while the refrain always
replies from outside; but in the refrain after the
last verse all join. Wlien that is finished the cru-
eifer knocks at the door with the lower end of the
staff of the processional cross; it is immediately
opened by the cantors, and the procession enters with
its palms, singing some appropriate hymn. The Holy
Eucharist then, begins and proceeds as usual. The
people carr}^ home their branches or crosses of palm,
and preserve them until the following year.

A curious little mistake is sometimes made in this
quaint old ritual in the Roman Church, the cross-
bearer kicking at the door instead of knocking with
the staff of the processional cross. This arose from
a mistranslation by Dale of the directions given in
the monumental work of Baldeschi, col suo piede

Holv Week 167

being interpreted as referring to the foot of the
man instead of the foot of the cross.

There are no especial ceremonies on Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week. The
Roman Church recites the office called Tenehrae
on Wednesday night — and indeed on the nights of
Thursday and Friday as well. The chief feature of
this service (from which its name is taken) is that
during its performance all the lights in the church
are gradually extinguished until only one candle is
left, which is then hidden behind the altar. In the
darkness a great crash is made to signify the over-
throw of nature at the death of its Great Architect,
then the lighted candle is produced and shown again
for a moment, and the congregation all rise and
depart in silence. A weird service, and not particu-
larly useful, so far as we can see; therefore we have
omitted it.

Maundy Thursday

For the same reason we do not perpetuate the
ceremony of the washing of the feet of thirteen poor
men on Maundy Thursday. Among us that day is
kept as one of festal splendour in honour of the
institution of the Holy Eucharist, and at the High
Celebration we carry the Blessed Sacrament round
the church in procession, just as at Benediction.
Three additional large Hosts are consecrated at this
celebration and reserved for subsequent use. In the
evening a ciborium containing these three Hosts is
carried out in solemn procession. These Hosts, to-
gether with some particles for the possible need of
the sick, should be reserved in a tabernacle in the
sacristy or some other convenient place out of the
church. Two of these Hosts are required tor the

168 The Christian Festivals

Eucharist of the Presanctified on Good Friday and
Holy Saturday respectively, and the third is to be
placed in the tabernacle on the high altar before
the first Celebration on Easter Day, or on the Satur-
day evening if the first Vespers of Easter and
Benediction be celebrated.

After the evening service on Maundy Thursday
the altar is stripped of flowers, cloths and frontal,
the tabernacle is left open and empty, and the altar
cross is again veiled in violet — as indeed it has been
all through the Holy Week, except that the veil
was changed to white for Maundy Thursday. On
that day the bishop in his cathedral consecrates the
holy oils to be used during the succeeding year.

Good Friday

On Good Friday the altar is covered with a plain
linen cloth and violet frontal, but otherwise is un-
adorned. No candles are lighted. The service
begins with the Asperges in either the long or short
form (but omitting the collect for the Angel). The
Collects, Epistle and Gospel follow on immediately.
After the Gospel follows the sermon if there is one;
and immediately after that follows the ancient ser-
vice of reverence to the cross. The altar cross is
placed in the centre of the altar and unveiled; and
as the veil is taken off the people kneel. The officiant
and any other clergy and acolytes approach the
altar from the further end of the chancel by three
stages, and at the end of each stage they all genu-
flect simultaneously. At the first genuflection the
priest chants the words, ''Holy art Thou, 0 God,"
which are repeated by the congregation. At the
^ee on d genuflection he chants, ''Holy art Thou, 0

Holv Week 169

Mighty One," and again the people repeat what he
says. At the third genuflection the words are,
"Holy art Thou, 0 Immortal One; pour out Thy
love upon us." And again the people reply in the
same words. This is one of the most ancient of the
ceremonies, and as it is performed even to-day in
the Roman Church the old form is preserved; for
the priest speaks his sentences in Greek, while the
congregation answer him in Latin. Considering,
however, the impossibility of getting the average man
of to-day to pronounce these words correctly, we
have thought it desirable to translate the versicles
into English.

After this the hymn ''Take up thy cross" is
sung, and towards the end of it the candles are
lighted on the altar and the cross is moved back to
its accustomed place. A procession is now formed
which goes out to fetch the Host, and returns to the
high altar with lights and incense, the celebrant
bearing the Host in a ciborium. The Host is placed
on the corporal, and wine and water are poured
into the chalice, but without the usual prayers. The
priest censes the offerings on the altar in the usual
way and resumes the Eucharist at the Orate Fratres,
using only two short prayers; he then elevates the
Host, breaks it over the chalice, and drops in a
particle as usual, but in silence. He then recites
the prayer ''0 Thou Who in this adorable Sacra-
ment," and himself communicates as usual. Imme-
diately after this he concludes the service with the
Post-Communio prayer, and the altar cloth is then
removed.

This curiously shortened form is called in the
Roman Church the Mass of the Presanctified. It is

170 The Christian Festivals

used in that Church and in ours on Good Friday and
Holy Saturday only, but in the Eastern Church a
similar form is enjoined for all the days in Lent
except Saturdays and Sundays. The traditional
oiifices of Good Friday and Holy Saturday are pro-
tracted by the reading of long passages from the
Old Testament; but the whole of that is omitted
in our services. Our attitude towards the events
which these days are supposed to commemorate is
60 different from that of the other Churches that
the form of service which they prescribe is entirely
unsuited for us. Good Friday, however, offers an
excellent opportunity for the priest to explain to
his people whatever he knows with regard to the
great Initiation which the Church here symbolizes
for us. This is in one way the last of the purely
human Initiations. There follows yet one, the Fifth
— that of the Asekha, which means '^The man who
has no more to learn" (that is, with regard to our
planetary chain) — and that is symbolized in
the Christian system by the Ascension and the
descent of the Holy Ghost on Whitsunday. But
that Initiation takes the man out of humanity and
makes him a superman, so it may be said that that
which we are now celebrating — the Arhat — is the
last of the purely human Initiations.

The question is often asked why there should be
so much trouble and suffering associated with it. It
is part of our teaching that no suffering can ever
come to any man unless he has deserved it — that
there is a mighty law of cause and effect in obedience
to which comes suffering or joy, as the case may be.
Therefore the man who is about to wind up his
affairs as a human being, and pass into an altogether

Holv Week 171

higher state, must clear off before he goes any
arrears of karma, as they call it in India — any debt
outstanding as the result of his actions. A certain
amount of that result remains until the very end
of his human career, and then it comes upon him at
this time — -the time at which he is taking that final
step. We are ail generating causes all the while —
every day, every moment, by our thoughts, our
words, our actions, we are setting something in
motion. Inevitably it all reacts upon us, whether it
be good or whether it be evil. The man who has
reached the level of that higher Initiation is little
likely to be making much evil karma, because al-
ready he stands far above the average in spiritual
development. Necessarily, therefore, most of the
karma he makes will unquestionably be good, but
since he is still a human being, some of it will still
be evil, although the proportion may be smaU. Now
although this karma is a natural law and works just
as absolutely as the laws of physical nature down
here, yet it is also administered by officials who are
appointed to supervise its application, and there are
cases in which they interfere with what otherwise
would be the direct action of the force. They can
never lessen the payment to be made by one iota;
that which a man sets in motion will return to him.
The officials cannot decrease it, but they can delay
or hasten its action, and tliey do that according as
they think that it will be for the good of the man.
We can see that in the earlier stages of man's
development, when he is still a savage, when he is
the prey of violent passions of all sorts, he would
naturally make a great deal of evil kai-ma, and if it
all came down on him at once there would be no

172 The Christian Festivals

progress; he would be crushed to the earth; there-
fore in all those early srtages of his growth it is re-
tarded. But when the man begins to have sufficient
good karma to offset it, gradually the unpleasant
karma is released, and what may be called his fate
or destiny for a life is really the amount of that
karma which is cut off and given to him to work
out in that life. So a certain amount remains even
to the end; but it must then be cleared up.

That is what happens at this Arhat Initiation.
If we want an example of how such things work
out, we have only to read the autobiography of
Mrs. Besant, and we shall see how suffering is
heaped upon one who is about to attain. There
are many other instances. Quotations from Madame
Blavatsky and Ruysbroek show us that for many
centuries the idea has been quite well understood
by people undertaking this higher life. They know
that they must clear off whatever remains of their
debt to the divine law, and they are willing to face
all the trouble and the pain involved in doing so,
for the sake of the power they will then gain to do
good to other people.

But we in daily life, who are far from attaining
such an Initiation, find that we have a certain
amount of sorrow and trouble converging upon us.
Tliat also is the result of what we have done in
past lives. There is a curious text which says,
''Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." In the
old days I never knew what that meant, and it is
not common sense as it is usually understood. The
reality behind it is this: If a man does exceptionally
well in life, if he clears off all the early kanna that
is apportioned to him, sometimes the Lords of Karma

Holv Week 173

will give him a little more. They will, to all ap-
pearances, repay him for being a good man by giv-
ing him some exceptional sorrow and trouble; but
the reason is that they think him worthy, think him
strong enough to pay off a little more of his debt,
and so to draw nearer to the time when he will be
free from it all. Therefore it is a compliment that
the Lords of Karma should heap additional suffer-
ing on him ; they are giving him the sorrow of two
lives in one, and thus saving him time; they are
decreasing b}" one the number of lives that lie be-
fore him, and drawing him that much nearer to his
freedom.

But we in daily life have another task before us;
we have to try to develop ourselves for the future.
That is what is meant by what is said in the Gospel
for Good Friday: "If any man will not take up his
cross and follow Me, he cannot be jMy disciple."
That means that every man must take hold of his
lower nature and subdue it. It is exceedingly good
for tJie man — the soul — but it is extremely unplea-
sant for the lower nature which is being subdued;
yet it is an absolute necessity^ and because down here
these lowfer vehicles are so unamenable, it does come
to taking up a definite cross and bearing a definite
amount of inconvenience. Any one who has a bad
habit will find that there is no little suffering in-
volved in suppressing it. If a person has been in
the habit of taking drugs, it is a terrible fight for
him to conquer the habit. It is no less a fight to
conquer a bad temper, to conquer laziness, to con-
quer the habit of constant criticism and carping. All
these things are definite crosses, but we must take
up our cross and carry it, or we cannot be the

174 ^he Christian Festivals

Christ's true disciples. So until we have got rid
of our failings a certain amount of sorrow and suf-
fering is inevitable in daily life for those of us who
are trying to get on.

But do not think that the sorrow and suffering are
pleasing to the Deity. That is the horrible delu-
sion that ran through mediaeval ideas on this
subject — the thought that to fast, to torture the
body in some way, was actually pleasing to God.
It is not pleasing to God. There is an older scrip-
tu.re than any of ours which is much wiser than
that, for there the Logos is represented as saying
to His people: "Some, being ignorant, torture Me,
dwelling in their bodies"; because all life is the
divine life, and those who torture the body are
through it reacting upon the God within. Asceticism
of that kind is not in itself useful, and is often
harmful. It is never a good thing to torture the
body, but it is necessary to learn to control all
our vehicles, the physical, the astral, the mental;
and the doing of that is very often tiresome and
troublesome. Consequently it does amount to tak-
ing up a cross, and not being ashamed to face it.
It has to be done. If there is sorrow, trouble, pain,
we have brought that upon ourselves by allowing the
bad habits to grow in the past. We must face the
suffering and live it down. That is the real Good
Friday lesson — that the cross we take up in imita-
tion of Christ is the conquest of the lower nature.
It is not a thing to do lightly ; it is a serious under-
taking; if we will not face it in this life, that only
means that the bad habits will grow stronger, and
therefore we shall have more sorrow to conquer in
some future life. Therefore it is onlv wisdom and

Holv Week 175

common sense to take these matters in hand now.
This is the occasion on which the Church reminds us
of that. Let us find out our weak points and con-
quer them; that is the real meaning of the story of
Good Friday. If we do that we shall also under-
stand and enter into and realize the glory of the
resurrection, the freedom from that slavery, from
the evil habit, the coming up into the higher life
which we commemorate on Easter Sundaj^

It does not matter to what extent the story in
the gospel is historical; these events probably did
not occur as described in that life in Palestine, but
it is quite certain that our Lord, however long ago,
has passed through every stage which we have to
go through. In all things He has been tempted as
we are; in all things He is our Example and our
Leader. He does not ask us to go through anything
which He Himself has not endured before. So it is
well that we shall have our eyes open, that we should
understand that we are not making mistakes through
materializing and degrading the whole of this beau-
tiful allegory.

Therefore, on this day the priest might well speak
to his people of the necessity of self-sacrifice in the
religious life, and of the conquest of the lower
nature by the higher. If an evening service be said
upon Good Friday it should be Complin, as neither
Vespers nor Benediction is permissible.

Holy Saturday

The ancient services of Holy Saturday are quaint
and complicated, and many of them originated long
before the foundation of Christianity. The procur-
ing of the new fire, for example, may be traced back

176 ^he Christian Festivals

to the very earliest Zoroastrian times — not only to
the preaching of the last Zoroaster, some fifteen
hundred years before Christ, but much farther back
still to the time of the first of his long line of pre-
decessors. The rubric in our liturgy prescribes that
at a convenient time before the service fire is
kindled outside the church. It is desirable that the
tinder from which this fire is ignited should be
lighted from the sun by means of a lens, but if this
is not possible, flint and steel should be used. The
altar is covered with a plain linen cloth and violet
frontal, but otherwise unadorned. No candles are
yet lighted. The service begins with the Asperges.
Then a procession is formed, which moves to the
door of the church. The glowing embers are now
placed in an appropriate vessel, such as an open
thurible, and the priest blesses the new fire. Char-
coal for burning the incense i^ now lighted from the
new fire and placed in another thurible, and a speci-
ally prepared triple candle is lighted from the new
fire and blessed. The procession returns, the deacon
(vested in a white dalmatic) bearing the triple
candle which was lighted from the new fire. As the
procession passes up the church four genuflections
are simultaneously made by all who take part in it;
and at each of these the deacon raises the triple
candle on high and sings, ''Christ is our Light," to
which the people respond, "May His Light shine
in our hearts." When they reach the altar he recites
the Munda Cor Meiim, and the celebrant makes the
usual response, after which the deacon reads as a
gospel the first twelve verses of that according to
St. John.

Holg Week 177

A great candle standing in a high candlestick at
the corner of the space on the gospel side of the
altar has previously been prepared. The deacon now
attaches to this candle five grains of incense, and
the priest especially blesses it. The deacon then
lights it and the altar candles from his triple candle,
and an appropriate collect is recited. The deacon
then resumes the violet dalmatic.

This great candle is called the Paschal candle, and
is lighted at all celebrations of the Holy Eucharist
and at Vespers, from Easter Day until the Feast
of the Ascension, when it is solemnly extinguished
after the Gospel. It reappears on Whitsun Eve
(but without its candlestick) at the ceremony of the
blessing of the font, in churches where that is
performed.

It is the custom of the Roman Church to conse-
crate on this day the water that will be used for
baptisms during the forthcoming year; and if there
be any fit subjects, it is considered desirable that
one or more baptisms should take place at this point.
We also adopt this traditional observance, if there
is a candidate for baptism ; though we have preferred
to consecrate water especially for baptism on each
occasion when it is required. If the water is blessed
now, the priest lowers the base of the triple candle
into the water and makes with it the sign of the
cross thrice. After this the Mass of the Presanctified
follows, just as on the previous day.

In ancient times the people spent the night of
Holy Saturday in prayer and watching, and it was
often during the night that the water in the font
was blessed and that catechumens were baptized
in readiness to share in the celebration of the Resur-

178 The Christian Festivals

rection at dawn. In preparation for all this, long
discourses and scripture readings were given for the
edification of the faithful. During the Middle Ages
a tendency to anticipate liturgical events came
increasingly and irresistibly into evidence, and now
the Roman Church celebrates the Mass of the Resur-
rection as well as the blessing of the new fire and
of the font on the Saturday morning. We in the
Liberal Catholic rite have reverted to the older and
surely sounder usage of not celebrating the Mass
of the Resurrection until Easter morning. The ser-
vice of Vespers on Saturday is, of course, that of
Easter itself, and consequently is in every way as
grand as it can be made.

CHAPTEK VIII
EASTER

The festivals of the Church are divided into
several classes according to their importance. As I
have already explained, all the greater festivals have
what is called an octave; that is to say, they are
celebrated over the whole w^eek and the eighth day
is practically a repetition of the feast. Easter is
the very greatest of them all — so great that its
celebration lasts even longer, and in its honour we
keep the great forty days, running on until the time
of the Ascension; and during that period we
burn the special Paschal candle for an indication
that this is all part of the most splendid festival of
the Christian year.

The word Easter is derived from Eostre, w^hich
is the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring;
there is a further derivation beyond that, because
Eostre is only another form of Ishtar, Ashtaroth or
Astarte, tlie Queen of Heaven, and even that in turn,
if we go far enough back, comes from the Sanskrit
Us, which means light; the word from which springs
the title Ushas, the dawn maidens of the Vedas. So
fundamentally Easter is the great festival of light —
of the rising again of the Light of the World.

All the symbology of our evolution centres round
the fountain and origin of that evolution — the Solar
Deity, Who in the Greek philosophy was called the
Logos of our system. Logos means ''Word"; it
is the Greek term used in the well-known and most
beautiful text: ''In the beginning was the Word,

179

180 The Christian Festivals

and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God." Let us try to understand a little of what
these words meant to their writer. Modern Chris-
tian belief has become largely material and non-
philosophical, chiefly, as I have stated, because of
its most unfortunate and persistent confusion of the
very personal Jewish tribal deity Jehovah with the
Supreme First Cause of all. Those who hold to that
illogical confusion think of God as a Father, but a
savage and tyrannical Father, jealous and cruel
beyond all earthly experience, capriciously creating
one man healthy and another full of fell disease from
his very birth, throwing one man at birth into the
lap of affluence and another into grinding poverty,
and capable of casting either or both of these men
into everlasting torture after death if they will not
do violence to the intellect with which He has en-
dowed them by pretending to believe certain
incredible stories.

It is indeed most true that no man can compre-
hend God; but we can at least form a more intelli-
gent conception of Him than this, and the first step
towards such a conception is to recognize that He
has many manifestations. Of the Absolute, the
Infinite, the All-em^bracing, we can at our present
stage know nothing, except that He is; we can say
nothing that is not a limitation, and therefore in-
accurate. But in Him are innumerable universes;
in each universe millions of solar systems. Each
solar system is the expression of a mighty Being
Whom we call the Solar Deity, the Logos, the Word
or expression of that infinite God. This Solar Deity
is to His system all that men mean by the title God.
He permeates it; there is nothing in it which is not

Easter 181

He; it is the manifestation of Him in such matter
as we can see. Yet He exists above it and outside
it as well, living a stupendous life of His own among
His Peers. As is said in a scripture older than ours :
''Having permeated this whole universe with one
fragment of Myself, I remain."

Out of Himself this Solar Deity has called this
mighty system into being. We who are in it are
evolving fragments of His Life, sparks of His divine
Fire ; from Him we all have come ; into Him we shall
all return. He pours Himself down into matter, and
thus suffers very truly an eclipse, a crucifixion, a
death, and then rises again out of that matter in
order that we, humanity, may be. The whole life
of the solar system comes from Him, and therefore
those who wish to fulfil that which He has indi-
cated for us, those who wish to become wise, to
become Initiates, must follow in His footsteps and
develop as He has developed. All the ancient reli-
gions have taken up these ideas and have woven
them into beautiful symbols, differing according to
the religion, the race, and the people ; and that very
same symbolism, which indicates and describes the
life of the Initiate in terms of the life of the Sun
God, exists here in our Christian Church, and is
shown in the course of our Christian Year.

The first half of that year (from Advent and
Christmas up to Trinity Sunday) is as it were the
active, eventful part of the solar life; and then
the next six months are devoted to practising and
preserving what we have learnt, so we pass into the
comparatively calm waters of the Sundays after
Trinity, when all goes on quite quietly with only
occasional great festivals, none of which are con-

182 The Christian Festivals

nected with the iife-stoiy of the Christ, which is
also the life of the Sun-God. In all religions alike
the Sun-God is always born in midwinter, directly
after the shortest day, born at midnight of the 24th
of December when the constellation Virgo is on the
horizon. Hence it is said that He is born from the
Virgin; and yet after the birth, when the sun has
risen into the heavens, Virgo still remains the im-
maculate and heavenly Virgin. "We see there a
sidelight upon the story of the Immaculate Concep-
tion which appears not only in our religion but in
many other older faiths.

The Sun-God is reborn, because the shortest day
in the northern latitude is past; for months the
days have been growing steadily shorter, as though
He were being vanquished by the powers of dark-
ness; but now this decrease is conquered, and He
begins to reassert His powers, and the night slowly
yields before Him. He has still to pass through the
storms and tribulations of winter; and that is why
the early life of the Sun-God in all religions is
always surrounded by trouble and sorrow and diffi-
culty. Krishna suffered much from persecution and
had to be hidden among the cowherds as a child,
because the king sought His life; the Lord Jesus
was assailed by Herod, who attempted to kill Him;
in all the stories of the Christ-life in any religion
we find the same thread running througii. Osiris
Himself, thousands of years before, was cut to
pieces and destroyed by Set, and only after that He
was gathered together and rose again. In Ancient
Egypt the people mourned over the death of Osiris,
just as some Christians now mourn over the death
of the Christ on Good Friday, and they rejoiced in

Easter 183

the great festival of the assembling together, the
gathering together of that which had been separ-
ated, just as we now rejoice at Easter. Those old
religions taught the same truths which we teach
now; truth is one, although it is many-sided, and
the presentations in those old days were not at all
unlike the presentations put before us now.

Great are the storms and tribulations of winter,
but the Sun-God survives them all, and His strength
is steadily growing as the days lengthen towards the
vernal equinox. At that equinox, as the name
implies, day and night are exactly equal all over
the world; and after it the sun crosses the line, so
that in the northern hemisphere the days grow
steadily longer, and the victory of the Sun-God
over night is assured. He rises triumphantly
over the line and ascends in the heavens, ripening
the corn and the grape, pouring His Life into them
to make their substance, and through them giving
Himself to His worshippers.

Every one of us will have in turn to undergo
the suffering symbolized by the cross; every one of
us must learn how to give himself up utterly for
others; but also for every one of us is the glory of
Easter, the Resurrection, the victory, the triumph
over matter.

That still remains ever and gloriously time. The
victory which man gains over the lower nature is
something which must be achieved in the life of
every Christian man. There must come in his life
a point at which he finally triumphs over the lower
matter and rises out of the darkness of sin and
ignorance into the light of wisdom and the higher,
purer life. So Easter is not only the commemora-

184 The Christian Festivals

tion of something in the far-distant past; it is a
real day of celebration and of thankfulness for the
victory which man has gained, is gaining, emd will
gain all through the ages over that which is lower,
that which is less developed. In everyone of us
there is the divine spark. The Christ said: ''Ye are
gods, ye are all the children of the Most High."
In every one of us that divine spark is the true man,
and that spark manifests liimself in lower planes in
the soul of man, the ego ; and that in turn puts down
to still lower levels the personality, which is what
we know as the self down here. We are only a tiny
fragment of a fragment of the magnificent reality.
That which we see ourselves to be down here is as
it were the seed of the future glory, but each one of
us is also a soul; more than that, each is a spirit —
the divine spark, slowly, slowly unveiling itself,
slowly developing the qualities through which it can
show itself, so that man may know it for what it
is. At present the spark burns low; at present we
are but at the beginning of the higher part of our
evolution. We have won a great victory already in
that we are here as men, we whose life has passed
through all the lower stages, the kingdoms of the
mineral, the vegetable, the animal, in ages long gone
by. We have reached humanity, we have joined
with the Father and have developed the soul; but
that soul in its turn must grow and expand. Just
as the personality has to become one with that soul,
so has that soul in turn to become one with the
divine spark which it represents, and then later still
the divine spark sweeps back into the flame of which
it is a part, and God is all in all.

Easter 185

Every stage of that progress is a victory; every
stage of that progress is very truly a resurrection,
a rising from the lower to the higher. The life
of the Christ is a type of the life of every one of
His followers. As I have said, we, too, must pass
through those stages, those steps, those Initiations
through which the Christ passed. We must suffer
with Him all the sorrow and the pain of this past
week, a veritable crucifixion of all that seems to the
man worth having; but he who endures to the end,
he who passes through that test as he should, for
him the glory of Easter is to be also revealed, he
also will gain the victoiy which makes him more
than man, which raises him to the level of the Christ
Spirit. That victory is for every one of us, and
when we thank God for the Easter festival, we are
thanking Him for that magnificent possibility, and
also for the fact that there are many even now who
have realized that. It is true that we see but few
of them, for those who rise to such a height do pass
somewhat awaj^ from the ordinary life of men, and
necessarity must do so. Their aims are so different
from those of most of us as yet, that their whole
life must be different too. It is indeed difficult for
them when their lot is still cast in the busy world.
There are those who, having gained that rank, still
need for the helping of others to work here on earth,
but their life is one of tremendous strain, of very
great trial in many ways. It cannot be a life of
happiness in the ordinary sense of the word, although
it is one of spiritual and interior happiness ^^alwaj^s,
because there is a joy that nothing earthly can
touch. No trouble, no pain, no suffering down here
can affect the union with God which such men have

186 The Christian Festivals

attained; and so even though their life down here
must be ever one of strain and stress and struggle,
yet the glory is so far greater that no words can
ever express it — that this trifling affliction, which is
but for a moment, weighs for them as nothing be-
side the far more exceeding weight of glory.

It is then that possibility for which we thank
God, and as I have said, we thank Him also for the
fact that there be many who have attained this,
thereby showing us that it is possible for all of us.
I fear that sometimes when the example of the
great saints and the mighty Angels is held up before
us it all seems to us unreachable, impossible. We
feel perhaps: ''Yes, it is all very well when one
gets to that height; but what of us who seem so
many miles away, so many ages behind?" Yet all
who can see the higher levels, all who can see the
steps of the ladder of life above us and below us,
agree in telling us that they see men standing on
every one of those steps, and that those who are
now so far above us that in their knowledge and
power they seem to us like gods, tell us that no long
time ago they stood where we stand, and that we,
if we persevere, shall beyond all possibility of doubt
or question stand presently where they stand now.

''If Christ be risen, then shall we also rise" was
the argument of old, and indeed that is true, and
true in many different ways; in no way more than
in regard to this symbol of which I speak.

Because He has conquered evil, because He has
risen above matter, others have been able to follow
Him and to do the same great deed; and because
they have done it, we shall do it also. Easter is a
magnificent reality to every one of us, just as it was

Easter 187

to Him. At Christmas we sing not only the com-
memoration of the victor}^ of the birth of the Christ
(even in one of its many symbolical forms) ; but we
also sing a personal possibility. It was no figure
of speech when we said: ''Unto %is a child is born,
unto us a Son is given." The possibility is for us,
for every one of us, and we should feel that with
the glory of the resurrection at Easter, the mighty
triumph of good over ill is an absolute and actual
reality for each individual. Not a thing which is
far away out of reach, that may or may not reflect
its glory upon us, but a real definite step which each
individual here and elsewhere will take in the future,
a real thing which we can put before us with the
certainty that we can gain it.

Some will gain it comparatively quickly ; some will
be slower in their rising; that is within oxir power.
We may hasten or we may delay our journey to
that glorious goal, but we cannot throw ourselves
out of the path for ever. We cannot prevent our
final victory of attainment, whatever we may do.
There are men who are what we call wicked, which
means that they have strayed far away from the
direct path to God. They are wicked because they
are foolish and ignorant, because they do not under-
stand; but however far they may stray from the
great path they will return to it, for that is what
God meant for them from the beginning. They
may turn their backs on the light; they may delay
their progre^, but the pressure of that definite
Will will bring them back to the path sooner or
later, and they who now are ignorant must learn the
truth of God. They who sit in darkness, upon them
shall the light shine; they who feel themselves at

188 The Christian Festivals

present in the Garden of Gethsemane, they who feel
themselves to be suffering a veritable crucifixion —
for them also and inevitably shall come the gloiy
of the Easter victory, the utter final triumph of good
over ill. ^

In His Resurrection is the earnest of our own.
Because the Logos Himself has entered matter,
has triumphed, and has risen from it; because
the Christ, the great World-Teacher, has passed
through that experience also, it is certain for
every one of us that, when our time comes to
endure that suffering and that crucifixion, it will
lead us, as it led Him, to the higher glory of the
resurrection and to final triumph — a triumph which
is final because it is based on knowledge. The
Initiate hnows that wherein he believes; and matter
can never again conquer him who has learnt that
all, matter and spirit alike, is equally part of God,
and is equally included in the divine plan which
leads us to this glorious victory. For the victory is
to become one with Him — one with Him Who is All
in All. Therefore is it an eternal victory; there-
fore is it forever; therefore can there be no doubt,
and no hesitation, because when we are one with
Him we know. Then shall we be like Him, because
we see Him as He is; because we really know, there-
fore we cannot fall back.

We may or may not regard the bible allegory
which is read to us at Easter as representing a his-
torical occurrence on the physical plane; our people
are entirely free to believe or disbelieve; but most
of us hold that it embodies in symbolical form a
great and mighty truth. Therefore is Easter for us
a glorious festival; therefore we celebrate it in every

Easter 189

way we can. Therefore have we a true joy in
exchanging with one another the traditional Easter
greeting. For just as on Christmas Day we wish
one another a happy Christmas, so when the early
Christians met one another on Easter Day one said
to the other : ' ' The Lord hath arisen, ' ' and the reply,
was: ^'He is risen indeed." Not from an earthly
grave, but from the grave of matter; risen in ti-uth
and in splendid reality — risen for evermore. So in
his victory we triumph too, and in the joy of the
Lord His Church rejoices also.

CHAPTEK IX
ASCENSION DAY

Four of the festivals of the Christian Church
have always been recognized as the greatest — Christ-
mas, Easter, the Ascension Day and Whitsun-day.
Three of these have heen accepted by the outer
world as public holidays; but that has not hap-
pened to the same extent in the case of the Ascen-
sion Day, probably because it falls so near to Whit-
sun-day— only ten days before it — and the latter,
being a Sunday, is more convenient for popular
observance. Ascension Day, however, is one of those
which our Roman brethren call holy days of obliga-
tion, upon which all true members of the Church
are supposed to join in the celebration of the Holy
Eucharist, and if possible communicate. The
original reason for that requirement is that each of
these great feasts has its own special type of force^
which is outpoured upon it, and the Church wishes
that her people should have the advantage of all
these different streams of grace, in order that their
characters may be properly rounded out and evenly
developed.

Regarded from the point of view of the life
of the Christ this is quite one of the greatest of
the festivals. There is an old monastic hymn which
rather beautifully emphasizes this, explaining that
though we are full of joy at Christmas when the
Angels come down and sing the birth of the Infant
King, in all that joy there cannot but be some
thought of the weary life, containing much of suf-
fering, misunderstanding and persecution, which lay

190

Ascension Dai; 191

before that Holy Child. And even at the greatest
festival of all — the triumph over death at Easter —
the Lord's life on earth is not yet finished; there still
remains work for Him to do in the teaching of His
people. But when we reach the Day of the Ascen-
sion all earthly labours are over, for this is the final
triumph, when Christ takes His place for ever at
the right hand of the Father. Assuredly from the
point of view of the Church this should be, and
according to our Liturgy it is, one of the greatest of
the festivals.

From the inner point of view also it is a day of
deep meaning and importance, for the Ascension and
Whitsun-day taken together typify the fifth Initi-
ation, that of the Adept. In that the man rises
from earth to heaven, and for the first time
definitely steps outside ordinary humanity. In the
Arhat stage, which comes before this, he is already
free from some of the restrictions of common human
life, for he has so far worked out his karma that
he is no longer compelled to reincarnate on the
physical plane, though he usually does so in order
to help others; and that immunity from lower neces-
sities is symbolized in the narrative by the nature
of Christ's resurrection-body, which passes through
closed doors, and appears and disappears at wiU.
But in this fifth Initiation he reaches the goal which
is set before humanity in this chain of worlds. With
the fifth Initiation He also achieves union with a
certain aspect of the Third Person of the great
Solar Logos ; and one of the effects of this is typified
by the downpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Whit-
sun-day, to which we shall make further reference a
little later.

192 The Christian Festivals

We are not on this day celebrating the attain-
ment of that level by any one man only. We can
of course look back to the time when the Great
World-Teacher Himself took this step, but that was
far back in the night of time, in the mists of pre-
historic periods; we are really celebrating the great
fact that for us also is possible this transcending
of humanity — this ascension from earth to higher
realms; and so we pray in the words of the old col-
lect of the Church that since our Lord Christ has
thus ascended into heaven we may also in heart and
mind thither ascend, and with Him continually
dwell. Of course those who take the literal view
of the gospel suppose that to mean that they will
rest for ever amid clouds of gloiy in the presence
of the physical body of the Christ. We should raise
our thought a little higher than that and understand
that to dwell for ever with Christ is to be truly
united with Him in consciousness, so that whatever
work we may afterwards choose to take up for the
benefit of this or any other humanity, wherever we
may go in the whole solar system, we shall never
lose that consciousness of His intimate unity with us.

And so very truly we shall rise with Him and
with Him continually dwell; that will be true of all
of us. ]\Iay that time come soon, that in His Name
and for His sake and by means of our unity with
Him we may be able to spread to others the glorious
gospel which He has taught, and the spiritual power
which He pours forth through that gospel.

CHAPTEK X
WHITSUN-DAY

Whitsun-day is the last of what have been called
the four great festivals of the Christian Year; and
although in the Liberal Catholic Church we put in
many cases a different interpretation on them, all
these great festivals have their meaning for us, just
as they have for other branches of the Church.

Whitsun-day is commonly supposed to be merely
a commemoration of the descent of the Holy Ghost
upon the apostles ten days after the Ascension of
our Lord into heaven. I do not know whether that
happened exactly as it is stated or not. Many people
have disputed it on what seem to be good grounds,
but the point for us to understand, about this as
about the other festivals, is what Origen, the greatest
of the Church Fathers, said with regard to the
gospel story. He did not in the least deny that all
these events happened in Jud^a, but he said that
what happened once in PalOvStine is of no consequence
to US; the fact of importance is that all these events
are symbols of spiritual facts, which occur in the
life of every Christian man.

This descent of the Holy Spirit is the symbol of
a great reality which takes place in the life of the
initiated disciple. The man who has reached
Adeptship enters a higher Kingdom, and becomes
more than man; and for that reason He was repre-
sented as rising clear away from earth into heaven.
The descent of the Holy Ghost in connection with
it is intended to symbolize the wonderfully intimate
and mysterious union between the Adept and the
Deity through the Monad of that Adept, and the

193

194 The Christian Festivals

outpouring of spiritual force which thereby comes
upon the world through him — a glorious mystery
which we cannot fully grasp yet.

We must therefore understand this festival as the
celebration of the union of God and man, and of
the consequent descent of the Holy Spirit upon the
world. I do not question that some such event may
have occurred in connection with the life of Jesus,
but its importance to us is the fact that it happens
in the course of the Initiate life, and that it will
therefore one day happen to every one of us. The
very name of the day indicates that, although a mis-
taken derivation is given to it by many people. It
is often said that Whitsun-day is a corruption of
White Sunday, and that it was so called because on
that day candidates robed in white were presented
for baptism. That is not the true derivation, for
Whitsun is really a corruption of an old Anglo-
Saxon word Pfingsten, which means the Holy Ghost.
Therefore it should be pronounced with the accent
on the first syllable, and it is to help our people to
remember that pronunciation that I am carefully
spelling it with a h}T)hen.

It may be noticed that the Holy Ghost occupies
a curious position, if we may venture reverently to
say so, in the older prayer books and services. The
Athanasian Creed tells us, very truly, that in the
Trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater
or less than another, but that They are all co-equal
and co-eternal; yet we may notice that while in the
Roman and Anglican liturgies there are many
prayers to God the Father and to God the Son,
there are almost none to God the Holy Ghost. Also
there are very few churches dedicated to the Holy

Whitsim-Dap 195

Ghost. In the Hindu religion it would seem tliat a
similar curious occlusion has arisen, but with re-
gard to the First Aspect instead of the Third; for
I am told that in all India there is only one temple
dedicated to Brahma, thouo^h there are thousands
to Vishnu and Shiva.

The reason for this is that there has been a great
deal of misunderstanding with regard to the place
of the Third Person of the Ever-blessed Trinit3\
We read often of Him as being sent by Christ, as
if He were, if we may say so with reverence, a mere
influence to be poured out. This is not true. He
is a Person of the Trinity, as great as the Others,
for all are equal. Remember that the Trinity is a
mystery; it will remain a mystery whatsoever any
of us may say or think about it. For it is far
above, out of- our reach; but something of what
it means to us we may comprehend; it is right and
proper that we should try to understand what we
can of it.

All religions have a Trinity, but they differ to
some extent in the way in which they make up that
Trinity — the point of view from which they look at
it. The Trinity of the older religions was nearly
always Father, ^lother. Son; for example, in
Ancient Egypt it was Osiris, Isis and Horus. The
Hindu Trinity is the Creator, the Preserver and the
Destroyer; but the maternal side is brought in by
each of them having what is called a shakti or power
which is always regarded as feminine. The Zoroas-
trian Trinity has almost the modern idea of spirit,
matter and the active force generated by their inter-
action— Ormuzd, Ahriman (who afterwards came to
be regarded as the devil, but was originally part of

196 The Christian Festivals

the Trinity) and Mithra, who took the place of the
Son. So although that is not exactly Father, Mother,
Son, it is yet eternal spirit, eternal matter and the
active force coming from them — Mithra the Son. The
Christian Trinity is not quite either of those; it has
the Father, the Son, alone-born from Him, and the
Holy Ghost proceeding from both. In the Chris-
tian Trinity there is no feminine element at all —
nothing which can be taken as representing matter
alone. Various attributes properly belonging to
that line of thought have been given in that sym-
bolism to God the Holy Ghost, and it would seem
as though He represents several different features,
or is perhaps a kind of combination of several lines
of thought or symbolism.

The nearest that we can get in history to the
Christian presentation of the Trinity as Father, Son
and Holy Ghost is the philosophical conception of
the Three Aspects of the Logos. There is no
feminine in either, and they do ver\^ closely corres-
pond. The feminine aspect is brought in as the
mother-matter or root of matter which in Hinduism
is called MxdaprakriU, which however is not part of
the Trinity, just as in the Christian system the
Blessed Virgin stands outside the Trinity, but never-
theless is intimately connected with Its Persons —
represented, for example, in a well-known hymn as
Mother, Daughter, Spouse of God. Mother of God
as Christ (not the eternal Christ, alone-born of the
Father, but the secondary Christ as man) ; daughter
of God on the theory that she was immaculately con-
ceived by Anna her mother, and then spouse of the
Holy Ghost in the immaculate conception of the
Christ. But to try to apply this elaborate cosmic

Whitsun-Dav 197

symbolism to the noble Jewish lady who was the
mother of Jesus materializes the whole conception,
and indeed makes it ridiculous.

The Christian Trinity represents three stages of
emanation, and they to some extent agree with and
are the prototypes of the division into Power,
Wisdom, and Intelligence, because God the Father
is the Creator of all; the atma or spirit in man is
an expression of Him, verily a part of Him; while
God the Son is the Wisdom by W^hom all things
were made. God the Father is the Creator, but He
creates through the Son; the power is exercised
through the Son, the Wisdom. Then we have the
Third Aspect, the Holy Ghost, which corresponds
with the idea of manas or intelligence in man,
just as huddhi or intuition corresponds with the
Wisdom, and atma or spirit with the Light or
Power beyond.

The Christian conception of the Holy Ghost
includes the oriental idea of the Light of the
Logos — the Arm coming forth from the Father
and the Son by Avhich to a large extent the
Divine Work is done dowTi here; not, however, in
any sense a mere instrument or messenger, as
an Angel might be, but a veritable Arm; the
Activity Aspect of the Blessed Trinity, when we
look at the Three Persons as Will, Wisdom and
Activity. It may be of use to attempt to illustrate
this by a diagram; for though this cannot of
course explain so stupendous a mystery, it may
aid our thought in its excursion into these un-
familiar regions. The problem is so complex that
it is not wise to despise any assistance in keeping its
manv sides simultaneously before the mind.

198

The Christian Festivals

Whiisun-Dav 199

DIAGRAM: THE HOLY TRINITY

In this diagram an attempt has been made to show the
relationship of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Let no one
think that we are ii-reverent or presumptuous in making such
an attempt. We are fully aware, we have the most absolute
and overwhelming conviction, that the Great Architect of the
Universe infinitely transcends our feeble human thought, and
that any endeavour to picture even the lowest of His myriad
manifestations must inevitably fall short of the truth in many
ways. Yet we have found that reverent effort to understand
the method of His working is imdoubtedly of help to us
in our studies, for it clears up for us many conceptions which
have before seemed nebulous, and enables us to speak with
certainty where before we were merely guessing. Such effort
cannot be ill-directed, for the further we press inward and
upward in our search the more profound becomes our sensa
of His infinity and His glory. His power, like His peace,
passes man's understanding; yet to try to comprehend and
to realize is surely beneficial to us, since it deepens our
reverence for Him.

This diagram is of course in no sense a picture, any
more than a table of altitudes represents a chain of mighty
snow-clad mountains, or a chart of light-vibrations reveals
the glories of a sunset. \Ve can never hope to picture the
Logos in earth's dull pigments or within the cramping limi-
tations of three-dimensional space, but it is possible to indi-
cate to some extent the relationship existing bctw^ecn the
Three Persons in Whom He manifests.

In our diagram the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
are represented as already descended into our system of inter-
penetrating worlds and as manifesting Themselves in the
seventh, sixth and fifth worlds respectively. We do not know
in what Form or Manifestation the Logos exists outside the
limits of these worlds. All that can be said with cerT;ainty
is that when His life appears in the highest world of the
solar system it pours down in three mighty streams, giving
rise to the Triple Spirit of the Logos in manifestation.
(A., B and G in the diagram.) A does not descend below

199^ The Christian Festivals

that level, aud is called the Father in Christian philosophy.
The Second Person of the Holy Trinity is called into being
by the action of the will of the Father, working without
intermediary. Hence the Second Person is spoken of as only-
hegotten (or, more exactly in the sense of the original Greek,
alone-horn), since He was created from one divine Principle
and not from a s>jzygj or pair, aud so this emanation differs
from all other and later processes of generation. It will be
noted that the Second Person is represented as dual, ana
as D does not descend below the level of the sixth world
He is called the Son. This duality has always been clearly
recognized by religions, but in modern Christianity the two
poles or aspects are expressed only as divinity and humanity.

The procession or emanation of the Holy Ghost (F) was
an ancient source of theological controversy, and indeed was
put forward as the ostensible reason for the separation of
the Greek and Roman Churches. In a very real sense both
the disputing parties were right. Since the manifestation of
the Father takes place in the seventh world, and that of the
Holy Ghost in the fifth, it is evident that, if the latter comes
forth from the former, it can do so only by passing through
the intermediate sixth world, in which is the manifestation
of the Son. It is not that the Holy Ghost descends from
the manifested Person of the Father (A) through the mani-
fested Person of the Son (D) (which descent would be repre-
sented by the diagonal line connecting A, D and F) ; such
an idea would indicate a confusion of the functions of the
separate Persons or Aspects, and the Greek Church was right
in resisting it. The truth is that the Holy Ghost descends
from C in the seventh world, through E in the sixth, to be-
come the manifested Holy Spirit F in the fifth; and so in
this sense the Roman Church was right in inserting the word
filioque.

The symbols used to designate the Three Persons — the dot
within a circle for tlie First, the bar dividing a circle for
the Second, and a cross within a circle for the Third — are
of extreme antiquity.

The relationship of the principles in man is shown by re-
producing a portion of Diagram 21 in The Science of the
Sacraments, and the reader is referred to that book for a

Whitsun-DaD 199^

detailed explanation. It will be seen from this diagram that
the old text which tells us that man is made in the image of
God is wonderfully and beautifully true — not, as was ignor-
antly supposed, of the body or outer form of the man, but
of the real inner man, tlie soul. Just as Three Aspects of
the Divine are seen upon the seventh plane, so the
Divine Spark of the spirit in man is seen to be triple
in its appearance on plane five. In both cases the second
Aspect is able to descend one plane lov.er, and to clothe it-
self in the matter of that world; in botli cases the Third
Aspect is able to descend two planes and repeat the process.
So in both cases there is a Trinity in Unity, separate in its
manifestations, yet one in the reality behind. Indeed, incom-
prehensible though the statement may be, it is in reality true
that the principles in man, which we call spirit, intuition and
intelligence, are not merely correspondences, not merely even
reflections or rays of the Three Persons of tlie Holy Trinity,
but are somehow themselves in very truth expressions of tliese
glorious Beings. ' ' In Him we live and move and have our
being. ' '

'dOO The Christian Festivals

The Three Persons are fundamentally and on the
highest level all absolutely co-equal and co-eternal;
but when They descend into manifestation (as in
the creation of a solar system) it may be said that
the Third Person comes down further into matter
than the others, and so appears to be nearer to us,
and in that sense temporarily lower. The First
Person remains at the original level; the Second
steps down one level and manifests Himself there;
the Third descends two levels to the plane we call
the spiritual, and manifests Himself in the highest
stage of that spiritual plane. Here we see one illus-
tration of the fact which is symbolized by the
statement that the Christ has two natures — God
and Man, because He exists as perfect God on that
higher level, and yet also exists one stage lower in
manifestation. In the same sense the Holy Spirit
has three stages, one above the other. Yet again
the diagram illustrates the much-disputed question
of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father
and the Son. Both the contradictory statements are
true, for He does proceed entirely from the Father;
but He proceeds through that second level which is
especially the field of manifestation of the Son, and
so comes both from the Father and from the Son.
In Him the two lines meet — the perpendicular of
the triangle and its hypothenuse; so both the state-
ments are true.

He was the first to act in the making of the
system, and so it is said that the Spirit of God
brooded over the face of the waters of space. He
pours His life into them and creates matter as we
know it. He is still manifesting before us even
now, and that in two ways. First, He is still within

Whitsun-Da^ 201

the earth making new elements; the last that we
have so far discovered is uranium, but He is siill
making new and heavier elements. He manifests
Himself also among us in the wondrous force that
we call prana or vitality; that life is His life; so
we have on the phj^sical plane a manifestation of
Him in what are called the vitality globules. (See
Man Visible and Invisible and The Hidden Side of
Things.) It is matter vivified by Him that is used by
the Second Person when He in turn dips down into
matter in the Second great Outpouring, and so it is
said mystically that Christ takes form not from the
Maria or seas of virgin matter only, but from the
Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary. But the treat-
ment of that matter belongs to our third volume.

The downward point of the triangle in the dia-
gram indicates the lowest point of the descent into
matter, inconceivably high though even that must
be in comparison with our own consciousness. Thus
this manifestation of the Holy Ghost is in that sense
the Aspect of Divinity which is nearest to us, and
consequently through Him the work is done. It is
He Whom we invoke at Confirmation and at Ordina-
tion; and through Him come all blessing and sanc-
tifying power, whether it be in the consecration of
churches, of holy water, or of the congregation. As
the nearest point of the manifestation of Deity (the
expression is terribly materialistic, and yet perhaps
less misleading than any other) He is the first with
which man can be united when he has risen to be
something more than man.

In the course of his evolution man has now reached
what is called the nivritti marga, the path of return,
and so he is drawing himself steadily upwards to-

202 The Christian Festivals

wards God from Whom he came — towards the Logos
of Whom he is a part. WTien he has reached Adept-
ship he may be said to pass away from earth to the
heavenly regions, as symbolized by the Ascension;
and having thus drawn away from ordinary manhood
and become a superman, he also becomes one with
God — at first with that lowest manifestation of Him,
which yet is so supremely high — with God the Holy
Ghost. And having become one with that mighty
manifestation he immediately pours himself down
upon his friends and pupils in tongues as of fire. It
is part of the Asekha Initiation to become one with
the Logos at that level. Later on he rises to another
stage and becomes one with the Christ Aspect. But
even so we must remember that it is only within
this set of planes, whereas the Logos Himself in His
splendour is outside time and space; and presently
we must become one with Him there also; so there
is an infinity of evolution still before us.

The altar-frontal and all the vestments on Whit-
sun-day are red, by order of the Universal Church;
and it is commonly supposed to be so in honour of
the Fire which in the gospel story came down and
rested on the heads of the apostles. Fire is the
symbol of the Holy Spirit, and He is constantly
described as the Breath of God, the Fire of Love,
because He is that tremendous power which is best
expressed in our words as Fire or Light. The
ecclesiastical red. when it is the right tint, stands
for courage, bravery and power, and so most truly
images for us His most prominent characteristic.
This has been somewhat obscured by an unsatisfac-
tory translation of His principal title, ''The Para-
clete." It has been the custom to render this by

Whitsun-Dap 203

the English word Comforter, thus relegating the
chief action of the Holy Spirit to times of sorrow
and suffering. The derivation of the word is from
the verb parakaleo, which means to cheer on, to
encourage; so the best English equivalent of the
Greek word Parakletos is the Encourager or
Strengthener. And this is precisely the true func-
tion of God the Holy Ghost with regard to man;
poured upon us at Confirmation, He dwells ever
within our hearts as a constant stimulus in the
direction of all that is good, ever ready to hearten
and to fortify us whenever we call upon His latent
power. The Church of England commemorates Him
on this one festival only; but we have added six
other days for special devotion to Him — the Sunday
before Advent, the three Sundays before Lent, and
two of the Sundays after Trinity.

In certain parts of the Church the Ascension and
the festival of the Holy Ghost were celebrated on
the same day, showing that it was recognized that
the union of the Adept with the Holy Spirit is
simultaneous with his attainment of the higher
spheres, even though the outpouring with which he
is thereby enabled to baptize his followers comes
upon them a few da^^s later.

CHAPTER XI

TRINITY SUNDAY

The celebration on this clay of the doctrine of
the Most Holy Trinity fitly and appropriately con-
cludes this first half of the Christian Year, and at
the same time leads us on into the second. Actually
it is the octave of Whitsun-da3^ and a Roman
authority remarks: ''Since it was after the first
great Pentecost that the doctrine of the Trinity was
proclaimed to the world, the feast becomingly fol-
lows that of Pentecost." The Church of Rome
in one way gives less importance to the day than
we, for she labels all the Sundays through the rest
of the ecclesiastical year up to Advent as Sundays
after Pentecost (of which Trinity Sunday is the
first), whereas we follow the practice of the Church
of England in calling them Sundays after Trinity.

It is only very lately that the transcendent impor-
tance of this day has been recognized by our Roman
brethren. In the early Church no special Office or
day was assigned to the Holy Trinity, as all days
alike were considered to be devoted to such service.
An Office of the Holy Trinity was composed about
the year 910 by Bishop Stephen of Liege, and we
find it recorded that it was in some places used on
this day. Pope Alexander II seems in 1061 to have
refused a request that he should decree a universal
feast in honour of the Trinity, as it was already daily
celebrated in the constant recitation of the Gloria
Patri. It was not until 1316 that Pope John XXII
ordered the entire Church to observe the present

204

Trinitv Sunday 205

festival, and even then he made it only what is called
a double of the second class, which it remained until
in our own day Pope Pius X raised it to primary
dignity on July 24, 1911.

The doctrine of the Trinity has been variously
formulated and sadly misunderstood, and those who
misunderstand it frequently stigmatize it as incom-
prehensible and incredible ; yet it represents a great
and fundamental truth. Here is a statement of it
culled from the pages of The Catholic Encyclopedia:
'^The Trinity is the term employed to signify the
central doctrine of the Christian religion — the truth
that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three
Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
these Three Persons being truly distinct one from
another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian
Creed, the Father is God, the Son is God. and the
Holy Ghost is God ; and yet there are not three gods,
but one God. In this Trinity of Persons the Son
is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation,
and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal proces-
sion from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwith-
standing this difference as to origin, the Persons are
co-eternal and co-equal; all alike are uncreated and
omnipotent.*'

There is no direct statement of this doctrine in
the scripture; for it seems to be universally agreed
among commentators that the passage from I John
V, 7: ''For there are three that bear record in
heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost,
and these three are one," is a late interpolation.
Late or early, it states a profound truth, but we
can hardly adduce it as evidence. The stories of the
Baptism and the Transfiguration of our Lord have

206 The Christian Festivals

been taken to include the manifestation of the Three
Persons simultaneously ; but, though when we already
know the doctrine we can weave it in deftly and
appropriately as an explanation, it would perhaps
be a straining of the words to deduce the doctrine
from the narrative. The command to go and bap-
tize all nations in the Name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost is the clearest direct
reference, for the mention of the Three Persons in
this manner im_plies Their equality, while the use of
the word ''Name" instead of "Names" shows that
all Three are One God.

As we have already seen, the thought of the
Trinity has appeared in some form or other in all
the great religions of the world, though the Aspects
or Persons are not always arranged in the same
order. In Hinduism it is taught that there is one
Absolute Unmanifested without qualities, but that
the Manifested Supreme Lord with qualities always
shows Himself as a Trinity. Its Persons are called
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva — sometimes defined as the
Creator, the Presenter, and the Destroyer or
Liberator, and sometimes as Existence, Consciousness
and Bliss; and They are said to be represented in
the human spirit by "Will, Cognition and Activity.
There is no feminine principle here — nothing
directly representing matter; but each of these Per-
sons has a shaldi or power which is practically His
feminine aspect; and there is also the conception, as
I have stated, of Mnlaprahriti, the primitive mother-
matter, not part of the Trinity, but very intimately
connected with it, just as is the Blessed Virgin in
our Christian system. Again, in the esotericism of the
Vedantins, DaivipraUriii, the Light manifested

Trinitv Sunday 207

through Ishvara, the Logos, is at one and the same
time the Mother and also the Daughter of the
Logos.

In the Zoroastrian religion — to add a few details
not mentioned before — the presentation is given as
Existence, Wisdom and Bliss, and the names are
Ahuramazda, Asha and Vohumano. The first title,
Ahuramazda (sometimes contracted to Ormuzd) is
often used for the whole, just as is the Christian
word Father. Ahura is interpreted as "He Who
is," while Maz means '' great," and Da ''to know."
Ahura is often taken as the lifegiver, and Mazda
as the great knower or thinker, and the scriptures
state that Ahura is threefold before all others. In
this system the twin forces of involution and evolu-
tion are named Spenta-Angra. Ahuramazda, Mithra
and Ahriman also appear as a Trinity; but in other
passages Ahriman is the personification of evil. Pos-
sibl}^ in the Trinity he may be the representative of
matter, which often comes to be regarded as evil;
if this be the case we have here one of the Trinities
of Father, Mother and Son, like that of Osiris, Isis
and Horus in ancient Egypt, or of Odin, Freya and
Thor among the Scandinavians.

In the Kabala of the Jews we find a similar pre-
sentation. Ainsoph the One manifests as Kether the
Crown, the Bliss Aspect of Deity, and the root of
the will in man; also as Binah, Intelligence, the
Consciousness Aspect, the root of Cognition in man;
and as Chokma, the Universal Mind, the Existence
Aspect, the root of Activity in man. The very name
of God in the Old Testament, which was the scrip-
ture of the Jews, implies the Trinity. The first
verse of the bible begins: ^'In the beginning God

208 The Christian Festivals

created the heaven and the earth/' The word used
for God is EloMm, and that word is plural. In
Hebrew, as in many other ancient languages, there
are three numbers, singular, dual and plural; and
it is significant that that word is not singular and
not dual, but plural; therefore they recognized at
least a threefold God. Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai
writes: ''In Elohim are three degrees, and each
degree by itself alone; and yet notwithstanding they
are all one, and joined together in One, and can-
not be divided from each other." There we have
the doctrine of the Trinity many centuries before
Christ. The Assyrians and Phoenicians believed in
a Trinity; Ann, Ea and Bel were their names. Lao-
Tse, the great Chinese philosopher, taught that
Tao, the eternal reason, produced One; One pro-
duced Two; Two produced Three, and the Three
produced all things. Orpheus, the great Greek
Teacher, told his disciples that all things were made
by One Godhead in three Names, and that this God
is all. Philo Judaeus also constantly speaks of God
as a Trinity in Unity.

The ancient Mexicans and Peruvians recognized a
three-fold Deity — Three Persons with one heart and
one will. The Druids worshipped a Triple God.
Taulac, Fan, and Mollac. I have already mentioned
that the Scandinavians had a different kind of
Trinity, the Father, Mother and Son, Odin, Freya,
and Thor, corresponding to Osiris, Isis, and Horus
in Egypt. It has been supposed that the Christian
teaching was derived in that respect from that of
Egypt, because in some of the early Christian docu-
ments the function assigned to the Holy Spirit is
that of the divine Mother. For example, in the

Trinitv Sundav 209

apocryphal gospel of the Hebrews we find that
Christ is made to speak of "My Mother the Holy
Spirit." The Ophites represented the Holy Spirit
as the first woman, the mother of all living. And
it is on record that in the reign of Trajan, one
Alcibides brought to Rome a manuscript in which
the Holy Ghost is described as feminine.

In Northern Buddhism we hear of the Trinity of
Amitabha, Avalokiteshvara, and Manjushri. In
Southern Buddhism the idea of a Deity has entirely
disappeared, but a sort of echo or reflection of it
persists in the constant mention of Buddha, Dharma,
Sangha.

The fact is that I\ranifestation is always a trip-
licity. God shows Himself in three aspects, in three
fundamental modes, as three essential qualities, as
discharging: three primary functions. So difficult is
it to explain these that the very words which I have
just used are heretical according to one of the
Councils of the Church, for it was decided that it
was not rif?ht to say that the Three Persons of the
Trinity are merely Three Aspects. Yet we must use
human words when we are speaking of these divine
mysteries, and to speak of them as Aspects is per-
haps as near the fact as we can come. We can
understand in a very much smaller way how a man
may have different aspects. The same man may be
husband, father, master in relation to his wife, his
children, his servants, and yet he is one and the
same man. In somewhat the same way as that, God
is the Creator, the Preserver and the Liberator, and
yet always one and the same God. Father of our
spirits, Protector of our lives. Source of our activi-
ties, and yet our innermost Self; a mystery, but

210 The Christian Festivals

nevertheless an eternal truth. Those who develop
clairvoyant facultj^ cannot indeed see God, for no
man hath seen God at any time in His fullness; but
they can see three streams of force coming down
from above, and they can follow the action of these
streams; so that if they were not taught this doc-
trine of the Trinity they would have to assume it,
or something very like it, to account for what they
unquestionably see.

We may know something of God by His reflection
in man, for we remember that God made man in
His own image. That does not mean, as some have
thought, that the physical body of man bears re-
semblance to some supposed body of God ; but it does
mean that man — not his body, but himself, the spirit,
the soul — is in the likeness of God, threefold in
aspect and in action,-«ven as God is threefold. It
will be seen that an attempt has been made in our
diagram to indicate this.

The finest sermon that has ever been written on
this doctrine of the Trinity is the Athanasian Creed.
That is a document given to us alike in the prayer-
books of the Roman Church and of the Anglican
Church, and if we read it and study it carefully
we shall see that it is beautifully and literally true
in most of its statements. Many people have con-
demned it, but only because they did not under-
stand it. That is vei*y often the secret of the rabid
condemnation and criticism which is so common in
the world; we do not understand, and so we con-
demn, which is silly. Especially ought we to be
careful of anything like rash condemnation when
we are dealing with these higher matters which
none can fully comprehend.

^rinitp Sunday 211

I readily admit that this dogma is too high for
us to grasp, because it belongs to what we call the
higher planes. It needs the full divine conscious-
ness to understand that which is divine. Everyone
of us has that divine consciousness, but it is as yet
but very partially unfolded. The whole of the path
which lies before us is the path of the unfolding of
the divine within ourselves, and when that develop-
ment is ended we shall know even as now we are
known; but until that time it is inevitable that, when
we deal with higher levels like this, all that we say
must be imperfect, must be inaccurate, because our
understanding of those higher levels is as yet utterly
insufficient. But at least we can see something of
what is meant. The facts are to some extent veri-
fiable. We do see that in the world we have force
(spirit, if we like to call it so), matter and
phenomena. Think of a jewel for example. There
is in it a force which has made the matter take that
particular type of form; there is the matter which
has been moulded by the force, and there is the
stone, the phenomenon, the result of the moulding
of the matter. We find this everywhere. If we
examine the qualities of matter, we shall find that
they are three — inertia, motion, and rhj^hm — three
qualities eveiywhere in everything. All manifesta-
tion takes that form — the active, the passive, and the
result of their interaction; the Father, the Mother,
and the Word or expression.

In the Christian Trinity we have not that group
of Father, Mother, and Son; the Father and Mother
are merged together in the first Person of the Trinity.
C ' Father-Mother spin a web," as another scripture
tells us.) The Substance there is combined with,

212 The Christian Festivals

merged in the Father; the Offspring, the Word or
Expression, is called the Son; while the Potency
which proceeds from the former through the latter,
and denotes Deity in the dynamic or active (as dis-
tinguished from the static or passive) mode is called
the Holy Spirit, and makes the Third Person, and
so it is sometimes called the Light of the Logos, or
the Arm of the Lord.

When we speak of God our meaning is perhaps
a little more precise than that of the ordinary Chris-
tian. He holds a belief in a God Who is omni-
present, omniscient, Who is far away beyond all
possible spheres, and includes all within Himself,
and yet he often regards that God from a very
limited and personal point of view. The Jews (and
influenced by them, most unfortunately, the early
Christians) regarded Him as a cruel God, as an
angry and jealous God. We are gradually rising
out of all this, but even yet people hold Him to be
strangely limited, and regard Him as being able to
break His own laws in answer to their request. Also
they regard Him as not knowing what is best for
them unless they explain it to Him; they seem to
think He needs to have His attention attracted to
the fact that so-and-so is in ill-health and they want
him to get well; they think that their particular
and private sins need to be forgiven. They are con-
stantly bringing all sorts of little personal and pri-
vate matters to His attention, and telling Him what
to do about them. That comes from the fact that
they are confounding several quite different ideas, so
that the conception of God in the mind of the
average uneducated Christian is a bundle of nebulous
contradictions.

Trinitv Sunday 213

We have already seen that the mighty Solar
Logos represents to us all that we mean by the title
God. Out of Himself He has called this wondrous
system into being. Through it He manifests Him-
self in such matter as we can see, yet at the same
time He exists above it and outside it. At what
stupendous elevation His full consciousness abides
we know not, nor can we know its true nature as it
shows itself there. But when He puts Himself
down into such conditions as are within our reach,
His manifestation is ever threefold, and that is why
all religions image Him as a Trinity. Three, yet
fundamentally One; Three Persons, yet one God
showing Himself in those three Aspects. Three to
us, looking at Them from below, because Their func-
tions are different; one to Him, because He knows
Them to be but facets of Himself. So the Trinity
with which we are concerning ourselves is the
Trinity of the Solar Logos.

No words that we can use can accurately repre-
sent the relation one to another of these Aspects or
Persons. Both those words are defective in expres-
sion. Person is derived from the Latin persona^
from sona, sound, and pe7\ through — the mask
through which the sound passes. " It was the mask
worn by the Roman actor; instead of having himself
painted and prepared to represent a particular char-
acter, the actor in Roman plays just fitted a mask
over his face. Often the same man had to take
several parts in the one play, and to represent those
different characters he would put on a mask appro-
priate to each and change his clothes to correspond.
That mask was called the persoria; and thus the
word came to mean the character he was represent-

214 The Christian Festivals

ing at the time. So we speak of the Trinity as
being three Persons; but neither the word Person
nor Aspect is wholly satisfactory. We cannot expect
to understand exactly so great a mystery, but we
can see quite enough to show that we have here not
a ridiculous idea, but a great and basic truth; and
as we understand something of the meaning of the
Trinity, above and below (in the unknown and un-
seen worlds, and in the worlds down here which we
think we know) what was before merely a hard un-
intelligible dogma becomes a living and most illumin-
ative truth. Only by the existence of the Trinity
in man is human evolution intelligible, for we see
how man evolves first the life of the intellect, and
then the life of the Christ. On that fact mysticism
is based, and our sure hope that we shall know God.
Thus have the Saints taught, and as we tread the
Path thc}^ show, we find that their testimony is
true.

CHAPTER XII

CORPUS CHRISTI

Corpus Christi means the body of Christ, and this
is the day set apart for the especial celebration of
the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist — a
day upon which we express our gratitude to our dear
Lord for providing us with this wondrous means of
grace. As we have already seen, the Sacrament was
founded on Maundy Thursday; but as that day
comes in the midst of Holy Week, when the Church
is occupied in following the last events of her gospel
drama to its culmination in the Crucifixion and
Resurrection, it seems to have been felt in the
Middle Ages that due justice could not then be done
to a feast so great and glorious as that of the
Blessed Sacrament should be. They have in the
Roman Church a system of the transference of fes-
tivals when they fall inconveniently; if, for example,
some Saint's Day should come within the octave
of Easter, it would be altogether ignored at the
time, but they would keep it on the first free day
after the Easter festivities were over. It is not
exactly that which is done in the case of Maundy
Thursday, for that is duly kept by a high festal
celebration in the morning, though it is not possible
to give it the octave which is assuredly its due. But
as soon as that part of the Church's year which is
symbolical of the course of Initiation is over, and
we are free to devote our thought to other matters
without breaking its sequence, the question of the
postponed full celebration of the founding of the

215

216 The Christian Festivals

most holy Sacrament is taken up again, and the first
Thursday after Trinity Sunday is devoted to it.
We in the Liberal Catholic Church are enthusias-
tically in favour of any observance which will help
to bring home to our people the glory, the dignity
and the usefulness of this greatest of the sacraments,
so we most gladly keep this day in addition to
Maundy Thursday.

I suppose that most Christians look upon the Holy
Eucharist as an act of worship and as a means of
obtaining benefit. It is both of these, but it is also
much more ; and I think that in celebrating this great
festival in its honour we should try to understand
what it is, what it means to us, what it can do for
us, and what we can do by its means. It is:

1. A symbol to remind us of the descent of the
Second Person of the Blessed Trinity into matter,
and also of the sacrifice of the World-Teacher.

2. A ready and beautiful means of thanks and
worship.

3. A channel of help and stimulus for those who
are present, more especially if they communicate.

4. An opportunity of work for God and for His
world.

This last of its aspects is but little understood, so
I wish especially to emphasize it. There has been
a vast amount of amazingly acrid controversy with
regard to this great and wonderful subject. I sup-
pose, perhaps, as much theological hatred has
centred round the various opinions as to what the
Blessed Sacrament really is as about any subject
in the whole range of theology, and that is saying
a srood deal. There has been a vast amount of

Corpus Christi 2t7

argument as to what is meant by the Real Presence
of the Christ, what is meant by the great doctrine
of Transubstantiation, and whether that or the alter-
native of Consubstantiation is to be taken as the
true belief. It is difficult for us in these days to
understand why there should have been such inten-
sity of feeling about it. There may well be dif-
ferent opinions, but why because of those opinions
men should hate, anathematize and persecute one
another, is incomprehensible and amazing; but it
has been so all through the history of the Church.
It is most unfortunate; but at least we may hope
that gradually the world is evolving, and that we
are now a little more liberal, a little more ready
to allow that truth is a many-sided thing, that it
has many facets, and that it is rarely that any one
man grasps the whole of the truth upon any of
these great and involved esoteric subjects.

For those who possess the inner sight — the sight
which sees a little more than the physical eyes can
see — there is no question as to the fact of Transub-
stantiation; what it means at levels higher than any
that we can see is still unknown to us; but what it
is that happens, so far as we are able to see it, is
clear and unmistakable.

I think we might save ourselves a certain amount
of trouble and heart-burning if we realized exactly
what the words mean with which we are dealing.
Transubstantiation means the passing of the sub-
stance into some other condition altogether. Trans
signifies across. It therefore means a change of
substance, but then what is substance? That, I
think, is where there has been so serious a mistake.
There is the bread; there is the wine and the water.

218 The Christian Festivals

These are placed upon the altar, and people think
of them as substance, because we are in the habit
of using the word substance to indicate material, or
something like that; but that is not the original
signification of the word at all, nor was it the mean-
ing in the mind of those Fathers of the Church who
many centuries ago argued so vigorously about these
things. If we think of suh and stans, the two Latin
words from which our word comes, we shall see
that it means ''that which stands underneath or be-
hind anything" — that is to say, the reality of the
thing. It especially is not the outward appearance
or material of the thing; it is the reality of it.

So the Church tells us that in regard to this sacra-
ment we have to consider what is called the sub-
stance and what are called the accidents. The acci-
dents are the outer forms taken — the bread, in this
case, and the wine; the substance is the reality that
lies behind those things.

Those of us who have been studying the science
of the inner life are quite aware of the fact that
eveiy object here on the physical plane has counter-
parts in subtler forms of matter. Students have
made certain divisions of that matter; they speak
of the next type of matter above the physical
by the name of astral or starry, because it is gener-
ally bright or shining in appearance. The next
above that is the mental, because it is of that
type that the mind in man is made. I do not,
of course, mean the brain ; I mean the mind, because
that mind also is material, although people generally
are quite vague about such things. Those who
reallj^ study this inner side of nature come to see
clearly a great many things which are generally

Corpus Christi 219

left vague in men^s thought, and among others they
see that the mind of man is definitely not the man
himself, but an instrument which the man uses. It
is a material instrument, although the matter of
which it is built is much finer than that with which
we generally meet down here. Every physical
object has a counterpart in the astral world, and
also in the mental world and in other worlds above
that, reaching away up to the Divinity Who per-
meates all — indeed, Who is all, for there is nothing
v/hich is not God in some form or other. The very
matter (the dead matter as some call it) which sur-
rounds us is a manifestation of God, just as much
as we ourselves are, only in a different way, and at
a different level.

We may reasonably think of that which stands
behind the bread and the wine — their counterpart
on higher levels — as the substance, the reality of
the thing. If one who possesses the inner sight looks
at a piece of bread or the wine in a cup, he sees
behind it its counterpart in higher matter, which
is called the substance of the bread and wine. It
has always been held by the Church that at the
moment of the consecration there comes a great
change over the bread and the wine, and yet we see
them there before us obviously the same as before.
The doctrine of Transubstantiation as it is ordinarily
taught in the Roman Church implies, I think, so
far as I am able to understand it, that after the
consecration the appearance of the bread and wine
is an illusion. That is to say, our physical eyes see
bread and wine, but in reality those things are no
longer bread and wine. That is true in one sense,
but not quite in that way. It is true that the

220 The Christian Festivals

reality behind that bread, that which made it bread,
and distinguished it from any other edible, is
changed; but the physical manifestation is not
changed, and is exactly what it was before. There-
fore we are not under an illusion when we look at
that piece of bread, and say: "That is still bread."
Of course it is, on the physical plane; but the other
side of it, the counterparts (and those, remember,
are the substance which really makes it bread) have
been changed.

Let me describe what a clairvoyant sees when he
watches the consecration of the Host. It was that
very thing (many years ago now) which first
attracted my attention to this side of the sacramental
service. Having myself, after many years of ex-
ceedingly hard work, succeeded in developing these
higher senses of which I have spoken, I went to
church (which I had not done for many years, hav-
ing been far away from all such things in foreign
lands, and engaged in this other inner work), and
being now able to see, I at once perceived what I
had never seen before, although I had felt it some-
times; and that was the real change which does take
place. There at one moment lies the wafer, with a
connection running up behind it, up into the very
Deity Himself, far up beyond anything that clair-
voyance can see; but it is the line, the substance, of
ordinary bread. There is a certain line or set of
lines (we might perhaps image them as wires), a set
of lines of communication going up through the
higher planes which is identifiable as that belonging
to bread. The priest says over that wafer the word
of power: "This is My Body." The physical wafer
remains there unchanged, but the line of connection

Corpus Christi 221

behind is changed; in a moment that bundle of
wires is swept to one side, and its place is taken by
a line of living fire coming down from the Christ
Himself. And so that which was before a manifes-
tation on the physical plane of the line of communi-
cation which makes and means bread, is now a direct
manifestation and vehicle of the Christ Himself. A
line of living fire (which has been well described a-s
looking like a flash of lightning standing still) con-
nects that wafer with the Christ, and though it re-
mains bread in its accident and on the outer plane,
it is visible to the clairvoyant eye no longer as real
bread at the higher level, but as instinct with the
life of the Christ; and that is why it is called the
body of Christ. It is not the body of physical flesh
which He wore two thousand years ago in Galilee
and in Judaea; but it is really and just as abso-
lutely a body, a vehicle of the Christ, a manifesta-
tion of Him on the physical plane, as ever that body
was long ago in Palestine, so it is absolutely true to
say: ''This is My Bod3^" The suhstans is the
Christ, although the physical accident is still a
wafer; but now it is a consecrated wafer.

Just the same thing takes place with the consecra-
tion of the wine and water in the chalice. In that
case the line differs in colour and in certain other
ways, because these are manifestations of the two
sides and two natures of Christ; but they are both
of them quite truly vehicles of Him. They do re-
present the actual Presence of the Christ Who lived
in Palestine, though they certainly are not the flesh
which He then wore. I know that this statement
would be deemed inaccurate by many theologians,
but I am dealing with the observed facts of the case,

222 The Christian Festivals

and not with pious speculations. That being so, we
begin perhaps to see what a wonderful thing this
Sacrament is. We come into the direct Presence
of the Christ Himself, however little many may be
aware of it; we just as truly come into His Presence
as though we had met Him in that body of old.
We are just as literally standing before the Christ
as we might have done if we had lived in Jeru-
salem two thousand years ago. Not only may we
stand in His presence and worship Him through
that, but we may actually go further and receive Him
into ourselves.

It is a common misconception among the ignorant
to imagine that Catholics worship the bread and
the wine. Suppose we had lived in Galilee or in
Jerusalem at that time when He was on earth, and
had met the Christ and fallen at His feet and wor-
shipped Him, would it have been the physical body
that we were adoring, or would it have been
the Christ, who lived in that body? Of course it
would have been the Christ W^hom we venerated;
but the sight of the physical body would make it
much easier for many people, would bring Him
much nearer to their thought than when they wor-
ship Him as someone far away in heaven. Exactly
the same is true of the manifestation in this His
glorious Sacrament. It is not the wafer that we
worship, it is not the wine which we adore; it is
the Christ Who manifests Himself to physical sight
through that wine and that wafer. To speak of
such veneration as idolatry is the height of folly. It
would be a person of incredible ignorance who would
adore the outer manifestation. It is the reality be-
hind which we worship; but the outer manifestation

Corpus Christi 223

makes that reality easier to grasp, to understand, to
reach. Our prayers, our thoughts, our aspira-
tions, are forces which we pour out; and although
we call them spiritual forces, they are liable to the
laws of nature, just as any other force is; so
that if there is a channel provided for them, they
flow more readily and more definitely, just as elec-
tricity flows along a wire. The same vibrations
would not flow in the same way without the wire;
certainly we have another set of vibrations which
flow without wires, by means of which we have
wireless telegraphy, but that is another matter. The
ordinary electric vibrations need the wire, and flow
more readily along it.

It is just the same with our outpouring of force;
we can worship better, our aspirations will rise
better, if there is a channel along which they can
go, and that is one thing which Christ provides for
us in this His most holy Sacrament. We can take
Him into ourselves; think what that must mean.
That holy Host, which is in very truth a manifesta-
tion of the Christ, is radiating out in all directions
like a sun. We take that into us and that tremen-
dous radiation of spiritual power is within us. It
is radiating through the whole of our being, through
not only our physical body, but our higher vehicles,
and from and through us it is radiating upon all
those near to us. For some hours after we have
taken that Sacrament, we are ourselves very truly
spiritual suns. Let us see to it that we never for-
get that — that we bear in mind that grace which
has come to us, so that we shall do nothing unworthy
of the Christ Whom we bear within us. For truly
those who have communicated are Christophers, like

224 ^Iie Christian Festivals

St. Christopher who bore the Christ; they are
Christ-bearers in very truth; and let him be clean
who bears the Christ.

So we draw this wonderful thing into us, and its
tremendous vibrations are acting upon us all the
time. We have our own vibrations; our physical
bodies have certain undulations common to them; so
have our emotional vehicles, so have our mental
vehicles. All these have their regular rates, but
here among them, when we take this most holy
Sacrament, there comes an enormously higher and
stronger set of oscillations. They will act upon ours,
and they will tune them up; they will bring them
— not yet indeed to the Christ level (would that that
could be so!) ; but at least they will raise them very
much from what they were before, and for the time
we are greatly elevated and developed. But our
own vibrations have been going on within us for
years and years, and so have the almost irresistible
power of habit ; and in the end they overpower these
other more glorious oscillations, which slowly die
down as gradually the sacred Element disintegrates
within us, as does all other food; but meantime
these higher undulations have been operating upon
ours, and have most assuredly left their mark.

How much they can do for us depends veiy largely
upon our attitude. If we are receptive, if we try
to lay ourselves open to that holy influence, every
communion is a definite step on our upward path.
If we are careless and forgetful, if the thoughts of
the world, of business and pleasure, come sweeping
in upon us and overpower us — I do not say that we
shall not be influenced, but we shall be less influenced
than we should otherwise have been. And so we

Corpus Chrisa 225

see that what Christ can do for us depends on
what we are prepared and willing and ready to let
Him do. He stands always there; He knocks; as
He said Himself, He stands at the door of the
human heart and knocks, and He waits for admit-
tance; but He never forces His way in. It is for
us to receive, and He is always ready to give — is
indeed always giving, if we will but be always in a
state to receive.

Let us try, therefore, to realize what this great
and wonderful Sacrament means; then we shall
understand why a great festival is kept in honour
of it and in gratitude for it. Then we shall truly
join in the celebration of Corpus Christi, the body
of Christ, because we shall know something at least
of what is meant by that body of Christ, and how
in His great lovingkindness and goodness He has
provided for us this easy means of drawing near to
Him, and of becoming one wdth Him.

Evidentl}^ there is much for us to gain in taking
part in this sublime service; yet even that is not
the principal object of the ceremony. It offers us
an opportunity not only of personal advancement
but of altruistic work. We become a channel for
His mighty force, not primarily for ourselves, but
in order that we may help the progress of our fellow-
men. This wonderful outpouring of divine power
has been made possible by a skilfully arranged co-
operation. First, the priest blew a kind of gigantic
bubble at the Asperges, because the Angel of the
Eucharist desired to erect a thought-form inside
which the divine force could be stored, might accu-
mulate until it could be directed and used. But to
do this the Angel must have a fleld already puri-

226 The Christian Festivals

fied from worldly thought, and this the priest makes
for him; and he must have material for his struc-
ture, and that is provided for him by our outpour-
ing of devotion and affection during the service. So
the great eucharistic edifice is gradually built by
the Angel; and inside that edifice the priest (by the
second censing) makes a kind of insulated chamber
or casket round the sacred elements, cutting them
off from the rest of the church, just as he had tem-
porarily cut off the church from the world outside.
Within that innermost casket the priest begins a
sort of tube which is the actual channel for the force ;
and inside that tube takes place the change at the
moment of consecration of which I have already
written.

The Christ Himself pours out the power; in order
that He may do that easily and with the least exer-
tion, leaving the greatest possible amount of the
force to be used for its real purpose, the Angel of
the Presence by the actual transubstantiation makes
the line of fire along which He can pour it. The
priest, however, by pushing up his tube and so pre-
paring a channel has made it possible for the Angel
to do that. There are many electrical experiments
which must be performed in a vacuum; and in that
case it is of course necessary to make the vacuum
first. So in this case the tube must be made before
that especial line of communication can be inserted
in it. But the priest could not make that tube
unless he had first made a properly isolated casket
from which to push upwards, and so he has per-
formed the isolation of the elements. The people
have assisted the priest, and have supplied tjie
material for the edifice through which the force is

Corpus Chris ti 227

distributed when it has been poured down. Thus
we see that all have taken their due part in the
somewhat complicated process which produces so
magnificent a result.

This process is followed in detail in the first
volume of this series, Tlfie Science of the Sacraments,
in which will be found many illustrations and dia-
grams intended to help in making its action compre-
hensible. It is important that our students should
grasp this idea that all the greater divine services
are meant primarily to benefit the world at large,
and are for those who take part in them first of all
an opportunity for useful work and only secondarily
a means of grace.

We are now at the end of the first division of the
Church's year. We have followed the great Mystery-
Drama of Initiation as typified by the life of the
Christ from its inception to its close; we have cele-
brated the glorious mystery of the Holy Trinity and
the wondrous Sacrament of the Love of Christ. Now
we com^e to that second half of the year which is
devoted mainly to putting into practice the lessons
that we have learnt, to pouring out upon our brethren
the power which we have developed within our-
selves. To help us in our efforts by making them
more precise and definite, we have in that later part
of the year assigned to each Sunday some special
intent which it seemed to us desirable to emphasize,
composing or adapting a collect and selecting an
epistle and a gospel more or less appropriate to
that subject. Towards the end of this book some
addresses enlarging upon a few of these intents will
be given; but I should like first to comment upon
certain festivals which we find that the Church has

228 ^he Christian Festivals

prescribed, not directly connected with the Mystery-
Drama, but nevertheless of considerable importance.
Among them will be found several feasts of our
Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the holy Angels
and of various saints. We will begin with the feasts
of the Blessed Virgin.

CHAPTEE XIII

FEASTS OF OUR LADY

There is a vast amount of misconception connected
with the subject of our Lady, the Blessed Virgin
Mary, and also a great deal of ignorant pre-
judice about it. The Roman and Greek Churches
hold her name in deep reverence, although many of
their members know but little of the real meaning
of the beautiful and poetic symbolism connected
with that name. The Church of England has cur-
tailed somewhat the reverence paid to her, while
those Christians who do not belong to her com-
munion usually hold that it is idolatrous to
worship a woman — an attitude of mind which is
merely the result of narrowness and ignorance.

If we want really to understand the truth in these
matters, we must begin by freeing our minds alto-
gether from prejudice; and the first point to realize
is that no one ever has worshipped a woman (or a
man either) in the sense in which the rabid pro-
testant means the w^ord. He is inca])able of compre-
hending— he does not want to comprehend — the
Catholic attitude towards our Lady or the saints. We
who are students, however, must adopt a fairer
position than that. Let us quote from The Catholic
Encyclopedia (article Worship) what may be taken
as an approved and authoritative statement of the
Roman view on the subject:

"There are several degrees of worship; if it is
addressed directly to God, it is superior, absolute,
supreme worship, or worship of adoration, or, ac-

229

230 ^he Christian Festivals

cording to the consecrated theological term, a
worship of latria* This sovereign worship is due to
God alone; addressed to a creature it would become
idolatry.

''When worship is addressed only indirectly to
God — that is, when its object is the veneration of
martyrs, of angels, or of saints, it is a subordinate
worship dependent on the first, and relative, in so
far as it honours the creatures of God for their
peculiar relations with Him; it is designated by
theologians as the worship of duliaf\ a term denot-
ing servitude, and implying, when used to signify
our worship of distinguished servants of God, that
their service to Him is their title to our veneration.

''As the Blessed Virgin has a separate and abso-
lutely supereminent rank among the saints, the wor-
ship paid to her is called hyperduUa. In accordance
with these principles it will readily be understood
that a certain worship may be offered even to inani-
mate objects, such as the relics of a martyr, the
cross of Christ, the crown of thorns, or even the
statue or picture of a saint. There is here no con-
fusion or danger of idolatry, for this worship is sub-
ordinate or dependent. The relic of the saint is
venerated because of the link which united it with
the person who is adored or venerated; while the
statue or picture is regarded as having a conven-
tional relation to a person who has a right to our
homage — as being a symbol which reminds us of that
person.''

'This word is an amphibrach. Accentuate the second syllable, pronouncing
it exactly like the English word "try."

^ Again an amphibrach. Accentuate the second f;yllable, i^ronouncinsr it like
the English "lie." The first syllable is pronounced like the English word
"do."

Feasts of our Ladv 231

That seems to me to make the whole matter admir-
ably clear, and to present a correct and defensible
attitude. Much confusion has arisen from the trans-
lation of those three Greek words, with their delicate
shades of meaning, by the one English word worship.
I suggest that among ourselves and in our literature
we make the distinction clearer by translating only
latreiaX as worship; donleia might be rendered as
reverence or veneration, and hyperdcndeia as deep
reverence. But the point for us to bear in mind is
that no instructed person has ever anywhere or at
any time confused such worship or reverence as may
duly and properly be offered to all great and holy
beings with that higher worship which may be given
to God alone. Let there be no mistake about that
fact.

Much nonsense has been talked about idolatry,
chiefly by people who are too anxious to force their
own beliefs upon others to have either time or in-
clination to try to understand the point of view of
wiser and more tolerant thinkers. If they knew
enough of etymology to be aware that the word idol
means an image or representation, they might per-
haps ask themselves of what this thing is an image,
and whether it is not that reality behind which these
much-maligned savages are worshipping, instead of
the wood and stone about which they prate so glibly.
The image, the picture, the cross, the lingam of the
Saivite, the sacred book of the Sikh — all these things
are symbols; not in themselves objects of worship,
but reverenced by those who understand, precisely
because they are intended to remind us of some aspect

tHere the true Greek spelling is given ; the Encyclopedia uses the mediasTal
Latin,

232 The Christian Festivals

of God, and to turn our thoughts to Him, In India
these aspects are called by many different names, and
the missionary makes haste to revile the Hindu as a
polytheist; yet the coolie who works in his garden
could tell him that there is but one God, and that
all these are but aspects of Him, lines of approach
to Him, divided and materialized in order to bring
infinity a little nearer to the grasp of our very
finite minds.

The bloodthirsty elemental Jehovah whom the
Jews worshipped at an early and undeveloped period
of their history as a nation was always clamouring
for exclusive devotion: ''Thou shalt have none other
gods but me." He openly acknowledged himself as
jealous, revengeful and unjust, visiting the sins of
the fathers upon the children, and generally behav-
ing like a savage oriental despot of the worst type.
He is obviously a mere tribal deity, one amongst
many, nervously anxious lest any of his unfortunate
followers should desert him, and transfer to one of
his rivals part of the horrible tribute of the blood
of rams and oxen which his obscene appetite de-
manded. How different from this revolting entity is
the loving Father of Whom the Christ tells us, the
one true God Who said through another of His mani-
festations: ''All true worship comes to Me, through
whatsoever name it may be offered"; and again:
"By whatsoever path men approach Me, along that
path do I meet them; for the paths by which men
come from every side are Mine."

There is nothing but God; and for whomsoever
we feel reverence, adoration, love, it is to the God
within that person, the God manifesting through
him (however partially) that that reverence, adora-

Feasts of our Ladp 233

tion or love is offered. '^Many sheep I have which
are not of this fold; them also will I bring, and
they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one
fold, and one shepherd."

Having thus endeavoured to rise above the miasma
of ignorance and bigotry into the purer air of
justice and comprehension, let us in that spirit ap-
proach the consideration of the beautiful and won-
derful manifestation of the divine power and love
which is enshrined within the name of our Lady,
the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I do not think that anyone with our western
education finds it easy to understand the wealth of
symbolism which is used in oriental religions; and
people forget that Christianity is an oriental reli-
gion, just as much as Buddhism, Hinduism or
Zoroastrianism. The Christ took a Jewish body —
an oriental body; and those to whom He spoke had
the oriental methods of thought, and not ours at
all. They have a wonderful and most elaborate
method of symbolism in all these religions, and they
take great delight in their symbols; they weave them
in and out and combine them, and treat them beauti-
fully in poetry and in art. But our tendency is to-
wards what we call practicality, and we are apt to
materialize all these ideas, and often greatly degrade
them in consequence.

Let us never forget that our religion comes
from the East, and that if we want to understand
it, we must look at it first of all as an oriental
would look at it, and not apply our modern scien-
tific theories until we are able to see how they fit
in. They can be made to fit in, but unless we know
how, we are likely to make shipwreck of the whole

234 The Christian Festivals

thing, and we run a serious risk of assuming that
the people who hold the allegory know nothing at
all and are hopelessly wrong. They are not wrong
at all. Those beautiful old myths convey the mean-
ing, without necessarily putting the cold scientific
facts before those who have not developed their
minds sufficiently to grasp them in that form. That
was well understood in the early Church.

There is always much more behind these beauti-
ful and poetical thoughts of the men of old than
most people believe. It is foolish to be filled with
ignorant prejudice; it is better by far to try to
understand. Whatever in religion anywhere has
been beautiful and helpful to man has always be-
hind it a real truth. It is for us to disinter that
truth; it is for us to clear away the crust of the
ages and to let the truth shine forth.

That is true with regard to this beautiful glyph
of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There are three
separate ideas involved in our thought of her — ideas
which have been confused, degraded, materialized,
until in the form in which the story is now held, it
has become impossible for an^^ thinking man. But
that is not so if we analyse it and understand its
real meaning.

The three ideas are:

1. The IMother of the disciple Jesus ; what she
was and what she afterwards became.

2. The sea of virgin matter, the Great Deep,
the waters over the face of which the Spirit
of God moved.

3. The feminine Aspect of the Deity.

Let us consider these three ideas separately.

Feasts of our Ladij 235

THE MOTHEE OF JESUS

It must be understood that the disciple Jesus was
born precisely as other men are born. The story of
the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin,
of her overshadowing by the Holy Ghost, and of
the Virgin Birth — all that group of ideas refers to
the myth, to the symbol; it has a real meaning and
a beautiful interpretation, as I shall presently try to
show, but it is not concerned with the physical
body of the disciple Jesus. The mother of that
physical body was a Jewish lady of noble birth, but,
if tradition is to be believed, of no great wealth.
We need not think of Joseph (who, remember, was
also of the seed of David) as a carpenter, because
that is part of the symbolism, and not of the his-
tory. In that symbolism Joseph is the guardian of
the Blessed Virgin — of the soul in man. He repre-
sents the mind; and because the mind is not the
creator of the soul, but only its furnisher and its
decorator, Joseph is not a mason, like the Great
Architect of the Universe, but a carpenter. We
need not think of our Lord as working in a car-
penter's shop; that is simply an instance of the
confusion and m.aterialization introduced by those
who do not understand the symbolism.

The mother of Jesus, then, was a noblewoman of
Judaea, a descendant of the royal house of David.
Truly she who was chosen for so high an honour
must have been pure and true and of flawless char-
acter— a great saint; for none but such could have
given birth to so pure, so wonderful, so ^glorious a
body. A saintly and a godly life she led ; one of ter-
rible suffering, yet with' wondrous consolations. We

\

236 The Christian Festivals

know but little of its details; we glimpse it only oc-
casionally in the scant contemporary narrative; but
it was a life which it will do us good to image to our-
selves, an example for which we may well thank
God. It carried her far along the upward path —
far enough to make possible a curious and beautiful
later development, which I must now explain.

Students of the inner life know that when man
has reached the end of the purely human part of
his evolution — when the next step will lift him into
a kingdom as definitely above humanity as man is
above the animal kingdom — several lines of growth
lie open before him, and it is left to him to choose
which he will take. Occasionally, too, there are
conditions under which this choice may be to some
extent anticipated. This is not the place to discuss
the alternatives; let it suffice here to say that one
of the possibilities is to become a great Angel or
messenger of God — to join the deva evolution, as an
Indian would put it. And this was the line which
our Blessed Lady chose, when she reached the level
at which a human birth was no longer necessary
for her.

Vast numbers of Angels have never been human,
because their evolution has come along another line,
but there are Angels who have been men, who at a
certain stage of this development have chosen to
follow the Angel line; and a very glorious, magni-
ficent and helpful line it is. So she, who two thou-
sand years ago bore the body of Jesus in order that
it might later on be taken by the Christ, is now
a mighty Spirit.

Much beautiful enthusiasm and devotion has ail
through the centuries been p'oured out at her feet;

Feasts of our Ladp 237

thousands upon thousands of monks and nuns, thou-
sands upon thousands of suffering men and women,
have come before her and poured out their sorrows
and have prayed to her that she in turn would
present their petitions to her Son. This last prayer
is a misconception, because He Who is the Eternal
Son of God and at the same time the Christ within
every one of us, needs none to intercede with Him
for us. He knows before we speak far better than
we what is best for us. "We are in Him, and through
Him were we made, and without Him was not any-
thing made which was made, neither we nor the
smallest speck of dust in all the universe.

Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.

One does not pray to great Angels for interces-
sion if one understands, because one knows that He
in Whom all Angels live and move and have their
being, is already doing for everyone of us the very
best that can be done. But just as one may ask
help from a human friend in the flesh — as, for
example, one may ask of him the encouragement of
his thought — so may one ask aid from the same
human friend when he has cast aside his robe of
flesh; and in the same way one may ask the same
kind of help from these great Spirits at their higher
level.

There is nothing unreasonable or unscientific in
this. I myself have often had letters from
people who know that I have studied these matters,
telling me that at such-and-such a time they would be
going through some difficulty — a surgical operation
perhaps, or some other specially trying experience
— and asking me to think of them at that moment,
and to send them helpful thought. Naturallj^ I

238 ^he Christian Festivals

always do it. And as I know there can be no effect
without a cause, and in exactly the same way there
can be no due cause which does not produce its
effect, I know that if I (or if any of you) take the
trouble to fix our thought upon any one in sorrow
or difficulty, and try to send him helpful ideas, try
to put before him something which will strengthen
him in his troubles, we may be perfectly sure that
that thought-force does produce its effect, that it
goes and reacts upon the person. To what extent
it will help him depends on his receptivity, upon
the strength of the thought, and upon various other
circumstances; but that some effect will be produced
we TUdLj be absolutely sure. And so when we send a
request for kindly, helpful, strengthening thought
to one of these great ones — whether it be a saint
now in the flesh, or one who has laid aside that flesh,
or one of the great Angels — assuredly that help will
come to us, and will strengthen us.

That is the case with our Blessed Lady; yet there
are those who would have us believe that all that
splendid good feeling, all that love and uttermost
devotion, have run to waste and been useless. In-
credible as it appears to us who are used to wider
and saner thought, I really think that in their curious
ignorance the more rabid enemies of the Church
actually believe this. They even go further still,
and say that it is wicked and blasphemous for a
man to feel that love and devotion towards her!
It sounds like madness, but I am afraid it is
true that there are such people. Of course the
truth is that no devotion, no love, no good feel-
ing has ever been wrong, to whomsoever it has
been sent. It may sometimes have been wrongly

Feasts of our Ladv 239

directed. Devotion and affection have often been
lavished on unworthy objects, but it has not
been a wrong act on the part of the lavisher — only
a lack of discrimination ; always it has been good for
liim that he should pour himself out in love, and
develop his soul thereby.

, Remember that if we love any person, it is the God
within that person that we are loving ; the God with-
in us recognizes the God within him; deep calleth
unto deep, and the recognition of the Godhead is
bliss. The lover often sees in the beloved qualities
which no one else can discern; but those good quali-
ties are there in latency, because the Spirit of God
is within every one of us; and the earnest belief
and strong affection of the lover tend to call
those latent qualities into manifestation. He who
idealizes another tends to make that other what he
thinks him to be.

Could we suppose then that all the wonderful
and beautiful devotion addressed to our Lady has
been wasted? Any man who thinks so must under-
stand the divine economy very poorly. No true and
holy feeling has ever been wasted since time began,
or ever will be; for God, Who knows us all so well,
arranges that the least touch of devotion, the least
feeling of comprehension, the least thought of wor-
ship, shall always be received, shall always work out
to its fullest possibility, and shall always bring its
response from Him. In this case in His loving-
kindness He has appointed the Mother of Jesus as
a mighty Angel to receive those prayers — to be a
channel for them, to accept that devotion, and to
forward it to Him. Therefore the reverence offered
to her, and the love poured out at her feet have

240 The Christian Festivals

never for one moment been wasted; they have
brought their result, they have done their work.

If we try to understand it, we shall see how very
far grander is that reality than the barren concep-
tion that all high thought, all worship, all praise
not directed through a particular Name must inevit-
ably go astray. Why should God limit Himself by
our mistakes as to names? He looks at the heart,
not at the words. The words are conditioned by
outer circumstances — ^by the birthplace of the
speaker, for example. We are Christians because
we happen to be born in England, or America, or
some other Christian land; not because we have
examined and compared all religions, and deliber-
ately chosen Christianity. We are Christians be-
cause it was the faith amidst which we found our-
selves, and so we accepted it. Did it ever occur to
you that if we had been born as natives of India
we should have been Hindus or Muhammadans just
as naturally, and should have poured out our devo-
tion to God under the name of Shiva, Krishna, Allah,
instead of the name of Christ? If we had been born
in Ceylon or Burma we should have been ardent
Buddhists. What do these local considerations mat-
ter to God? It is under His law of perfect justice,
under His scheme of evolution, that one of His
creatures is bom in England and another in India
or Ceylon, according to his needs and his deserts.
When devotion is poured out by any man, God re-
ceives it through the channel which He has ap-
pointed for that man, and so everyone alike is satis-
fied and justice is done. It would be a gross and
a glaring injustice if any honest devotion should be
thrown aside or rejected. Never has the least mite

Feasts of our Ladp 241

of it been rejected. God's ways are other than ours,
and His grasp of these things is wider and greater
than ours. As Faber wrote:

For we make His love too narrow

By false limits of our own,
And we magnify His strictness

With a zeal He will not own.

The stories that we hear about our Blessed Lady
may well have a basis of fact. We hear of her ap-
pearing in various places to various people — to
Joan of Arc, for example. It is exceedingly prob-
able that she did — that this great Angel did so show
herself or himself (for there is nothing that we can
call sex at such a height as that). There is no
antecedent improbability in this, and it is most un-
likely that all the people who testify to these appari-
tions were deluded or hypnotized, or under some
strange error. All students know that earnest
thought upon any subject produces strong thought-
forms, which are very near the edge of visibility;
many thousands of such thought-forms have been
made of our Lady, and she has never failed to re-
spond, and most thoroughly and effectually to fill
them. It is certain that out of all these some would
under favourable circumstances become physically
visible; and even when they remain astral, sensitive
people are often able to see them. The terrible and
unexampled strain and stress of the war made many
people sensitive to psychic impressions who were
never so before. Thus it happens that we hear many
stories of apparitions just now, and visions or mani-
festations of our Blessed Lady take a prominent
place among them.

242 The Christian Festivals

It is said, too, that wonderful cures have been
produced at Lourdes and other places by faith in
her. Probably they have. There is nothing in the
least unscientific, there is nothing outside reason
and common sense in supposing that. We know per-
fectly well that a strong downpouring of mesmeric
force will produce certain cures; we have no know-
ledge as to the limit of such power, but it is well to
remember that all these things have truth behind
them.

THE VIRGIN MATTER

God in the Absolute is eternally One; but God in
manifestation is twain — life and substance, spirit
and matter, or, as science would say, force and
matter. When Christ, alone-born* of the Father,
springs forth from His bosom, and looks back upon
that which remains. He sees as it were a veil
thrown over it — a veil to which the philosophers of
ancient India gave the name of Mulaprakriti, the
root of matter; not matter as we know it, but the
potential essence of matter*; not space, but the with-
in of space; that from which all proceeds, the con-
taining element of Deity, of which space is a
manifestation.

But that veil of matter also is God; it is just as
much part of God as is the Spirit which acts upon
it. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters of space; but the waters of space are divine
in their making just as much as the spirit that
moves upon them, because there is nothing but God
anywhere. This is the original substance under-
lying that whereof all things are made. That in

♦ See The Science of the Sacraments, p. 16.

Feasts of our Ladg 243

ancient philosophy is the Great Deep, and then, be-
cause it surrounds and contains all things, so is it
the heavenly wisdom which encircles and embraces
all. For that in speech the philosophers used always
the feminine pronoun; they speak of that Great
Deep — of the eternal wisdom— as ''she." She is
thus the soul, macroscosmic and microcosmic, for
what is true above is also true below.

These ideas are somewhat complex and foreign to
our modern thought, but if we want to understand
an oriental religion we must give ourselves the
trouble to grasp this oriental way of looking at
things. And so we realize how it is that she, this
other aspect of the Deity, is spoken of as Mother,
Daughter and Spouse of God. Daughter, because
she also comes forth from the same Eternal Father;
Spouse, because through the action of the Holy
Ghost upon the virgin matter the birth of the Christ
into the world takes place; Mother, because through
matter alone is that evolution possible which brings
the Christ-spirit to birth in man. But this subject
belbngs rather to our future theological volume, in
which we shall try to explain it more fully.

Above and beyond the Solar Trinity of which we
usually think there is the First Trinity of all, formed
when out of what seems to us nothing there came the
First Manifestation. For in that First and highest
of all Trinities God the Father is the Absolute —
what we may with all reverence call the Static Mode
of the Deity. From that leaps forth the Christ,
the Second Aspect truly of the Godhead and yet the
First Manifestation, for God the Father is "seen of

244 The Christian Festivals

Then through the interaction of the Deity in His
next Aspect — that of the Holy Ghost, Who repre-
sents the Dynamic Mode of the Deity (Will in
action) — from that essence, that root of all matter,
come all the worlds and all the further manifesta-
tions at lower levels, of whatever kind they may be,
including even the Holy Trinity of our own solar
system.

The Mother-Aspect of Deity thus manifests as the
ffither of space — not the ether which conveys vibra-
tions of light to our eyes, for that is a physical
thing; but the aether of space, which in occult
chemistry we call koilon,^ without which no evolu-
tion could be, and yet it is virgin and unaffected
after all the evolution has passed.

Into that koilon or finer aether, the Christ, the
energizing Logos or Word of God, breathes the
breath of life, and in breathing it He makes those
bubbles of which all that we call matter is built
(because matter is not the koilon, but the absence
of koilon) ; and so when He draws in that mighty
Breath the bubbles cease to be. The aether is abso-
lutely unchanged; it is as it was before — virgin —
after the birth of matter from it; it is quite un-
stirred by all that has happened; and because of
this our Lady is hailed as immaculate.

She is thus the essence of the great sea of matter,
and so she is symbolized as Aphrodite, the Sea-
Queen, and as Mary, the Star of the Sea, and in
pictures she is always dressed in the blue of the
sea and of the sky. Because it is only by means
of our passage through matter that we evolve, she
is also to us Isis the Initiator, the Virgin Mother

* See Occult Chetnutry, by Annie Besaut and C. W. Leaclbeater, p. 110

Feasts of our Ladi) 245

of whom the Christ in us is born, the causal body,
the soul in man, the Mother of God in Whom the
divine Spirit unfolds itself within us, for the symbol
of the womb is the same as the Cup of the Holy
Grail. She is represented as Eve, descending into
matter and generation; as Mary Magdalene while in
unnatural union with matter, and then when she
rises clear of matter, once more as Mary the Queen
of heaven, assumed into life eternal.

While we are in the lower stage of our evolution,
and subject to the dominion of matter, she is to us
truly the Mater Dolorosa — the sorrowful Mother, or
the Mother of Sorrows, because all our sorrows and
troubles come to us through our contact with
matter ; but as soon as we conquer matter, so soon as
for us the triangle can never again be obscured by
the square, then she is for us our Lady of Victory,
the glory of the Church triumphant, the woman
clothed with the sun, and having the moon under
her feet, and around her head a crown of twelve
stars.

If we look at it along this line of symbolism, the
doctrine of the final drawing up of the root of
matter into the Absolute, so that God may be all in
all, is what is typified by the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. The great festivals of the
Church are all meant to show us stage by stage what
it is that happens in the work of the Great Archi-
tect of the Universe, in the evolution of the cosmos
as well as in the development of man. In studying
these mysteries we must never forget the rule of
the philosophers of old: ''As above, so below." So
that whatever we see taking place in that mighty
world-evolution we shall also find repeated at his

246 The Christian Festivals

far lower level in the growth of man; and con-
versely, if we are able to study the methods of
the unfoldment of the God in man down here, we
shall find that study of invaluable assistance in help-
ing us towards a comprehension of that infinitely
more glorious development which is God's will for
the universe as a whole. And, learning thus, we
must not fail to put the lesson into practice. As a
poet has written:

I must become Queen Marj,
And birth to God must give,

If I in heavenly blessedness
For evermore would Jive.

Note also, for the better understanding of the
symbolism, that Christ the Spirit, being deific in
nature, ascends by His own power and volition, even
as of His own will He sprang forth in the beginning
from the bosom of the Father; but Mary the soul is
assumed, drawn up by the will of Him Who is at
the same time her Father and her Son; for the first
Adam (said St. Paul) was made a living soul, but
the last Adam, the Christ, is Himself a quickening
or life-giving Spirit. So in following Adam, who
t3T)ifies the mind, all die; but in Christ all are
made alive.

THE FEMININE ASPECT OF THE DEITY.
We must realize also that our highest conception
of Deity combines all that is best of the characteris-
tics of the two sexes. God, containing everything
within Himself, cannot be spoken of as exclusively
male or female. He cannot but have many aspects,
and in this Christian religion there has been a great
tendency to forget that cardinal fact of manifold
manifestation. In the perfection of the Godhead all

Feasts of our Lady 247

that is most beautiful, all that is most glorious in
human character is shown forth. In that character
we have two sets of qualities, some of which we
attach in our thought chiefly to the male or the more
positive side of man, and others which we attach
more generally in our thought to the feminine side.
For example, strength, wisdom, scientific direction,
and that destroying power which is symbolized in
the Hindu religion by Shiva — all that we usually re-
gard as masculine. But love, beauty, gentleness,
harmony, tenderness, we consider as more especially
feminine. Yet all these characteristics are equally
envisaged for us in the Deity, and it is natural that
men should have separated those two aspects of
Him, and should have thought of Him as Father-
IMother. In all the great religions of the world
until quite recently those two aspects have been
brought out; so that their followers recognized not
only gods but also goddesses. In India we have
Parvati, Uma, Sarasvati; in Greece we had Hera,
Aphrodite, Demeter, Pallas Athena; in Egypt, Isis
and Nephthys; in China, Kwan-yin; in Rome, Juno,
Venus, Minerva, Ceres, Diana. In yet other reli-
gions we find Astarte or Ashtaroth, the queen of
heaven. Images of Isis with the Infant Horus in
her arms are exactly like those of the Blessed Virgin
carrying the infant Jesus ; indeed, it is said that the
old Egyptian statues are stiU in use in several Chris-
tian churches to-day.

Ignorant Christians accuse those old religions of
polytheism — of the worship of many gods. That is
simply a misunderstanding of what is meant. All
instructed people have always known that there is
but one God; but they have also known that that

248 The Christian Festivals

One God manifests Himself in divers manners, and
in every respect as much and as fully through the
feminine as through the masculine body — through
what is called the negative side of life as well as
through the positive.

We who have been brought up in the Christian
ideas sometimes find it a little difficult to realize
that we have narrowed down the teaching of the
Christ so much that in many cases what we now
hold is only a travesty of what He originally taught.
We have been brought up, as far as religion goes,
non-philosophically. We have never learnt to ap-
preciate the value of comparative religion and com-
parative mythology. Those who have been studying
it for many years find that it throws a flood of light
on many points which are otherwise incomprehen-
sible. We see that if all be God, and if there be no-
thing but God, then matter is God as well as spirit,
and there is a feminine and a passive side or aspect
to the Deity as well as a masculine side, and yet that
God is One, and there is no duplication of any sort
in Him.

All that is, is God; but we may see Him
through iwdjij differently coloured glasses and from
many different points of view. We may see Him
as the mighty Spirit informing all things; but those
things which are informed — those forms — they are
no less God, for there is nothing but God. And so
we see what we may call the feminine side of the
Godhead; and just as the masculine side of the
Deity has many manifestations, so has the feminine
side man}^ manifestations. So in those earlier days
there were many gods and goddesses, each repre-
senting an aspect, and the gods had their priests,

Feasts of our Ladij 249

and the goddesses their priestesses, who took just as
important a part in religion as did the priests. But
in the last great religions, Christianity and Muham-
madanism (both coming forth from Judaism, which
ignored the feminine side), the World-Teacher has
not chosen to make that division prominent; there-
fore in Christianity and in Muhammadanism we
have the priest only, and the forces which are poured
down through the services of the Church, although
they include all the qualities, are yet so arranged,
so directed, as to run through the male form only.

In Ancient Egypt we divided those forces, because
that was the will of the World-Teacher when He
founded the Egyptian religion, so some of them ran
through the manifestation of Osiris, and some
through the manifestation of Isis. Therefore some
of them were administered by the priests of Amen-
Ra the Sun-God, and others by the priestesses of
Isis. And Isis was in every way as deeply honoured,
and considered as high in every respect as any of
the male aspects. She was the great beneficent god-
dess and mother, whose influence and love pervaded
all heaven and earth

It is time that we learnt to understand the sym*
holism of the Church — learnt to see how many-
sided it is, so that each idea which is put before us
calls up a host of useful and elevating thoughts, and
not one only. Reference has already been made to
that other line of symbols in which the different
stages in the earth-life of the Christ typify the four
great Initiations, and His Ascension represents the
fifth. Into that line also the story of our Lady
enters, for in it her Nativity represents the first
appearance of matter in connection with the ego

^50 The Christian Festivals

at his individualization, while the Annunciation
stands for what is commonly called conversion, that
first penetration of the soul by the Holy Spirit
which turns the man in the right direction, and
makes the birth of the Christ within him a neces-
sary result, when the long gestation period shall be
over. In the same scheme the Assumption means
the full and final drawing up of the ego or soul into
the monad.

If we take the other form of the symbology, that
which refers to the descent of the Christ into matter
as His birth, her Nativity is the formation of Mula-
prakriti by the leaping forth of the Second Person,
as before mentioned, wliile the Annunciation is the
First Descent of the Holy Ghost into matter. The
Holy Spirit descends and overshadows the maria, the
seas of virgin matter; the Spirit of God moved over
the face of the deep, and so the Annunciation is that
First Descent which in other phaseology we call
the First Outpouring, which brings the chemical
elements into existence. But only after a long
period of gestation is the matter prepared for the
Second Outpouring which comes from the Second
Person of the Trinity, and Christ is bom in matter,
as on Christmas Day. Later still comes the Third
Outpouring, when each man individually receives
into himself the divine spark, the ^lonad, and so the
soul or ego in man is born. But that is at a much
later stage.

In older faiths there were several presentations of
the Feminine Aspect. For the Romans, Venus typi-
fied it as love, Minerva as wisdom, Ceres as the
earth-mother, Bellona as the defender. Our Lady
does not exactly correspond to any of these, or rather

Feasts of our Ladu 251

perhaps, she includes several of them raised to a
higher plane of thought. The nearest approxima-
tion in antiquity to our conception of her is probably
the figure of Kwan~yin, the Mother of Mercy and
Knowledge, in Northern Buddhism, as promulgated
in China and Tibet. Our Lady is essentially Mary
the Mother, the type of love, devotion and pity; the
heavenly wisdom indeed, but most of all Consolatrix
Affli-ctorum, the consoler, comforter, helper of all
who are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness or any
other adversity. For not only is she a channel
through v/hich love and devotion pass to Christ, her
Son and King, but she is in turn a channel for the
outpouring of His love in response.

So that, both from the point of view of symbolism
and from that of fact, we have good reason to keep
the festivals of our blessed Lady, and to rejoice in
and be thankful for the wisdom and the love that
have provided for us this line of approach — thank-
ful to Christ Who gives this, and to our Lady
through whom it is given. So we too can join in
the world-v/ide chorus of praise, and repeat the
words of the Angel Gabriel: ''Hail, Mary, full of
grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among
women. ' '

Ave Maria! thou whose name
All but adoring love may daim,

Yet may we reach thy shrine;
For He, thy Son, our Leader, vows
To crown all lowly, lofty brows

With love and joy like thine.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FESTIVAL OF THE ANGELS

THE HIGHEE ANGELS

The festival of the holy Angels is usually called
Michaelmas Day, after St. Michael, the great Chief
of the Angels; but really we celebrate on that occa-
sion not only that glorious Prince, but the whole
angelic Host; we thank and praise God for them and
for all the wonderful help which they give to us.
There is a great deal of misunderstanding about the
holy Angels. The idea of them is so beautiful, so
poetical, that people often think of it as if it were
only poetry. They talk about these great and glori-
ous beings somewhat in the same way as they speak
about fairy legends. It is all very beautiful, but
it is not quite real to them.

Nothing could be further from the truth than any
such idea as that. The radiant glory of the holy
Angels is far more real, and not less, than the things
of this physical plane. I suppose that sounds strange,
overstrained, even half -ridiculous ; but it is not so at
all. These things of the physical plane which we
touch and feel are real enough to us now, while we
live among them; but we have only to raise oar
consciousness just a little into a higher world, and
at once all this gross reality is real no longer, but
is airier than the fabric of a dream, and we under-
stand then that the things which are seen here on
the physical plane are rightly described as temporal,
but the things which are unseen down here are far
more nearly eternal. Those are the realities, and not

252

Festival of the Angels 253

these. The spirit is the real thing, not this body.
The body is perfectly real while it lasts, but that is
only for a few years; the spirit is a divine spark,
and lives for ever.

So the holy Angels are in no way less real than
you and I. If we are to institute comparisons be-
tween mere vehicles, theirs are much more real and
more lasting than ours. Everything which is
material had a beginning and will have an end; but
that which rises far above the merely physical lasts
indefinitely longer, and is infinitely more glorious.
If we wish to understand these higher things, we
must first of all get that idea well into our heads,
that the higher we can raise our consciousness the
nearer we get to the true reality. There is One
only Who is eternal beyond all eternity, and that is
God alone; but these His grander, brighter, nobler
creatures are far longer-lived, far more vivid, than
the consciousness which we have down here; so we
must try to understand something of this great
Angel kingdom.

Anyone who has studied the discoveries of modern
science knows that there is a definite line of evolu-
tion coming up through the different kingdoms of
nature. The mineral kingdom is generally accounted
the lowest; some students know that there are others
preceding even that in evolution, but we need not go
into that matter at the moment. The mineral
kingdom gradually leads up to the beginnings of the
vegetable kingdom, and in the same way the vege-
table kingdom also leads up to the beginnings of the
animal kingdom. There are intermediate organisms
which it is difficult to assign with certainty to either
kingdom. In their earlier stages it is often impos-

254 The Christian Festivals

sible to distinguish the vegetable from the lower
animal, and in the same way there are organisms
hovering on the edge of vegetable life which are
almost mineral; so these kingdoms form a steadily-
rising sequence.

Man is usually classified as being at the head oi
the animal kingdom; but in our studies of the inner
life we count him, for certain good reasons, as a
separate kingdom. The qualifications in various
ways which he possesses differentiate him from even
the highest of the animal kingdom, though from the
animal there is a steady progress up to the human.
There is uo break in this system of evolution, and
so from the very lowest life we can lead up to our
own life. Are we then the end of everything? Is
there no life as much higher than ours as ours is
higher than the animal, as the animal is higher than
the mineral? Investigation shows us that there is
a life higher than ours — that there is a kingdom
above the human kingdom in precisely the same way
as the human is above the animal, and the animal
above the vegetable — -a kingdom higher in evolution
than our own.

In English we call it the Angel kingdom. The
philosophers of that wonderful country, India, have
studied these things for thousands of years before
any of us did, because their civilization is very much
older than our own. They know all about that
higher kingdom, and they give to its members the
name of Devas. Beva is a Sanskrit word from which
is derived our word ''divine." It is connected with
all which is high and God-] ike. The Devas are the
Shining Ones — a very natural name for men who
can see them to give to them, because all this higher

Festival of the Angels 255

world is to our world as light is to darkness. If by
chance we become able for a moment to see some-
thing of the matter of that higher world, to us it
appears as light, and if from that higher world we
look down into the matter of this, we see it as com-
parative darkness. We must realize that the Angel
kingdom is in every way as real as our own, or as
the animal kingdom which is below our own. Men
may think: "We can see the animals; why can we
not see the Angels? The animals belong to a lower
kingdom than we, but they can see us ; if they can see
something belonging to a higher kingdom, why can-
not we?"

First of all, we can. There are a great many men
who have seen members of the Angelic kingdom, al-
though the lowest matter to which they descend is
higher than this of our physical v/orld. There are
many stages and varieties of matter even down here;
we have the solid, the liquid, the gaseous. Sir Wil-
liam Crookes spoke of radiant matter — matter wliieh
he thought of as in a fourth state, higher than the
gaseous. There is matter which eludes our senses,
not because it is in any sense unreal or even imma-
terial, but because our senses are imperfect, and reach
only a small part of what we know to exist. For
example, we can see solid matter, and liquid matter
also unless it is perfectly clear; but we can rarely
see gas, or anything in a gaseous condition. There
are some gases, like chlorine, which we can see by
their colour, but usually we are aware of gas in
another way, by scent or by our feeling when breath-
ing it. That which is higher than gas is still more
beyond our physical senses, but we should be mak-
ing a vital mistake — vital, that is, to the compre-

256 The Christian Festivals

hension of things — if we suppose it to be unreal.
These Angels have bodies, and those bodies are built
of matter as ours are; only they happen to be built
of higher matter, answering only to higher vibrations.
But we also have within ourselves a body of finer
matter, a higher vehicle which can be cultivated,
and its senses developed, just as the physical senses
of a man can be developed to a much greater degree
of fineness than most of us possess.

I remember once visiting the astronomer in charge
at one of our great universities. He showed me a
number of photographs, and he said to me: "You
see in that photograph of a spectrum of a star six
lighter lines." I looked at thxit photograph, but I
could not distinguish them, and presently I mus-
tered up courage to say so to the great man. "Of
course not," he replied, "I forgot: it took me two
years to learn to see them." I had the photographs
in my hands, but my eyes were uncultivated for this
finer sight, so that I could not see what to his trained
eye was clearly visible. So even our physical senses
vary greatly according to whether they are educated
or not. The senses of our higher body can also be
trained to see things belonging to these higher
worlds. People sometimes catch a glimpse of them
when they are in an exalted condition, or in deep
vision. We read, for example, that the great saints
had visions of Angels. We must not suppose that
these men were mere hysterical dreamers; the fact
is that their higher consciousness was for the moment
opened, so that they saw what under normal condi-
tions would have remained invisible to them. We
should try to realize then that the Angels are a
great and glorious reality, and that they are close

Festival of the Angels 257

about us all the time; and yet, though belief in their
existence is to be found in every religion (it is cer-
tainly very prominent in the Catholic Faith, though
perhaps in the later sects of Christianity it has been
allowed to fall somewhat into the background) little
is really known about them.

I suppose that most people, when they think of
Angels, regard them as a host of glorious Spirits,
human in form, though usually bearing huge wings
on their shoulders, who spend their time either in
perpetual adoration before the Throne of God, or
in travelling on errands for Him, mostly connected
with the progress of the human race, or the rescue
of individuals from positions of misery or danger.
There is no particular exception to be taken to
that point of view, and it is well enough for the
general public who are not interested in exact
detail. But there is a good deal more than that
which maj^ be known with regard to this wonderful
order of beings ; and it is perhaps as well that intelli-
gent members of the Liberal Catholic Church should
be somewhat more precise in their knowledge of this
subject.

Though the Angelic kingdom is next above the
human, it is not necessarily the next stage in our
evolution. Just as not all the creatures which are
classified as belonging to the animal kingdom will
eventually become human, so not by any means all
human beings will ever join the great kingdom of
the holy Angels. All who are now human will one
day reach the end, the summit of human develop-
ment, and will become super-human; but there are
many other lines of evolution into which man may

258 The Christian Festivals

pass other than this of the angelic host. (See
Invisible Helpers, chap, xvii.)

This great Angelic kingdom has its own races, its
varied degrees of development, its different lines of
evolution, just as is the case with every other king-
dom in nature. There are Angels who do not stand
higher in evolution than some of the best of men;
and there are others whose splendour seems to us
to include all that we can image of Divinity. We
have no space in such a book as this to attempt a
detailed account, but we may note that the wording
of our Liturgy recalls to us at every eucharistic ser-
vice a ninefold classification which has been widely
accepted in the early Christian Church — that which
divides them into Angels, Archangels, Cherubim,
Seraphim, Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms,
Virtues and Powers. The Jewish arrangement,
which has also largely been adopted in the Christian
Church, divides them into seven great types, corres-
ponding to the Rays. Even the names of those
Great Ones Who stand at the head of each of these
seven types are given to us in ancient writings,
where they appear as Michael, Gabriel, Raphael,
Uriel, Chamuel, Jophiel, and Zadkiel.

In the nine-fold classification two other types are
added which are cosmic — that is to say, they extend
beyond the limits of our chain of worlds, perhaps
even beyond our solar system. To each of these types
different characteristics are assigned, and in each of
these great Orders of Angels there are many levels.
We divide our human kiingdom into various races —
the Aryan, the Mongolian, the Semitic and so on; but
we all recognize that in each of these races there are
highly developed people and people of comparatively

Festival of the Angels 259

low development. There are kings and princes and
nobility and also there are peasants; but they are
all of the same race. Just in the same way in the
Orders of the Angels there are the great leaders, and
there are others who are not so highly developed;
for the lower levels of the various Orders have astral
bodies, and are still subject to the influence of desire.
It is true that evil of intention is no longer possible
for any of the angelic host, but there are many who
in intellect and general advancement are but little
beyond ourselves.

Among the Buddhists and the Hindus we find a
great four-fold grouping which is certainly readily
distinguishable in the case of those Angels who come
most into contact with humanity. These different
classifications are by no means mutually exclusive,
but may well refer to different parts or tribes in so
vast a kingdom, or even to the same divisions looked
at from a different point of view. We shall have,
however, but a very truncated and partial idea of
this glorious kingdom if we think of its members
as always occupied either in fruitlessly praising the
Deity or in running errands connected with the
human race. The Angels are a manifestation of the
Divine Life at a certain high stage of its evolution,
and ih-Qj are primarily -concerned, just as we are,
with the business of that evolution. They are living
their own lives, and those lives are a far more
splendid epiphany of Deity than are most of
ours. No doubt they often praise God, as we
ourselves do in our churches; but just as we
try mainly to show forth our love to God by
living in the world as He would have us live,
so do they at their superior level show best their

260 The Christian Festivals

love and devotion to Him by carrying out to their
utmost that work which He has given them to do.

It would be foolish of us to think of that work as
in any way specially concerned with us, though, no
doubt, such a thought is flattering to our pride, and
fits in readily with the self-centrednass of humanity
as a whole. We shall perhaps arrive at a more
rational understanding if we think of our own
attitude towards the kingdoms below us — the animal
and the vegetable. We do not spend the whole
of our lives in thinking how we can do good to
these lower kingdoms or help on their evolution;
the average man is far more concerned in thinking
how he can make these lower creatures serve him,
and how much in one way or other he can make out
of them. Our relations with wild animals are, in
fact, of the most horrible description; and they may
well be excused if they regard us not as angels but
as devils.

Of course it would be quite unthinkable that
the angelic kingdom should endeavour in any
such ^vay to exploit us (though dead men sometimes
do) ; but w^e may well suppose that it is, on the
whole, content to go the way of its own evolution with-
out interfering unnecessarily with ours. There are
no doubt, individual cases of interference; some-
times an Angel sees a man in trouble or difficulty in
which he thinks that he can give some help, and he
promptly gives it, as we should to a wild animal.

Such occasions, liowever, must always be rare; for
we must remember that the average Angel even of
the less exalted type is, as compared with the average
man, much in the position that a College professor
would be with regard to a little child in the baby or

Festival of the Angels 261

primer class. The professor is there for the
helping of students; but the child in the primer
class must develop to a great extent, and learn
a great deal from other teachers before he will
be able to take advantage of the help that the pro-
fessor can best give. Under exceptional circum-
stances that professor might help the child through a
sum or a reading lesson; but we can all see that the
work of education as a whole is better done when
the professor attends to his own business, and leaves
the tiny child to acquire his learning through the
channels especially appointed for him at his level.

At a later stage that primer-class child will no
doubt come into touch with the professor and learn
much from him ; and in precisely the same way,
when humanity has evolved much further along its
path it will come into far closer relation with these
great angelic hosts, and such contiguity will be
greatly to its adv-antage. Something of the method
of that close union may be read by those who wish
in the book Mmiy Whence, How and Whither, in which
it is described how in a future, not far distant,,
great Angels will take a visible and leading part
in the Church services of those days, and will gather
together the devotion of the members of the congre-
gation and pour it upwards in a mighty fountain to
the feet of the Solar Deity Himself. They will also
act as the recipients and distributors of the tremen-
dous spiritual influence or grace which He in re-
sponse outpours upon these devotees.

They are doing work of that nature even now,
though somewhat less obviously. I have already
mentioned that all the devotion and all the love
which have been outpoured through many centuries

262 The Christian Festivals

at the feet of the Blessed Virgin Mary are gathered
up by her, now that she is a great Angel, and for-
warded to the Solar Deity, Who very surely accepts
and responds. In the first volume of this series.
The Science of the Sacraments, I have explained
something of the wondrous part which the Angels
play in the greatest of our Church services. Thou-
sands upon thousands of earnest Christians have for
the last twenty centuries been deriving the fullest
spiritual help and upiiftment from the Holy
Eucharist without knowing that they owe the possi-
bility of that most glorious service to the assistance
so gladly and patiently given by the holy Angels to
an uncomprehending world. They come then be-
cause they can arrange for us a certain kind of ser-
vice which without them we could not achieve, and
because they know that when a man attends such a
service and joins heartily in praise and worship, he
is in an impressionable attitude, and can be reached
and touched; good can be done to him and power
poured forth upon him.

When a man enters the church, he comes into
the presence of our Lord enthroned upon His
altar; and just because of that fact he also comes
into the presence of a great host of adoring
Angels. How much they can do for him depends
upon the extent to which he opens his heart
to their influence, and upon his physical, moral
and mental condition. Some of us feel such ui-
fiuences easily and keenly, because we have sharpened
our senses in that particular direction; others
become aware of them only vaguely and uncertainly;
but increasing numbers of people are becoming con-
scious of them. ]\Ian is growing by slow degrees tu

Festival of the Angels 263

be the kind of creature that Angels can help, and
as he advances further into their sphere he will be
more cognizant of their gracious response and
interest.

We have an unequalled opportunity to try to see
them, or at least to sense their presence for our-
selves, because although I think all Christians are
more or less vaguely aware that the Angels attend
upon certain services of the Church in order to help,
we have the advantage of a little more definite in-
formation than is usually given. We may know
exactly at what point these great ones arrive, and
therefore we may be watching for them, and I
should strongly advise that we should all of us
make it a practice to try to be aware of such pre-
sences. There is a vast amount of help and strength
and comfort to be obtained from them, and if we
know at what time they may be expected we are
readily able to attune our minds to obtain that
benefit. The presence of the Angels should not be
for us vague, uncertain or hypothetical; we should
make up our minds that it is a perfectly
definite reality, and although we may not all
actually be able to see it, any more than we can see
an electric current, yet it is just as real as an electric
current, and its effects may be appreciated by those
who are capable of sensing them.

Great hosts of Angels attend the celebration of the
Eucharist. Why? Most of them because they
enjoy the wonderful vibrations which are radiated
forth from the consecrated Host. They also enjoy
the vibrations of devotion and love which we send
up in our adoration, and they come to bathe in this
not only because they enjoy it, but because they

264 The Christian Festivals

know it to be good for them, to be of great advan-
tage to their evolution. But besides those there are
other and greater Angels who come in order to take
a definite part in the work. The Holy Eucharist
is not celebrated for our sake, however much benefit
we may derive from it. We come not in order to
receive, but chiefly in order to give. We come be-
cause this is the method which Christ has ordained
for the radiation of spiritual force abroad upon His
world, and we come here to help in this distribution
of divine energy. Incidentally we get a great deal
for ourselves, but that is not our main object.

The Angels come — those greater ones — in order to
make all this possible for us. At the end of the
Asperges we ask that God shall send His Angel to
help us and be with us. In answer to that call comes
the Angel of the Eucharist who builds the edifice out
of our devotion and our feeling, and out of the
energy that is thrown out by the musical part of the
service. Greater than, he are the Angels who come
when we send out the call for them just before the
Sanctus — when the priest or the bishop, having
called upon us to lift up our hearts and to give
thanks unto God, proceeds further to say that with
the holy Angels (enumerating the different kinds) we
take our part. That is the traditional call to them
and the very melody to which we sing, ' ' Lift up your
hearts," "We lift them up unto the Lord" is almost
two thousand years old, if not quite. It goes back
to the very earliest ages in which such music was
used in the Church.

They come and take part in the service; the work
which they do, when the celebrant tells them for
whom we wish to offer this service, was explained in

Festival of the Angels 265

the previous volume. The Directing Angel, the
Angel of the First Ray, apportions to the different
representatives of the other Rays the block of force
which they shall take away and apply to the object
named. We have some objects which are always
•enumerated — George our King, our Presiding
Bishop, our bishops, clergy and laity — and each of
these definitely receives something. Of course we
must not think for a moment that it is only we who
have such privileges. In all Christian Churches
where the link of the apostolic succession has been
made, the same arrangement exists; indeed we must
not think of it as confined to Christianity at all.
All religions exist for the helping of the world, and
in almost all of them some provision is made for
the reception and distribution of spiritual force.
This work of the Angels is made easier when the
congregation understands what is being done and
assists intelligently by thought. Therefore we should
make it our business to know and to comprehend, so
that we may help the Angels in the work which they
have to do.

These glorious Spirits are of so many different
kinds that it is scarcely feasible to attempt any
description of them. Many of them are of human
form, though usually of far more than human stature.
Their colours, their radiance, their iridescence are
wonderful beyond all words; they look upon us with
glorious starry eyes, filled with eternal peace. In
them the aura is so much larger, so far more mag-
nificent than with us, that from a distance often
they appear mere spheres of flashing light. I have
never seen them with wings ; indeed, I think that
the wings worn by the angels of art and of poetry

^66 ^he Christian Festivals

must always be symbolical of their various powers,
as they so evidently are in some of the scriptural
descriptions. This supposition is further borne out
by the fact that even in the biblical story, when the
Angel of the Lord comes to visit His people (such
as Abraham, Peter and others) he is usually taken
for a man, which would hardly be possible if he
wore a pair of gigantic wings.

The aura of the great Angel is far more exten-
sive and flexible than ours; he expresses himself
simultaneously in thought-forms of marvellously
beautiful shapes, in coruscations of glorious colour
and in a wealth of loveliest music. For him a smile
of greeting would be a wondrous brightening of
colour and a rush of harmonious sound; a speech
delivered by one of these valiant Sons of God would
be a magnificent oratorio; a conversation between
two great Angels would be like a mighty fugue, in
which motif answered to motif, echoing in bewilder-
ing cataracts of harmony, accompanied by
kaleidoscopic changes of glowing hues, and scintil-
lations of rainbow light. There are Angels who
live in and express themselves by what to us are per-
fumes and fragrances—though to use such words
seems to degrade, to materialize the exquisite emana-
tions in which they revel so joyously.

There are always Angels hovering round the
Reserved Host, but when the more vivid glow begins
at the Elevation or Benediction we see a curious
and most beautiful addition to the company, for a
number of very small Angels circle about it. Most
members of the angelic host are at least of ordi-
nary human size, and many of them are much
greater than men ; but here is a tribe of tiny cherubs

Festival of the Angels 267

quite like some of those painted by Titian or Michael
Angelo, except that I have never seen any of them
with wings. They are small and wonderfully perfect
creatures — not at all unlike certain classes of nature-
spirits, except that they are far more radiant and
undoubtedly angelic in type ; child-like and yet some-
how very, very old. They give an impression of
eternal shining which it is impossible to put into
v\^ords; they are like birds of paradise in the splen-
dour of their colour, beings of living light ; and they
wheel or hover in an attitude of adoration, twining
in and out as they move, making a kind of hollow
sphere about the Host — a sphere perhaps twenty
feet in diameter. I do not think that any of them
come so low as to have an astral body; most of
them can be distinguished only by the sight of the
causal body, which of course means that their
densest vehicle is built of matter belonging to the
mental world. They are of great value in the service,
for they reflect and transmute some of the mighty
forces employed, and call out great volumes of
others; so a swirl of indescribable activity is always
going on within and around their sphere.

There is also another kind of these tiny creatures
to whom the title of Angel is less appropriate. They
are equally graceful and beautiful in their way, but
in reality they belong to the kingdom of the elves or
nature spirits. They do not express themselves by
means of perfumes, but they live by and on such
emanations, and so are always to be found where
fragrance is being disseminated. There are many
varieties, some feeding upon coarse and loathsome
odours, and others only upon those which are deli-
cate and refined. Among them are a few types

268 The Christian Festivals

which are especially attracted by the smell of incense,
and are always to be found where it is burnt. When
the priest censes the altar and thus creates a mag-
netic field, he encloses within it a number of these
delightful little elves, and they absorb a great deal
of the energy which is accumulated there, and be-
come valuable agents in its distribution at the proper
time.

The Greek word aggelos means a messenger; but
sometimes in our Scripture the English word
''angel" is used in quite a different sense, where to
our thinking the word ''spirit" would perhaps be
more appropriate. An instance occurs in the Gospel
for St. Michael's Day, when the Christ is reported
as saying of the pure in heart who have turned away
from evil and become as little children, that "in
heaven their angels do always behold the face of My
Father Who is in heaven." Here, if He is cor-
rectly reported. He can only be speaking of the
spirit in the man, which because of the man's purity
is able to recognize its unity with the Great Spirit^
and thus ever to behold the face of its Father.

We must also hold in affectionate remembrance the
great class of thought-angels, of whom so many are
specially connected with the services of the Church.
The greatest of all of these is the mighty Angel of
the Presence, who comes every time the Holy
Eucharist is celebrated, and consummates for us that
tremendous sacrifice; for when, fulfilling the duties
of his holy office, the priest pronounces the words of
power, that Angel flashes forth, and by his touch of
fire performs that wondrous transmutation which is
at the same time the greatest of all miracles and the
rnost natural, touching and intimate expression of the

Festival of the Angels 269

Divine Love. He is in very truth a thought-form
of the Lord Christ Himself, a projection of that
wondrous Consciousness.

There is no greater joy for His holy Angels
than to follow the lightning of that thought, and to
bathe in that river of life, that ineffable outpouring
of spiritual influence. And so it comes that at every
Eucharist, at every Benediction Service, the congre-
gation is far more numerous than we can see with
physical eyes; and when we celebrate these holy
mysteries, the squadrons of the heavenly host gather
about us here and now. Another manifestation of
the power of the thought-angel occurs in connection
with the Sacrament of Baptism. The priest makes
a sort of cuirass of light before and behind the
infant; and when in this way the thought-form is
built, the power from on high pours down into it,
and the priest then carefully seals it. This thought-
form, thus ensouled by the outpouring of divine
power, becames a veritable guardian angel for the
child, and greatly assists the ego in gaining control
of his new vehicles.

But it is not only by the powers from on high
that these helpful thought-forms can be made. At
an infinitely lower level we ourselves can, and do,
constantly make useful thought-forms which are, to
all intents and purposes, guardian angels for those
to whom they are sent. Whenever we pour out a
strong thought of love, we thereby manufacture a
form which is projected towards the person of whom
we have thought. A constant succession of such
thoughts will surround our friends with a veritable
cloud of helpful influence; and such a cloud almost,
always attracts the attention of some passing Angel,

270 The Christian Festivals

who will then interest himself in its distribution and
application to the needs of the person concerned.

This is only one of many ways in which even the
lower orders of the angelic hosts are ready to assist
us as soon as we show ourselves worthy of such
assistance — or (which is perhaps the same thing in
other words) as soon as we are capable of receiving
it. In connection with our earth the Angels fill many
and varied positions. I have written elsewhere of
those who inhabit and guard a certain sacred moun-
tain in Ireland;* there are many other similarly
guarded spots in various parts of the world, and at
such points the Angel liosts are very near for those
who have eyes to see or hearts to feel. We are
familiar with the idea expressed in our hymn:
"All nature is to God a glorious garment rare;"
but perhaps it has not yet occurred to us that every
glorious landscape is itself the garment of an Angel,
who is part of God. Those who comprehend the
message of nature, those who are truly in sympathy
with her, will understand this wondrous truth ; in
ancient Greece they knew it well, but in these later
days men have become very material, and few are
those who can truly feel and see.

THE LOWER ANGELS

The class of Angel who ensouls a landscape, a
wood or moor, though by no means so highly
developed as some of those of whom I have already
spoken, is yet in certain ways a type further removed
from humanity and less easy for us to comprehend.
Our knowledge of this mighty kingdom next above
our own is as yet imperfect in so many respects that
we cannot even say what stages of evolution lie
either behind or before this most interesting division

*The Hidden Side of Things, toI. i, p. 136.

Festival of the Angels 271

of the heavenly host; we do not know how a par-
ticular Angel is appointed to take charge of this
spot or of that; nor are we certain by whom or on
what principle the limits of his jurisdiction are
defined.

This at least we know — that this wondrous and
majestic universe is part of the manifestation of the
Deity on the physical plane; and yet at the same
time each planet is the body of a great planetary
Angel, who lives his life in it and expresses himself
through it as we do through our bodies, though we
can have but little idea of the methods or possi-
bilities of such life. We know only that to him the
spherical form is absolutely the perfect form, that
to breast the ether in his splendid onward sweep is
in some way the keenest of all joys, that all the
beauty and vividness and vibrant happiness of all
the thousand forms of life in the world are but a
partial expression of his bliss. The life of his world
is part of him, just as he in turn is part of the Solar
Deity Himself. This Angel of the Earth is a great
intelligence, and in many ways he manifests through
us who are a part of him. Music, for example, is
one of his faculties, so that when we play or sing
we are helping him to express himself, and thus
giving pleasure to him; for music, as I have said
before, is a sort of entity or congeries of entities, and
when we use it we are bringing into play another
side of Nature, an additional set of forces, and
associating with us some of the Music-Angels.

j\Iost of us have as yet no conscious contact with
the great Earth-Angel, though it is by no means im-
possible that that may be one of the glories lying
before us in the future. When life was simpler and

272 The Christian Festivals

more natural, men drew nearer to a comprehension
of him; at least they became aware of some of his
thought-forms, and half -materialized them; and they
definitely attained companionship with some of the
wood or river spirits who bear to him the same re-
lationship that he in turn bears to the Solar Deity.
They differ much as men do; some are of exalted
type, earnest workers in the cause of evolution, while
others are by no means incapable of manifesting
personal desire and other quite ordinary human char-
acteristics; but their life is so radically different
from ours that we are in no position even to attempt
anything in the nature of criticism of their actions.
They animate or ensoul or brood over (all these
expressions are applicable, yet none is fully satis-
factory) a section of the earth's surface — sometimes
an extensive landscape or a great forest, sometimes
only a field, a spinney or a garden. Some seem com-
paratively indifferent to this physical garment of
theirs; others are keenly alive to anything which
affects it in the slightest degree. Some obviously
dislike all human intrusion, and even take steps to
prevent it; others welcome certain friends, but adopt
a reserved attitude towards mankind in general.
Those who ensoul beautiful views very definitely ap-
preciate and enjoy the admiration of the artistic;
and almost all show great surprise and delight when
they meet a human being who can see them, and
understand them and converse with them. Though
the higher orders of the Angels reach far beyond any
level that the bulk of humanity has yet attained or
even imagined, these lower orders are, as I have said,
not unlike developed men; and indeed it is often
by no means easy at the first glance to distinguish

Festival of the Angels 273

between the lower members of the angelic kingdom
and the most advanced of the nature-spirits.

The nature-spirits stand in relation to the Angels
just as the animal kingdom stands in relation to the
human, and the dividing line between the two is
individualization, in the one case as in the other;
but a much higher development of intelligence and
reasoning power is gained before individualization
in the case of the less material evolution, and thus
it happens that we frequently encounter the pheno-
menon of etheric or astral entities fully equal to
man in intelligence and resourcefulness, but without
any special ethical feeling or sense of responsibility.

These more tenuous beings constitute a line of
evolution parallel to our own, and consequently every
stage with which we are familiar in physical life is
represented among them, from the amorphous pro-
tozoon, in which consciousness is dawning, to the
great Archangel who directs a vast department of
terrestrial activity. The number of types is all but
infinite — a fact that accounts for the wide difference
between the reports of casual observers. For the
existence of these non-human entities is widely known
in the world, and numbers of people have seen them;
indeed, it was only the ignorant scepticism of the
last century tliat introduced disbelief in their
reality.

In old Greek stories we read frequently of en-
counters between human beings and these minor
]:)owers of nature, and these latter are sometimes
represented as materializing temporary physical
bodies, always in human form, and assuming paren-
tal responsibilities. Modern scepticism scoffs at
such legends, but there are many facts in Nature

274 The Christian Festivals

which lie outside our very limited experience.
There were plenty of instances in classical days;
and it is unwise to decide that, because a thing does
not happen in our crassly materialistic civilization,
it can never have occurred under more natural and
picturesque conditions. It is unsafe as well as pre-
sumptuous to pronounce the bombastic formula:
''What I know not is not knowledge."

Perhaps I shall best attain my object if I describe
two experiences of my own with these Lords of the
wood and field; in the first case with one who was
decidedly on the angelic side of the dividing line,
and in the second case with some highly developed
nature-spirits. Once upon a time ni}^ friends car-
ried me off for a day in the open air — a day to be
spent in a tract of country which, though not far
from a great city, is left in its wild and primitive
condition as a National Reserve for the enjoyment
of the people. On Saturday and Sunday it is often
quite crowded, but during the rest of the week it
is a delightful umbrageous solitude. In the centre
of it is a wooded valley through which runs a river;
and as soon as we entered that valley the sensitive
members of our party at once became conscious of
a brooding influence, by no means unpleasant, but
distinctly unusual. Tracing this to its source, we
found the whole valley to be under the care of an
Angel who has decided views as to what he intends
to mal^e of it, and is showing laudable determina-
tion and unwearied patience in achieving his ends.
He regards the place as a sacred charge, and aims
at so magnetizing it that it shall produce an effect
upon every sensitive person who passes through it.
He has stretched a web of etheric matter from crest

Festival of the Angels 275

to crest, to isolate his valley from the outer world;
and inside it he endeavours to keep up something
like a higher moral temperature, much as we pre-
serve a higher physical temperature in the palm-
house at Kew.

His theory is that people visit the great Park at
a time of relaxation, when their minds are free
from the strain of business, and that they are there-
fore less imprisoned within the shell of selfishness,
and more open to the higher influences. He argues
that if he thus catches men at the favourable
moment, the gentle yet steady upward pressure,
which his atmosphere is applying all the while as
they saunter along his valley or row on his river,
must produce some effect — an effect which will of
course increase in direct ratio to the impressibility
of those who are subjected to it, but can hardly be
entirely absent except in the most hardened cases.
This aura of his is already instantly perceptible to a
psychic, but he considers his work yet scarcely be-
gun, and is enthusiastic as to the condition he hopes
to be able to induce by fifty or a hundred years of
strenuous labour and concentration.

It was of intense interest to us to observe the
methods which he had been employing in his pre-
paration, and the success vv^hich he has so far
achieved; it may not however prove easy to explain
a line of activity so remote from ordinary human
conception. It is comprehensible that every living
creature, every fox, rabbit or weasel is a fragment of
the divine life in manifestation, and (though not yet
individualized and capable of reincarnation) is dur-
ing its physical existence just as much a soul, a
separate consciousness, as any one of us. We must

276 The Christian Festivals

extend this idea to include the smaller forms of
animal life, and the trees and bushes of our wood.
But each of these lives is naturally independent and
self-centred, moving in its own way, so that such
force as they radiate flows indifferently in all direc-
tions, and its various streams probably cancel one
another. By his steady pressure the Angel of the
Valley has changed all this; without in any way
coercing or interfering with his trees and his animals
he has brought them gradually to be capable of a
certain co-operation, or amenable to a common in-
fluence. Normally each creature thinks and acts for
itself just as before; but at any moment, when the
Angel wishes it, he can send out a stream to which
all the lives instantly adapt themselves; they lie
parallel like reeds combed out by a current, and all
the force of the valley is at his disposal, acting as
a unit. He spoke sadly, almost impatiently, of the
type of human being who visited his valley in
crowds on Sundays, declaring that although they
professed to belong to a higher kingdom, they were
of less actual use to him in the generation of energy
than the very rabbits under their feet.

It happened that one of our party was a bishop,
wearing a pectoral cross, which is a highly-mag-
netized jewel containing gems specially linked with
the Heads of the Seven Rays — an object of immense
value as a centre for the distribution of force for
the helping of men. In this the Angel was keenly
interested, asking to be allowed to examine it
closely. He fully understood its object and its
power; and when, later in the day, another member
of the party encountered him alone, he enquired
whether it would be possible that a similar arrange-

Festival of the Angels 277

ment of magnetized and linked gems could be pro-
cured for him, explaining in how many ways it would
be of assistance to him in his work. Of course we
very gladly agreed to provide what he wished; there
was no difficulty in doing so, for the merest speck
of the appropriate jewel is sufficient to make the
necessary radiating centre, so that the total cost of
such a talisman is only a few shillings. As soon as
it was prepared, a deputation visited his valley
once more to present it to him; he was greatly
pleased, and requested us to bury it in the ground
for him in a central spot which he selected with great
care, being especially particular as to what trees
grew in the immediate neighbourhood. When this
was done, he called together a large number of the
higher types of nature-spirits (probably superin-
tendents under him) and held a beautiful little dedi-
cation ceremony, in which they Avere put en i^apport
with the amulet, and its use was fully explained to
them. The jewels were caused to glow until they
were surrounded by a great globe of living light;
and each spirit in turn came and bathed himself in
that splendour until he was thoroughly permeated
with it, charged with it as though he were a battery.

The Angel was quite disproportionately grateful
for this small service which we rendered him, and
for our strong interest in his work. We were
naturally anxious to find other ways of helping him,
but it was not easy to see what else we could do.
Presently, however, we discovered a method by
which we could be of great use to him, and give
him really valuable assistance in his work — assist-
ance which, if continued by our successors, will very
materially shorten the time required to get his valley

278 The Christian Festivals

into the condition which he desires. That method is
to allot to him a portion of the outpouring of divine
force which is evoked at the celebration of the Holy
Eucharist. We found that when this was done he
was immensely strengthened and encouraged, and
the influx of this entirely different type of energy
seemed actually to inspire him with new ideas in
connection with his work. Where the mighty magic
of the eucharistic service is understood, a list is
kept of the people most in need of help, and of the
objects to which this spiritual force can most use-
fully be devoted. The most efficient aid which we
can give to our friend, the Angel of the Valley, is
to include him in our list; that is now done, so he
is receiving a daily dole of divine grace which re-
doubles his power for good, and incidentally has the
effect of drawing us into closer relation with him.

Here surely is an instance of the giving of mutual
help, of co-operation between two evolutions, which
is interesting not only in itself, but as a forecasting
of the future; a suggestion of the wider possibili-
ties which may dawn upon the world when we under-
stand God's plan a little better.

The other experience to which I have referred took
place in India. India is a very wonderful country;
and even the most unlearned there possess infor-
mation which we in the West are only now begin-
ning graduallj^ to acquire. Many Indians know
from observation that any great old tree possesses a
strong temporary individuality, capable on occasion
of exteriorizing itself into human form; they know
also that where a grove of such trees has been undis-
turbed for many years there is usually a much
greater entity of a quite different type, of whom

Festival of the Angels 279

they speak as the presiding Angel or deity of the
grove — probably what is called a kdnuideva. They
would tell us that such a being rules over the less
developed tree-spirits (though usually without inter-
fering with them in any way), and receives from
them such worship as they are capable of giving. He
is also quite willing to absorb any devotion offered
to him by human beings; he even sometimes tries to
appropriate what is not especially intended for him.

As illustrating this I remember a most interest-
ing spectacle of which I was personally a witness.
European readers may perhaps not be aware
that in India it is customary to have long
performances of a character unknown to the
"West in modern days, though perhaps not
entirely unparalleled in mediaeval times — ^per-
formances half-musical, half-conversational — dis-
tinctly religious in their intention, yet not without
homely touches of wit and quaint topical allusions.
Some well known religious story is recited, with
rigid adherence to the traditional incidents, but with
plenty of room for the talent of the performer to
manifest itself in the dress in which he clothes it,
in the local allusions and songs' which he works into
his entertainment. For it is half an entertainment
and half a religious function; members of the audi-
ence are deeply affected, and indeed frequently pass
into a condition of intense and half-abstracted devo-
tion which is almost a trance, and seem for the time
unimpressible by external affairs. Such a perform-
ance (it is called in the south of India a harikatha)
often lasts for four or five hours — sometimes
even all night, I am told ; and those who attend seem

'(^80 The Christian Festivals

capable of enjoying a sort of orgy of devotion for
quite an indefinite period.

Looked at by a clairvoyant, a ceremony of this
sort veils itself in rolling clouds of blue, intermingled
sometimes with other unexpected colours; but it
naturally differs completely from a definite act or
offering of devotion aimed at a particular deity.
Perhaps it is that very difference, that vagueness
and lack of direction, which offers his opportunity
to the local deity; for in the case to which I am re-
ferring there was in attendance an entity of no
mean power, the ruler of a neighbouring grove, who
sat on the roof of the building and absorbed those
clouds of devotion as a sponge sucks up water.

This ''ruler of the wood" had materialized into
human form, gigantic but well-proportioned, and
rather feminine than masculine in appearance; his
(or her) body was obviously normally astral, but
had drav^n into itself for the occasion so much of
etheric matter that it was only just barely beyond
the limit of ordinary physical sight; I think it must
have been perceptible to anyone even slightly sensi-
tive. If the form was human, the expression as-
suredly was not; it was weird and incalculably
strange; no single feature was noticeably unhuman,
yet the effect of the whole was removed by unthink-
able spaces from sane everyday life. One felt one-
self rapt away from the twentieth century after
Christ into the twentieth century before Him, into
the unfamiliar and the uncanny, the incomprehen-
sible— perhaps even the terrible. Not that the
wood-queen was ill-disposed; on the contrary, she
wore an expression of almost fatuous satisfaction,
which somehow irresistibly suggested the purring o*f

Festival of the Angels 2Sl

a cat; yet she was remote with the remoteness of
another dimension from the humanity whose eman-
ations she absorbed with an enjoyment which seemed
somehow glutinous. So far as was perceptible, she
gave nothing in return for all that she absorbed,
but more and more as the entertainment went on
she overshadowed the performer, strengthening him
yet possessing him, until even in outward appearance
he grew strangely, awfully, like her, and one wonders
how it was that the audience did not notice the
change that came over him and the unnatural ten-
sion in the atmosphere.

Another entity of similar type was present — an
entity just as unmistakably but indefinably male as
the former was female; a creature of less power than
the lady, and apparently not on the best of terms
with her — distinctly jealous of her at any rate, and
desirous to deflect some or all of the devotion in
his own direction. Without actually moving he con-
trived to give a strong impression of an endeavour
to oust her — of trying to shoulder her away, just
as one small boy might try to push another in some
childish game. He was entirely unsuccessful, for
the lady had attached herself to the gathering like
a limpet to a rock, and was not to be dispossessed.

Earnest students of these subjects, quite outside
our own ranks, are becoming familiar with the idea
that our world has a vast population normally un-
seen by us — a population of angels and nature-
spirits. Signs are not wanting that the long reign
of obscurantism is at last passing, and that con-
temptuous denial is being replaced by intelligent
enquiry with regard to such matters; and among

282 The Christian Festivals

such signs it seems to me that three recently-pub-
lished books are specially noteworthy.

The first of these is The Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries, by Dr. W. Y. Evans Wentz. This is a
remarkable and in many respects an epoch-making
book, for it is the first attempt to treat rationally
and worthily at least one section of the world-wide
belief in nature-spirits. Just twenty years earlier
Mr. Hartland published his Science of Fairy Tales,
but though he wrote sympathetically on the sub-
ject, and avowed his dissatisfaction with the theory
then current that all fairy stories were traditions
of the remnants of earlier races, he stopped short of
any definite suggestion as to the real ground of a
belief so universal. Dr. Wentz goes much further;
he has spent much time in personally collecting tes-
timony as to the living fairy faith in Scotland, Ire-
land, Wales, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany,
and as a result of his investigations he proclaims
that:

(1) Fairyland exists as a supernormal state of conscious-
ness into which men and women may enter temporarily in
dreams, trances, or in various ecstatic conditions: or for an
indefinite period at death.

(2) Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to
be the same as the intelligent forces now recognized by
psychical researchers.

The fact that Dr. Wentz is a man of science and
learning is attested by the University degrees which
he has taken in three countries; and it is gratify-
ing to find that a man of such standing has the
courage to defy the cheap sneers of the ignorant,
and to state so clearly the result of his investiga-
tions. He is to be congratulated alike on his patient
industry, his perspicacity and his valour; one can-

Festival of the Angels 283

not say to what extent he is prepared to accept
clairvoyant testimony, but at least it may possibly
interest him to hear that many of us are well ac-
quainted with his fairyland under the name of the
astral world, and that even already we know a
good deal about some of the many nations of his
fairies, though we more often call them nature-
spirits.

There are some points on which he is not fully
in accord with our own results, but we may venture
to think that, if he continues his enquiries in the
same fearless spirit, he will approximate more and
more nearly to our conclusions. He has not yet
arrived at a clear distinction between the etheric and
the astral; and perhaps he (or more probably those
whom he interrogated) may not always fully dis-
tinguish between the actions of nature-spirits and
those of dead men. For example, in dealing with
early Irish history, he regards the Tuatha-de-
Danaan as fairies, whereas our researches show them
to have been a race of men closely allied to the
ancient Greeks. But it is quite true that, because
of their splendid appearance and greater knovdedge,
they Y/ere considered as semi-divine beings, and the
traditions of them are now in the minds of the
peasantry inextricably intermingled with those of
the fairies.

He speaks quite plainly and with evident sym-
pathy of the Celtic doctrines of rebirth and of the
other world, which, as he expounds them, are simply
reincarnation and the astral life, exactly as we hold
them; and he declares that these ideas "accord
thoroughly in their essentials with modern science."
The following passage from p. 514 in his book shows

284 The Christian Festivals

that he shares with us yet another of the most
precious items of knowledge which our study has
brought to US:

An integral part of the Celtic esoteric theory of evolu-
tion is, that there have been human races like the present
human race who in past aeons of time have evolved com-
pletely out of the human plane of conscious existence into the
divine plane of conscious existence. Hence the gods are
beings vrhieh once were men, and the actual race of men
will in time become gods. Man now stands related to the
divine and invisible world in precisely the same manner that
the brute stands related to the human race. To the gods, man
is a being in a lower kingdom of evolution. According to
the complete Celtic belief, the gods can and do enter the
human world for the specific purposes of teaching men how
to advance more rapidly towards the higher kingdom. In
other words, all the Great Teachers (such as Jesus, Buddha,
Zoroaster, and many others, in different ages and among
various races, whose teachings are extant), are, according
to a belief yet held by educated and mystical Celts, divine
beings who in inconceivably past ages were men but who
are now gods, able at will to incarnate into our world, in
order to emphasize the need which exists in nature, by virtue
of the working of evolutionary laws (to which they them-
selves are still subject), for man to look forward, and so
strive to reach divinity, rather than to look backward in
evolution and thereby fall into mere animalism.

All students of the inner side of things will thank
Dr. Wentz for the care with which he has made and
recorded a most valuable series of investigations.

It is to him indirectly that we owe the second book
of our trilogy, Lore of Proserpine, for its author
(Mr. Maurice Hewlett, who is a novelist of repute)
confesses that it was only after reading the work to
which we have just referred that he was inspired
to add his modicum of personal testimony to that
which Dr. Wentz has so laboriously collected. The
direct testimony confines itself to some five or six

Festival of the Angels 285

definite encounters, though the suggestion is con-
veyed that there have been many others entirely
satisfactory to the author, but less capable of
description.

He speaks of a fairy boy whom he saw in a wood,
of a dryad, and of some other forms to which he
gives the name of oreads. These seem all to have
resembled humanity in size and general appearance,
yet to have had about them some distinctively non-
human quality. I have seen hundreds of nature-
spirits to which his descriptions would apply, yet he
seems to have had one experience that has never yet
fallen to my lot, for he records that he saw a fairy
behaving cruelly to an animal, whereas all those that
I have encountered have appeared to be on the most
friendly terms with the wild denizens of the flood
and field. Apart from the above instances, he gives
some account of several cases in which he believes
that nature-spirits inhabited human bodies — an
event which certainly does sometimes occur, perhaps
more frequently than we have hitherto suspected.
The most remarkable story in the book is called
"Quidnunc," and perhaps one may be pardoned for
feeling some uncertainty as to whether Mr. Hewlett
wishes us to take it seriously; it describes what pur-
ports to be a very inappropriate incarnation of Mer-
cury, the messenger of the old Greek gods.

In a final chapter our author tries to formulate a
theory which shall include all these experiences, and
comes in some points very near the truth. He says:

There is a chain of Being of whose top alike and bottom
we know nothing at all. What we do know is that our own
is a link in it, and we cannot generally — ^can only fitfully and
rarely — have intercourse with any other. ... Of this chain
of Being, then, of which our order is a member, the fairy

286 The Christian Festivals

world is another, and more suTjtle member, subtler in the
right sense of the word because it is not burdened with a
material envelope. Like man, like the wind, like the rose,
it has spirit; but unlike any of the lower orders (of which
man is one) it has no sensible wrappings unless deliberately
it consents to inhabit one.

With all that we can agree; but on some minor
points we are less certain. Mr. Hewlett seems to
hold that all fairies have sex, and reproduce their
species as we do, while we should think that to be
true only of a few of the lower etheric varieties.
There are still other points upon which he specu-
lates, probably rightly; but we have not as yet suffi-
cient evidence to make positive statements about
them. He evidently holds that the classical deities
of ancient Greece still exist, and may be reached.
He understands that a river, a hill, an oak-tree, a
rose-bush may be under certain circumstances an
actual entity, wherein we are fully with him; and
he believes that such an entity may sometimes
materialize in human form, and actually enter into
the closest relations with men and women.

It seems probable that the entities which I saw
at that Indian festival were of the same type as
some of those described by Mr. Hewlett. However
that may be, his book will have its use in familiariz-
ing a wide circle of readers with the idea of the
reality of faery.

The third book of the set is A Prisoner in Fairy-
land, by Mr. Algernon Blackwood. When we open
a book by that author we know that a treat lies be-
fore us, and if on inspection we find that children
figure prominently among the characters, we know
that it will be a great treat, for Mr. Blackwood's
children are always charming creations. A Prisoner

Festival of the Angels 287

in Fairyland offers us children — delightful children;
perhaps none quite so utterly lovable as Nixie in The
Education of Uncle Paul, but still young people who
soon bind themselves to us by cords of affection.
Once more fairyland is the astral world, into which
all the characters pass when they fall asleep — or
nearly all, for some are so entangled in worldly
cares that they cannot be pulled out of their physi-
cal bodies, but actually stick in the process and slip
back again! But though this story deals with fairy-
land we hear nothing of the fairies, except a few
who are personified dreams of childhood — the Dust-
man, the Tramp, the Woman of the Haystack; nor
do we even encounter the hosts of the dead. We
are invited to concentrate our attention entirely
upon the living human inhabitants of the astral
world, and the work which they do as invisible
helpers.

For the stream of Divine Love pours down ever
as the Starlight, and such of it as is not immediately
used is stored up in a Star-Cave, and all the helpers
come flying there at night to fetch it and distribute
it where it is needed, among the sick, the sorrowful,
the suffering. The whole book is a fantasia upon
this theme — a delicate fantasy such as Mr. Black-
wood so well knows how to weave, and all his char-
acters are fantasts too. They live in a world which
is and yet is not the world that we know — a world
enwrapped in a web of starlight, palpitant with mys-
tery and sympathy, with omnipresent life and love.

There is no story in the ordinary sense of the
word — no plot, no climax; yet the book is permeated
with the idea that thoughts are things, that because
of the mighty power and wide-spreading influence

288 The Christian Festivals

of thought it is the duty of every one to think beauty
and helpfulness, and to pour it out with clear intent
upon those whom we know to need it. Some are
so shut in by a shell of sordid care that it is hard
to find a way into their hearts; yet such a shell may
be penetrated if there is in it even one tiny channel
of love. We read of one who was in the bondage of
squalid anxieties, yet could be touched and helped
through her love for her flowers.

This is by no means a book for all, yet to those
who understand it will appeal very strongly. It
takes its place with the books already mentioned —
signs of the times, all three of them, showing that
popular interest is turning towards the non-material
side of life, and is gradually beginning to realize its
transcendent importance. I recommend them all to
our students.

There are Angels, too, presiding over countries
and races, brooding over them, to some extent en-
souling them, ready to take a close interest in them
and advise them if the people of the country or race
will but make themselves responsive. If there ever
comes a time when those who govern a country are
wise enough to desire the advice of its guardian
Angel, and developed enough to consult with him,
thej^ may profit greatly by his assistance.

The world seems far from such a time as yet, but
we can help to bring it nearer by adopting an intel-
ligent attitude towards the whole question, and
keeping an open mind. The worst thing that can
happen to us is to become prejudiced and hidebound,
so that we are unable to receive new ideas, and to
widen out in harmony with the development of the
raoi'al, the mental, the physical world about us. We

Festival of Che Angels 289

must move with the times, and in order to do so
we must open ourselves out. All kinds of beautiful
possibilities exist; we have not known of them
hitherto, but that is surely no reason why we may
not learn about them and take advantage of them
now. We must be open to all good influences, but
we must never forget the advice of the apostle to
try the spirits, whether they be of G-od. We must
not accept as gospel everything which we hear from
some unseen source; we must test and judge care-
fully, using our reason and common sense at every
point, remembering that it is just as unwise to re-
ject without examination as to accept without
examination. But the first step of all is to recognize
the possibility of a wider and higher life, and learn
to vibrate in response to it.

I have mentioned but few of the numerous angelic
activities; but I think that even this short account
will be enough to show us that we have indeed great
reason to glorify God for their ministry, to observe
their festival with vivid enthusiasm, and to feel
their splendour as an ever-present reality, enfold-
ing us like the sunlight, ever drawing our thoughts
and our hearts upwards towards Him Who is the
King of Angels as well as of men.

CHAPTER XV
FESTIVALS OF THE SAINTS

OUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE SAINTS

We have a number of festivals in the Christian
year which are intended to remind us of great
people who have gone before. Just as in the outer
world it is the custom to keep the birthday of His
Majesty the King, and of various members of the
royal family, so in the Church is it the custom to
keep the birthday of the Princes of the Church —
the great saints who have stood out in her ranks as
especially noble examples, who are great heroes and
leaders, whom we are all proud to follow; but in
the case of the saint we celebrate not as a rule his
birthday on the physical plane, but what some might
call the day of his death — his birthday into a higher
life. In the calendar of the Roman Church we find
a vast host of saints, often one or even two or three
for every day in the year. The reason for that
is easy to see. In any particular part of the world
its own leaders take great prominence. It is the
same in every-day life. We celebrate the birthday
of His Majesty King George, but in other countries
they keep the birthday of their rulers, who are to
them more important than our ruler, and just in
the same way we find a large number of local saints,
people who did good work in their time and in their
place, but are really not of world-wide importance.

We find that the observance of the days of such an
enormous number of saints makes the Roman ser-
vices cumbrous and complicated; and when the

290

Festivals of the Saints 291

people were of purely local renown it hardly seems
worth while. If we look at the list of saints we shall
come upon dozens of whom we have never heard be-
fore. I know that is the case with me, and perhaps
I have studied ecclesiastical history more than many
people. These saints evoke no particular enthusiasm
in me, because I do not know them. In the Liberal
Catholic Church we have thought it well not to adopt
numbers of saints about whom we have no informa-
tion, more especially as we find it difficult to trace
many of them historically. Some are purely legen-
dary, and while we are not averse to celebrating a
legend if it is a good legend and has some founda-
tion, it seems hardly worth while to perpetuate
stories which v.e know to be historically inaccurate.

In our psychic investigations we found little trace
of the twelve apostles of the Christ. It is true that
He had apostles, but we do not find twelve who
stand out conspicuously, and the names given in the
gospel story do not appear at all prominently. Most
of them were not apparently people of great im-
portance. I remember we thought in our earliest
investigations that at least St. Peter must prove to
be a man and a great leader, but we were checked
by the discovery that the head of every Church of
every country was always called its Peter. It was
used then not as a name, but as a title. Petros is
a rock, and the head of each Church was called ite
Peter, the rock on which it was built. There may
of course have been a first and greater Peter, but
we were not successful in our attempt to identify
him. There were also some indications which sug-
gested that the twelve may have been a personi-
fication of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. For all

292 ^he Christian Festivals

these reasons we in the Liberal Catholic Church
have decided not to perpetuate all of the earlier
saints, but we have chosen those whose celebration
offers us something tangible or useful, soniething
that it is well for us to know.

A saint is by the definition a holy man, for the
word is derived from the Latin sanctios, holy. In
the Gospel for All Saints' Day we are told what we
are to understand by that. That gospel contains the
account of what is commonly called the last judg-
ment, and though the popular theory of that event
is so distorted as to be an absurd travestj^ of the
truth, there is nevertheless a lesson to be learnt from
it. Those whom the King put on His right hand in
that story were those who had fed the hungry, who
had given drink to the thirsty, who had clothed
the naked, who had visited those who were sick and
in prison. This account is according to the gospel
spoken by the Christ Himself, who is to be the
judge on that occasion and therefore presumably
must know something of the procedure; and He very
specially mentions those people as the saints, but
does not attach that name to any man because of
his belief in this doctrine or that. He does not say
a word about what these people believed or what
they did not believe ; He says only : ' ' Those who have
done such things to one of the least of these My
little ones, have done them unto Me." Those ar-e
the true holy men — those are the saints. What they
believe is of no importance whatever ; it is what they
do that counts. The}^ may be Hindus, Buddhists,
Zoroastrians, Muhammadans; if they do these things
they pass the examination, and are saints. So we
see what kind of men and women we must be if

Festivals of the Saints 293

we are to follow in the footsteps of these holy ones
whom we commemorate.

A great deal is said in the Roman branch of the
Church about the intercession of the saints. They
are asked to pray God for us that our sins may be
forgiven, and that we may be helped in various ways.
On the other hand, in other branches of Christ's
Church we find that very prayer to the saints re-
garded as a dangerous superstition, for the ignorant
say that Catholics allow the saints to get between
them and God. A curious expression, because it is
obviously true that the saints are in development
between ordinary men and God. The saints are
higher than we, and certainly infinitely lower than
the Deity of our solar system. They do stand be-
tween us, but why it should be considered wicked or
dangerous to ask for any help they can give I have
never been able to see. We of the Liberal Catholic
Church do not ask for intercession on the part of
anyone, because we know that God is a loving
Father and that He is all the time doing for all of
us the very best that can be done at the stage where
we happen to be at the moment. We do not need
anyone to pray Him to do that for us. What we
need is to try to make ourselves more worthy of
the help which He is all the time pouring out upon
us, so that we may be the more susceptible to it,
and better able to profit by it. That is our side
of the bargain, that we should try to live as He
has told us to live; that we should try so to live
as one day ourselves to reach this very sainthood of
which we are thinking.

Is there then any use in praying to the saints, if
we do not want them to pray for us? They can do

294 The Christian Festivals

a great deal, no doubt; but they also, like the God
whom they serve, are already doing what they can;
we may be very sure of that. A great deal of the
misunderstanding which has surrounded the ques-
tion of sainthood comes from the forgetting of the
great fact of reincarnation. The idea all through
the Middle Ages was certainly that the saint, hav-
ing left earth, had passed away into heaven, and so
was close at hand to plead with God, as a kind of
friend at court. Many of our hymns voice that
idea: ''There they stand in heavenly glory,'* etc.
That is quite true, but it does not mean that they
are in some special place, some heaven set apart
from the rest of God's evolution. The great saint
has raised himself into a position where he does
walk in the light and the glory of God's counten-
ance, whether he be what we call alive or what we
call dead, because it is the man himself, the ego,
the soul of him which knows and enjoys all that
glory and beauty. Thus what is said in our hymns
is true, if onty we understand it symbolically, as
it should be understood. We must avoid the idea
that the saints are all living together somewhere as
a great community round the feet of God; God is
everywhere, and those who draw nearest to Him are
those who serve Him best, not merely by verbal
worship of Him, but by action in His service in
spirit and in truth. Many of the saints to whom
people pray are incarnated here on earth, and some
of them walk among us now. Nevertheless, they as
souls receive the outpouring of love and devotion
which is given to them, and it is certainly help-
ful to them, not only by its direct action, but also
because of the response which every such outrush

Festivals of the Saints 295

of love and devotion calls forth from them. To out-
pour in response is part of their evolution; and
much good is also unquestionably done to those pious
souls who by their love evoke this blessing from tlie
saints.

Some of us may not have been accustomed to such
an idea as that, and so it may not appeal to us; but
the fact that a particular idea does not attract
us is no proof that it may not be helpful to other
people of different type. Many ideas that have
been put forward in the name of religion may not
especially appeal to us; but why should we condemn
them if they are useful to some other servant of
God? Why should he not take them and make use
of them? We cannot expect to cast the whole world
in our own mould; it would be a very dull place
if we could! There must be all kinds of people
in it, and each of these kinds of people must have
its own way. They have already their own enjoy-
ments; they have their own work, which they can
do better than we could do it probably, whereas
if they tried to do our work they might find them-
selves rather helpless. Can we not see that they
must have their own way of approaching God also,
and that the path which seems so straight to our
eyes may not appear by any means the most direct to
them because they are starting from a different
point? As we have so often said, to try to force
people to take our view is exactly like drawing a
man away from one side of the mountain where he
stands, and saying: ''You must not start from your
own place; you must come round to my side of the
mountain, and start afresh." The man might rea-

296 The Christian Festivals

sonably reply : ' ' That may be the best way for you,
but it is obviously not so for me."

It is exactly the same in religious matters, and
that is why it is so foolish to try to convert a Hindu,
a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian, a Muhammadan to Chris-
tianity. A mission to African savages may have its
utility, for it brings mental, moral and hygienic ad-
vancement to its converts, and Christianity is cer-
tainly an advance from fetish worship, but foreign
missions to civilized races are nothing but a waste
of time, money and effort in an endeavour to im-
prove upon the divine arrangements. It is not by
chance, but by the will of God, that one man is born
a Buddhist, another a Hindu, and another a Chris-
tian; God puts each man in the environment which
he has deserved, which gives the best available op-
portunity to develop the qualities which he most
needs. It is no business of ours to interfere with
that arrangement; and if we do so by telling a per-
son that he can attain the goal which God intends
him to reach only by abandoning the path which
God has chosen for him and following our prescrip-
tion instead, we are making a false, foolish and pre-
sumptuous statement. Sometimes a man, having
carefully studied various religions, elects to change
from one to another; he has of course an incontest-
able right to do this, and it may quite possibly be
of benefit to him, for he may have absorbed all
that he can along one line, but may be able use-
fully to supplement his information or experience
by adventuring in another direction. Because of
that we should always be ready to explain our be-
lief and our reason for holding it, when au}^ one

Festivals of the Saints 297

asks us to do so; but we have no right whatever to
try to force it upon him.

That is one reason why in this Church we leave
our people free as to what they should believe. We
tell them quite plainly: ''Here are certain ways
which for us are the best and shortest; they may
not be so for you, but probably they are, since you
are drawn here to this kind of worship ; probably
you will do well to follow the lines which we put
before you; but that is a minor point. Take what
path you will, but take some path; get to work and
climb. There are many paths which lead to the
mountain-head, and when you get there it does not
matter by which path you have come. Do not make
the mistake of limiting everything. Ingersoll once
said that an honest God is the noblest work of man,
parodying the other statement that an honest man
is the noblest work of God. Some may be trying to
make an honest God, but others are making in their
minds a very petty, parochial, bigoted God, and that
is a thing which can hardly be pleasing to Him — to
see Himself credited with our narrowness and our
prejudices. At any rate it is an error. He has no
such narrowness, no such purblind limitations. Many
things which seem strange to us are yet in His eyes
part of an ordered progress, for He sees the whole
and we see only one little corner; and we are apt
to think that some other part is wrong if it does
not agree with our little corner. The saint is the
man who goes to work to help other people, and we
do not help them by trying to force them along our
own line. Never make the mistake of condemning
them because they do no^ follow ours."

298 The Christian Festivals

There are many kinds of saints in life, and some
of them may have looked by no means saintly to
their contemporaries who did not understand. The
higher we rise the more shall we be able to see of
the path along which others are going. So we may
leave it to them; it is their own business how they
rise. If it be possible for us to put the idea of ris-
ing before those who as yet have not thought of
it, that is always good; but we should never try to
force them to follow our particular line. Let us
remember what is said in one of our collect-s; let us
so endeavour to follow the example of the great
ones that we also may reach that which they have
attained. Not a place in a heaven confined to one
particular and perhaps rather wearisome line of
enjoyment, but a position of greater power which
can be used for greater good.

It has been said, and very truly, that God wants
people to be more than merely good. Good of course
they must be, because unless they are they cannot
be trusted to use their power rightly, but God does
not want an army of pious weaklings. He wants
great spiritual powers who will work for Him and
with Him. Remember the remark of St. Clement
of Alexandria: "Purity is a negative virtue, valu-
able chiefly as a condition of insight." We must
have some powder and some strength to offer in His
service; and sometimes the earlier manifestations of
power are not altogether desirable. We sometimes
read in the biographies of the strong men of the
world — the men who have done its work — that they
were decidedly wilful and unruly as children. They
were possessed even then of a great deal of power,
and it is perhaps difficult for a child to show power

Festivals of the Saints 299

without running counter to the prejudices of the
people round him, and so he gets a bad reputation.
Many who are now considered great saints have
had among their contemporaries the reputation of
being anything but saints, just because they were
showing in some injudicious way the power that was
in them. Still, it is better to have some strength,
even if one shows it in a wrong way, than to have
none at all; let us learn to follow these blessed
saints in all virtuous and godly living, so that at
last we may come to that condition of unspeakable
joy in which our angels, our higher selves, shall
always behold the face of our Father Who is in
heaven.

PATRON SAINTS

What is a patron saint, and why should a church
have one? A patron saint is an especially selected
channel. The Christian religion is one of the reli-
gions of the Second Ray, that of which Christ is
especially the Head. So to call a church Christ-
church does not in any way distinguish it; it is
simply one of the many thousands of churches be-
longing to our Lord, because all Christian churches
are necessarily churches of Christ. To speak of
the Church of the Holy Spirit is not in any way
distinctive. That does not say anything as to our
special channel at a lower level, because the grace
of God is poured upon all churches, just in so far
as they are able to receive it.

Not that we need channels in order to reach God.
We must not be under any misapprehension about
that; to every man upon this earth and in all other
worlds God Himself is "closer than breathing,
nearer than hands and feet," as the great poet puts

300 ^he Christian Festivals

it. We are all of us fragments of God Himself,
sparks of that divine fire, and so assuredly we need
no link in that sense with the Deity; but if force is
to be poured down upon us from above for our use
as a church, it must come down through inter-
mediate levels and by various routes. When we give
a name to our church, when we choose a patron saint
for it, we are simply selecting a channel at that dis-
tinctly lower level — our principal channel, because
of course there are many ways through which the
grace of God comes down upon every church and
every gathering of people who are met together in
His name. We choose a name for our church; do
not forget that a name is a power. When we begin
our service in the Name of the Blessed Trinity, truly
we claim that our bishops and our priests act in
His Name, but also we mean much more than that.
We declare that they act in His power^ that any
power they have is power delegated from Him —
that it is by the power of the Christ that the priest
can consecrate the Host, that the priest or the
bishop can bless, that he can convey grace and help
to God's people in many different ways.

So to give a name is not merely to attach a label ;
it distinctly indicates that we invoke that par-
ticular saint, and ask that we may approach through
him as a channel. That does not mean that we ask
him to intercede for us; that is what you would be
told in the great Roman Church — that the patron
saint was a special intercessor, always reminding
God of those who entrust their business to his
care. But that is not so. Everyone of us is near
to God, as I have said. It is true that the great
saint is nearer, in the sense that he has realized

Festivals of the Saints 301

his nearness, that he has opened within himself
higher faculties. We have, everyone of us, many
sheaths or vehicles. This physical body that we so
often think of as "I," is only the lowest and the
coarsest of the vehicles, the furthest away from
the reality. Inside that we have what St. Paul
called a spiritual body; still a body, remember, not
spirit; but a spiritual body — a body of much finer
matter. Students divide that body into two
parts, the emotional or astral body and the mental
body, but those both taken together are probably
what St. Paul meant when he spoke of our spiri-
tual bod}^ "There is a natural body and there is
a spiritual body," he says; and in other places he
speaks of man as body, soul and spirit.

Students often call this threefold division the
monad, the ego and the personality. The spirit is
the divine spark in man, the soul is the individual
sheathing of that monad or spark, brought down
to a lower level; and that individual sheathing or
soul goes on from life to life in the long chain of
earthly lives, taking upon it a succession of per-
sonalities; and this has been the case with our
patron saint as well as with us. At any one of
these levels and through any one of these vehicles
we may come into touch with the divine, because
God manifests Himself at all levels. We come into
touch with our Lord here on the physical plane
when we come to the Sacrament of His altar ; birt
we may come into touch with Him through our
emotions, when we can raise our consciousness out
of the mere physical into the emotional body. We
may come into touch with Him through our mind,
if that mind be pure enough and high enough, and

302 Bhe Christian Festivals

if the soul within it be so far developed that it can
use that mind as a vehicle; and so by degrees we
can rise to the level of the soul itself, and be con-
scious through it. The soul is the ego in the causal
body, and at that level also we can contact the
divine. But it is only the few among us who are
free from the physical fetters.

The great saint rises beyond all that, and at
higher levels still he becomes one with the Deity.
The higher the level we can reach, the more nearly
and the more really do we come into contact with
the Deity, and with the Christ Who is His Repre-
sentative and part of Him. That is the difference
between the great saint and ourselves, that he
reaches far higher up in his contact with the Deity.
He is one with Him, and so are we; but we are one
at the circumference of the circle — one with God
through His outer garment. The great saint, the
Master, draws near to the heart of that circle. To
reach that heart and to become one with God fully
and at the highest level — that is the goal that we
set before ourselves, all alike. That the Buddhists
call the attainment of Nirvana, or perhaps Maha-
paranirvana, the highest state that lies beyond that
unthinkable condition of bliss.

We do not want a saint to pray for us. We do
not think it necessary that any, however high, should
call us to the notice of God, because we know full
well that we also, however humble, are part of Him;
we know that God is already doing for us all that
it is possible for Him to do at the level where we
now stand. He needs no reminder; He needs no
intercessor to speak with Him for us. He knows
far more than any intercessor could know, and He

Festivals of the Saints 303

is ever near to us. It is not that that we want
from our patron saint; we ask merely that he should
act for us as a channel. Wherever he may be we
can reach him; he may be again in incarnation. He
may have a physical body such as you and I have,
though his would naturally be far higher, far purer,
far better than ours; or his consciousness may be
on any one of the many planes or worlds that extend
about us. But wheresoever he is, our thought can
reach him, our earnest aspiration can reach him, our
love can reach him.

When it does so reach him, what do we want
him to do for us? To call a church by his
name makes a real link with him; it attracts his
attention, and he then takes it as a medium for
his work and his force. He is, if we may
venture to say so, glad that someone, some church,
some body of people should appeal to him in
order that he may be the channel for them. Be-
cause, again, if we may very humbly venture to say
so, the great Ones Themselves make further progress
in so far as They are able to help, in so far as They
are able to be the channel for others. And so what
we ask from our patron saint is his kindly thought,
sometimes, perhaps, his inspiration — yes, and some-
times actually his advice, for remember that he is
a great living power, that he can be reached, and
that our thought can be laid beside his, so that
through the thought which he puts into our minds
we can know what is his opinion on certain sub-
jects. There are those who can meet him face to
face on his own higher levels, and can ask what-
ever we want to sisk from him.

304 The Christian Festivals

That is what we gain from him, and we owe him
most emphatically our gratitude and our love for
that which he has already done for us. We do not
worship any saint; nobody does worship any saint.
That is one of the many w^eird misconceptions which
arise from ignorance, the almost invincible ignor-
ance of the man who knows nothing about theoiog}'
and nothing about these higher levels, but is never-
theless filled with the craziest prejudice against
everj^thing he does not understand. Ask any Roman
priest or bishop or well-instructed layman whether
he worships a saint, and he will say to you: ''If
you like to mistranslate the word in that way, yes;
but if you mean the same worship we give to God,
then most emphatically no." Our language is poor
in this respect, and we have not the proper words;
I have already written of the super-reverence due
to Our Lady, of the reverence paid to the saints, and
of the absolute worship, the desire to become one
with Him which is offered to God alone, and in
the nature of things could never be offered to any-
one else.

Therefore it is not worship that we offer to our
patron saint, but we recognize his kindly help, and
we are grateful for it. We recognize that he stands
on one of the great Rays, and on his Daj^ we speci-
ally decorate the shrine of that Ray in honour of
him. So what we feel to him is love and grati-
tude. Let us all join therefore in blessing God for
the help that our patron saint has given us, and
for the noble example he has set before us.

CHAPTER XVI

BRIEF NOTES UPON SOME OF THE SAINTS

ST. ALBAN

St. Alban is the patron saint of several of our
churches. He was very closely associated with our
country of England, with the Church and with
Freemasonry, and plaj^ed an important part in all
of them. He was a man of noble Roman family,
bom at the town of Verulam, in England, which is
now after him called St. Albans. Verulam was at
that time the capital of Roman England, though it
is now but a small place.

Not many details are known of his life. The most
prominent force in it was a life-long friend of his
called Amphibalus, a monk of Carleon, in Wales,
though, I think, a Frenchman by birth. Those two
were unusually close friends, and Amphibalus un-
doubtedly exercised a great influence over Alban, or
Albanus, as his name was in Latin. They went to-
gether to Rome as young men. Alban was not then
a Christian; he followed the ordinary religion of the
time, but Amphibalus was a monk, and it was un-
doubtedly due to Alban 's association with Amphi-
balus that he later became a Christian. Alban
joined the Roman army, and achieved considerable
distinction in it. He served in Rome for some seven
years at any rate, perhaps longer than that. It was
in Rome that he learnt his Freemasonry, and also
became proficient in the Mithraic mysteries which
were closely associated with it in those days.

305

306 The Christian Festivals

After this time in Rome he returned to his birth-
place in England, and was appointed governor of
the fortress there. He also held the position of
''the master of the works, '^ whatever that may have
meant; he certainly superintended the repairs and
the general work in the fortress at Verulam, and
he was at the same time the Imperial Paymaster.
The story goes that the workmen were treated as
slaves and wretchedly paid, but that St. Alban in-
troduced Freemasonry and changed all that, secur-
ing for them better wages and greatly improved con-
ditions generally. Freemasons will have heard of
the Watson manuscript of 1687. In that a good
deal is said about St. Alban 's work for the Craft,
and it is especially mentioned that he brought from
France certain ancient charges which are practically
identical with those in use at the present time.

He became a Christian through the influence and
example of Amphibalus, and he was martyred in the
great persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, which
began in the year 303, because he sheltered Amphi-
balus and refused to give him up. I have myself
visited the place of that martyrdom — a rounded hill
outside the town of St. Albans. The story of the
Roman Church is that a spring arose magically to
slake the thirst of the martyr. The spring is cer-
tainly there, but I cannot guarantee its origin. Offa,
King of Mercia, built a great abbey in the year 795
over the shrine which was erected for St. Alban. His
disciples embalmed his body, and it may still be seen
in the Abbey; the head is visible through a broken
part of the shrine.

Soon after that he had another important incar-
nation; he was born in Constantinople in the year

SL Jllhan 307

411, and received the name of Proclus — the name
which in after life he was destined to make famous.
He was one of the last great exponents of Neoplaton-
ism — of that great philosophy of which we hear so
much at the time of Christ, and a little later. His
influence overshadowed to a great extent the
mediaeval Christian Church. After that there is a
gap, as to which at present we know nothing. "We
find him reborn in the year 1211, and in that life
he was Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, who was
a reformer both of the theology and science of his
day. He was a great experimentalist, and he in-
vented gunpowder, but for that I do not know
whether we should be grateful to him or not. In
the process of his invention he seriously injured
himself, which gives us a glimpse of the kind of man
he was — a daring experimentalist and scientist, as
exact as at that period a man could be.

In 1375 came his birth as Christian Rosenkreutz.
That was also a birth ol: considerable importance, for
in it he founded the secret society of the Rosicru-
cians — a society which has not really died out, al-
though it is supposed to have done so. Various
organizations claim its name and some of its teach-
ings; the original society still remains, but it is
absolutely secret. Meantime we have the knowledge
of the Rosicrucians, but in a somewhat different
form, in what is called Theosophy, and also in Free-
masonry, though in the latter it is veiled in allegory.

It is stated by Mrs. Besant that he again took
birth some fifty years later, or a little more than
that, as John Hunyadi, an eminent Hungarian sol-
dier and leader. I have not seen anything myself
of that life, but we are told that about 1500 he had

308 The Christian Festivals

a life as the monk Robertus somewhere in middle
Europe. We know practically nothing about that,
as to what he did or in what way he distinguished
himself.

After that comes one of the greatest of his
births, for in the year 1561 he was born as Francis
Bacon. Of Francis Bacon in history we hear little
that is true and a great deal that is false. The
facts of the case are gradually becoming known,
largely by means of a cypher story which -he wrote
secretly in the works which he published. It ap-
pears from that that he was the son of no less a
person than Queen Elizabeth, who married Sir
Robert Dudley, afterward the Earl of Leicester,
when they were both prisoners in the Tower. Such
a marriage as that was not legal, but at a later time
it was legalized, so there is no doubt that he was
Francis the King, as he calls himself in the
cypher, and that he should have been King of Eng-
land instead of James I. There were various rea-
sons why he bound himself by a pledge to his
mother not to let the fact of his birth be known.
The whole story is written in his cypher, and a
considerable literature on the subject has been pub-
lished by the Baconian Society, which takes up the
study of his life, and shows that he was the real
author of the plays which he chose to attribute to
Shakespeare. There is a good book on the subject
entitled The Eldest Son of Queen Elizabeth pub-
lished here in Sydney, written by a Mrs. Nicholls,
in which we find many of the arguments and proofs
adduced.

In his youth he went to Paris, and he got into con-
nection there with a certain body of literary men,

SC. Jllban 309

who, because they were seven, called themselves the
Pleiades. These men, who were deep students of
philology, had practically recreated the French lan-
guage. They found it a chaotic mixture of barbarous
jargons; they put it together and made it into a
noble language. Bacon was at once impressed with
the great necessity of doing the same thing for Eng-
lish, and when he returned to England after some
years in Paris, he set to work to reconstitute the
English language. He shows us what it was before
his time, and he constructed, out of the various dia-
lects then spoken, English as we know it to-day.
That he did largely by writing the plays attributed
to Shakespeare, and also (perhaps chiefly) by edit-
ing the Authorized Version of the Bible, which was
then being translated by a committee of forty-eight
under the direction of King James I. Bacon, being
Chancellor, kept himself in the background, but he
superintended and edited the whole volume, so that
absolutely the same style and the same type of lan-
guage runs all through it, although the original is
written by a large number of different authors in
Hebrew and Greek, and although there were forty-
eight nominal translators. We may note the dif-
ference if we compare King James' translation with
the Revised Version, which is also the result of the
work of a committee of people; in the latter we can
clearly see the differences of style in the various
parts. There must have been close supervision over
the Authorized Version, and the supervisor was
Bacon. He wrote many other books also; alto-
gether a vast amount of literature was put forth
by him.

310 The Christian Festivals

A century later we are told that he took birth as
Ivan Rakoczy, a prince of Transylvania. We find
him mentioned in the encyclopaedias, but not much
information is given. He still uses that name some-
times; I have myself seen and photographed one of
his signatures. After that considerable mystery sur-
rounds his movements. He seems to have travelled
about Europe, and he turns up at intervals, but we
have little definite information about him. He was
the Comte de St. Germain at the time of the French
Revolution. He also appears to have disguised him-
self as Baron Hompesch, who was the last of the
Knights of St. John of Malta, the man who arranged
the transfer of the island of Malta to the English.
This saint and teacher still lives, and his present
body has no appearance of great age. I myself met
him physically in Rome in 1901, and had a long
conversation with him.

He is the Prince Adept at the head of the Seventh
Ray, which is now beginning to rule the world in
the place of the Sixth Ray, whose characteristic was
devotion — degenerating into rather blind and unin-
telligent manifestations sometimes in the Middle
Ages, I am afraid. Naturally he is deeply interested
both in the work of the Church and in Freemasonry
— cults which are in reality two expressions of the
same eternal truth, though they are popularly sup-
posed to be diametrically opposed. "We have much
for which to thank him now in this present day, as
well as for those earlier achievements of his — the
magnificent gift of the English language, the intro-
duction of Freemasonry into England, and the
moulding of Christian medigeval metaphysical and
philosophical thought.

SC. George 311

ST. GEOEGE

St. George is the patron saint of England. There
is considerable doubt as to his history. He is
usually spoken of as of Cappadocia, yet it seems he
was born in Lydda in Palestine. That is where his
family lived; that is where he was buried and where
his shrine is shown to-day. That shrine was cer-
tainly accepted as his tomb in Crusading days, be-
cause we read again and again of Crusaders as mak-
ing a pilgrimage to that shrine. He was born of a
noble Christian family, and he entered the Roman
army and served with distinction under the Emperor
Diocletian.

The Emperor Diocletian is said at one time to
have persecuted the Christians. The stories of the
so-called Christian persecutions have been so enor-
mously exaggerated and misrepresented that clair-
voyant investigators have learnt to regard them with
a good deal of incredulity. So far as our investi-
gations have gone we have found again and again
that Christians suffered not because of their religion
but rather because of the political opinions which
many of them held, much in the same way as Jews
have been indiscriminately persecuted in Russia. In
fact the early Christians seem to have been regarded
as the anarchists, the Bolsheviks of that period,
and when they came into conflict with the Govern-
ment it was not on account of their faith, for the
Romans were a most tolerant people, believing little
themselves, and caring still less what others believed.
It was usually on account ol their refusal to show
the ordinary respect to the Emperor.

There were certain little ceremonies which were at
that time considered as part of the ordinary amenities

312 The Christian Festivals

of daily life — little acts of courtesy showing friendly
remembrance of the Emperor and loyalty to him,
corresponding exactly to drinking the health of the
King at the head of every list of toasts, and rising
when the National Anthem is sung at the end of
every entertainment. It was the custom then that
whenever a man was about to drink a cup of wine,
he should first pour out a few drops upon the floor
as a libation to the gods in honour of the Emperor.
The idea behind the action was that a tiny offering
of kindly thought was made to the Deity on be-
half of the Emperor — a little prayer that he might
be strengthened and helped in the onerous work that
was laid upon him. With exactly the same object
it was also the custom each morning and each even-
ing to throw a pinch of incense on to the fire which
was ever burning on the domestic altar, accom-
panying it with a word of aspiration for the
Emperor's health and prosperity.

These little observances seem harmless enough; but
the early Christian was often rather a cantankerous
and Pharisaical person, and it appears to have been
one of his unpleasing habits to refuse these trifling
courtesies on the plea that they were idolatrous, and
ascribed divine honours to the Emperor. These
customs had come down through thousands of years.
They had been observed in Chaldoga, in Babylonia, in
Assyria, and many other countries, and no one had
thought them harmful. If the early Christians felt
these things to be wrong, if it was against their
conscience to throw that pinch of incense into the
fire, then they were right to die sooner than do it ; but
it seems rather an unnecessary thing for which to
die. It is a matter of conscience, and no man can

St. George 313

decide for another. So far as I can see, if I had heen
living on earth in those days, I should have been
quite willing to show the same courtesy to Caesar that
millions of other people have shown to their respec-
tive sovereigns all through the ages, without the least
thought of infringing upon the honour of any sen-
sible deity. But these early Christians would not
do it.

Naturally people who thought it their duty to
make themselves objectionable in that particular way
were quite likely to be roughly handled and sus-
pected of disloyalty, much as a man who refused to
drink the health of the King or to stand when the
National Anthem was being played would probably
be suspected among ourselves. One can understand
that a man who is a rigid teetotaler might even go
so far as to decline to drink the health of the King.
One can even to a certain extent respect the con-
sistency of such a man, though one might not in
the least agree with him and would consider him
lacking in discrimination and sense of proportion.
I myself, though a life-long total abstainer, should
certainly not refuse, though I should prefer to
drink the health in water if it were obtainable. It
seems to me a far less evil to take a microscopic
quantity of alcohol into my system (an action from
which no one suffers but myself) than to arouse in
the minds of the people around me the indignation
which they might quite justifiably feel if they had
reason to suspect me of disloyalty. It would be a
case of ''avoiding the very appearance of evil." I
think the ancient martyrs often immolated them-
selves unnecessarily for matters as small as that.
Probably something of that sort was the reason of

314 The Christian Festivals

the feeling against the Christians as a rule, for the
Romans were great sticklers for law, order and
custom, and expected everyone to conform to what
was thought best for the community as a whole.

We have also to remember that many of these
early Christians in their misguided enthusiasm
wished to be martyred, and were prepared to go to
any lengths to gratify their desire. If we read the
life of St. Francis of Assisi, we shall find that a
number of people connected with him (although I
do not think he was responsible for their foolish-
ness) resolved to get themselves martyred at any
cost. They went to Morocco, and ran after the car-
riage of the Emir in the open streets, shouting insults
at him as a heathen. The Emir very naturall}^ sup-
posed them to be insane, and was at first good-
humouredly tolerant of their rudeness, but as they
persisted and became more and more abusive, he
eventually imprisoned and executed them. They con-
sidered themselves great and glorious martj^'S; look-
ing back upon the incident with impartial eyes, we
can regard them only as ill-mannered fanatics who
intruded where they were not wanted, and were
quite justifiably suppressed. Myself I have not the
slightest sympathy for that kind of martyr!

There was one of these so-called persecutions of
the Christians under Diocletian, and the story is
that St. George, who stood high in the Eoman army,
ventured to protest and to rebuke the Emperor. It
is not a safe thing to rebuke an absolute Emperor,
and Diocletian promptly banished him and seems to
have felt rather hurt about it.

St. George considered apparently that his faith
required him to make a demonstration, so even when

St. George 315

banished to Asia Minor he continued to adopt an
aggressive attitude; he finally got himself into some
open trouble and was put to death in Nicomedia.
There is some doubt about the historical details, but
the year 303 is usually given as the date of his
death. An earlier year is preferred by some
students, and there appears to have been some con-
fusion between him and an Aryan bishop of the
same name. There seems no reason to doubt that
St. George was a historical person, but as to the
story which represents all that most of us know about
him, the tale of his slaying the dragon, there is
considerable uncertainty. This at least stands out
as a fact, that very near Lydda is the traditional
place where the sea-monster who came to attack the
maiden Andromeda was slain by Perseus. Many
historians have thought that because these two
legends were attached to the same place they gradu-
ally became confused, and the Christians took the
feat of the Greek hero Perseus and attributed it to
St. George. That is not impro*bable. It might
quite easily have happened so, because there is no
doubt that in many cases stories, which existed cen-
turies before the life of Christ, reappear in early
Christianity, attributed to Christian heroes instead
of to those of the earlier days. All history in those
days was much more fluidic, much less certain than
now, so I do not think we need be in any way shocked
if the story should prove to be one of the old myths
carried on to the present day. Of course we can
find for it various symbolical meanings, and per-
haps that is the wise way to deal with it, because
short of elaborate clairvoyant investigation there

316 The Christian Festivals

can be no certainty that the thing took place as it
is usually believed.

The idea of a dragon is commonly supposed to be
quite mythical, but there are considerations in
favour of the occasional appearance of such crea-
tures. We know that in the earlier days of the
earth there were great flying reptiles, and it is not
impossible that single specimens may have survived
into what we may call historical periods. There is
a story going about that some prehistoric monsters
still survive in central Africa. I believe they are
looking for a brontosaurus there at the present day.
There may be a foundation for some of the numerous
dragon stories, but whether in this particular case
Perseus or St. George was the slayer I do not pre-
tend to say. At any rate tradition has indissolubly
associated St. George and his dragon, and he has
now become a kind of symbol. He was in earlier
da.ys the patron saint of Genoa in Italy ; he was not
adopted as the patron saint of England until the
reign of King Edward III, but since then his cross
has been the banner of England, and he has been
invoked as our patron saint, though it is difficult to
see why he was elevated to that honour. It would
have been in some ways more natural if we had
adopted the first English Martyr, St. Alban, who
was also a great soldier of the Roman army: but St.
George has been chosen, and no one thinks of
changing that now. However, it does not matter
whether St. George did or did not do anything in
particular to entitle him to the position of patron
saint of a great Empire. I presume that he must
have done something to earn that good karma. Un-
questionably to have been so appointed means that

St. George 317

a great many people make thought-fonns of him
and pour their aspiration and devotion through him
to a very considerable extent. It is exceedingly good
for him as well as for us, for we may say that a
patron saint, whether it be of a church or an indi-
vidual or a nation, is a channel through which we
send up our stream of devotion and affection to the
Divine. Then back through him flows the stream of
grace and blessing to us. Therefore, it is a good
thing for the patron saint, as well as for the country^
the church or the person. Thus the patron saint
is a link, a chosen link with higher planes. Any
country whose rulers were wise enough to get into
touch with the two lines of direction which exist on
higher planes might unquestionably gain a certain
amount of help and advice in that way. We speak
always of the two sides of the government of the
world, one being the directing of the physical world
done by the Manu of the Root Race, Who guides the
Race in its migrations, and moulds its development in
various ways. He is the Spiritual King and Ruler ol
the Race. The other side is that of the Spiritual
Teacher of the race. There are physical represen-
tatives for these two lines, and there is also the
guardian Angel of a race. All the beautiful legends
of guardian angels and race-spirits are not merely
childish stories. There are facts behind them, and
we shall find tliat these realities produce a definite
effect down here on planes that we can reach and
realize and understand. Behind each race stands a
patron saint, if it has selected one, and an Angel
Gruardian (a deva, as they call it in India — a shin-
ing one) ; and each of these two has his depart-

318 The Christian Festivals

ment, and between them they take charge of the
two sides of the development of the race. If the
race knows of such things, and is willing to be
guided and directed, then it gets very much more
from these great officials. If it does not know, it
gets less; but anyhow they are there and they exer-
cise such influence as they can.

Probably we have all heard some of the strange
stories of the appearance of St. George at the head
of the English troops in France during the recent
war, and have wondered whether any credence can
be attached to them. They are quite circumstantial,
and the doubt cast upon them seems to have arisen
mainly because a story was written before the ap-
pearance in which his name was mentioned. Yet
there is a great deal of evidence that some inter-
ference of some sort did occur there in France at
a very critical period of the war and that someone
not of the physical plane did encourage the troops
and led them on to victory. The English called him
St. George — that would be the first idea that would
occur to them; the French called him St. Michael or
St. Denys, and in other parts of the field they saw
also their great heroine, Joan of Arc.

There is evidence for all these apparitions. I
personally have no doubt that there were inter-
ferences from the inner world, but whether St.
George or St. Michael or Joan of Arc had anything
to do with them I do not know. Dead people of
both nations would certainly wish to help; great
military leaders of the past still in touch with the
earth may have wished to interfere, and if they
were able to show themselves it is fairly certain
that they would be taken for some of the saints.

St. Patrick 319

They may even have intentionally taken the forms
of such saints in order to recommend themselves to
the people, because, owing to the foolish modern
attitude towards apparitions of all sorts, people are
more liable to be frightened than helped by any-
thing unusual, whereas all the French Catholics
would welcome the appearance of a saint and would
not be in the least afraid of him. It may well be
that the traditional form of some of these saints
may have been taken by some who wished to help.

Those who belong to the Liberal Catholic Church
should try to understand the real meaning of all
such occurrences. We must not be obsessed with
the absurd Calvinistic prejudice that there can be
no truth whatever in anything that is said about
the saints. When we look more deeply into the facts
of the case we shall see that all these beautiful old
legends have their part to play — that they have all
helped the human race and that there is no reason
why we, v/ho have advanced a little further in
knowledge and understand more fully what they
mean, should therefore look down upon those who
believed them once in a more literal fashion. It will
be indeed well for us if we are able to get through
these channels as much help as our more ignorant
forefathers obtained.

ST. PATRICK

Just as St. George is the patron saint of England,
so is the holy St. Patrick the patron saint of Ire-
land. There is again some uncertainty as to the
exact date and place of his birth, but we are able
to say from clairvoyant investigation that there
really was such a person — that the theory that he

320 The Christian Festivals

is merely a mythological character is without foun-
dation. He is a real historical person, and he did
convert a great part of Ireland to the Christian
faith.

The date of his birth seems to have been about
the year 387, though some put it a little earlier than
that. Two places claim the honour of being his
birthplace — Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton in Scot-
land, and a village near Boulogne in France. On
the whole the balance of evidence seems to be in
favour of Boulogne. In any case it is certain that
he was of Roman descent and that he was born in
a Keltic country, whether it be Normandy or Scot-
land. His father was a man of good family, spoken
of as the Deacon Galphurnius. Whether he ever
attained any higher level in the Church than deacon
we do not know. His mother was named Conchessa,
and she was either a sister or a near relative of
St. Martin of Tours, a])out whom we have all heard
the celebrated story of his cutting his cloak in two
(when he had nothing else to offer) and giving
half of it to a beggar. Whichever was the place of
his birth, the youthful Patrick lived near the sea-
coast, and in a raid of Irish pirates he was captured
and carried off as a slave at the age of fifteen. He
was sold in Ireland to a certain Druid priest named
Milchu, and he stayed with him, acting as a shep-
herd, for some five years. In that time he learnt
the Irish tongue, which differs somewhat from the
dialect spoken in Scotland or in Brittanj^ though
all these are variants of the Gaelic language.

At the end of those five years some vision led
him to make an attempt to escape, and the attempt
was successful. He contrived with great trouble

SL Patrick 321

and many privations to reach the sea-shore, to get
on board a ship, and eventually to reach his home.
He devoted himself earnestly to the religious life,
and was for some considerable time in a monastery
at Tours under St. Martin. It is said that there
came to him a vision or a dream, in which he saw
the youths with whom as children he had associated
in Ireland calling to him to come and teach them
the truth, and that apparently intensified an idea
which had long been in his mind that he would like
to go back again to Ireland, where he had been
enslaved, and try to teach the people Christianity.
It is not certain that there had been no Christianity
before that in Ireland; there is a tradition, at any
rate, of an earlier spreading of the faith in the
south of that country. The pope of that period,
Celestine, received this young man Patrick, and
after some years of preparation gave him a commis-
sion to go and preach the faith in Ireland. He was
not immediately appointed, because Palladius had
already applied for and received that work. But
Palladius seems not to have been successful. He
landed in a part of the country where the people
were not prepared to receive him, and became dis-
couraged.

St. Patrick was consecrated as bishop, and sent
forth to preach the faith in Ireland. He landed
there in the year 432, and though not well received
at first, he contrived to make his way, and eventu-
ally travelled over the whole of the countr>\ Many
stories are told in connection with his travels all
over Ireland. He appears to have been a man of
indefatigable industry. It is recorded that he con-
secrated no less than three hundred and sixty-five

322 The Christian Festivals

churches in different parts of the country, and he
is said with his own hands to have baptized twelve
thousand converts during that period. He met with
varied reception, but he seems to have been an
exceedingly skilful and politic preacher of the faith.
He invariably began, wherever he went, by convert-
ing the chief and his family, and the rest followed
the lead given b}^ the most important man of the
district. Where some local king or chief would not
receive him, he moved on to some other place, but
came back again and again until practically the chief
yielded to him. He has left us some writings : one of
them, at any rate, many of you know — the Confes-
sion of St. Patrick, as it is called — a kind of creed
in which he emphasizes strongly the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity. When first he was asked how Three
could yet be One, he stooped and plucked a leaf of
the shamrock and held it up before the people,
saying: ''Here at least is an example that there may
be three and yet one." A crude illustration, but
nevertheless a striking one for the people to whom
he was preaching, to whom the whole idea was new.
And that is why the shamrock was adopted as the
national symbol of Ireland, as it remains even to
this day.

He lived to a great age. There is a little difference
of opinion, but it seems fairly certain that he reached
the age of a hundred and six, for he died in the
year 493 at a place called Saul, near Downpa trick
in Ireland. His remains were still shown there up
to the time of the Reformation, when I fancy the
relics were lost.

St. Mark 323

ST. MAKK

As is the case with so many of these bible heroes,
we do not know much about St. Mark. We are told
that he was the cousin of Barnabas, a character of
whom we read a good deal in the Acts of the
Apostles, and it is also the tradition that he was a
nephew of St. Peter. It seems at any rate certain
that his mother, Mary, was a woman of considerable
distinction in Jerusalem, and that at her house the
early Christians used to hold meetings for quite a
long time. St. Mark founded the Church at Alex-
andria, and that is perhaps one reason why he came
forward so prominently and is credited with the
writing of a gospel. It is as usual not at all certain
that he had anything to do with the gospel which
is attributed to him. These gospels were written in
the city of Alexandria, a good deal later than the
date usually assigned to them, and it is very natural
that one which is supposed to be the earliest should
be attributed to one of the Founders of the Church,
who is spoken of as the interpreter of St. Peter. He
is reported by tradition to have written his gospel
in Rome from Peter's dictation. That is not likely,
but it is believed by the highest critics that St.
Mark's is the earliest of the gospels, with the excep-
tion of the alleged Hebrew original of St. Matthew,
about which very little is known because there are
no copies extant. St. Mark's symbol is a lion, and
those v/ho have had the privilege of visiting his
city, Venice, will remember that the great cathedral
there is dedicated to him, and in the piazza in front
of it is the Lion of St. Mark, set upon a tall column.

CHAPTER XVII

ALL SAINTS' DAY

The festival of All Saints has always seemed to
me to be one of the most beautiful in the Christian
Year. All through that year we are at intervals
celebrating the birthdays of the great ones of the
Church, just as in private life we celebrate the birth-
days of our friends. The only difference is that in
the ecclesiastical calendar we generally celebrate a
saint's birthday not into this physical life, but into
the wider life of the higher sphere; that is to say,
we keep what is commonly called the date of his
death. We do this not only out of our affection for
him, but in order to recall to ourselves the noble
example which he has set us. We thank God for
the example of the saint, and for the glorious en-
couragement of his success. But that is not all;
there is yet something more, and it is precisely that
something more which is often so sadly misunder-
stood. I have already pointed out that among many
who call themselves Christians the idea of the inter-
cession of the saints seems to arouse an amazing
amount of incomprehensible anger and prejudice.
With extraordinary irascibility they clamour that it
is wicked of us to ask help of the saints, and further-
more ridiculous to expect it. It has always seemed
to me that this is a matter in which we should use
our common sense; if this help is to be had, it must
be part of God's scheme and under His providence,
for He works through means and by intermediaries,
so why should it be wicked or ridiculous to avail

324

All Saints' Dav 325

©urselves of it? Let us consider what are the facts
of the case.

Any great religious teacher is a centre of inspira-
tion and of active help. Take, for example, one
whom many of us know and love — Mrs. Annie
Besant. Many of us are deeply thankful to her for
the teaching given in her books, which has changed
the whole aspect of life for thousands of men and
women; but we are also profoundly grateful to her
for her inspiration and her example, as well as in
many cases for direct personal advice received from
her. When she casts off her physical body — and may
that day be far distant! — will that inspiration and
example be any less real? We frequently send her
thoughts of devoted love now, and we are unques-
tionably uplifted by the answer which we receive;
will that be any less then? Man does not change
at death, so assuredly one whom we have known as
so full of love, of strength and of helpfulness in
this world will be equally full of those characteris-
tics even without a physical body. For in these
matters we are dealing with the ego, and the ego
does not die.

Some people, while agreeing at once that such a
power of response would remain quite unchanged
during astral life, have yet questioned whether it
might not be hindered by the limitations of the
heaven-world. It should be remembered that for
the developed man — the saint — these limitations no
longer exist. The ordinary man is entangled by
them only because his mental body is as yet imper-
fectly evolved; one whose mental body is in full
activity moves as freely on the mental plane as most
of us do on the astral. And in any case such limita-

326 The Christian Festivals

tions are only those of the personality. Whatever
powers the ego possesses, he possesses permanently,
and he can use them quite irrespective of the con-
dition of his lower vehicles. No doubt every one
of us is at this moment figuring in the heaven-world
of several departed friends, although in physical
consciousness we know nothing whatever about it.
Each of these departed friends makes his own
thought-image of the man he loves, and that very
love constitutes an appeal to the ego of the loved
one, which is never left without response. The
ego, awakened by that affectionate touch, at once
pours himself out and fills that thought-form; but it
is no part of his business to impress that action of
his either upon his own physical brain (if he hap-
pens to have one at the moment) or upon that of
the object of his affection. The ego is certainly
capable of filling a thousand devachanic images at
once.

The saints of old may now be reborn, and may be
working nobly in another personality. Indeed, I
personally know many who are doing so; for
example, St. Bernard of Clairvaulx, St. Francis of
Assisi, and St. Antony of Padua are all of them at
present in incarnation and working energetically for
the very same ideals which they pursued so nobly
under those historic names. The present personali-
ties may know little or nothing of their work as
saints, but the egos are as active as ever. What we
know to be true in these and other cases must cer-
tainly also be true in thousands of cases of which
we do not know. Appeals to such developed egos
unquestionably do evoke friendly and helpful re-
sponse from them. We do not ask their intercession,

All Saints' Dai; 327

because such an idea as that is based upon an un-
worthy conception of God — a suggestion that He
needs to be propitiated or appeased; but we do ask
their blessing and their friendly thought. I, as
bishop, give God's blessing at the end of each service,
or whenever I am asked to exercise my office; do
you suppose that I shall be less willing or less able
to give it when I drop this physical body? And
surely what I can do, and shall be glad to do, these
far greater people can do also.

Do we begin to see now what is meant by the
doctrine of the Communion of the Saints? Do we
not see now how truly that which is gained by one
is gained for all who are ready to share it? Why
should we deny the fact of the Communion of the
Saints, and why should we reject its advantages?
When we ourselves in turn become saints, shall we
not be glad to help our fellow-men? Then why
should not they be equally willing to do what they
can? Let us accept willingly such help as God's
scheme provides for us; let us thank God for all
good people, and gladly receive whatever they can
give.

On All Saints' Day we celebrate the vast host of
holy men who have not been sufficiently conspicuous
to have a special day assigned to them — who have
lived beautiful and helpful lives which, though un-
doubtedly recognized by God, did not attract the
attention of those officials of the Church who were
charged with the duty of recommending men for
canonization. Tliere must be many thousands of
these unknown heroes of the faith — yea, of all faiths
— who are just as worthy of our gratitude and our
recognition as those whose names have been pre-

328 The Christian Festivals

served through the ages. So we devote this day to
their memory.

One of the minor difficulties which we meet in
carrying on the practical work of the Liberal Catholic
Church is that of finding suitable hymns — hymns
which we can sing with all our hearts, really mean-
ing every word which they put into our mouths.
Our difficulties are chietly concerned with the un-
worthy attitude adopted towards the Deity, and with
the mistaken theory of vicarious atonement; but we
are also compelled to reject many beautiful old
hymns because of the grossly materialistic view
which they take of the future condition of our
people in higher worlds.

It would be difficult to sing without a sense of
unreality such a verse as:

There is the throne of David;

And there from care released
The shout of them that triumph

And the song of them that feast.

The implication that the same personality will
remain for ever in an imagined heaven is of course
unfounded, because we know that in due time that
personality will come to an end, and the ego will
reincarnate. But we shall find it quite possible to
sing a great many of those beautiful old hymns when
we realize that their expressions are meant to be
taken as symbolical; for it is perfectly true that the
open sight of God and the unimaginable glory of
His perpetual presence are ever-living facts for the
highly developed ego — true most of all of course for
the Monad; but true of the ego also when it be-
comes one with that Monad and is a perfect expres-
sion of it at its level. And so, when we think of

All Saints' Dap 329

the saints as for ever in the presence, we must under-
stand that they are not confined to a particular
spot, but that wherever they may be and on what-
soever plane they may be functioning "their Angels
do always behold the face of our Father who is in
heaven"; the true Self on its own plane is always
consciously in the direct presence of the Deity.

There is no special place, for we are all in that
presence here and now; it is only that we have not
yet learnt, as the saint has, to be fully conscious
of it. Even the saint may have that consciousness
but rarely and imperfectly in his physical brain; but
in his causal body he has it always. Therefore it
is true to sa}^ of the holy saints;

Now they reign in heavenly glory,
Now they walk in golden light;
Now they drink as from a river
Holy bliss and infinite.

The feebleness and insufficiency of all these sym-
bolical expressions must not blind us to the
infinitely glorious truth of the Communion of the
Saints.

Be very sure that as the Christ Himself exists, as
the Hierarchy of His holy Angels exists, so also
exists the Great White Brotherhood, the Communion
of the Saints. Well may we thank God at this great
festival for the example, the encouragement and the
help of these glorious ones; may we so follow them
in all virtuous and godly living that to us also may
soon come the ineffable happiness of being con-
scious channels of His eternal love.

CHAPTEE XYIII

ALL SOULS' DAT

It seems natural that, along with the thankful-
ness to God for His holy saints not especially named,
we should also think of those other dead who perhaps
can hardly yet claim the honour of sainthood — our
own dead, those whom we have known and loved and
perhaps, alas! in many cases have mourned. So it
comes that the next day after All Saints is set
apart for the celebration of All Souls, of all the
mighty host of the dead, especially with a view to
remembering those who have passed away during
the year since the last of these celebrations.

It has become the custom that on this day mem-
bers of congregations should send in to the priest-
in-charge the names of all those in whom they are
personally interested, who have passed away during
the year, in order that those names may be specially
mentioned at the Altar, and that they may take part
in the outpouring of force which accompanies the
celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

It is important that we should understand exactly
what that force is, and exactly what good it does to
the dead. It is natural, it is only human nature,
that we should desire to pray for the dead. I know
that a certain section of Christians (perhaps not a
large, but a very noisy section) consider such
prayer for the dead to be wrong. They have some-
how succeeded in pei*suading themselves that there
is no such thing as progress, and that when a man
dies, that is to all intents and purposes the end of

330

All Souls' Dav 331

him; his fate is then settled for ever. It is no use
praying for him; it is even supposed to be wicked
to pray for him ! That is an illusion born of ignor-
ance. Far wiser would it be to follow the teaching
of the Church and of her Lord, and to realize that
there is no death, but only a life of continuous evolu-
tion, and that at any point in that life (whether it
be the part of it which is spent down here in a
physical body or that which is spent in another
world in a subtle body) the man can be reached by
thought and by love and can be helped just as much
in one stage of that eternal progress as in another.

Before, then, we can understand what good we
can do to the dead we must think for a little of
the state of the dead. Unfortunately the Chris-
tianized part of the world has for some centuries
lain under the illusion that nothing can be certainly
known with regard to states after death. The idea
seems to be that the Church may have some teach-
ing on that subject ; there may be some speculations ;
there may be pious beliefs, but nothing can be
definitely known. That is absolutely untrue. It is
possible to know all about the state of the dead; it
is possible to explore and to investigate that higher
part of the world precisely as countries hitherto un-
known may be explored on the physical plane. How
do we obtain information about the South Pole and
the North Pole, or about the interior of Africa ? Men
learn the conditious under which it is possible for
them to penetrate to these remote regions, and to
bring back news from there. It is equally possible
for the man still in the physical body to penetrate
to these other higher regions and come back and
give his report.

332 The Christian Festivals

That has been done many hundreds of times,
and we now know about this other world (though in
reality it is not another world, but only a part
of this) as clearly, as definitely as we know about
the less visited parts of the earth, and there Ls
just as much evidence for the existence of that
spiritual world as for any of the little known parts
of the physical plane. In fact there is more, for
only one or two people have penetrated to those re-
mote regions, whereas many scores of people have
brought back recollections from the world of those
whom we foolishly call the dead. The dead laugh
us to scorn for using such a word; they maintain
always that they are more living than they were,
and not less, now that they have got rid of the
physical body which was so heavy a veil, so great
an obstacle in the way of real knowledge of the
facts of life. What then is the state of the dead?
There is a large literature on the subject, to which
I must refer those who desire a detailed answer to
that question. ]\Iy own book, The Other Side of
Death, gives much information, but new volumes are
constantly being published. I can give only an
outline here.

To understand even that outline, we must first
fix in our minds some fundamental ideas. I want it
quite clearly understood that in putting forward
these ideas I am not offering them as mere pious
beliefs or as probabilities, nor am I speaking from
hearsay. I am explaining facts which I myself per-
sonally know by repeated investigation and experi-
ment. Furthermore any man who is willing to take
the trouble may convince himself of these great
central truths by verifying them at first hand. The

All Souls' Dai; 333

first of these great principles is the utter over-
whelming certainty of God's love. Another is the
absolute continuity of life — the immortality of man;
and yet another is the reasonableness and justice of
the whole scheme of evolution. The scriptural axiom
that all things work together for good is a matter not
of belief, but of knowledge, to those who have really
studied these subjects.

The very air around us is charged with so many
and such serious misconceptions about death that it
is almost impossible for us to escape their influence,
unless we put ourselves especially on our guard
against them. One of the worst of these is the idea
that after death men are either rewarded or punished
for what they have done during physical life. This
is absolutely not so — not so in any sense whatever;
though it is true that, because the life is continuous,
its later conditions after death do depend upon its
earlier conditions before death, just in the same way
as the life of the adult depends to a considerable
extent upon the previous part of that same life, as
it was spent during childhood and youth. It might
be thought that, after all, this comes to much the
same thing; but that is not so. Let us take an
example from school-life to help us to understand.
If a boy works well, he receives perhaps a medal
or a prize; if he works badly, if he acts foolishly,
he receives a certain number of bad marks, or per-
haps has an imposition to write out. These, you
will observe, are rewards and punishments, but they
are in no sense restilts. They have no actual con-
nection with what the boy has done or not done;
they express only the master's opinion of him. On
the other hand, the result of good work is that the

334 ^he Christian Festivals

boy knows more, and is therefore more capable of
learning; while the result of laziness is ignorance,
and lack of power to understand future lessons. The
true result is not imposed from without, but is
inherent, natural, inevitable. So is it exactly with
the life after death. This death is a change through
which all men must pass. They may be well or ill-
equipped to profit by it, according to the way in
which they have lived this previous stage which we
call physical life.

Again, our tendency is to regard this life after
death from the point of view of the survivors, not
of the dead man. Let us take yet another example
from school life. Suppose we have two comrades at
a school strongly attached to each other, and sup-
pose that in due course one of them passes on into
college life. We can see at once how selfish it would
be if the younger boy thought only: ''I have lost
my friend; he should have stayed here at school for
my sake." Obviously no boy would think that; he
would be more likely to think: "He is continuing
his studies and development ; I shall presently follow
him, but he will certainly not return to me." And
if he were especially affectionate and helpful, he
might also think : ' ' Can I help him in any way ? Can
I do anything that will be useful to him in his new
surroundings"? Yes; I can write to him, I can show
him that I have not forgotten him, I can send him
my love, and try to encourage him in every possible
way. ' '

These analogies hold good; keeping them in mind,
let us tr}^ to grasp a few leading facts about our
dead. First of all they are more keenly alive than
we. They are not far away in some unknown imagin-

All Souls' Dav 335

aiy heaven or hell ; they are very near us still. They
are not changed suddenly either into angels or into
demons; they are precisely and exactly what they
were before they slipped off the vehicle of flesh, that
outer coat which we call the physical body. They
are themselves just as they were before. Their love
remains the same ; nay, it is greater than ever before,
because there is less to clog its expression. Their
knowledge or their ignorance is just what it was
before. They have indeed opportunities of learn-
ing a great deal. So have we down here on the
physical plane, but we do not always take advan-
tage of our opportunities. It is just the same with
the dead. There is no one to compel them to learn;
so some of them make little advancement, while
others acquire a vast amount of information. It is
well for them to know, because knowledge is power,
but not all the dead are wise, any more than all the
living. Let it be quite clear then, that their life is
the same as our life except for the fact that they
have no longer a physical body.

Let us ask ourselves what difference it would make
to us if we had not these physical bodies; then we
shall realize exactly what is the condition of the
dead. We can see that it would not be by any means
the same to all of us. Some of us live very much
in our physical bodies; some of us think chiefly
about the things which appertain to those bodies,
such as comfort, enjoyment, pleasant sensations,
good food and drink, and so on. Some think a
great deal of what the physical body brings to
them, but there are other people who are compara-
tively indifferent to these matters, whose joys are
all joys of the intellect or of the higher emotions.

336 The Christian Festivals

The great artist or the great musician almost for-
gets his physical body, and often neglects it, just
because he is swept away out of it into the higher
and subtler vehicles.

When that artist dies he will not change. If the
physical body has been little to him while he had
it, it will mean but little to him that he has dropped
it, and he will continue to live the same life, the
life of art or of music. The man of that other
t3^pe, who has lived mainly in relation to his physical
body down here, will find himself distinctly at a
loss when he has dropped it. He will have to evoke
for himself a new set of interests; otherwise life
without the body would seem to him dull and un-
interesting. These considerations operate all the
time; so when we think of someone v/ho has passed
away, we have only to try to image to ourselves how
much difference it would make to that man if he
had not his physical body, and we shall have a very
fair idea of the condition in which he finds himself.

There is another side to all that which must not
be forgotten. The physical body is the cause of
much of our trouble and worry; nearly all our
work, the daily work at which we have to slave, has
to be done because we have a physical body, because
we must provide it (and other physical bodies
round us) with food and clothing and shelter. With-
out the physical body the man is utterly free, and
perhaps for the first time in his life he does only
those things which he wants to do. Most of us
spend our lives in doing things we would rather
not do if v/e were not compelled. There is no such
compulsion for the dead man. Being absolutely
free, he may therefore be gloriously happy. On the

All Souls' Dap 337

other hand, if his life down here has been a purely
material life, he may be somewhat bored; he may
find the whole thing uninteresting. I suppose many
an uneducated man attending a church service
would not know in the least what was being done.
The music would be over his head; if he could not
read he would not be able to follow the liturgy; the
whole thing would weary him. Yet those who can
understand and can follow know that there is a
vast amount to be gained out of such services; that
they offer us not only a means of grace for our-
selves, but the means of helping others by the force
which is poured out. Yet the ignorant man would
know nothing about that; he would find the whole
thing monotonous, wearisome. It is just the same
with the dead.

All this being so, how can we help them? Not by
our physical actions, because they have no longer
physical bodies. What have they still in common
with us? They have the subtle body, which St. Paul
called the spiritual body. We divide it as students
into two parts, the astral body and the mental body.
Those the dead man still has, and we have them in
common with him. If we are to help him, then, it
must be not by our physical acts, but by the acts
of these higher vehicles. What can we do with them
that will help?

One thing that I am afraid many of us have
done is to mourn the dead whom we have loved.
That is the very worst thing that we can do for
the dead man. I do not wish for one moment
to seem unsympathetic, but if we are not afraid to
face facts, we must admit that to mourn is after
all selfish. What are we mourning about? That

338 The Christian Festivals

he whom we love has passed into a higher and fuller
life, that he stands more nearly in the presence of
God, that the opportunities opening before him are
far grander than they were before? Surely that
would be a strange thing about which to mourn!

If we come to think of it, we are mourning because
we think we have lost him. That is an illusion; we
have not lost him. All we have lost is the power
of seeing him. He is still there, he is still near us,
as much within reach as he ever was, but not with-
in reach of our physical eyes. The moment we fall
asleep each night our physical eyes are no longer
of any use to us; we have passed away from the
world in which these senses operate; we are using
the astral body, and we are therefore using its
senses; and to these senses the dead man is
as obvious as the living man was to our phy-
sical sight. We may be under the delusion,
while we are what we call awake (but what he calls
asleep) that we have lost the dead man. When we
have waked up to his world, when we have put
aside temporarily the clog of the physical body, we
stand side by side with him and talk to him exactly
as before. We may think down here that we have
lost him; he never for one moment thinks that he
has lost us, because he holds that higher conscious-
ness continually. He sees us fade away from him
when we wake up (or down as he would call it) ;
we fade away from him then, but he knows that we
shall come back into his world after a few hours.
It is just as when we see a man lie down to sleep
for a few hours; we do not mourn because he has
left US; we know that he will presently wake up
rested and will be with us as before.

All Souls' Dav 339

To mourn for our dead friend is the worst thing
we can do for him, because when we allow the mourn-
ful feeling to come over us, we surround ourselves
with a cloud of depression. A clairvoyant would see
it around us as a dark mist. To our dead friend
that mist is something that he can not only see,
but that he can feel acutely. He feels the depres-
sion, it reacts upon him, and it does him harm, be-
cause it holds him back in his onward progress. We
must forget ourselves; I know very well how hard
it is, but we must be unseltish; we must forget our-
selves and our presumed loss, and we must think
only of our friend and of his great gain. So when
we think of him we will not mourn. What can we
do but mourn? We can do something infinitely
nobler; we can love. Let us pour out our love upon
him whenever we think of him; let us think of him
as living still; let us think of how we loved him in
the past, and how we love him more and more now
as time goes on. That, too, he will feel, and to that
he will respond. Then we are helping our brother,
we are surrounding him with sunlight which will call
out all the best that is in him, which will help his
evolution, and make his onward path easier. That
is what we have to do.

Shall we pray for the dead? Yes, if you will;
but even then do not misunderstand. Though many
have foolishly thought it wrong to pray for the
dead, it is not in the least so; but if we are to take
the words in their ordinar^^ meaning, it does perhaps
show a little ignorance. If by prayer we mean that
we are going to ask God to help them or bless them,
or remember them, then we may as well save our-
selves the trouble, because God knows far more than

340 The Christian Festivals

we know about what they need and God is watching
the evolution of every one of His creatures every
moment. We are within His Consciousness, wher-
ever we are, and He Who is Lord of the living and
the dead does not lose sight of a person who draws
nearer to Him. For that is what it is — to cast
aside the physical body is to draw the consciousness
a little nearer to God, not further away. So He
does not need our prayers to remind Him.

What then is prayer? Prayer is a strong and
earnest wish; and that is a power. Such a thought
is a great reality; it sends out a stream of force,
as is well known to all who have investigated the
subject. There is a science of all these things, just
as there is a science of chemistry or of geology, and
these matters can be investigated and tested. All
that has been done, not once, but hundreds of times.
There is no reason why people should remain igno-
rant of the results of that investigation. One would
think that people wished to mourn, that they v/ished
to be miserable, so obstinately do they decline to
accept the truth when it is laid. before them. Some
cannot believe that it is the truth. One would like
to say to them: ''If your intuition is not yet suffi-
ciently developed to guide you in such matters, at
least let your intellect guide you. There are books
by the hundred on this subject; read them. If you
will, and if you must, investigate for yourself." I
did SO; forty or fifty years ago I devoted a vast
amount of time to first-hand inquiry into this matter
of life after death, and because I did so I am able
to speak quite definitely about these things now.
I know these things to be so. He who finds it diffi-
cult to accept that testimony should study the sub-

All Souls' Dai; 341

ject for himself, and he will eventually come to the
same conviction. A man is quite right to desire a
firm foundation for faith on so important a matter;
it is of the very greatest importance, for whatever
else may happen to us, this at least is certain — that
every one of us must die. Surely we ought to know
all we can about this state beyond death, even if it
were only for our own safety and happiness, and
far more because those whom we love pass behind
this veil, and the more we know the more we can
help them.

We may be absolutely sure that every thought of
ours reaches those whom we call the dead, and that
if we send out an earnest and loving wish for them,
that loving wish is a definite power which will reach
them and affect them. We do not need to evoke the
power of God. In God's power we live and move
and have our being. There is nothing which is out-
side of Him. He has made laws for the world, and
under those laws every cause produces an effect.
Our strong loving thought is a cause and will as-
suredly produce its effect. It must produce it. We
may see it or not; that does not matter, but it must
produce an effect — otherwise the whole of the uni-
verse has lost its law-abiding character.

The dead indeed see us, but (except during our
sleep) not exactly as they used to do; they do not
observe our physical actions, but they are thoroughly
cognizant of all our feelings and of all such thoughts
as are in any way connected with the lower personal
self. That is why it is of such supreme importance
that we should never allow ourselves to be filled with
depression or despair, because if we made that mis-
take, we should inevitably infect them with feelings

342 The Christian Festivals

of the same description — the very last thing we
should desire to do in the case of those whom we
love dearly.

What then can we give to them? What shall we
wish for them? The ancient prayer of the Church
Catholic shows us this most beautifully and effec-
tively. The antiphon for the dead runs: '^ Eternal
rest grant unto them, 0 Lord, and let light per-
petual shine upon them." This is not to be taken
as meaning that life in the astral w^orld is necessarily
indolent — quite the contrary; but it does mean that
we desire for them perfect rest from the worries
and troubles of this physical world, so that they
may lay themselves open more fully and completely
to the influence of that glorious divine light which is
ever shining upon all His creatures. For His love
pours out like the sunlight ; it is for us and for them
to see that w^e open our hearts to its beneficent
influence.

The greatest help of all that you can give to j^our
dead is to remember them before the altar of God
— to send in their names to be laid before Him at
the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. I have ex-
plained in The Science of the Sacraments that to
every name mentioned at the altar the Directing
Angel assigns a definite portion of the mighty out-
pouring of divine force which descends at the Con-
secration. What will that force do for the dead
man? That is at the discretion of the messenger
Angel who bears it. He knows better than we what
is wanted, but it will undoubtedly be applied to the
calming, the strengthening, the uplifting of the man.
Some dead people may still be in a condition of un-
consciousness. Then if that unconsciousness is in

All Souls' Dai? 343

any way prejudicial, if it would be better for the
man to be aroused, the Angel would use that power
to arouse him. If the Angel sees that the rest is
doing him good, the force would be stored up with-
in his aura, to pour itself out upon him in any way
that may seem best, so soon as he rises out of that
condition of unconsciousness and wakes up into his
new life.

Whatever may be the condition of the dead man,
the force we send will reach him and will be used
for his good. None need doubt that, for we have
seen thousands of cases, and we know of what we
speak. Any one may study the matter, and verify
our statement. Our dead are often very near to us,
but the veil between us is at its thinnest on such an
occasion as All Souls' Day, for the very fact that so
many people are simultaneously thinking along the
same line opens the channels more widely, and calls
the attention of a vast number of the dead who would
otherwise be pursuing their own affairs.

One family -we dwell in Him,

One Church, above, beneath,
Though now divided by the stream,

The narrow stream, of death.

We are all brethren, we can all help one another;
we can aid them, as they can aid us, by kindly
thought and loving memory. Let us then not neglect
the special opportunity given to us by the Church
on All Souls' Day to draw closer the bonds between
the seen and the unseen.

part 2

SOME DAYS OF SPECIAL INTEKT

CHAPTEK XIX

THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS

The Liberal Catholic Church asks no profession
of faith from its members. We who are its clergy-
regard ourselves as stewards of Christ's Mys-
teries, as distributors of His gifts to His people;
and we consider it our duty to administer them to
all wlio reverently desire them, without exacting
some particular form of belief as a qualification.
We think that what a man believes is his OAvn busi-
ness, not ours. When we apply to a doctor for a
tonic, he does not enquire to what political party
or religious denomination we belong; we go to him
with a definite object, and he at once puts his
special knowledge and skill at our disposal.
Christ has ordained certain sacraments as aids to
those of His followers who feel that they need help
in treading the upward path; we who have taken
up the work of bishops and priests are simply His
almoners — part of His machinery of distribution.

But the fact that we have no desire to interfere
with anyone's faith by no means implies that we
have no belief of our own. We leave men abso-
lutely free to put whatever interpretation they
choose upon creeds, rituals or scriptures, because we
think that every man must use his own intelligence
in deciding upon such matters; but we are perfectly
willing to tell our congregations what interpretation
we ourselves accept, and to share with them such
information as we possess. We do not care to dis-
pute or to argue, because discussions on religious

347

348 The Christian Festivals

subjects are so often both useless and unedifying,
and tend to degenerate into a mere acrimonious
wrangle; but we are ready to expound our views
to any one who desires to know them.

We are not in the least shirking any of the
issues involved, nor are we taking refuge in vague
generalities; we have a clear and coherent faith,
which we believe to be consonant with reason and
common sense, and to represent the original teach-
ing of the Christ. We hold it to be the true
Faith of our Fathers — of those of our fathers who
were able to grasp the magnificent simplicity of that
teaching; and we think it would be v/ell for Chris-
tians to get back to that, instead of superimposing
upon it all sorts of unnecessary^ and laboriously-
invented complications which have no basis in fact.
This faith is not binding upon either the priests or
the people of the Liberal Catholic Church; it is
til at which I individually hold, and I think that it is
shared to a large extent by my colleagues.

What then is this great truth which I am to put
before you? It is on the one hand so vast, so
illimitable, that the wisest of philosophers may
spend his life in its study, and on the other so
simple that a child can understand it.

Its first tenet is that there is a God, and that
He is good. God is Light, and in Him is no dark-
ness at all. He is Love, Wisdom, Strength, Beauty
and Justice. He is all the highest that we can con-
ceive, and infinitely more than that. That is the
root and foundation of our system, and one who
wishes to comprehend it must never for a moment
forget that, or allow his faith in it to be shaken.

The Faith of our Fathers 349

Secondly, man is himself divine in essence — a
spark of God's own Fire. Therefore he is im-
mortal, and his eventual return to the Divinity
whence he came is in all cases an absolute certainty,
no matter how far from the upward path of evolu-
tion he may have wandered. This path of evolu-
tion is long, and what we commonly call a man's
life is in reality only one day in his true life as a
soul. His gradual growth takes place under a law
of absolute justice — perhaps better stated as an un-
changeable law of cause and effect; so that nothing
whatever can come to any man unless he has
deserved it, and everything that happens to a man
(whether it be sorrow or joy) is on the one hand
the direct result of his own action in the past, and
on the other an opportunity by means of which he
can deliberately mould his future.

There is no such thing as hell; there is no wrath
of God to fear; all that is a silly and blasphemous
nightmare, begotten by the diseased imagination of
ignorant and cruel fanatics. Therefore salvation in
the ordinary sense of the word is unnecessarj^ for
there is nothing for man to be saved from except
his own error and his own ignorance. There is no
death; there is an endless and steadily progressive
life for all, and those whom we call the righteous
and the wicked are souls at different stages of that
ladder of life. Savages and selfish people are just
young souls — naughty children who, under the dis-
cipline of life, will learn better as they grow older.
That learning better and growing better is the
object of the whole scheme, and the time occupied
in this growth may be lengthened or shortened ac-

350 The Christian Festivals

cording to the diligence with which we apply our-
selves to learning the necessary lessons and
developing the requisite qualities.

The goal set before us is a high one: Be ye per-
fect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect. We
are an incalculable distance from that goal as yet;
but our feet are definitely set upon the path which
leads to it, and we see men both above and below
us on every step of that path, so that our future
way lies clear before us, however long it may take
us to tread it. Those who stand above us, those
great Saints and Masters of the Wisdom, who seem
to us as gods in the splendour of their knowledge
and power and love, one and all tell us that, no
long time ago, they stood where we stand now, and
that if we will but persevere as they persevered, we
shall in due time shine even as they.

Christ is our Saviour, not in the sense that His
physical death delivers us from a non-existent hell,
but that the teaching which He has left us lightens
our darkness and saves us from error. He is our
Pilot, guiding us aright; our Leader and Example,
after Whom we should pattern our lives. We must
think of Him, not as a memory of two thousand
years ago, but as a mighty living King Who stands
very near to everj^one of us, flooding His Church
with life and strength through the channels which
He has provided. His sacraments are the means
of help which He has arranged for ns; but we
must never forget that He has other sheep, who are
not of this fold, and that He said long ago In an-
other Manifestation: "By whatsoever path a man
approaches Me, upon that path do I meet him;

^he Faith of our Fathers 351

for the paths by which men come from every side
are Mine."

Sometimes men say to us : ' ' This that you say is
beautiful; but how do you know it?" Our faith
is founded on common sense, on observation and on
reason. It is the truth which lies behind all the
religions alike — the truth which the great World-
Teacher, the Christ, has always taught whenever
He came down to help the world. It is the only
theory which accounts rationally for the observed
facts of life, which solves the many problems of our
existence, and enables us to answer the various ques-
tions with which every thinking man finds himself
faced sooner or later. Those who have climbed
higher than we on the vast ladder of evolution —
the great Saints and Sages of whom I have spoken
— affirm its truth and offer us instruction in it; but
even on their testimony we have not accepted it
blindly. The scheme is a coherent whole, and though
parts of it belong to higher worlds far beyond the
present reach of any of us, other parts are well
within our powers of observation.

Man possesses a spiritual body as well as a phy-
sical body, as St. Paul has told us; and it is quite
possible for him to cultivate the powers of that
spiritual body, and thereby to extend enormously
the field of his observation. There are some of
us who have done this — have devoted many
years of their lives to such development and
such study; and at every point, as they un-
folded new faculties within themselves, they
have found stronger and stronger confirmation of
the glorious teaching which has been given to them.
So they have good reason to accept the scheme as

352 T)he Christian Festivals

a whole, for the lower part which they can see
implies and requires that higher part which is as
yet beyond them. Their experience is no proof to
you, though their statements are evidence which you
would be foolish to ignore; but it is always open to
you to do as they have done, and try to unfold
your own spiritual faculties, that you may know
the truth for yourselves at first hand. Meantime
you will be wise to examine this faith, and see
whether it does not commend itself to you at least
as the most probable hypothesis yet put forward.

It may further be asked how we can reconcile
our faith with the ancient creeds and scriptures.
We believe that we offer the only intelligible ex-
planation of the Creed, taking it, as we do, as a
symbolical statement of the existence and work of
the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. This is
a subject far too vast to be treated in this cha.pter,
but bookvS have been written upon it to which those
who desire further information may be referred.*

In the scriptures also we find many passages of
which we can suggest a far more beautiful and
rational interpretation than that ordinarily adopted;
but I readily admit that, for my own part, I am
entirely out of harmony with the attitude of the
average Christian towards the bible. He describes
it as God's Word, because he has been told that
it is so, but he is unable to produce the slightest
evidence for so amazing an assertion; he founds his
religious beliefs upon certain texts which he selects
from it, utterly ignoring other passages which teach
quite an opposite doctrine. Many Christians are so

♦ See The, Credo of Christendom, by Dr. A. Kingsford ; Emte.ric Christianity^
by Annie Besant ; The Christian Creed, by C. W. Leadbeater,

The Faith of our Fathers 353

curiously constituted mentally that they cannot hear
the truth on this matter without becoming furious;
but we of the Liberal Catholic Church must not be
afraid to face facts.

The Old Testament is clearly a Jewish scripture,
and not Christian, and the tribal deity of whom it
tells us has no affinity with the loving Father as
preached by the Christ. It has been conclusively
proved that most of its books were really not written
by the authors to whom they are attributed; and
indeed, the same may be said of most of the books
of the New Testament also. No one who has deeply
studied those books can successfully maintain their
historicity; and those who understand comparative
mythology will readily see that we have in the
four gospels, not the story of a life, but an allegory,
a Mystery-Drama of a type not uncommon in an-
tiquity. When this is once understood, all the
incidents fall into order, and much that was pre-
viously incredible or unaccountable is seen to be
perfectly natural. If these things are so (and there
is no doubt about it) why should we be afraid to
acknowledge them?

It is open to any of our members to cling to the
more physical interpretation if he prefers it, for
it matters little what we believe, but very much
what we do. But I think that to most of us the
higher and more spiritual meaning will appeal, for
in taking it we shall find the glorious old Faith of
our Fathers welcoming and explaining the latest
scientific developments, and presenting us with a
coherent, rational and most beautiful scheme of
unending progress. When once we see it, and grasp

354 The Christian Festivals

it so far as we can at our stage, what enthusiasm it
arouses, what devotion and love it calls forth! Well
may we sing: "Faith of our Fathers, holy Faith!
we will be true to thee till death/' Yes, and be-
yond death to life again, and through many lives
and deaths; for our faith is faith in a God of Love,
and whithersoever His "Will may send us, it can
never be outside the boundary of that mighty Love
which fills eternity.

CHAPTER XX

OUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE

I am emphatically of opinion that a correct atti-
tude towards life is of far greater importance than
any particular shade of religious belief; yet it is
true that without some reasonable belief this atti-
tude cannot be attained. A right attitude is in
truth the very first thing which the student needs,
yet it is usually the last which he gains; for it is
not to be acquired by reading about it, not to be
learnt like a lesson; it is something into which a
man slowly grows as a result of his study, and, still
more, of his efforts to put that study into practice.

AVhat he needs to set before himself is not so
much any one form of religion, but rather the philo-
sophy which underlies all religions — the actual
fundamental truth about God and man and the re-
lation between them. This truth is in reality a
philosophy, a religion and a science ; a philosophy, be-
cause it gives us an intelligible and satisfactory
theorj' of the constitution and reason of the uni-
verse; a religion, because it speaks to us of God,
of His relation to man, and of His will with regard
to our progress; a science, because it propounds its
teachings not as mere abstract theories, but as deduc-
tions drawn from facts which have been repeatedly
observed.

We of the Liberal Catholic Church look through
the exoteric wording of our Creed to its esoteric sig-
nification, and we find that inner meaning to be

355

356 The Christian Festivals

identical with the basic truth of which I have written.
So if we really understand and appreciate our reli-
gion, I think it should affect its votaries very dif-
ferently from other faiths. Most Western people
are used to a religion which is absolutely divorced
from practice — which has no connection with daily
life; for with the exception, perhaps, of a small
number of people belonging to monastic orders, no
one makes any attempt really to carry out the teach-
ings of the Christ. It is the custom to consider that
any one who goes to Church regularly, who gives a
certain amount in charity, and lives on the whole
a kindly and helpful life, is actuated by religious
motives, and is doing all that can be expected of a
follower of the Teacher of Palestine.

Yet if we face facts instead of hiding ourselves
behind conventions, it will be found that the people
who do these things do them chiefly because of their
own kindliness of disposition, and not with special
reference to any religious commands; and, further-
more, they are by no means prepared to follow out
the real instructions attributed to the Christ. He is
supposed to have said:

Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what
ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on.
Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Judge not, that ye be not
judged. Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn
to him the other also, and if any man will sue thee at the
law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor; and come and
follow me. If any man come to me, and hate not his father
and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters,
he cannot be my disciple.

Christians will tell you that such commands are
unsuited to the spirit of the present day, and are

Our Attitude Towards Life 357

not intended to be followed literally; it has even
been said that if they were followed literally they
would be provocative of harm rather than good. Per-
haps in our present highly artificial condition of
society that may be true; but that does not alter
the fact that it is useless for men to pretend to be
followers of the Christ, if they are not prepared to
put into practice the instructions which He is said
to have given. Not even those who profess to follow
Him most closely make any sort of attempt to bring
these instructions down into daily life; it would
obviously be extremely inconvenient for them to
do so.

I do not guarantee that these instructions were
actually given by the Christ. If they were, our com-
mon sense shows us that they were addressed not to
the world at large, but only to those immediate
disciples who desired to give up the world and
devote their whole lives to the propagation of
Christ's teachings in precisely the way in which it
was then (and is now) the custom that religion
should be preached in Eastern lands — by men vowed
to a life of poverty and chastity. There is at all
times a wide difference between the directions given
to such peripatetic instructors (who were distin-
guished as ''the disciples" or ''the twelve") and
the teaching intended for the general public. A
world in which everyone lives as a mendicant friar
is obviously impracticable, and I am not for a
moment suggesting it. My argument is only that if
the orthodox profess to accept those words as
divinely inspired, if they really regard them as a
command from their Leader to themselves, a certain
sense of unreality is produced by the fact that they

358 The Christian Festivals

do not make the slightest effort to put them into
practice.

The same thing is true, though to a much less
extent, of the other religions. All the great faiths
of the world give the same ethical teaching to their
devotees; and if only each man would really follow
the teaching of his religion, no matter what that re-
ligion may be, we should have something like a mil-
lennium at onceand without further trouble. There
are fortunately many good people in the world —
many people of average goodness, that is — but only
very few who really obey to the full their own reli-
gious teachings. It may be asked why this is so.
The reason seems to be that none of these people
really believe what they profess to believe. They
think of these religious statements as something to
which they are expected to give a formal assent on
Sundays, but not at all as actual rules of life to
be put into practice every day and all day long.

In this it will be perceived that religious belief
stands in an absolutely different category from what
may be called scientific belief, or belief which is
based upon actual knowledge. A man who has a
scientific fact before him knows that he can depend
upon that fact, and therefore he acts accordingly;
if he has dealt with a thing experimentally he knows
exactly what to do with it, and no one can persuade
him to act against the experience which he has thus
gained. A man knows that fire will burn him ; he
is always careful to remember that fact. He knows
that water will always run downhrll; therefore he
never acts as though he expected it to run up. Yet
a man may hold the most exalted religious senti-
ments, and yet act in daily life in direct contradic-

Our Attitude towards Life 359

tion to them. Obviously this can only be because
the sentiments are merely superficial, and he does
not really believe in them at all.

There should be this great difference between the
way in which an earnest Liberal Catholic student
takes his system of philosophy and the way in which
the ordinary religionist takes his religion — that the
student accepts the teachings given to him only in
so far as he really believes them, and therefore he
obviously acts accordingly. If it be found that he
does not act accordingly, then the same remorseless
logic applies — he does not truly believe them at all.
This then is the secret of our attitude towards life;
it is (or it should be) the attitude of those who really
believe what many others only profess to believe —
of those who believe it so thoroughly that in daily
life they act as though it were true.

One may take up a series of rules, live accord-
ing to them for a time, and then get tired of them
and decide to abandon them; but that is possible
only when they are not laws of nature, but just
arbitrary rules voluntarily accepted. So a man may
accept a religion; and presently drop it again; but
to accept the divine wisdom really and fully is to
open one's eyes to a set of new truths, to acquire
an amount of additional information which it is
impossible afterwards to ignore. A man who has
known and grasped these truths can never unlearn
them — can never fall back into the position of one
who does not know them; it is just as impossible
as it would be for the man to grow back into the
child again. Therefore one who has once attained
the joyous attitude cannot lose it again; he may
frequently fail to live up to its standards, but he

360 The Christian Festivals

will always know that he has so failed, and will per-
petually strive after a more perfect success. When
once we have seen the sun we can never thereafter
deny that it exists, even though for the time it may
be veiled from us; and in the same way a man who
has once realized the truth of God, and has had all
his life expanded and coloured by it, can never fall
back into orthodoxy or materialism.

How is this attitude to be obtained? There is no
way but to make our philosophy real in our lives,
to become permeated by the philosophical feeling
and way of looking at everything. Take the ideas
expressed in our Liturgy on p. 292, in the Act
of Faith, which we recite in the office of Prime:

We believe that God is Love, and Power and Truth and
Light; that perfect justice rules the world; that all His
sons shall one day reach His Feet, however far they stray.
We hold the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of man;
we know that we do serve Him best when best we serve our
brother man. So shall His blessing rest on us, and peace
for evermore.

Merely to hold these as a pious belief would mean
little; but the man who is quite sure about them,
who feels deep down within him that they are true,
knows that by means of them he has an absolutely
secure basis, that through them he can obtain all
good things if only he works steadily to get them.

See how many other facts at once follow from
this certainty. If God is good, then all things are
tending towards an end which is good for all; there-
fore any person who allows himself to be made
miserable by any events that happen does not yet
grasp the reality of this truth. A man who allows
himself to be distressed or depressed does not really

Our Attitude towards Life 361

believe that God is good; the evanescent sorrow or
suffering is more real to him than the great truth
which lies behind. I know quite well that it is not
always easy to see that all things are working to-
gether for good, but that is because we see them
only partially, and do not understand how they fit
into the great Flan. We do not deny the existence
of evil; but we assert that all which is really evil is
man-made, and arises directly as the result of the
breaking of the divine law. Therefore the Liberal
Catholic attitude includes perfect calm; for a man
who knows that all must be well cannot worry.

Though all is tending towards a glorious end, it
is by no means yet attained; and therefore, when
we see manifold wrong and suffering around us, we
must do all we can to make things right — to let the
underlying right manifest itself; but if, in spite of
all our efforts, things cannot be brought to go well,
that is at least not our fault. God leaves a certain
amount of free-will to man, and therefore man can
misuse it; and a certain proportion of men always
do so. If things will not go as well as they should,
there is sure to be some good reason why for the
present that is so, for we know with absolute cer-
tainty that they must finally come right. Why there-
fore should we worry about it? One who worries is
not a true philosopher, for this habit sends out evil
vibrations which do much harm to others, and no
student of the Wisdom ^Yi\\ willingly harm any
living thing. Also he cannot but feel that the
man who worries is distrusting God — showing a want
of faith in His power and in His love. His atti-
tude must be one of the uttermost confidence.

362 ^he Christian Festivals

Again it follows that if God is good and is the
loving Father of humanity, men must also be
brothers. But if we hold this truth of the brother-
hood of man it is impossible for us to continue to
act selfishly, for if a man realizes that he is no longer
a separated being, he can no longer be selfish. Some
of our members say with regard to these matters:

''Intellectually we believe all this to be so, because
the teaching of Divine Wisdom seems to us to be
by far the most satisfactory^ hypothesis to account
for all that we see in the world ; but we have not the
absolute certainty in these matters which can come
only from actual knowledge; and so sometimes our
feelings overpower us, and we seem to lose hold for
a time of the fundamental truths."

I sympathize entirely with those who have these
feelings; I have acknowledged that some of us have
a great advantage, those who have had direct experi-
ence, who by the use of higher faculties have seen
overwhelming proof of the truth of these great
statements. I know very well how great is the dif-
ference between our absolute certainty and even the
strongest conviction arrived at by mere reason. But
if a man will start with this theory as a hypothesis,
he will find that all that happens fits into it and is
explained by it, and he will encounter a number of
corroborative circumstances — each is perhaps small
in itself, but cumulatively they are of very great
force — until his conviction gradually expands and
deepens into certainty.

A man who declines to accept some such theory as
this v/ill constantly find facts which to him are in-
explicable— facts which will not fit into his scheme.

Our Attitude Towards Life 363

If, for example, a man denies the existence of the
astral world and of the life after death, he finds him-
self without any rational explanation of a great num-
ber of well-authenticated phenomena and of all sorts
of small happenings in everyday life. He has to
ignore these things or to attribute them (against all
reason and common sense) to hallucination; while a
man who understands the facts of the case can fit
them in quite easily into the outline already in his
mind. He may not understand in every detail how
the results are produced, but he sees at once that
they are in agreement with what he already knows,
and they are not in any way unnatural to him.

Thus, without being himself clairvoyant, he may
accumulate a great deal of evidence of the existence
of higher planes. Indeed, his position in compari-
son with that of the sceptic is like that of the first
believers in the heliocentric theory as opposed to
those who believed in the flat and stationary earth.
Those who held to the latter idea became more and
more confused as they acquired additional informa-
tion; the more they learned of the movements of
the different planets and stars, the more hopeless
the confusion became; whereas when once the fun-
damental fact of the earth's movements had been
realized, everything straightway fell into its place
and was seen to be part of a coherent and compre-
hensible whole. Every additional fragment of
evidence is not merely an addition to the strength
of the proof as a whole, but actually a nndtiplication
of it.

All the theories of man about the Deity may be
classified under three heads: either He is indifferent
to US; or He is actively hostile to us, and needs to

364 ^he Christian Festivals

be propitiated; or He is full of love and goodwill
towards us. If God be indifferent to us, if He has
brought us into existence for a mere whim, or if
we have grown fortuitously as the result of the
blind working of natural laws, it is to us to all
intents and purposes as though there were no God
at all.

This belief has obviously no coherent theory of the
universe to offer us — no plan, and consequently no
hope of any final end which shall justify or account
for our existence. There have been many in the past
who have held this comfortless belief, and it is even
possible that there are some who hold it now\ It
seems inconceivable that anyone could desire to hold
it, but some may imagine themselves forced to do
so by what they consider the lack of sufficient evi-
dence to the contrary. The philosophical student
knows that such evidence to the contrary exists, and
exists in overwhelming quantity ; but as much of it
depends upon clairvoyant investigation, the man
who wishes to examine it must satisfy himself as to
the possibility of clairvoyance.

The second theory — that God is capricious or hos-
tile to man — has been very widely held. Man images
God as the highest that he can conceive; but the
highest that he can conceive is often only a glorified
and intensified edition of himself. Consequently
when nations are in the rough and boisterous and
fighting stage which accompanies the earlier steps
of their development, they usually provide them-
selves with a god who is a man of war and will fight
for them against their enemies. Such a god is com-
monly regarded as capable of anger and of great
cruelty, and therefore he needs propitiation to pre-

Our Attitude Towards Life 365

vent him from letting his angry passions loose upon
his unfortunate devotees.

All religions which offer any type of sacrifice to
God belong to this category, because in all cases
the idea underlying the sacrifice is either that by
this offering the deity may be pleased and induced
to do in return for it some kindness which he would
not otherwise have done, or else that by this offer-
ing he is bought off from doing some evil which
he otherwise would do. The Jewish Yahweh was
obviously a deity of this type, and the pernicious
influence of this idea of propitiation has been allowed
to extend itself into Christianity, and is responsible
for the amazing and indeed blasphemous distortion
of the beautiful and inspiring story of the descent
of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity into
matter.

Thus those who do not understand the real mean-
ing of their Creed are driven to the untenable posi-
tion that God in one form sacrifices Himself to pro-
pitiate God in another form, in order to prevent
Him from the perpetration of atrocious cruelties
upon His creatures; and even this tremendous and
incredible sacrifice is represented to be so far from
effective that only an inappreciable fraction of
humanity is after all rescued by it. The utter im-
possibility of so monstrous a theory escapes the
notice of those who think they believe it; but that
is only because they have never ventured really to
face it, but take its statement for granted as part
of a theological system which is supposed to lie
absolutely outside of the region of ordinary reason
and common sense. This second form of belief
usually involves a theory of the universe as exist-
ing for a certain end, but as constructed in a man-

366 The Christian Festivals

ner so faulty that it fails almost entirely in its
original intention, and secures the lasting happiness
of only a small proportion of its inhabitants — and
even that on the remarkable assumption that they
are somehow enabled to forget the appalling fate
which overtakes the great mass of humanity.

The third theory — that God is love, and that the
whole of His mighty universe is moving steadily on-
ward to an appointed end of conscious unity with
Him — is the only one which can be accepted by the
philosophical student. The boundless love of the
Deity is the very foundation of Liberal Catholic be-
lief. No sacrifices, no offerings, no prayers, can be
necessary to the God who is the loving Father of all
His people, and is already doing for them far more
than they could ask, far more than they can con-
ceive. All that we can offer Him in return is our
love and our service; and our love is the very mani-
festation of God within us, so that the only action
on our part which can be thought of as pleasing to
Him is that which more and more allows the indwel-
ling God to manifest Himself through us. This
seems to me the greatest of all the truths — the truth
upon which all else depends.

When a man is thoroughly permeated with the
utter certainty of eternal love and absolute justice,
from that, as the basic fact, he will find all the other
facts in nature gradually coming into line and tak-
ing their proper place. Trouble of some sort comes
to every man ; and because of that, man is sometimes
tempted to believe that all cannot be well — that there
must be a failure somewhere and somehow in the
working of the divine scheme. Such an error is
natural; but it is an error nevertheless, and the man
who makes it is in the position of the African chief

Our Attitude Towards Life 367

who refused to believe that water could ever become
solid, because he had never seen an example of that
phenomenon.

To the average student this certainty comes only
as the result of the intellectual conviction that it
must be so — that the evidence in its favour is
stronger than that which is offered against it. The
clairvoyant has the enormous advantage of being
able to see on higher planes much more definite evi-
dence of the trend of the great forces which are
playing through and round humanity. Seeing phy-
sical life only, a man obtains a distorted view, and
if he is by nature hypochondriacal he may contrive
to take and to maintain a pessimistic view of life;
but one who can see beyond the physical plane is
thereby enabled to estimate things more nearly at
their real value, to get them into perspective, and to
see their relative proportions. So in the strength of
that higher knowledge he is able to say with cer-
tainty that he knows that the great forces which
surround us are tending finally to good. Much which
is temporarily evil arises, and must necessarily arise,
from the giving of even a small amount of free will
to man. But all evil is only partial and temporary,
and its effects are all swept along in the mighty
stream of evolution, just as the little eddies and
whirlpools on the surface of a roaring torrent are
nevertheless swept onward in its course towards the
sea.

When a man is thoroughly convinced that this is
the universal law, he is able to estimate at their
true value the small apparent divergences from it
with which he meets in daily life. His own troubles
and difficulties loom large to him because of their

368 The Christian Festivals

proximity, but his knowledge of the Divine Wisdom
enables him to rise above them and to look down
upon them from the higher standpoint, so that he
can see their true proportion. He in no way fails
to sympathize with an individual who is temporarily
suffering; yet he cannot be overwhelmed by sad-
ness, because he sees beyond the suffering to its re-
sult, beyond the sorrow to the goal of eternal joy.
All troubles are to him necessarily evanescent, like
the discomforts of a journey. They are no doubt
real and annoying while they last, but the man
faces them precisely because he desires to reach the
end of the journey. For the true philosopher there-
fore depression is an impossibility; he regards it
not only as a w^eakness, but as a crime, because (as
we said before) he knows that it infects those around
him, and holds them back in their progress on the
upward path.

He knows it to be both inutile and foolish to
grumble at what happens to him, however unpleasant
it may be. It could not happen to him unless he
had deserved it, and consequently he regards it as
the paying of a debt which must be cleared out of
the way before further progress can be made. He
does not grumble at the deficiencies and weaknesses
which he finds within himself, because he knows
that it is he and none other who has made himself
what he is, and that it is he and none other who can
change himself to what he would be. He believes that
he has all eternity in front of him in which to con-
quer his difficulties, and therefore he knows with
absolute certainty that these difficulties ivill be con-
quered, however insurmountable they may appear
from his present point of view.

Our Attitude Towards Life 369

He knows that any evil which he has done in the
past must after all have been finite in its extent,
and consequently its results must be finite also;
whereas he himself is a living force of infinite pos-
sibility, able to draw without stint from the Divinity
of which he is an expression. His attitude is then
one of perfect trust and of perfect philosophy, and
the object of his life is to become to the fullest extent
of his capacity a co-worker with God Himself. In
playing that part he cannot but be a happy man,
because he feels himself at one with the Deity, Who
is happiness. If he can but realize that all nature
is the garment of God, he will be able to see in it
His hidden beauty and glory.

All this may be his, but only on condition that he
really lives his creed, that he allows it to permeate
him and to inspire him. We have been told in
ancient scripture that he who wishes to tread the
Path must become that Path himself, which means
that the treading of it must become so absolutely
natural to him that he can do no other. A man may
be intellectually convinced of the truth of our
teaching although he knows that in many ways he
falls short of its full realization; but the man who
is able to live it obtains far more than the intel-
lectual conviction; by his own experience there
grows up within him a living certainty and know-
ledge of its truth which can never be shaken. They
that do the will of the Father which is in Heaven,
they shall know of the doctrine, whether it be true;
only by living the life of the child of God is the
true Wisdom of God attained, and only through that
Wisdom can we reach and maintain the truly divine
attitude of limitless love to all beings.

CHAPTEE XXI

THE GREATEST OF THESE

Christ is the Lord of Love, and if we are in
earnest in our wish to follow Him. we must be dis-
tinguished from men of the outer world by this
characteristic above all others. It was said of the
early members of the Church : ' ' See how these Chris-
tians love one another ' ' ; can this truly be said of us
to-day? I think we must try to understand what
love really is; we all talk about it freely enough, but
there are few outside the Inner Circle of those who
stand close round our Masters who can be said really
to know what it is. What passes in the outer world
by that name is usually only a faint and sullied re-
flection of love. It is often grasping and selfish ; it
is intermingled with all kinds of desires and other
emotions, su-ch as jealousy and pride; it is not the
genuine feeling at all; we who know that God is
Love ought to be capable of something higher than
that.

"We must not make the mistake, as beginners not
infrequently do, of thinking that tho.se who try to
foUew the Path of Holiness should have no emo-
tions ; assuredly we must have emotions, but Vv'e must
be careful that they are only those that we definitely
choose to have. We must not let o*r astral bodies
formulate emotions for themselves and then run
away with us, and sweep us off our feet with them ;
that is all wrong. But to say we should have no
emotions would be to make of us monsters instead
of men: to make, perhaps, intellectual giants, but

370

^he Greatest of These 371

beings utterly incapable of sympathy, and therefore
useless for the Masters' work.

If we look at the illustrations in a book which I
published many years ago, Man Visible and Invisible,
we shall see that the astral body of the savage, and
even that of the ordinary man, are examples of what
the astral body ought not to be ; they show it formu-
lating its own emotions (some of them distinctly
bad), sweeping away the ego from his path, and
acting entirely without his control. If we examine
the drawing of the astral body of the developed man
we see that it is an exact mirror of his mental body,
which means that he has emotions, profound and
beautiful emotions, but he has those which he allows
himself to have, and no others. The astral body
has become a reflection of the mental; it is a ser-
vant instead of a master; and the astral body, like
fire and some other things, is a very good sei^v^ant but
a very bad master.

The moment we allow it to take control it spoils
everything; but it is an absolutely necessary vehicle
for our work, and when under perfect control, it
can enable us to reach much which without it we
could not reach. The astral body corresponds to and
is a mirror of the buddhic vehicle; and as the
buddhic vehicle is not yet developed in most of us,
it is only through the astral body that we can obtain
touch with the buddhic plane — not through the mind.
Through the mind we can know a little of the ego,
the soul ; by meditation the lower mind can come into
contact with the higher mind; but it is through the
nobler emotions only that we can touch that still
higher vehicle. Therefore we need to feel emotions,
but we must strictly curb those emotions; we must

372 The Christian Festivals

see that they are of the right kind, and that only
those which are helpful are allowed to play through
us.

So is it with love, the key-note of which is, as
Christ absolutely insisted, that we must forget our-
selves in that which we love. That ought not to be
difficult; but apparently it is. There are many who
seem unable to do it ; and yet, if the feeling be only
strong enough, the result must follow. This ques-
tion is one of those with which every one of us will
be faced in the future. When the Lord comes, His
gospel will be a gospel of love. He Himself is
known as the Lord of Love, of Compassion, of Kind-
liness; that that is one of the features which must
be most prominent in His teaching is stated in Mr.
Jinarajadasa's wonderful little book, What we shall
Teach; we find it laid down there very clearly; and
we should remember that Mr. Jinarajadasa is one
of those who is on the special line of the World-
Teacher, and therefore closely linked with Him. He
says there:

There is a power that makes for strength, and it is lore;
in many forms it grows in men's hearts, but with each
appearance it brings strength — strength to transmute cruelty
into sacrifice, lust into worship, pride into devotion; this love
brings. This is the first truth that you and I will teach, in
His name.

There is a power that makes all things new, and it is
Beauty that is Joy. Love, and you shall see the Beauti-
ful; worship, and you shall be one with Him; serve, and
you shall be His Anointed for the salvation of your fellow-
men. This is the second truth that you and I will teach,
in His name.

There is a power that unifies all, and it is sacrifice.
Through action that is sacrifice comes life to love that is
strength and to beauty that is joy. This is the way for all

^he Greatest of These 373

to tread, the path the One Lover has made for His Beloved.
This is the third truth that you and I will teach, in His
name.

Now these words are not only beautiful but tbey
are profoundly true; that is precisely what we must
do, if we are to take part in the future which is
opening before us. All the modes of thought, all
the methods, and all the ideas that come naturally
to us, are of the past ; we must learn to live in and
for the future; the future which the Lord will make
when He shall come; and this Love is the key-note
of that future. It is no new teaching; He gave it
when He was on earth before; He gave it as Shri
Krishna; He gave it as the Christ; and His disciple
St. John, following in His steps, preached this also.

St. Paul has given what is perhaps one of the
best definitions of Love in the thirteenth chapter of
the First Epistle to the Corinthians. We can do no
better than take that chapter and read it, and see
how far our conception of Love agrees with that of
that great Apostle and Initiate. "Love," he said,
"suffereth long and is kind." That is to say, it
bears all for the sake of him whom it loves; it never
thinks of anything that can be done for the loved
one as a trouble or a worry or a difficulty. "It
suffereth long." He says in another place: "It
beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth
all things." So from the loved one, it bears
all, whatever may come. Of him it believes
the noblest and the best always, and hopes
for the grandest and most magnificent. So it devotes
itself wholly and solely to the object of its love; it
never thinks of itself at all. "Love seeketh not her
own"; it does not even ask for that which well might

374 The Christian Festivals

be expected; for it thinks nothing of itself, but only
of the beloved.

That is a beautiful conception — all must see that;
but I suppose many people in the outer world would
think of it as an impossibility. Perhaps it is a
counsel of perfection, it is Utopian; the outside world
would say that there is no one who feels like that.
Yet wait, you who are striving upwards, wait till
you enter into the Inner Arcanum, and you will find
that there are those who feel just like tluit. The love
of our Masters is love such as that ; and vvdien in the
far future we are able to see the consciousness of the
great Lord of Love Himself, we shall find that He
loves His world in exactly that way, caring
nothing what it thinks of Him, thinl^ing only of
what can be done for it. It is wonderful, it is
glorious, but it is true; this attitude can be reached
by men, and it has been reached by men; therefore
we can reach it, every one of us. I do not say that
we can do it at once — that we can cast aside all our
old habits in a moment; we can cast them off, but
they will come back again and again, because we have
established a sort of evil momentum ; we have created
ruts in which our thought moves, and it is not easy
to pull it away out of those in a moment. It is not
easy to change ourselves, because our habits in these
matters are not those of this life only; they have
existed for thousands of years, and a habit we have
been forming for twenty thousand years takes some
changing; but it must be done, and therefore we had
better set about it at once; the sooner we begin the
better.

When Love is strong enough, we may see that atti-
tude even now. We have all heard of the most won-

^he Greatest of These 375

derful self-sacrificing actions performed by those
who truly love — by a mother for her child, by a
husband for a wife, or a wife for a husband. There
are wonderful instances of splendid heroism that
seem superhuman; but, after all, those who do these
things are men like ourselves, and if they can do
them, surely we can do them too. It is only a
matter of shaking oneself free from the old fetters
and trying to understand, and that is not so difficult
after all. All that St. Paul says — beautiful as it
is, glorious as it is, well worth reading as it is —
every word of it is already in the heart of any
person who really deeply loves. He forgets, he
must forget, himself; he can think only of the
object of his love; and that being so all the rest
follows. All these other qualifications which St.
Paul mentions come, if the love be true and pure.
It is useless to say that at our present level we can-
not have such a thing; we can and we must.

Of all the qualifications for Initiation this is the
greatest, for it includes all the rest. St. Paul ends
his chapter, ''And now abideth Faith, Hope, Love,
these three; but the greatest of these is Love," and
this is the new gospel. The old one — I mean that of
the previous World-Teacher — was the gospel of
Wisdom; if ignorance could be dispelled, He said,
if man could only know and understand, then evil
would be gone. That is perfectly, absolutely true;
but this presentation is also true, and this is the pro-
clamation of the present day — that when men live
as brothers, when they put aside their lack of love,
their suspicion and their lack of comprehension,
their Avoodenness and their stupidity, the whole world
will be different. When men have learned to trust

376 The Christian Festivals

one another, to live together by common-sense
arrangement, instead of every one having to be re-
stricted by law from doing this and doing that, the
one great Law of Love will be restriction enough for
every man.

It will be a long time before all the world can
come to that stage; but it will be longer still if
somebody does not begin, and we are precisely the
very people whose business it is to be setting that
example, for w^e are awaiting the coming of the
Lord of Love. If we are to be His helpers, His
disciples, perhaps even His apostles when He comes,
we must be studying His method already — what we
know of it — and this at least we know of it, that
Love will be its central feature. We can accustom
ourselves to that central feature, we can begin to
live the life which He will expect us to live,
and most certainly the more we live it now,
the more we shall prepare ourselves to be His
helpers when He comes. If we can permeate
ourselves with His spirit beforehand, that will be
an enormous advantage to us in acting as the
channels of His grace and His power when He comes.
Until then the most we can do is to practise all
these virtues, and to try in that way to make our-
selves ready.

We must put away all unworthy ideas; it is an
insult to the glorious name of Love to use it for the
sort of emotion with which many of us are familiar;
it is not the right w^ord at all. The real thing is
spiritual, truly, beyond the comprehension of many,
but glorious beyond all that words can tell. Let us
reach, if we can, the buddhic consciousness; let us
try to touch it even for a moment; we shall have

me Greatest of These 377

to experience it when we reach the period of Initia-
tion. Happy for us if we can attain it before, and
so save on that mighty occasion some trouble to
those who are in charge.

Let us enter, if we can, into some stage of this
higher consciousness; it will be a revelation to us,
something we can never forget. The world will
never again be the same to us when once we have
seen that. Such experience is not for all of us
yet, because it means a stupendous effort — an effort
for which few are yet ready. It has been made by
some, but only at considerable risk and with con-
siderable strain. I have seen a strong man faint in
the making of an unsuccessful effort to attain that
union; yet there are others to whom it comes natu-
rally and easily. It will come to all of us at one
stage or other — most likely first in our meditation
some time. It may be by a definite effort, it may
be simply in the course of the evolution of our
power of meditation that it will come to us, but come
it will, and then we shall know.

Until then we must simply imagine to ourselves
this higher love; but let us get as near to it as we
can; let us determine, at least, that not even the
tiniest tainting speck of selfishness shall remain in
our emotion, that we will live only for the object of
our love. Let us pour out our love upon our
Masters; there indeed there can be no selfishness, for
we cannot be wondering what They feel for us, or
what They can do for us; we know that beforehand.
We know that when the pupil is ready the Master is
ready also, and that Their love is as wide as the
sea. The only limitations and difficulties are those

378 The Christian Festivals

which we make ourselves; there is no difficulty on
Their side, no limitation to Their power of affection.

St. Paul says: ''Love envieth not." It is rare to
find that sort of love, the love which envieth not,
which vaunteth not itself, which is not puffed up;
those are among his definitions. However splendid
may be the achievement of one whom we love, we
feel only the purest pleasure in it, never the least
touch of envy; and if in some way we can do some-
thing which the loved one cannot, we do not boast
about it, we are not puffed up about it ; we think
only of his feelings, and never of ours. It is all so
simple if we always keep in mind the key-note of
unselfishness; but failing that key-note everything
goes wrong; that is inevitable.

''It is not easily provoked," he says, "and it
thinketh no evil." There is a great deal in that. It
is not easily provoked; we know how difficult it is
to live through all the little strains of ordinary life,
and not to be annoyed; it is almost impossible for
the average man. Even for the more developed it
is very hard, and that for many reasons. First, as
I have said, we have a habit of irritability which we
have been industriously cultivating for many thou-
sands of years; that has to be conquered. Secondly,
we are living in an age of great nervous strain, such
as the world has never known before until now;
consequently our nerves are all out of tune, most
especially those of us who have to live in big cities,
and so it is exceedingly difficult to preserve an
even balance all the wa}^ through; still, we must
try. It is, I admit, an almost superhuman thing to
expect, but at least we must try. We are attempt-
ing what no one else has essayed; all who have

The Greatest of These 379

striven to live the spiritual life, as we wish to do,
have begun by retiring from the world — by living
in the jungle, becoming hermits, or living in a
monastery among monks, so that they may either
be free from all other vibrations, or surrounded by
vibrations which shall ^e entirely harmonious. We
are, so far as I know, the first people who have
made an attempt to lead this higher life without
in any sense retiring from the world; living in the
midst of it — in the midst of what may be called a
very aggravated form of it.

It is true there have been great cities in times of
old; Rome was grand and glorious; Babylon was a
huge city; the City of the Golden Gate in Atlantis
was enormous also; but at least there was not the
pressure then that there is now. I have looked back,
in the course of clairvoyant investigation of various
sorts, at a large number of the older civilizations;
some of them were far from good, some of them
were distinctly evil, for there was much of un-
pleasant magic: some on the other hand were mag-
nificent, and were our own equals in most respects;
but at any rate there never was one of them (that I
have seen) where we had so terrible a hurry and
pressure as we have now. It all comes from our new
methods of communication, from our railways and
our steamers, our electric telegraphs and daily
papers; all these things tend towards hurry.

All that has its good side; it is teaching us to
crowd into a short time a vast amount of concen-
trated work, and to manage many different things
at once; it is not without its benefit; but in the
meantime it is wrecking the health and the consti-
tutions of many people; and it distinctly makes all

380 The Christian Festivals

spiritual progress much harder. It does develop
mentality and intellectual power, but it makes any-
thing in the nature of meditation or union with
God much more difficult, because the very essence
of those things is that one should be quiet, that one
should be able to abstract oneself from the world
and concentrate on higher things. Meditation can
be done; to some extent many are doing it — though
without much success in many cases, I know. We
need not wonder at our lack of success in medita-
tion— at the fact that other thoughts thrust themselves
in, and that it seems to us almost impossible to carry
out our meditation perfectly. Let us remember that
if we succeed under these conditions, we have made
a great step — for we are proof against most diffi-
culties that will come in our way. A man who has
proved himself successful in meditation under con-
venient circumstances, away in a cave or a jungle,
might well be thrown off his balance if he had to
live in a great city; so if we can do our work per-
fectly under such conditions, we have secured our
footing on that pathway of advancement.

What we are trying is a hard thing; but it as-
suredly can be done, and if done, it gains much more
for us than the following of the easier way would
gain. It is one of our difficulties that our nerves are
all strung up by this great rush and activity round
us. Some of us may think that they do not take
part in it; unfortunately we cannot help doing so
to a certain extent; if we are living in the midst of
it we must feel it. The vibrations of a million men
are all around us; those must be a powerful factor.
and we, as individuals, setting ourselves against such
a current as that, shall have a heavy piece of work

^he Greatest of Uhese 381

in keeping ourselves steady. It can be done, for it
has been done; but to reach this state of which the
apostle speaks — the condition incapable of provoca-
tion— is always difficult; and it is doubly, trebly
difficult under these present circumstances. Never-
theless we have to attain to it. As we progress along
the Path we have to gain something far higher than
that along the same line; the last fetter but one
which the Arhat casts off before he attains Adept-
ship is the possibility of being disturbed by any-
thing whatever. I must say I always look at that
condition with a certain amount of mild envy! But
when it is attained there is only one more fetter to
be cast off — that of ignorance. To be perfectly free
from irritability brings us near to the highest, and
of course that is still far in the future, but in the
meantime we must try to do what we can to follow
St. Paul's advice, and aspire to the love which is
not easily provoked and thinketh no evil.

Of course it thinks no evil: how should one think
any evil of a loved one? ''It rejoiceth not in evil,
but rejoiceth in truth." It is popularly said that
love is blind: I suppose there is such a love; but I
know there is a later stage which is pretematurally
keen — which expects far more than the ordinary in
the way of achievement and of behaviour from the
object of love — which sets a high standard just be-
cause of the love it bears — a love which is quite the
reverse of blind. Perhaps this is a reaction from
the other. The perfect love will be neither of these;
it will have passed beyond them both, and it will
judge of everything just as it is, without fear and
without favour, knowing well that nothing whatever

382 The Christian Festivals

that the loved one could do would change or alienate
the love.

This feeling of love does not depend upon the
character of the person loved at all; if we love a
person, we love him, and whatever he may do will
not affect our love. It may cause us pain if he
does evil, because we love him; it may cause us sor-
row and suffering; but it cannot affect our love.
That again is a thing which people do not seem to
understand. ^'How can I love a person who has
treated me in such and such a way?" they say. Do
not you see that his treatment has nothing to do
with it? True love is not between personality and
personality; it is between ego and ego — perhaps
between Monad and Monad: how do we know? We
know so little yet of those stupendous heights; but
at least we see that it is absolutely independent of
v/hat is done by the loved one.

Such love can be felt by man; I know that my-
self, because I have seen it ; because we see it in the
Great Ones and we see it in Their disciples. A
beautiful and a wonderful thing it is to see. This
kind of love, it is said, "never faileth." This is St.
Paul's final characterization of it; it never faileth,
whatever happens; whatever is done, it is still the
same, the one unchangeable thing in this changeable
world. Changeless, because love is God. "He that
loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." It
is by this fact, says an apostle again, that "we
know that we have passed from death into life, be-
cause we love." Not only is it a most important
factor in life — it is life itself. It is the life of God
in man, for God is love.

^he Greatest of ^hese 383

We do not perhaps think of all that that means;
if we love, God dwelleth in us and His love is per-
fected in us. That is an idea that I should like to
be ever with us, and never to be forgotten — that if
we are happy enough to feel the true, the glorious
love, it is not we who love, but God who loveth in
us. It is the life of the Logos Himself; and in
the proportion in which that life pulsates through
us, in that proportion may we pour it out as love
to our fellow-men. Again, it is said in the scripture :
"He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" If
we wish to show forth the power of God, we can
do it only by absorbing into ourselves the love of
God, and pouring it out again upon all these others.
We must be His almoners in this greatest of all
charities, the pouring out of His love ; to realize that,
and to do it, is the birth of the Christ within us; we
can make no better resolve than to carry that thought
with us wherever we may go, and to show that be-
cause we love God, and because we are thankful to
Him, we pour forth in our daily lives that love for
our brothers which is the mark of our unity with
Him.

CHAPTER XXII

DISCERNMENT

Discernment has always been recognized in all
religions as a matter of great importance for one
who wishes to make progress on the path towards
God. In the great Indian religions it is called Dis-
crimination, and there also it is put as the first of
the requirements, because unless a man possesses a
certain amount of discrimination to begin with he
will not know what things he ought to do, he will
not know the life which he ought to live. It is this
faculty of discrimination that leads us all to adopt
what we may call, perhaps, the religious attitude. I
do not in the least mean by that that the people
who choose that line will necessarily come to church;
that is largely a question of their training and of
their needs. Those who may be called the religious
of the world are, I think, those who recognize that
God has a plan for man, and that that plan is evolu-
tion. Those who realize that, those who know it,
make an effort to live in accordance with that plan.
They are definitely on God's side, so to speak. There
are in reality, from the higher point of view, just
two kinds of people in the world — the people who
know, and the people who do not know; those who
know that there is a plan, and those who do not
yet realize that fact at all. It does not matter in
the least which of the msmy religions of the world
those people profess. Those of us who are trying
to understand the truth of things must realize that
the form of religion which a man happens to pro-

384

Discernment 385

fess is a question of the country and surroundings
in which he was born, and nothing more than that.
You are Christian because you were born in what
is called a Christian country. If you had been born
in India, you would with the same enthusiasm and
devotion have been Hindus. If you had been born
in a Buddhist country, you would have been fol-
lowers of the Lord Buddha with just the same devo-
tion and just the same goodness of heart in every
way.

To possess a religious facultj^ — a religious turn of
mind that leads one in that direction — simply means
to be a person who wishes to follow the right. What
is to each of us the form of the right which he shall
follow depends, as I have said, upon where he hap-
pens to be born; and that is no accident, but a matter
of what we call his karma. That is to say, it
depends upon his desert in previous lives and what
is best for his progress at the moment. Most people
find it difficult to conceive of themselves as having
been born in any other religion, or in any other
race. It seems strange and incredible to them that
they could have been born in one of the dark-
skinned races of the world, for example, and yet
everyone quite certainly has been at some time in
the past, and it is by no means improbable that they
may be so born in the future.

The conditions into which a man deserves to -be
born include, among other things, not only the race,
but the religion which will come his way; and it
really does not matter which one of them it is, so
long as he has the feeling, the knowledge, which
enables him to think, to speak, to act for the right.
There are many truly religiously-minded people who

386 The Christian Festivals

do not follow any of these faiths which we have men-
tioned. Many a man who is a Freethinker, an un-
believer, is just as truly a follower of God as any
of us could be, though he follows Him along a dif-
ferent line. He is developing at the moment a
different part of his nature ; but all those who under-
stand that there is a God, that there is right and
there is wrong, all those are on the right road, and
the name by which they call their God does not
matter in the least. We think of God as Father, Son
and Holy Ghost, and we speak of God the Son as
the Christ. If we lived in India we should hear the
same idea of a Trinity, but the Second Person would
be called Vishnu, or sometimes Krishna or Rama in
His various Manifestations. But it does not make
the slightest difference. "All true worship comes to
]\Ie through whatsoever channel it may be poured
forth." And if you be a Muhammadan and call God
by the name of Allah — as I have remarked before —
that is no more than if, being a Frenchman, you
call Him Le hon Dieu, the good God. Allah is the
Muhammadan word for God, and the fact that in
one case it indicates a difference of language, and in
another a difference of religion, has nothing to do
with the case. All true worship, all real devotion,
all good feeling is received by the one great God.
Who is alike the Father of us all. That is one of
the things in which we must learn discrimination.
]\Iay I emphasize again that we should not fall into
the old illusion, in which unhappily so many of us
have been brought up from childhood, that ours is
the only path that leads to God, and that all others
are following error, are following mistaken ideas,
and will land no one knows where, AH that is

Discernment 387

nonsense; there are many paths to God. You have
been born here, so this is a way for you; but a man
born in another place will have his own way which
is just as good.

The whole point is that we should know enough to
stand on God's side. Many people standing on
His side do not want to come to church. They do
not feel impressed in that way. So long as they
follow God, it is not necessary that they should
follow in our way. Many in other branches of the
Christian Church would tell you that to go to church
is necessary to salvation; that to receive certain
sacraments is an absolute necessity. We do not
think so. All these things are given to us as helps,
and as they are put before us by the Christ Him-
self it seems wise to take advantage of them. That
much is true, but to say that a man would be cast
out, that he would be lost because he did not use
them would be a blasphemy against the holy Father
of us all. None will ever be cast out by Him, what-
ever they may do or however far they may stray.
They cannot lose themselves finally, but of course it
is true that they can make their path to Him slower,
longer, more tedious, more difficult than it need be;
that is what the people commonly called the wicked
are doing, but that is all they can do. They can-
not cast themselves out, because the will of God, as
we have said, is evolution; but they have not yet
developed sufficient discrimination to show them
what things are worth following and what are not
worth following. Vast numbers of people, very good
people in their way, have not seen that yet, and so
they are still running after money, wealth, power —
advantages for themselves only; because they have

388 The Christian Festivals

not yet seen that all mankind in reality is ©ne,
and therefore nothing which is gained hy one man
for himself alone at the cost of others can ever
be really for his good, because it is not for the good
of all.

Discrimination is necessary, that we may see what
we ought to follow. As they would put it in India,
we learn to follow the real and not the unreal. The
most beautiful commentary that I have ever seen on
this question of discrimination is contained in a
book called Ai the Feet of the Master^ written by
an Indian boy of about thirteen years of age. I
have seen no presentation of it so clear, so beautiful
as in that little book. It is well worth your fullest
study, I can assure you. That book tells us that
discrimination has to be shown in all sorts of ways,
not only in first of all choosing the path we shall
follow, but while we are on that path, every day to
the end of it w^e have to use our discrimination to
judge between the right and wrong, to see what is
important and what is unimportant, what is useful
and what is useless, what is true and what is false.
Most of all, perhaps, what is selfish and what is
unselfish.

We talk much about right and wrong, and I think
those great words are often much misused. Few
things can be said definitely to be wrong or right.
The great majority of things that come before us
are expedient or inexpedient, desirable or undesir-
able. Right and wrong are very strong words indeed
— words which we ought to use only when we are
absolutely certain of what we are doing. So many
people will tell us that this or that is wrong, when
all that they mean is that it is contrary to their

Discernment 389

ideas and their conventions. There are thousands
of people who would tell you that it is wrong to
go for a walk or to read any but the most serious
books on Sunday. That is the sort of thing to which
such words as right and wrong should not be ap-
plied. It is contrary to the ideas of certain small
sections of the people that this should be done, and
so for those people it is better not to do it, but there
is no reason why they should limit the rest of us
by that idea. We might take it as a definition, I
think, of right and wrong that that is right which
helps on God's plan of evolution, and that is quite
definitely wrong which interferes with that plan in
any way. Anything whatever which injures a
fellow-man or holds him back on his path — that thing
is definitely wrong; but short of that it is a word I
should use with great circumspection.

I can certainly tell you of many things which I
should think most undesirable. Take the great ques-
tion of the drinking of alcohol. To say that is
wrong seems to me assuming much more than we
have any right to assume; I should emphatically
say that it is almost undesirable thing; it is a thing
I would not do myself, because I consider its
influence evil; but it is not for me to lay down that
as the law of God. I say that its effects are undesir-
able, therefore for me it would be wrong. Even
that is a strong word; for me it is simply a thing I
would not do; but to say that it is wrong means
surely that it is wrong for all. lii speech, as in
many other things, we must learn discrimination;
we must be careful how we use such strong words
as right and wrong.

390 ^he Christian Festivals

The main thing, I think, that leads us to undesir-
able actions is the fact that we have not yet proper
control of our bodies, our vehicles. We have this
physical body, we have an emotional or astral body,
we have also a mental body; all these things are
our vehicles, and we ought to use them for our own
purposes to help the soul, to whom they all belong.
"We ought to use them to further our advancement
and to serve others; but half the time people do
not do that; they confuse themselves with their
bodies, and let those bodies manage them, which is
precisely the same thing as it would be if one were
riding a horse and should let the horse go wherever
it would — let it run away and take its rider where
he did not intend to go. Under those circumstances
the horse would be of little use to the man. If men
would only believe it, the physical body is just an
animal. It is not the man; it is just an animal be-
longing to him, and he should treat it in the same
way as he would treat an animal that is serving
him. He should take care of it, he should feed it
on the proper food; he should be careful to keep it
perfectly clean and in good health: but the very
reason for his association with that animal (just as
in the case of the horse) is that by its means he may
be able to do things that he could not do without it.

By means of the horse he can get quickly from
one place to another ; it will draw his goods for him ;
it will help him in various ways, and that is why
he keeps it. Kut if the horse declines absolutely to
do anything he wants and insists on having its own
way ail the time, he will soon say: "Why should I
be at the trouble of keeping this creature which is

Discernment 391

useless to me?" The same thing is true of the
physical body.

The man is a soul, and he keeps- this hody because
it is of use to him in his evolution; and that is the
only use it is to him. If it is not doing any good
for him in that way, he would be better without it,
for nearly all trouble comes to him through the
body, and without it he as a soul would be free
from all that.

We have to learn to control our bodies. The
physical body is often lazy; it wants to do this and
that on its own account; it has all sorts of undesir-
able wishes. Each time that such a wish arises
just think: ''Is it I who want this thing? No, it is
not I; it is my body that wants it. Is it well that
I should give it this thing?" Perhaps in some
cases it is, but in many cases it is not. Therefore in
this, too, we must use discrimination.

The emotional body has all kinds of wishes of its
own. It wants excitement; it wants a great stir and
flurry, and it does not care at all what kind it is,
because the excitement produced b}^ intense anger
is just as good for it as the feeling produced by
intense affection or devotion. To the astral body it
is just the same what the excitement is so long as
there are violent vibrations; but it is not at all the
same for the real man, the soul. Therefore we must
use our discrimination here also ; let the astral body
have the excitement of affection, of devotion, of
the earnest effort to do the best we can (though that
is perhaps more mental). Let it have all such vibra-
tions, but do not let it have those of the excite-
ment that comes from anger, hatred and jealousy;
these latter vibrations are no more useful for it than

392 The Christian Festivals

those of the good emotion would be, and they are
very bad for the soul. Therefore we must control
that body; we must have some discrimination.

It is the same with the mind. It has its own
little wishes apart from ours. If we set ourselves
to think on some difficult problem, all kinds of
wandering thoughts come into our minds. The
mind is glad to have that distraction; it likes the
constant change. We do not want that, so we pull
our minds back. There again we must use our dis-
crimination. We must take care what sort of
thoughts we let the mind think. So long as it gets
vibration out of them, it is all the same to the mind
whether they are horrible thoughts or good thoughts,
but it is not at all the same to us. So we must not
let our mind control us; we must not let our horse
run away with us; we must show once more our
discrimination.

The mental body chiefly likes pride. It wants to
stir us up to think that we are better than anybody
else, and even when we develop spiritually, it will
try to make us think that in that way we are better
than other people, that we are nobler, more religious.
Another opportunity, obviously, for the use of
discrimination.

Then there is the question of relative importance
and unimportance. Do we realize that most of the
trouble and difficulty in the world, most of the
quarrels and most of the hatreds are stirred up about
things that do not matter in the least — things that
are absolutely, utterly unimportant? What some-
body said about us, or what we fancy someone is
thinking about us. It is never important what any-
one thinks or says. We live according to our own

Discernment 393

conscience before God; it matters nothing to us
what ^"niebody else says about us. These unimpor-
tant thoughts, because they are unduly magnified,
are allowed to do us a vast amount of harm. Again
discrimination is needed. Let us use reason and
common sense to realize what things are important
and what things are unimportant. Constantly
people take offence at something done or said, and
so a vast amount of unnecessary trouble arises. Do
not make a fuss about little things; think first
whether it is worth wiiile making trouble over the
matter. Remember that peace and quietness, and a
friendly and kindly feeling between people, are ten
times more important than the observance of certain
tiny outward rules. In nine cases out of ten in
which trouble is made, the keeping of the peace is
far more important than the matter about which a
difficulty arises. Let us remember that, and take
care that we at least are not the people to confuse
the unimportant with the important.

Remember too the discrimination between the
true and the false. Let us see to it that we think
truly and speak truly of our fellow-men, and in
order that we may do that, let us never impute
motives. We do not know a man's reason for doing
this or that. Nine times out of ten it is something
we should never have thought of, yet people gaily
impute motives to others, never realizing that they
are diligently spreading falsehood all round them.
Never speak unless you know, and even then it is
generally best to keep quiet. So let us take care
that our discrimination keeps us in the middle path,
and shows us that we are not to speak, not to think,
untruly or hastily of anyone.

394 The Christian Festivals

Then again, to discriminate between selfishness
and unselfishness. Selfishness is a subtle, insidious
thing. It crops up again and again in life when we
think we have disposed of it. The power of dis-
cernment is badly needed there. Remember the
remark attributed to Christ in the gospel: ''Ye can
discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but
how is it that ye do not discern this time ? ' ' Which
meant to say: "Here I, the great World-Teacher,
have come down among you, and yet you do not see
it; the question as to whether it is going to rain or
not you can judge; why cannot you perceive a far
more important thing?" That same World-Teacher
is coming again to us. Take care that we descry
the signs of the times, and do not let us be caught
unwatchful.

Time fails me to tell in how many ways this dis-
crimination can be used; all the time we must try
to discover good in everything and in everybody.
There is nothing which is not God, and His light
is gleaming through everyone of our fellow-creatures,
even though in some cases the spark burns dim and
is buried almost out of sight. God is there in every-
one, and all the beauty in all the world is the divine
beauty. Let us learn these things, and because we
behold God in all, we shall be able to lielp all to
draw nearer to God a'hd to realize Him better.

CHAPTER XXIII

WISDOM

Wisdom is of vast importance to the Chiireli.
In times past there has been a great deal of opposi-
tion between the Christian Church and modern
science. All through the Middle Ages we find the
Church setting herself in opposition to anything in
the nature of new discovery, and even last century
there was the most bitter hostility on the part of
the Churches both of Rome and England to the doc-
trine of evolution — to Darwin's new theories and
discoveries. We all remember the historic case of
Galileo, who was forced by the Church to recant his
great discovery of the motion of the earth. We
know how in order to save his life he was obliged
publicly to proclaim that the earth did not move,
although even then he muttered under his breath
E pur se muove, ^^But nevertheless it does move."

Such a state of affairs as that was a shame and a
disgrace; a Church which adopted such an obscuran-
tist policy as that, which set herself in opposition
to the truth, whatever that truth may be, was cer-
tainly not fulfilling her functions as she should have
done. It is difficult for us now to understand how
the Church could have taken that attitude. Perhaps
there may have been two reasons for it. I am afraid
we must admit that one of them was that the Church
was the great teaching body of the time, and that
she was jealous of any kind of interference with that
position. Perhaps it is difficult for us now to realize
how things must have seemed to the mediaeval church-

392

396 The Christian Festivals

man as well as to the common people of that time.
All knowledge was in the possession of the monks.
They were for a long time in European history the
only people who could read and write. The great
knights and nobles were often quite illiterate men,
judging by our standards of the present day (just
as great Zulu chieftains are illiterate) though
valiant leaders and exceedingly good people in their
own way and along their own line. Even the very
Kings signed their names with great difficulty and
considerable illegibility, as we may see by examining
old documents such as our own Magna Charta. Many
such papers bear signatures of which the average
schoolboy would be ashamed.

All knowledge being in the hands of the Church,
she was very intolerant of anybody else who advanced
any pretensions in that direction. She adopted
much the same attitude as some scientific people of
the present day: "What I know not, is not worth
knowing." Political considerations also had sway,
for unfortunately even then the great Roman Church
was beginning to dabble in politics. That she has
done so ever since has been her curse and her con-
demnation. Beyond question any Church which
interferes in matters of that sort is dropping her
spiritual heritage and forgetting the work which
her Lord gave her to do, which is not connected with
politics, but with the helping of the world.

Another reason which may have conduced to that
curious position was that churchmen took two or
three texts and twisted them to mean a contradic-
tion of the general spirit even of the bible. In the
Liberal Catholic Church we do not attach so much
importance to the verdict of the bible on any given

Wisdom 397

point as do some other religious bodies, because we
recognize that it is but one of many vohimes of
the sacred lore, but one of many scriptures; and
that all of them alike, while they contain much that
is noble and true and beautiful, also contain many
statements reflecting the average knowledge of the
period when they were written, and consequenth"
by no means stating the absolute facts about every-
thing. As Bret Harte puts it, ''They did not know
everything down in Judaea." They certainly had
not one-tenth of the information which we in the
present day have on certain points; we do know
more than they did, and it would indeed be a shame
upon us if we did not. Those books were written
two thousand years ago, and the world has not stood
still during that period. I know that there is a
statement that the wisdom of this world is foolish-
ness to God, and I can see what that means — that
the attitude of this world towards all such ques-
tions as money-making and worldly prosperity is
often foolishness before God, but most emphatically
it does not at all mean that it is not a good thing
to have wisdom. The Christ is alleged to have said
that God has hidden certain secret things from the
wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.
That is not a disparagement of wisdom, but of the
people who turned such wisdom as they possessed
in the wrong direction, and used it selfishly instead
of unselfishly.

But if there be a text or two that can be twisted
to tell against the possession of knowledge and
wisdom, I can quote you a hundred from the same
book exalting it. Remember how we are given in
one case as a good wish for a young man: ''The

398 The Christian Festivals

Lord give thee wisdom and understanding." David,
who was not particularly wise in many ways, is
alleged to have said: ''Give me understanding and I
shall keep Thy law." And Solomon, said to have
been the wisest man among the Jews, emphatically
remarked that they who despise wisdom and instruc-
tion are fools. ''Happy is the man who getteth
understanding." And in another place: "Get wis-
dom, get understanding, and forget it not."
"Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wis-
dom, and with all thy getting get understanding."
"The knowledge of the holy is understanding, the
excellence of knowledge is that wisdom giveth life
to them that have it." Those are just a few texts
taken at random; others will be found in the Psalm
of Wisdom on p. 271 in our Liturgy; but even these
are enough to show that the bible cannot be quoted
as in favour of ignorance. St. Peter said to his
people: "Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue
knowledge" — a very necessary qualification; and St.
Paul wrote: "We teach wisdom to them that are
perfect" — a technical term of the Mysteries.

We read in the gospel that Jesus Himself was
full of wisdom, and that He increased in wisdom and
stature. The world is evolving slowly — very slowly,
I admit, but still it is evolving; and many things
which were secret when these scriptures were writ-
ten are known more fully now. Few people knew
anything then; the rest just believed. There are.
only a few now who know fully, but still the general
level of knowledge is much higher now than it was
then, and therefore more people are now ready
to know. There is a certain danger in putting the
fruits of advanced wisdom before people who are

Wisdom 399

quite unfitted for them. We have had recently a
striking example of that. There are all sorts of
wonderful secrets in nature — secrets of chemistry,
secrets of electricity, secrets of all kinds which are
at present unknown to us, but will undoubtedly be
discovered by man. That practically means that
man is allowed to discover them, that they are en-
trusted to him as time goes on; but their reception
so far has not been encouraging. The greatest use
that has been made of the new knowledge in science
and in chemistr^^ has been that men have thereby
tried to destroy one another more efficiently and
with greater horror. Science has been swept into
the vortex of the great war. It remains to be seen,
now that it is over, whether science will also be
used for the purposes of peace. It certainly can
be; I hope that it will.

Men are not yet ready to have unlimited power
put in their hands, because the great majority of
men are not yet unselfish ; they have not yet wisdom
enough to be trusted with the lower knowledge. But
at least more people are ready to know, to under-
stand, now than ever before.

That is one reason for our existence as a Church.
We, the Liberal Catholic Church, exist in order that
we may explain to those who are ready to accept it
a little more than has hitherto been explained of
the great facts which underlie nature. A little
more we may know now about God and man and
about the relationship between them, and there is
no reason whatever for any of us ever to fear know-
ledge. There is no doubt that the mediaeval Church
feared knowledge; it feared those discoveries which
would overthrow its authority, overthrow the blind

400 The Christian Festivals

faith which people reposed in it. But in this Church
we have no fear of any knowledge or any dis-
covery. On the contraiy we welcome it, for the
more we can know of the wonderful works of God,
the greater will be our love and our reverence to-
wards Him. Not knowledge but ignorance is the
thing to be feared. Ignorance is the thing from
which we need to be saved.

What is this wisdom we are to acquire? There
is a saying in the bible (mistranslated as usual)
which I have already quoted: *'The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I do not
remember at the moment the Hebrew word which
is here rendered fear of the Lord, but the
Greek equivalent is theoseheia. "We could twist it
to mean fear, but it is intended to signify deep
reverence, for the word sehomai is simply ''I wor-
ship." Deep reverence for God is the beginning
of wisdom. That statement is perfectly true. The
man who is flippant and scornful, and does not
acknowledge anything greater or wiser than him-
self, has embarked on a course of error which leads
but to confusion; for ''reverence for that which is
worthy of reverence" may well be called the begin-
ning of wisdom. For wisdom is to know God, so
far as the mere mortal may know Him; to know
Him to be Love and Light, to know that in Him is
no darlmess at all, that we never need call on Him
to have mercy on us, presupposing thereby that if
we did not ask Him He would do something very
much the reverse, which amounts to crediting Him
with our own passions and imperfections — a thing
which we have no right to do. It is wisdom to
know something, so far as we may, of His plan, to

Wisdom 401

adapt ourselves to it so far as we can, to take
advantage of what He offers to us — of the help and
blessing of all kinds which He holds out to man, if
man will take it. The very sacraments which we
administer, what are they but offers from God,
opportunities given by Him for us to make more
rapid progress, to draw nearer to Him?

If we can understand something of His plan and
try to adapt ourselves to it, we shall be growing to-
wards that perfect wisdom which is Himself. We
must learn that there are many ways to Him, and
many ways of looking on Him, and that all of them
have in them some aspect of the truth, except those
which credit Him with human errors and faults —
jealousy, anger, revenge, hatred. These we know to
be shameful qualities, even in ourselves. How then
dare we attribute such feelings, such thoughts to
God? It is wisdom for us to try to understand, to
recognize that we ourselves are but at the beginning
of all this, and that we cannot hope to know every-
thing, but yet that certain broad principles are estab-
lished. We may cling to these and we may without
fear reason from them. Wisdom will utterly do
away with narrowness and exclusiveness ; that is one
of the most important ways in which it will help
us along our path, for He Himself has said: ''If
you know the truth, the truth shall make you free."
Any Church worthy of the name should be a veri-
table Santa Sophia, a Church of the heavenly wisdom,
so that through it men may gradually draw nearer
and nearer to the comprehension of Him Who is
Himself Wisdom, Strength and Beauty, Truth and
Love.

CHAPTEK XXIV

SELF-DEDICATION

One of the intentions set before us in our Liturgy
is self-dedication — the idea that we may so dedicate
and devote our lives to God's service that we may
be true and faithful members of His holy Church,
and may live as He desires that we should live. How
must we set to work to do that? For the conditions
of civilization now are very different from those
when the command was given. Remember how the
Christ answered a young man who came to Him, and
asked: "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal
life?" First the Christ told him to begin by keep-
ing the commandments, to keep all the rules which
have been given for holy living. And the j^oung
man replied that he had kept those from his youth
up, or at least he had tried to keep them; and he
asked what more he could do. Then Christ said
in effect: "If you want to rise to something
higher than that, if you want to go further still,
then go and sell all you have, give the money
to the poor and come and follow Me." And
we are told that the young man went away
sorrowful, because he had great possessions. I
think that all through Church history that young
man has been treated very unfairly, because the
usual tendency is to assume that he would not give
up his wealth for the sake of Christ. We have no
right to assume that; a rich man has many duties
as well as his wealth. It is not a question only of
pleasure; he may well have been so situated that

402

Self-Dedication 403

he could not give up everything and become a wan-
dering preacher, a follower of the Christ. It is not
possible for all of us to do that. There are those
of us who are able to cast aside all hope of worldly
advancement because we have no one depending
upon us, and we can devote ourselves wholly to the
religious life in some form or other. But the great
majority of us have our living to earn, and however
willing and earnest and anxious we may be, we
cannot give up the whole of our time to religious
work in the ordinary sense of the word.

What then are we to do, and how are we to take
this idea of self-dedication? It is perfectly possible
for us all to embrace it and to live the Christly
life, if we will only take all our duties as duties to
be done for Him; if we will do them all in His
Name as well as we can, we shall be serving Him just
as really, though not so pleasantly for ourselves, as
if we were able to give up everything to what is
commonly called a life of good works. Remember
what George Herbert said three hundred years ago:

Who sweeps a room as for His laws,
Makes that and the action fine.

If we do all our duties in His Name, and make it
an offering to Him that we do them as well and as
perfectly as we can, we are doing the best we can
to dedicate ourselves to Him. It is not only a ques-
tion of work to be done; it is a question of the atti-
tude we hold, the feelings that we permit, and the
thoughts that we allow in ourselves. If we want to
live for Christ, we must live like Christ as nearly
as we can; and if we cannot, as He did, give all our
time to altruistic work, at least we can go about
doing good, and that is what was said about Him.

404 The Christian Festivals

Wherever we are, and with whomsoever we come
into contact, we can make it our business to see that
our influence shall be a good influence and never an
evil one ; to do that is to dedicate our lives to Christ.

Assuredly we must keej) the commandments, but
that does not necessarily refer to the ten command-
ments of Moses, which are a veiy imperfect code of
morality in ever so many ways. Far nobler is that
which our Master the Christ Himself gave us when
He said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind and with all thy strength. This is the
first and great commandment, and the second is
like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy-
self." That is a far grander statement than that
made through Moses thousands of years before, when
a distinctly tribal deity, one among others, is made
to represent himself as jealous lest worship should
be diverted from him and given to those others — a
conception no doubt fit for the Jewish tribes at
that early stage of their history, but certainly not
the finest idea of God which can be put before us.

The world is evolving, because it is God's will
that it shall evolve, and we know more about a great
many things than the Jews of three or four thousand-
years ago knew; so it is right and fitting that God's
commandments should be put before us in another
guise. More and more of His glorious truth is
being unfolded to us; in every other branch of life
but religion we should at once admit that we know
a great deal more than did those people thousands
of years ago. And in religion also we must be able
to understand more than they, and assuredly we do
understand the spiritual meaning of a great many

Self' Dedication 405

things which in those early days were taken as
merely material and mechanical instructions. The
world is advancing but slowly, otherwise we should
not have needed that awful war; but even that, ter-
rible as it has been, awful as its consequences have
been, is a step in advance, for more good than evil
will come from it all in the end. We may be sure
of that, if we acknowledge that God rules the world
and that all is moving towards a grand consum-
mation in the future. There is plenty of evidence
of that fact in other ways; so even if we encounter
one particular case in which we are not yet able
to see it, it would be foolish for us to assume that
all the other indications are therefore wrong. We
shall understand it all one day.

How then can we here and now dedicate our
lives to Christ? We must not think of the Christ
only as historical — only of a Christ who lived and
died two thousand years ago; we must remember
that there is a living Christ Who can and will inspire
us now. Who stands behind His Church — yes, and
behind all the world as well, for all the world is but
an extension of His Church, though it may not know
it yet. And He is always ready to help, inspire and
strengthen any person whatever who will lay him-
self open to that help. The living Christ is our
nearest friend, because He can come so much nearer
to us than any one else can come; He can be so
much more to us than any one else can be. Never
let us forget the living Christ Who inspires us all
through life.

How can we approaeh Him? , How can we draw
nearer to Him? By making ourselves more like
Him; by living, as far as we can, as He lived; by

406 The Christian Festivals

adopting His attitude towards others. What was
that? We read in an epistle: ''Even Christ pleased
not Himself." Let every man of us, then, for-
get himself and go to work to try to be useful for
Christ's sake to others. In so doing we are putting
ourselves into the Christlike attitude; that is what
Christ did; He lived not for Himself, not for His
own honour and glory and fame at all, but abso-
lutely for others. He descended, He limited His
glory. He sacrificed Himself wholly for others.
That is what we, too, must try to do; and do not
let us misunderstand that word sacrifice. Many
think that to sacrifice means always to give up ; they
are forgetting the meaning of the word. Sacer in
Latin means holy, and facere is to make. To sacri-
fice anything is to make it holy unto the Lord. We
can sacrifice our lives to Him without suffering the
death of a martyr; if we make our lives holy unto
the Lord, we are sacrificing them in the best and the
truest sense.

Perhaps it may involve a little of the other kind
of sacrifice as well. We may find that it is neces-
sary to give up some of our lower desires, some of
the things that not we, but our lower nature, would
like. It is worth while, for we are souls; indeed, we
are even more than that, for the soul itself is only
a partial manifestation of the spirit. We are sparks
of the divine life; in everyone of us there is the
Christ which is our hope of glory, and so to give
up anything which you see would be harmful to
j^ou as a spirit is hardly worth calling a sacrifice,
even though it be something which is dear to the
lower self.

Self-Dedication 407

This may sound impracticable to some, because
they have allowed their religion to become too much
a merely historical religion. It is considered by
many people that that which saves a man is his
belief that Christ lived and died in Judaea a couple
of thousand years ago. They accept that just
in the same way as they accept the other fact that
Julius Caesar landed in Britain 55 B.C., and I really
believe that the one fact does them about as
much good as the other, if they do not make it a
practical factor in their lives, and do not realize
that the Christ "Who took a body two thousand
years ago is a living and mighty power behind His
Church to-day.

One who travels and lives in Eastern countries,
as I have done, has food for rather unpleasant
thought sometimes when he looks round him at the
people whom he may in his childhood have been
taught to call the heathen, because he cannot but see
(I am thinking mainly at the moment of India) that
those people round him are intensely religious
people, and furthermore that their idea of religion
is not precisely that in which he himself has been
brought up. I am not dwelling for the moment upon
the fact that it is a different religion; that seems
to me of very little importance; what I mean is that
to them religion is a living actual thing which per-
meates their lives every day and all day long. If
we can ever become intimate enough with a Brahman
really to see his daily life, we shall find that there
is not a single action he does, from the time he
gets up in the morning to the time he goes to sleep,
which is not a religious action, which is not stamped
with his religion. "When he rises from his bed, a

408 The Christian Festivals

religious thought is put into his mind; when he
bathes there is a thought of a similar nature in
connection with that; whether he eats or drinks, or
whatever he does, every one of his actions is accom-
panied by a religious thought. I grant you that
sometimes all that becomes merely formal, because
there is a deal of human nature in India, as well as
elsewhere. There is certainly that danger of
formality; but the prominent fact stands out that
these people are religious not once a week on Sun-
day but all the year round, every day and every
minute of the day. That strikes us as strange,
because we have not been used to it. There are
many of us, I hope and believe, who keep religious
thought at the back of their minds always, but they
are a small minority. I am afraid that the great
majority of our people do not keep their religion
always at the back of their minds but relegate it
to stated times and days, even though it may to
some extent influence their lives.

Because of that it seems to many occidentals
somehow improper, indecent even, that the oriental
should put religion forward always, as he does; it
seems like making it too common, and the European
is apt to think that it must be hypocritical. Yet
that is precisely what was intended for all of us;
if we look into the fundamentals of our own religion
we shall find that it was meant for us in Christianity,
just as much as for the Brahman in Hinduism. All
the little outer details to which he has to attend
every moment are not laid down for us, because this
is a later religion and its great Founder hoped that
it might be sufficient to say to His Christian fol-
lowers : * ' Keep the great truths always in your mind ;

Self-Dedication 409

never forget your Father which is in heaven." I
am afraid we have often disappointed Him; I am
afraid we have tended to forget the mighty truths
which lie behind far too often; and so an Eastern
religion often astonishes us because of its intense
vitality.

In the face of that, it seems to me amazing con-
ceit on our part to send missionaries to try to con-
vert such people. I feel that we should first try to
bring our own lives fully into harmony with the
teaching of the Christ; for the strange idea that
only through one Name and along one line can God
be approached is peculiar to us. I have had an
unpleasant shock once or twice in that way when
travelling in the East. I say, perhaps, to some
earnest Christian missionary: "How good all these
people around us are, how charitable, how kindly;
what splendid lives they are living; cannot they be
saved?" The answer depends upon the missionary.
I have had from a prelate of the Roman Church the
emphatic statement that he thought they had just
as good a chance of salvation as he had. But there
are very few who would say that, and often the
missionary has replied: ''We must trust in the un-
covenanted mercies of God for them, but I am afraid
their chances are very poor." Then I have turned
to the so-called heathen and said: ''Look at these
Christians; they are living good lives; do you not
think that they also will attain Nirvana?" (That
is the phrase used among the Buddhists for the final
consummation, equivalent to the "going to heaven"
of the more ignorant among the Christians.) The
reply was given with the greatest astonishment:
"Attain Nirvana! Of course they will! Why

410 The Christian Festivals

should they not?" ''But," I said, ''they do not
believe as you do." The Buddhist monk replied:
"What does that matter? They are trying their
best to carry out the teachings of the Lord Buddha,
although they never heard of Him; and surely that
is just as good."

We see at once the difference in the attitude, and
certainly the heathen showed to greater advantage
than the Christian; but only because the Christian
had misunderstood, because he did not realize the
worth and glory of the Master's teaching, Who said:
"Other sheep I have, who are not of this fold";
Who, when He spoke of what is called the day of
judgment, and told His disciples what questions will
be asked of those who come before Him, to decide
whether they are to go to the right hand or the left,
unaccountably forgot to ask whether they believed
in Him, or even had ever heard of Him, but enquired
instead: "Have you fed the hungry, have you
clothed the naked, have you visited the sick and
those in prison?" And if the answer is "Yes,"
then comes the swift decision: "Go to my right
hand, well-beloved of my Father." What the man
has believed is not the question; that does not seem
to matter at all; the result entirely depends upon
what he has done.

That gives us some indication of the way in which
we may dedicate ourselves to Christ. Let us try
to live in the broad open-air, in the glorious sunlight
of God. Let us try to understand the teaching of
the Christ, and live as He lived, in charity with all.
Let us not stop to think about ourselves. We have
not time for wounded feelings; we have not time to
hate our brother because of something that he is sup-

Self- Dedication 411

posed to have said or done. Our one business is to
be so occupied with trying to do him good that we
have not time to think about what he may have
thought or said about us. Perhaps he may have said
something he should not; suppose he did; after all,
if we think of it, that does not hurt us in the least.
A man speaks; what is it? A vibration of the air,
a sound. If we had never heard of it, it would
not have troubled us at all; but because we have
heard of it we stir ourselves up and become annoyed
and angry. Is that the other man's fault? What
he did would not have hurt us in the least unless we
happened to know of it, and because we know of it
we stir up trouble for ourselves. That is not com-
mon sense, and it is not the teaching of the Christ.
Let us live with Him and for Him, and dedicate
ourselves to Him in that way; for His sake let us
help these our brethren, because they also are His
children; and if they do not know that, if they
are wandering away from Him, all the more do they
need the help which He through us can give them
if we have no time for petty personal feelings.

We read in an epistle that we must be like-
minded one towards another. We must keep the
even tenour of our thought, and we must feel to-
wards people and treat people as we should like
them to feel towards us and to treat us. So often we
are just to one person because we like him, and
unjust to another because we happen not to like
him; all alike are our brothers, for God is the
Father of all; that is the lesson which Christ tries
to impress upon us over and over again. Therefore
let us do nothing that we cannot offer to Him as a
sacrifice, nothing that we cannot make holy, nothing

412 The Christian Festivals

that we cannot do in His Name. To live thus is to
dedicate ourselves to the service of the Christ; and
that we can all do, however busy we may be, however
troubled we may be; we can try to adopt the Chris-
like attitude towards all those round us, so that
the world shall be better and happier in that little
corner where we live, because we have lived in it
as followers of the Christ, for His sake and in His
Name.

CHAPTER XXV

PERSEVERANCE

Perseverance is one of the most necessary of the
qualities which we have to develop, and it must be
admitted that it is also one of the most difficult. We
have all heard or read of the great martyrs, and we
all honour them for the wonderful victories that they
have gained for the faith; and perhaps we have
sometimes wondered whether we could have done
and suffered what they did — whether we could have
faced death so undauntedly for Christ's most holy
Name. I hope we could; I believe we could. We
are quite ordinary people, most of us; by no means
great saints as yet, though we hope to be so some
day. Yet quite ordinary people sometimes respond
magnificently to the extraordinary demand of some
sudden emergency. We have had abundant examples
of that in the recent war; again and again men
who in every-day life were in no way distinguishable
from their fellows have blossomed out into splendid
heroism when opportunity offered. What they did
for King and country I hope we should be willing
to do for the sake of Christ if the necessity arose;
we should be swept away by a flood of enthusiasm
which would render us for the time careless of suf-
fering and danger; we should be buoyed up by the
consciousness that we were playing the principal part
in a great drama, and bearing witness for our faith
before a vast multitude. To die for Him, to give up
one's life, seems the greatest thing of all; and the
martyr was often carried through it in a kind of
ecstasy.

St. Augustine once remarked : ' ' Many there be who
will die for Christ, but few there be who will live

413

414 ^he Christian Festivals

for Him/' The obvious reason is that the latter is
much the harder task, for it demands this virtue of
perseverance which we are considering. Martyrdom
is one tremendous effort, but the steady work goes
on for many years. We are not called upon, most
of us, to sacrifice our lives for Him, but to devote our
lives to Him, day by day making ourselves gradu-
ally more like Him, doing that which He has told
US; and that is a hard thing to do. Each week we
come to our church, we join in our service, we feel
the splendour, the beauty, the glory of it all, and
the nearness of the Christ in His Sacrament, and
no doubt for the time we feel that for His sake and
in His Name we would do anything. But then we
go back to daily life, and gradually the height and
heat of our enthusiasm wane somewhat; we live
through the sordid details of everyday life, and
find them monotonous and irritating. People are
irritating too, sometimes, and circumstances are
wearing; the daily life is so wearisome; yet duty
lies that way. To remember all through it, all the
time, that we must be living for Him is no light
task; to do that for a whole life-time is a greater
feat than to throw a life away in a moment for Him.
And yet that is precisely what we are sent here to do.

This that we call a life is only one day in our
real life ; we have many such lives, and each of them
is just like one stage in a long journey. We have
to spend it in learning certain lessons. We are
told: ''Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is
perfect'' — a hopeless undertaking if we were con-
fined to seventy years of life; and furthermore no-
body ever has even that seventy years- of life in
which to do it; for all through the early part of

Perseverance 415

our life we are learning how to deal with things on
the physical plane, while towards the end of our life
the body is not so strong. In truth we have only a
few years of each incarnation for real work and
learning. We are all well-intentioned, but we have
probably often been careless and inefficient, and
have not kept up to the level which we know in our
hearts to be within our power. How are we to
attain perfection? The idea would be ridiculous if
there were no other life but this; but if we can
have as much time as we need, if we can go on with
the work life after life, it is no longer ridiculous to
say that we shall at last attain perfection.

So we have to do this very thing which we have
said is so difficult to do. That is our duty; we are
here to co-operate in God's great plan, and the first
step in that is to make ourselves fit to help in it,
because if we are to be fellow-workers together with
God we must have within us something of the power
and love and sympathy of God. So we have to
develop ourselves, and we have to do the right thing
as we see it, day after day, hour after hour, year
after year, however slow and monotonous it may seem
to be; and that is why perseverance is so important
to us.

It is easy enough when things are going well and
smoothly; but there is hardly a day in which some-
thing does not happen to annoy us or to trouble us.
If we get through a day without any difficulties, we
may consider ourselves fortunate. We ought not
to let these things worry us; we know that; but as
a matter of fact they often do, and it is our business
to face facts. We must get ourselves into such a
condition that we automatically resist that impulse

AA

416 The Christian Festivals

to feel annoyed, however natural it may seem, how-
ever great the provocation may be.

Think once more of those who went to the war
for US; think of the awful, the perfectly appalling
conditions through which those men went, and yet
retained their steadiness. How was it done? First,
by incessant preparation and drill. I take it that it
is practically impossible that a man under those ter-
rible conditions should feel no fear at all. He would
be scarcely human if he did not; but the glory of
it is that, feeling the fear, these men yet behaved
as though they did not feel it. How was that? The
whole thing had been made a matter of routine. The
soldier is drilled over and over again until when
he hears a certain word of command he obeys with-
out thinking. The whole object of that ceaseless
drill of the soldier is that when he is under abnormal
conditions, when he is inside wholly terrified, he will
still obey those orders, because he is used to obey;
he will do it automatically.

In just the same way we have to reach a stage
where unselfish effort is automatic. In the begin-
ning self-preservation must naturally be the first
idea to come up in a soldier's mind, just as it would
in any of us; but the soldier has learned to con-
quer that, because he knows he is there for another
and an unselfish purpose. He might be caught
unawares, he might not have time to think; but he
has been drilled until his movements are automatic;
he does the right thing automatically, and presently
he recovers his grasp of things, and then comes a
sort of second wind, bringing the higher thought:
''It does not matter about the danger for me; I
have a certain thing to do. I must hold this place,

Perseverance 417

I must carry out this order, whatever it may happen
to be."

That is what we have to do ; we have to practise
this business of unselfishness, of thinking first of
other people and working for them, until it is
automatic with us. When v>'e have got as far as that,
we shall find that many things which hitherto have
troubled and upset us, now trouble us no more. We
must act as a doctor does. A doctor goes perfectly
coolly into the most appalling dangers: danger of
infection, of blood poisoning, danger of all kinds
from which a man might well shrink with horror;
yet so ingrained in the doctor is the idea of saving
life, the idea that all suffering that comes before
him — however loathsome, however dangerous it is —
is yet a case with which he has to deal, a case which
it is his business to save, that he never thinks of
hesitating.

Every person we meet is an opportunity, an oppor-
tunit}' for us to see if we can help him in some
way or other. We can imagine how little a doctor
cares what a patient says to him in his delirium;
the man may be insulting, he may be filthy, he may
be everything that is unpleasant; but to the doctor
he is merely a case — a case which it is his duty to
help. That must be our attitude. Never mind that
the people to be helped are frequently not all that
they ought to be; that fact does not excuse our
being what we ought not to be; it does not excuse
us for losing our temper and being annoyed. Let
us go on and do our work in regard to them; and
our work is to be sweet and gentle and kindly, and
to watch everywhere for an opportunity to help.

W^e need to keep up our enthusiasm; we need to
restore our strength of feeling; that is one of the

418 The Christian Festivals

reasons for which we go to church. That is the
method which Christ Himself has appointed for the
helping of his people. He raises their emotions;
He uplifts them, He gives to them His very Self
in the most holy Sacrament. Why? Truly to help
them along their road in life, but far more to help
them to help others; to keep them up to the level
where they can radiate love and enthusiasm, and so
be really of use to others. That is why we should
not miss church services if we can help it. Blessed
are those to whom comes the opportunity of daily
communion with their Lord; their lives ought to
show the result of that daily communion. They
ought to differ from those who have not such an
advantage. The Christ is alleged to have said:
''Take up your cross and follow Me." "What does
He mean by that? ''Take up your trouble, your
difficulty, whatever it is." We may have irritability
as our cross, we may have sundry and various little
difficulties; never mind, let us take them up and
follow Him. We need not deny the existence of
our cross, or refuse to face it; let us take it up
boldly and follow Him. Live as He has lived, and
then at the end we shall attain freedom and safety
from all these troubles; we shall achieve that at
which we are aiming. We shall gain that life with
Him which is the real expression of Him. Take up
your cross and follow Him; that cross becomes a
rosy cross of light, and presently it is surmoimted
b}^ the crown, the crown of glory that fadeth not
away. But for that we need perseverance, and we
need strength to carry it day by day, yea, though it
be through a long life, that we may never turn
aside from following Him,

CHAPTER XXVI

GOOD WORKS

There has been a good deal of misunderstanding
in various sections of the Christian Church with
regard to the necessity of active work. There is a
large section of Christianity whose teachers tell us
that we have only to believe and we shall be saved,
as they call it. They usually attach a very unfor-
tunate connotation to that word saved, for they
make it mean saved from an everlasting hell — an
idea which is au utter impossibility and a blasphemy
against God our loving Father. There never is,
there never was, there never could be, the slightest
danger of any human being encountering so awful a
fate as that. It is true that sutfering alwa^'s follows
upon evil, but that suffering is always educative and
never punitive. We have to learn how we should
live; but there are plenty of opportunities of learn-
ing that. There have been in all religions and in
all ages of the world Teacjiers to tell people how
they ought to live, but the less evolved souls are
often unable or unwilling to adopt that teaching,
because it usually imposes upon them a good deal
of self-control and self-restraint of their lower pas-
sions and feelings, which they do not like. They
are not sure, deep down within themselves, that
the teaching is true; consequently they make mis-
takes, they commit what is called sin, they do tilings
which should not be done, and under the inevitable
law of cause and effect evil brings suffering to them
sooner or later. That suffering may sometimes be

419

420 The Christian Festivals

terrible. Eternal of course it could never be, be-
cause no man's action is eternal, and an infinite
result cannot flow from a finite cause; but it is true
that a man may save himself from a great deal of
trouble and sorrow if he is willing to use his com-
mon sense and to live in accordance with the great
scheme which God has laid out for us.

To be saved means really to be on the right side
when a certain division of the human race takes
place in the future — a division about which there has
been the most astonishing misunderstanding; it has
been described as the separation between the sheep
and the goats, the saved and the lost. There can-
not be any such idea as "the lost" in the whole of
God's world, because God intends us all to evolve;
and evolve we most certainly shall. There is no
question about that; the question is whether we
shall choose to go quietly and willingly along the
path of evolution, or whether we shall give our-
selves and other people a great deal of trouble by
moving restively and resisting the divine guidance.

That is the only meaning of salvation— that a man
is sure to come out on the right side in that future
judgment or decision — a judgment which is not in
the least a condemnation of him, but simply a deci-
sion as to whether he is or is not ready to go on in
the higher and more evolved world. If he is not,
he drops out and goes on with the next wave of
evolution. There is no question of eternal loss; it
is like the case of a child at school who is not up
to the level of his standard, and is therefore
unable to go on to a higher class with his
comrades, but has to wait and do the same year's
work over again. That is all that is meant by

Good Works 421

being condemned. The best translation would be
that a decision is made against the man — a decision
that he is not strong enough to go on.

It is written: "Believe and you shall be saved."
We quite agree, but it must be an efficient belief —
a belief that leads us somewhere, that makes us do
something — for we have the authority of the bible
for the statement that faith without works is dead.
We cannot pretend that a man truly believes some-
thing if he acts as though that thing were not so;
in that case it is clear that he does not fully believe.
When we talk about belief, we do not mean a vague
suspicion that a thing may be so; we mean an abso-
lute certainty of it — just the same certainty as we
have that fire will burn us, a certainty which makes
us take particularly good care not to put our hands
in the fire, and not to take hold of something which
is red-hot. It is not because we expect God to
punish us if we do, but because we know, as the
inevitable result of His law, that if we take hold of
something which is too hot we shall suffer by the
too rapid transmission of heat from that object to
our hands. It is not a question of punishment; it
is all a matter of common sense and obedience to law.
If that fact can be not into our heads, we shall save
ourselves much trouble.

If faith is to save us from unpleasant consequences,
it must be a faith which leads to action. Christ
remarked that not ever^^one who called Him "Lord"
would necessarily attain the goal. "Why call ye Me
Lord, Lord," He asks, "and do not the things that
I say?" He demands some proof that we recognize
Him as the Lord, the Teacher. He says: "Do the
things that I tell you; it is useless to profess belief

422 The Christian Festivals

if you do not show your belief in definite work."
Lip-service does not count at all in cases of this sort.
There are plenty of instances of that. In the bible
the most striking of all is one I have often quoted
before — the account which the Lord Himself gives
of this so-called day of judgment, of the day when
He will decide who is fit to go on to that higher level
which He describes as the kingdom of heaven. It
is not a place in space, a place where men will for
ever sit upon clouds, carrying harps and singing.
Heaven is a state of consciousness, a state into which
we can pass only when we have sufficiently developed
ourselves to be able to enter into it and enjoy it.

So He says of the higher states which lie in front
of men: ''You who are fit for them, come; ye who
are sufficiently blessed of My Father" (which means
those in whom the Third Outpouring is sufficiently
unfolded) ''come and inherit this fuller life. The
rest of you cannot yet do that, because you are not
fit for it. Depart from Me, for you still work
iniquity; come up for examination again when you
are better prepared." To feel good is not sufficient.
A man must do good if he wishes to succeed ; to feel
good and happy is at least always better than to
feel miserable, but it is not enough that a man should
be self-satisfied. He must definitely do good.

How can we define the doing of good works? At
least it always means helping others in some way;
it is not only charity, not only the distribution of
goods to the poor, however grand and noble a thing
that may be. There are varieties of good works
which are necessary to the man who wishes to make
"'"I progress. The good work specially put before
I', 'n the epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians is

Good Works 423

that we should show love. And there is a collect
which prays : ' ' That we, loving Thee above all things,
may continually be given to all good works." Truly
we must feel love to God, but aur love to God must
show itself in love for our fellow-men — in love for
God in man, because God, the divine spark, is in
everyone, and when we love a human being, it is the
God in him that we love. When we love we idea^'ze ;
we think of the person as grander far in many ways
than others can see him. But we are not idealizing
him one whit beyond his potentiality. It is in that
human being to be just as fine, just as good in every
way as we think him to be. Perhaps there is not
yet sufficient development in that soul to show forth
the whole of that possibility all the time; but the
divine power and the divine goodness are there, and
if we idealize the man, we are simplj^ looking ahead
a little to what he will be, rather than confining
ourselves to what he is at the moment.

So that is a good work that we must do if we
are to fulfil His command. We must love God, and
we must show our love in kindly action towards our
fellow-men. Besides the external good works (to
which the name of charity is commonly given) we
must always do the interior good work which was put
before us in the epistle, which tells us that we must
walk worthy of our vocation. We who have come to
the light have a singular advantage, but every such
advantage brings us a greater responsibility. If
we know a little more of the truth of Clirist than
others know, then we have a greater responsibility.
To whom much is given, from him mucli shall be
expected; so if we know more, we must show it by
living a life higher and nearer to the Christ than

424 The Christian Festivals

that which is lived by the man who as yet is igno-
rant. We have learnt not merely that we may know
in the abstract, not merely that we may have in our
minds so much of knowledge; but that we may put
that knowledge into practice, that we may live as
Christ would have us live.

The words of that epistle are admirable; we can-
not think of them too often, or follow too closely
their direction that we should show our love by
forbearing one another in love, and keep the unity
of the spirit in the bond of peace. Why is it that
unity is so emphatically eulogized? Because that
is the particular piece of progress which is put be-
fore US; that is the great step that we all ought to
be trying to take. We come forth from God, and
God is one; the One has become many; there has
been a vast divergence, in order that those Who
represent the One, that Mighty One, may bring
back into Him the fruit of many different experi-
ences, so that there may be a greater fullness, a more
perfect fruit of evolution. But having become many
in order that we may develop into strong and power-
ful centres, we have now to learn to become one
again, because He from Whom we came and to Whom
we are to return, is one God — in Three Persons,
truly, and manifesting through many glorious
Spirits, through all kinds of different forms — the
human form among others — but yet fundamentally
One; so to realize Him, and to gain strength and
power from Him, we must draw nearer and nearer
to unity ourselves.

So we are told to strive for that unity. It is the
most important thing put before us, and yet one
of the most difficult. Constantly we are squabbling

Good Works 425

and bickering among ourselves because we differ;
and how little are the things about which we
squabble, how unimportant when we come to think
of it. People will make a great fuss and a great
deal of trouble to get exactly their own way in
some quite small matter, though it does not matter
in the least really Avhether they succeed or not. What
does matter a thousand times more is to keep the
unity, the sense of love and harmony; and not to
break up that sense for the sake of some small
thing which is a matter of no importance at all.
The higher life, the heavenly life, the life of the
Christ is always a life of unity, and the nearer we
come to a definite unity among ourselves, the nearer
we shall come to Him, Who prayed to His Father
that we might all be one in Him, even as He is one
with the Father.

Let us then add to the outer good work in the
world (which I am sure all are doing or trying to
do as best they can) that inner good work of gain-
ing and maintaining unity with our brethren. Chris-
tianity ought to be a real bond. Our hand given to
a fellow-Christian should be a sure pledge of real
brotherhood to him. We should always stand ready
to help him in his need, and assuredly we should
defend his good name in his absence just as we
would in his presence. KM these things we should
do if our brotherhood is true, so that men may say
of us, as they used to say in the ages of the primi-
tive Church: "See how these Christians love one
another." That was the mark of the Christian in
those early days, when they were few. Would that
it were equally the mark of the Christian in these
days, when they are comparatively many. ''Sirs,
ye are brethren; then let brotherly love continue/'

CHAPTER XXVII

GOD AS LIGHT

The sun has been taken throughout the ages as
the symbol of the Deity. Many people have talked
a great deal of nonsense about sun-worshippers, and
have spoken of them as idolaters. The whole idea
of what we mean by an idolater is entirely foreign
to any of those Oriental religions. I doubt very
much whether there has ever been such a thing as
an idolater in this world. Many of the more extreme
protectants among the Christians accuse their
brethren of idolatry because they use the crucifix,
because they have images of Our Lady and of
various saints, but I think that not the most ignorant
of peasants among Catholics ever supposed those
pieces of wood and stone to he the saints. They
have understood them to be symbols of them — repre-
sentations of them to shew us, so far as can be done,
what manner of people these great Ones were, and
to arouse interest and reverence for them. No one
has ever worshipped any image; they have taken
images always as symbols of that which lies behind.

So, surely, with the sun. The Parsees, the Zoroas-
trians have been called sun-worshippers, but if we
ask a Zoroastrian he tells us at once: "Of course
it is not the sun we worship; that is the physical
representation of a mighty Spirit, a divine Power
behind; it is that and that alone which we worship."

The sun is a ver\' fit and beautiful symbol of the
Deity. Think how he pours forth light for ever;
how the sun is always shining. It is said in our

426

God as Light 427

scripture that God makes His sun to rise on the
evil and the good, and sends His rain on the just
and on the unjust; He pours- His sunshine upon all
without any difference or strength, and that great
light of His is always shining. We find half our
day, half our twenty-four hours dark; but that is
because we are in our own shadow, not because the
sun is not shining. Sometimes there are clouds and
storms, but, as I have said before, those also are
earth-born, and the sun shines on for ever. We
have only to rise above the earthly clouds, or to pass
out of the shadow of the earth, and we find our
sun eternal. So it is a fine symbol of the divine
Power, and it is very true that in Him there is no
darkness at all.

The light always remains pure. Man cannot soil
or influence that light. If an outpouring of water
passes through a pipe which is foul, it becomes
dirty water. If the sun shines through a dirty pane
the light is not foul; it remains the same light, and
even if we use coloured glass we do not change the
light; it means only that that kind of glass will let
through only a part and not the whole of it. Yet
even so, think how lovely that is; we can dis-
tinguish the especial beauty of that part the better
because for the moment the other parts are kept
aside, away from our view. Yv^e must sometimes see
less than the whole, in order that we may know what
splendour, what beauty is included in that whole.

Wonderful as that light is, we poor human beings
may actually help it, so to speak, in its work. We
can reflect this glorious sunlight into dark corners
which otherwise it could not penetrate; for the light
moves only in straight lines, so by purely human

428 The Christian Festivals

means, by mirrors and by reflectors, we can send light
to those from whom otherwise it would be hidden.
Men hide themselves in caves and shelters and cellars
into which the divine sunlight itself cannot pene-
trate; but we can reflect it into those places, and so,
poor and small as we are and comparatively of no
account, we can yet help that mighty divine Power
to make itself manifest to men who otherwise would
not see it, to whom its awful purity would make no
appeal. By reflecting it, by giving perhaps only
part of it, and reflecting only one colour of it, we
can make it visible to those who otherwise would
not see.

There is another thing also which we should re-
member. We spend much of our lives in what is
called artificial liglit, but those who know anything
of science are aware that there is in reality no
such thing as artificial light, for all light is only
transmuted sunlight. We burn our coal, we make
our power; what is coal but the plants of long ago
that have stored up light in the form of energy
which they drew in millions of years ago, and now
they give out again? All light is o\\\j a form of
energy, and all energy in this system comes from
the sun, just as all life comes from Him Who stands
behind the sun, the Solar Logos or Deity.

We see in how many ways this symbol of God as
Light is really beautiful, really something that is
well worth careful consideration. We, therefore, if
we would be fellow-workers together with Grod,
which is surelj^ the greatest honour and the greatest
blessing that can come to mortal man, must also be
lights, however comparatively feeble our light may
be. "Let the lower lights be burning," for the

God as Light 429

lower lights have their own work to do — work which
the greater lights cannot do without some entire
change of their nature and their power; so everyone
has his work to do; he must be a light. God is not
only the external light and the glory of the universe ;
He is the indwelling light — the light within us. So
let our light swell and grow until it becomes one
with the infinite Light.

St. John, in his First Epistle General, speaks
clearly as to the effect of -that Light. "If we
say that we have fellowship with Him, and yet
we walk in darkness, the truth is not in us." We
may tell for ourselves at once whether we are open-
ing our hearts to the divine Light, because if that
be the case we shall be in the light, as He is in the
light. If we suffer from clouds of depression, if
our attitude is pessimistic, if we feel ourselves over-
whelmed by what happens to us, then we are not
yet in the glorious sunlight of His life; then we
must come out of these caves of darkness, these
man-made shelters that hide us from God's glorious
sunlight; come out and walk with Him in the light.
"These things have I written unto you that your
joy may be full." Joy is the test of true belief.
It is the good and faithful servant who enters into
the joy of his Lord; but remember what the joy of
the Lord is. It is no vague heaven of feasting and
of singing; for what is it that Christ our Lord does?
All the while He pours Himself out in sacrifice for
US; it was for us men and for our salvation that He
descended into matter, and was born of the Holy
Ghost and the Virgin Mary. Those who enter into
the joy of the Lord must take part in the work of
the Lord, for it is that work that is His joy. In

430 The Christian Festivals

the Greek religion the Logos is symbolized under the
name of Bacchus; the infant Bacchus has His play-
things, and through His play the worlds come into
being. The list of His toys is of extreme interest,
for we find Him using dice which are the five pla-
tonic solids, a top which is the whirling atom, a
ball which represents the earth, and a mirror which
is the symbol of the astral light. It is these with
which He plays, into which He descends, and the
joy of the Lord is the joy of sacrifice. So it is into
that joy of sacrifice that all of us must ivy to
enter; but so long as we think of that sacrifice as
suffering, we have not entered into the true joy of
the Lord. When sacrifice is the only way of living
that is possible for us, when that is our truest and
our greatest joy, then indeed are we one with Him;
then we walk in the light, as He is in the light.

The epistle of St. John, in which is to be found
the passage upon which I have been commenting, has
an especial characteristic which is worthy of our
careful attention because it presents a close analogy
to our own position at the present day, and shows
that the witness of the Church comes down through
the ages, and that we tell you to-day exactly what
the apostle told his people two thousand years ago.
Notice the decided stand which St. John takes. He
says quite clearly: ''You must understand that I am
talking about what I myself have seen and know. T
speak to you of the things which mine eyes have
seen and my hands have handled, of the word of
life. I am not telling you something which is a
mere matter of hearsay; I have seen it and I know
it." That is exactly what we tell you in this Church
to-day. We are not speaking merely on the autho-

God as Light 431

rity of any sacred scripture, though we often quote
ancient scripture in support of what we say; w-e
are not depending upon information handed down
to us by tradition, though that often confirms our
teaching; we are telling you of things with which
many of us have experimented, things of which we
have had experience again and again, so that we do
know that w^hereof we speak and we give you
direct personal testimony — which is more than you
w^ill get from most religious instructors!

But we do not therefore expect any one to accept
all that we say without further enquiry. We leave
men perfectly free in this Church to believe what-
ever commends itself to their own reason and com-
mon sense; but the fact that we leave them per-
fectly free does not mean that we have no know-
ledge and no convictions of our own. On the con-
trary, some of us do know quite a good deal about
these things; we know it as the result of many years
of patient and careful investigation, along lines pre-
cisely similar to those which scientific men adopt in
studying chemistry or astronomy or any other
subject.

For a long time it seems to have been thought
that in this world of ours there were certain matters
which must be left to the province of religion; that
they were purely matters of faith, that no one could
know anything definite about them, and that there-
fore some people believed one thing and some an-
other. That has been an unfortunate thing for the
world. There is no reason w^hy people should not
investigate for themselves these matters which are
supposed to be appropriate to religion, any more
than there is any reason why they should not inves-

432 f)he Christian Festivals

tigate geology, chemistry or any other science. It is
in no way more presumptuous or irreverent to en-
quire into the working of God's laws on the astral
plane than on the physical.

For example, there is the whole vast question of
the life after death. It is ridiculous to suppose that
we cannot obtain any information about that. There
is plenty of information to be had about it for any-
body who will take the trouble to look for it. Of
course there are conditions attached to psychic re-
search, exactly as there are conditions attached to
the study of electricity. If we want to experiment
in electricity we must obtain the machinery which
will generate it, we must have the wires which will
conduct it, and in various ways we must provide our-
selves with the necessary plant and supplies. It is
exactly the same if we want to study matters of
the higher world. We cannot deal with them with
the same machinery which we should apply to chemis-
try or geology; but that does not mean that they
cannot be studied, if we will take the trouble to
learn and apply the appropriate methods.

Some of us have done that. I myself have spent
half a century over these subjects, experimenting in
various ways for myself and through others, and
collecting masses of evidence; and I think one may
fairly claim that at the end of so long an apprentice-
ship as that, one begins to know something about
it. It is quite possible for any man who has the
time, the money and the patience to do exactly what
I did to obtain evidence and to experiment for him-
self. Meantime, we are quite ready to put the re-
sult of our enquiries and investigations before our
people.

God as Light 433

The message which we bring is exactly that which
St. John brought. We have seen something of those
higher splendours, and we know with utter certainty
that there is a God of Light and Power, and we
see how He works down here through His instru-
ments, and through the matter which is a manifes-
tation of Him. Through all the ages there has been
continued testimony. There have always been
those who knew, and there always will be. Not every
one of us can say, "I know," although there are
far more who can say it than is generally supposed,
for many men have had their own experiences,
some of one kind, some of another, so that they are
quite certain inside. But those who take the trouble
to train their higher faculties know now, just as
others knew thousands of years ago. The testimony
of the great Catholic Church is consistent and
continual.

Christians recognize St. John as one of the great-
est of their apostles, but it is curious that in spite
of that no one seems actually to believe him — that
is if we are to go by the general attitude of the
Christian in the present day, the general tone of
his prayer-book and his religious writings altogether.
One great fact emerges from St. John's enquiry into
these matters. He claims to know at first hand, and
he declares that God is Light, and that in Him
there is no darkness at all. If only Christians had
believed him, had accepted his statement with its
inevitable corollaries, we should have avoided a vast
amount of totally unnecessary- trouble and sorrow.
Apparently Christians cannot believe him; they can-
not believe the assertions of Christ Himself; they
must go back to the old terrorism of the religion

434 The Christian Festivals

of the early Jews, who worshipped a tribal deity of
their own, whom they held to be excessively ciniel,
revengeful, jealous and in various ways very dif-
ferent from the loving Father Whom Christ con-
sistently put before His people. If only those who
call themselves Christians would follow Christ and
His apostles, and leave the Jewish religion alone, we
should get on much better.

Any one who can accept St. John's plain state-
ment that God is Light and in Him is no darkness
at all, will find that it changes everything, that it
is of the most supreme importance, that it is the
saving fact that makes all things clear to us, as soon
as we grasp it. Some may say: "When we look
round us in the world, we do not see sufficient evi-
dence that God is a loving Father, that He is Light,
and in Him there is no darkness. If that be so how
came this awful war? Think of the appalling misen^
which it has meant to millions of people; how can
that be if there is no darkness?"

Of course the evidence cannot be seen, so long
as we are looking only at a small part of the thing.
Imagine a number of ants crawling about on the
wrong side of some magnificent piece of tapestry,
and examining the ends which hang dov/n at the
back of it and arguing among themselves as to
whether there could be any design in it. "Some
colours here and some there," they might say, "and
no apparent sense or reason in it all." We are just
about in the same position to judge of what is really
being done as those ants w^ould be to judge the
design of that tapestry. Some intelligent ant by
chance or by extra development might learn to clim]^
round to the other side. Then he would come back

God as Light 435

aud report to the others: ''There is a real pattern
to it all : there is some reason in it, but you can see
only one side, and that the under side. All the
important part you do not see at all." That is
exactly the position in which men are who argue
about the power and love of God when they see
only this physical-plane side of things. They see
only what happens to the bodies of men, the lowest
part of them. If they could climb to the other side
of the tapestry and see the pattern, if they could
raise their consciousness to the higher level and sec
what is happening to the souls of men as a conse-
quence of all this, they would comprehend the real
plan and scheme of the whole business, and then they
would understand that verily God is Light and in
Him there is no darkness at all. If we cannot al-
ways see evidence of it down here, it is because we
are seeing not even half, not a tenth of the working
of the machine; we have no grasp whatever of the
world as a whole while we examine it merely from
this lower side. We must get above it and look down
on it and see it altogether.

Take an analogy from the great war. AYe can
imagine how little of what was being done in one
of those battles a single private soldier would know
while he was fighting in one corner of the battle-
field. He had his orders, and he carried them out
nobly, but he knew little of the plan of the general
who had the whole affair in his mind. There might
be terrible suffering, there might even be a partial
defeat and retirement in one part of the field, in
order that time might be gained to obtain a real vic-
tory in some other point of the same great battle.
We cannot tell by seeing a small part; but if we get

436 The Christian Festivals

up above and look down, we can see — not indeed the
whole, but — quite enough to make us certain that
there is a plan, that the plan is a noble and a true
plan, and that it is succeeding and not failing.

That is the message of those who are able, after
long practice and work, to raise their consciousness
so that they can look down on it all from above and
take a broader view than can be had down here.
Once more we are repeating the statement of St.
John, and we are repeating it on the same grounds
— that we have ourselves seen the working of the
scheme sufficiently to be able to affirm exactly what
St. John affirmed two thousand years ago, that God
is Light. The Act of Faith in the Office of Prime,
which I have already quoted, conveys the idea :

''We believe that God is Love and Power and
Truth and Light; that perfect justice rules the
world: that all His sons shall one day reach His
Feet, however far they stray. We hold the Father-
hood of God, the Brotherhood of man; we know that
we do serve Him best when best we serve our brother
man. So shall His blessing rest on us, and peace for
evermore. ' '

We do not tell men, as do some other Christian
denominations, that they will have an unpleasant
and sulphureous future if they do not believe what
we say; it is for them to take our evidence or leave
it; but we do claim that it is evidence, and that
even- sensible man ought to take it into account. All
who claim to have penetrated to higher levels and
learned to see for themselves agree in telling us that
there is an orderl}^ scheme, which is moving on to a
consummation of final good for all.

God as Light 437

From that knowledge follow many things. That
being so, the best of everything, and the best in
everything, is the nearest to the truth in it; so when
anything happens that seems to us to cause sorrow
and evil, we should look and see whether there is
not a good side to it. Look for the best always; for
we shall always find that somewhere there is a best.
Look for the good points, not only in everything, but
in eyerybody; 'because in looking for the good we get
nearer to the reality. Let us count our blessings
instead of all the time grumbling and looking round
for something with which we can find fault. If we
look for the good we shall be surprised to see how
much there is of it. If we accept the idea that God
is light, and trust Him, follow Him, obey Him, we
shall soon find evidence accruing to show that we
are on the right track. Men find what they want
to find. If a man goes about trying to find a
grievance he can easily manufacture one; if he goes
about searching for affairs that are going awry and
not being properly managed, of course he will find
some; but if, on the other hand, he tries to take the
higher line and look for the best, he will presently
see that the evidence on that side altogether out-
weighs that on the other.

It seems to me most important that we should
adopt a proper attitude of utter trust towards God
— the attitude of trust founded upon reason and not
upon blind faith. We must eliminate all cringing
and all prayers for mercy. Until we look into the
matter we hardly realize how all the old prayers
and hymns that our forefathers have been using
these many centuries are permeated with these ideas
of fear, cringing and horror. People say the words

438 The Christian Festivals

and never think of the awful implications that follow
from them. When they say: ''Lord have mercy
upon us," what do they mean? They must mean, at
any rate, that if they did not ask Him to act merci-
fully, kindly, justly, He would not do so. What
right have they to think such a wicked thing about
our loving Father? They ask Him to forgive sins —
meaning, I suppose, if words mean anything, that
if He were not asked to forgive them He would
hold a grudge against them. What right have they
to accuse the Father of Light of holding a grudge
against any man?

The Greek word is susceptible of a far better inter-
pretation; instead of remission we may translate it
demission — the putting away of sins. The word
may be used to imply remission, if we import the idea
that somebody else is required to put them away ; but
its simple meaning is the putting away of sins. It is
perfectly open to us to read that article in the Creed
in the sense that we believe in the necessity for put-
ting away our sins before we can make any progress.
It will just as readily bear that interpretation as the
idea of remission ; and when we come to see the facts
about absolution, we observe that it is not in the
nature of forgiveness by somebody Who is affronted
by a wrong done to Him, but simply the actual
mechanical putting straight of things that have gone
askew. The forgiveness of sins is simply the un-
twisting of the distortion we have caused in the
higher matter of our subtler bodies by setting our-
selves for the moment against the great current of
evolution, and doing something which interferes with
that current. The absolution does not in the least
degree remove any guilt; all it does is to rectify

God as Light 439

some of the subjective consequences of guilt, when
the new factor of an earnest desire for improvement
is introduced.

God is not mocked; we need not deceive our-
selves; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap; but if we are brave and honest we do not
desire anything else than that. If we have made a
mistake, we are ready to take the consequences. We
do not want to shuffle them off upon somebody else;
we do not want anyone else to suffer for the mis-
take we have made. That surely is fair and reason-
able; that is only common honour and decency. We
have to realize that matters connected with religion
are not cloudy, far-away and uncertain, but that
they work under exactly the same laws as everything
else in nature. A cause produces its effect in phy-
sical matters; so in moral matters also, if we make
a mistake we have set a cause in motion, and we
produce an effect which reacts upon us. If we do
a good action, then also we have set a cause in
motion, and that effect also reactvS upon us. The
angle of incidence is always equal to the angle of
reflection; these are matters not of faith but of
common sense.

Another point shown to us by the fact that God
is light is that His attitude towards us is not that
of a tyrant who long ago laid down a code of rules
and expects us to follow them ; He is a living Friend,
near us all the time and ready to help us all the
time if we will take advantage of His aid. Christ
is truly a Ruler and King; yet to eveiy man among
us Christ is also the best Friend; not a mere liis-
torical character of two thousand years ago, but an
actual Friend living here and now, a mighty Power

440 ^he Christian Festivals

in every human life if the man will only let Him
be so. But we have to learn this; and many will
not learn. Men turn their backs upon the sun and
cry out that it is dark. It seems easy enough to
put that right; we have only to turn round and we
shall see that the sun is shining.

Whatever darkness there is, we have made it for
ourselves, either in the past or now. Remember
what a great Teacher Who lived six hundred years
before the birth of Christ said: ''Do not complain,
and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see; for
the truth, the light, is all round you all the time,
and it is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far beyond
what any man has ever dreamt of or prayed for;
and it is for ever and for ever."

That is the eternal truth. It is just as true for
us who are Christians now as it was for those who
heard it two thousand five hundred years ago from
the lips of the Lord Buddha far away in India —
the same eternal truth that God is Light, and in Him
is no darkness at all.

CHAPTEE XXVIII

FORETHOUGHT

Many people, good and earnest Christians, have
doubted somewhat about the words of the Sermon
on the Mount; because it is obvious that to take no
thoug-ht for the morrow is distinctly to he improvi-
dent, and that the man who takes no thought as to
the provision of food and clothing for himself is
simply throwing the onus of that duty on to some-
one else.

People accept this statement as representing the
teaching of the Christ; yet they feel (and quite
rightly) that such instruction does not fit in with
our modem life at all. The usual way — not to get
over the difficulty, but rather, I think, to evade it
— is to say that a condition of affairs which allowed
such conduct may possibly have existed in the time
of Christ; or that that is how we ought to live, but
we do not.

Those who have made any study of the higher
criticism are aware that it w^ould be unjust to at-
tribute to the Christ all the words that are credited
to Him in the gospels, because we know that those
gospels are chiefly meant as symbols or parables and
not as history; but it is also true that the early
Christians wrote down and preserved many of the
sayings of the Christ, and there is no reason to doubt
that they have represented some of those sayings
with reasonable accuracy. There are certainly some
of them (such as the cursing of the barren fig-tree)
which are so obviously unworthy of Him that we

441

442 Bhe Christian Festivals

are justified in instantly rejecting them; but the
remark under consideration does not necessarily be-
long to that class, though to understand and appre-
ciate it, it is necessary for us to make a clear dis-
tinction between directions given to His immediate
disciples and precepts intended for tlie world at
large.

People so often forget that Christianity is an
oriental religion, and that the Christ was a Jew.
There seem still to be many good and earnest Chris-
tians who think that He addressed His audiences in
idiomatic English; how else can we account for
their blind belief in the verbal inspiration of the
English version? He spoke in the Koine or popular
Hellenistic form of Greek; many documents in ex-
actly similar language have recently been discovered,
showing that this tongue was that of the people all
round the eastern end of the Mediterranean at that
time. Students must remember that any religion
that comes from the Orient, and was originally
spoken to Eastern races, is written and preached
from the oriental point of view. One of the strong
features of all Eastern systems is the idea that every
religious teacher must be a man specially devoted
to the holy life ; he must be what in India we should
call a yogi — a man such as are the Buddhist monks.
a man not unlike the friars or the monks of the
Middle Ages in Europe, devoted to poverty, chastity
and abstinence; a man who, by the yqvj terms of
his existence as a teacher, can possess nothing what-
ever in this world. That is so at the present day in
India, and in the Buddhist countries; a religious
teacher may theoretically have nothing of his own;
even the robes that he wears must be valueless.

Forethought 443

That is one reason why Christian missionaries
have made so little headway with those oriental
races. There have been Christian missionaries in
India for some hundreds of years, and the number
of converts is ver>^ small, and none of them are
from what we should call the reputable classes.
They see the bishops and clergy of the Church of
England living precisely as do other white people,
with a retinue of servants, and a fine big salary. The
Oriental laughs at them. The very first sign by
which he knows a religious teacher is that he has no
possessions whatever. That is his point of view,
though of course there is much to be said on both
sides. Religious teachers could hardly live in that
way in Europe or Australia; but as that is the in-
grained oriental idea, the only way to approach the
Eastern race with a new religion would be to send
men who are prepared to live like that. The only
Christians who have approached the Orientals, at
least in India, in a reasonable way are the two oppo-
site poles of Christian belief — the Roman Catholic
priests and the Salvation Army. They go and live
among the people, and as the people live; conse-
quently they are at least honoured and respected as
religious teachers by the Indians, even though the
latter may say that the religion which these mis-
sionaries put before them does not appeal to them
as their own Hindu faith does.

In the same truly oriental way the Christ chose
His disciples; He called them straight away from
their ordinarj^ modes of getting a living, and with
true oriental fatalism they followed Him without
hesitation. Most of them v>^ere fisheraien, according
to the story; one of them was a publican (which

444 The Christian Festivals

does not mean one who kept a public -house, but a
man who collected taxes). St. Paul is said to have
been a tent-maker. The Christ called them from
their work, telling them to give up their lives to re-
ligion and to follow Him. They had been in their
small way tradesmen or business men, or workmen,
and perhaps they had some qualms about giving up
their living; it would not be unnatural, so the Christ
exhorts them constantly: "You are My disciples;
you are to teach the people, and to set them an
example; therefore you need not worry about money
or clothes or any such things. Do your work, and
these things will come to you."

Our ideas are so absolutel}^ different from those
in the Orient that it would be quite likely to occur to
us that these religious teachers of the East have a
very easy life. Everything they need is provided,
truly not on a magnificent scale ; but food and cloth-
ing are always certain. I once heard an Indian try-
ing to explain these matters to an American. The
Indian asked: ''Have you not people who wander
about the country thus, without any money, making
their way from place to place V "0 yes, ' ' answered
the American, ''we have plenty in America, 'but we
call them tramps!" That is the way it strikes the
man of this quite different civilization. The Indian
would say, "Do not think of these people as lazy: on
the contrary, they are living a spiritual life and devot-
ing themselves wholly to that, pouring out a spiri-
tual influence and shedding the light of a spiritual
life over us; therefore they are doing for us a work
which we ourselves have not time to do, and conse-
quently we are very glad to supply them in return
with the little food and clothing they need." Truly,

Forethought 445

it is little enough, as far as that goes; but we see
how totally different is their point of view.

If we look at the beginning of the account of this
Sermon on the Mount we shall see that Christ called
His disciples round Him and spoke to them; so that
obviously He is telling them how they ought to live.
He does not by any means lay down that same sort
of life for all the i)eople to whom He speaks on
other occasions. We must have a rational compre-
hension of what was meant before we proceed
to condenm the teaching as unreasonable. Most
Christians do not indeed condemn it as un-
reasonable, though they live as though they
thought it SO; but I think that tacit assumption has
done a good deal of harm. Here are quite definite
commands which they take as given to them, yet
they do not obey them; they do not begin to think
about obeying them. No ordinary Christian would
for a moment consent to take no thought for the
morrow, or to live as the flowers of the field live.
But because they who think they are enjoined to
do this do not do it, and would consider it thriftless,
objectionable, unmanly to do it, a certain unreality
overshadows their religion. Here are what they re-
gard as plain commands, yet they never think of
obeying them; why therefore should they obey any
of the other commands given to them under the
guise of religion?

There should be no pretence about religious mat-
ters in any way. If that really is a definite command
given by the Christ to all of us, we ought to be
trying to obey it. But it is noi a command given to
all of US; it was given especially to that band of
peripatetic disciples. He speaks quite differently

446 The Christian Festivals

wlien He is addressing the general public. Never-
theless, there are useful lessons which we can all
learn from those words, even though we recognize
that they were not addressed specifically to us.
Christ says that we cannot serve God and mammon;
and that is eternally true. If any man is devoting
the whole of his life only to the making of money
and thinking always of that, it is little likely that he
will be doing much to help on evolution. There is
assuredly no wrong in being rich. That is another
quaint idea that has arisen from the distortion of
this same doctrine — the theory that it is a wicked
thing to be rich. Christ is reported to have said:
•'How hardly shall the rich man enter into the
kingdom of heaven!" and the envious and ignorant
take that to mean that a rich man cannot escape
hell, which is not in the very least what the Christ
intended. The kingdom of heaven means the Com-
munion of the Saints, the Great White Brotherhood,
the body of Initiates; and it is true tliat a very rich
man would find it difficult to lead such a life as
an Initiate leads. He is, and he must be, altogether
too busy in worldly affairs to devote himself entirely
to a spiritual life. But we must remember that it
is his duty to be busy in physical life, because of
the wealth which has been entrusted to him. So
the Christ's remark is a statement of an obvious
fact, not a ridiculous condemnation of a man to hell
because he happens to be rich! That would be alto-
gether unjust. But it is true that every man, rich
or poor, who wishes to please God and to make pro-
gress, must undoubtedly seek first the kingdom of
God and Plis righteousness; he must always keep
before him the idea that he is serving God, and not

Forethought 447

living merely for wealth. That, however, is a
totally different thing and quite a reasona;ble claim.
He who devotes himself to the service of God can
best do so, as the Christ Himself tells us, by living
to serve his fellow-men. He says, ''You have fed
Me when I was hungry; you have given drink to
Me when I was thirsty, visited Me when I was sick
and in prison. . . Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of
the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto
Me.^*

His instruction to us is that we shall show our
love to God in the shape of service to our fellow-
men. That means that we must always be on God's
side. One might think that a superfluous sugges-
tion, because of course everybody would always be
on God^s side. Yes; if some great choice were set
before us — to choose between the good and the evil,
between the unselfish and the selfish — I quite believe
that all decent people would at once declare them-
selves on the side of God and would take the un-
selfish line. But people, Christians as well as others,
often forget that such a decision comes to each of
them many times every day in the little things of
life. I have already quoted St. Augustine's acute
remark, "Many there be who will die for Christ;
but few there be who will live for Him.'* With
all respect to the great martjo's it is not so diffi-
cult to be a martyr on some tremendous historic oc-
casion, but in the every-day little troubles and trials
we often do not realize that there is any kind of
test, and so it often happens that inadvertently we
fail, just for want of thought. We have to live for
Christ day by day, and we must be on God's side
in the little things as well as in the great emer-

cc

448 The Christian Festivals

gencies. These latter occur but rarely, but tlie
little tilings are always with us.

The world, as has been truly said by a great
Teacher, is divided into two classes: the people who
know what God's scheme is and therefore are al-
ways working on His side, and those who do not
know and therefore are at present following selfish
ideas. You must either be among the few who are
lifting the heavy karma of the world, or else among
the enormous majority who are being lifted. That
is the truth of it.

Let us make up our minds that in little things as
well as great we will be among the lifters, and not
make part of the burden that they have to raise.
Let us see to it that our service to our God is ren-
dered all day long, and that our lives are in every
respect lives devoted to Him, because they are
devoted to usefulness to our fellowmen.

part 3

ADDRESSES DURING THE WAR

U9

CHAPTER XXIX

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WAR

The great war is the one topic of the day, the one
thing about which everyone speaks — the one thing,
also, about which everyone thinks; and yet vast
numbers of people are not thinking rightly about it.
There are many who do not know what to think.
They are torn by a number of different ideas, and
they find it hard to take a balanced view. On the
one side there is often a rush of hatred called forth
by awful barbarities, by unexampled cruelties; on
the other side there is a strong feeling — a well-
founded feeling — that war is a wicked and insane
thing, which never settles any point properly, be-
cause the side that wins in a war need not at all
necessarily be always the right side. Providence,
they say, is on the side of the biggest guns, and the
old mediaeval idea that war was always decided by
some higher power does not find invariable accept-
ance in the present day. People say: "We know war
is an evil and a wicked thing ; we know that peace is
right and beautiful; so how can we fight with any
heart?" Yet, on the other hand, when such awful
things are happening, is it not every man's duty to
do what he can to stay the evil ? So there is a general
uncertainty of feeling, and many people hardly know
what line they ought to take.

Per'haps a statement of facts with regard to the
war from the inside may help us as to the attitude
which we ought to adopt. In my own mind the
position is absolutely clear and definite, because I

451

452 Ehe Christian Festivals

have the advantage of some knowledge of the inner
side of things. I feel that the attitude which men
take with regard to this war is a matter of great
importance. It is quite true that the one thing to
be thought of now is to win. But many of us are
not able to go and fight, and the attitude that we
take with regard to the war may make the final settle-
ment a comparatively easy thing or an almost impos-
sible thing; therefore it is not unimportant that we
should have the right ideas clearly in our minds.

In order to have clear ideas upon any subject we
must first of all have the facts at our command.
There is always a hidden side to everything — a side
which is unseen by the ordinary man, uncontemplated
by the ordinary thinker; yet that unseen side is
nearly always vastly more important and vastly more
informing than the side which is seen.

I am going to try to explain something of the
hidden side of this great struggle, because that may
help us to take up an attitude, to form an opinion,
which will be helpful and not hannful when we come
to the settlement later.

On the surface this war seems simple enough, al-
though incredible. All who know anything of the
real history of events — I mean from the external
point of view — ^l^now that Germany has been prepar-
ing through many, many years, with a careful, cal-
eulcated thoroughness which has perhaps never been
equalled in tlie world, to make a spring at the throat
of Europe; just precisely that — to make a tremen-
dous bid for world-domination. I know that even
that much is not generally believed in Germany.
There they try to persuade themselves that they

The Truth about the War 453

were forced to make this attack; but all of us who
have read the evidence, the Blue Books, and the
various messages interchanged between the countries
concerned, know that the attack was absolutely un-
provoked, and that one side had prepared for it in
a perfectly marvellous manner — a manner which is
an example of thoroughness to the rest of the world,
but unfortunately an example of unparalleled
treachery and dishonour as well. The Allies were,
most unfortunately, unprepared to a terrible extent
— to an extent which has cost a vast amount in lives
and in suffering.

All that is on the surface and is obvious. Calcu-
lated, detailed, and marvellously unscrupulous as
was the preparation, it has been fully equalled by the
execution, which has been carried out with a deliber-
ate brutality, with a finished and fiendish cruelty
never before approached. I know that is a strong
thing to say, but you have only to read unimpeach-
able evidence to see that it is true. Unfortunately,
I liiiow it to be true. I have had in the course of
work on other planes opportunities of observation
for myself. I Imow that the most av/ful stories we
have heard are absolutely founded on fact. I am
sorry, but it is so. We hav@ to face things as they
are — not as sentimentalism would like to have them.
We have to face things as they are, so that actually
we have come to see that Kipling was right in his
memorable phrase: ''We shall now have to revise
our vocabulary: we shall now have to divide the
inhabitants of the earth into human beings and —
Germans." I am sorry, but I am giving the facts
of the case.

454 The Christian Festivals

If we think of it, that is a most amazing thing;
and remember that, so far as we have been allowed
to hear, there has been no protest. Just think: I do
not want to stir up any man's passions — it is the
last thing I should desire to do; but just think of
the things which have happened. Remember the
Lusitania; remember the Persia and the Arabic.
Think of how many cases there have been of attacks
upon unprotected towns, the deliberate murder (a
verdict of wilful murder has been brought in by a
court over and over again) of non-combatants.
Think of that for a moment, and theu say: how can
we account for such a thing?

Probaibly all of us have known people belonging
to this race. I, at least, have known many Germans.
I belong to the Theosophical Society — a society which
has branches in every country in the world. I have
met men of that race. I have known them well ; they
have been friends of mine.

It is true that in that Theosophical Society we
had a foretaste of this endeavour to dominate the
world, for the German section of the Theosophical
Society rose against the rest of it and tried to ob-
tain supreme power in the Society some years ago,
before this war was in sight. They employed ex-
actly the same weapons that are now being employed
by the political agents of the German press: the
same unscrupulous lies, the same discover}^ of spies
in all sorts of unexpected places. We in the Tlieo-
sophical Society went through — on paper of coui*se
mainly — a small edition of this attempt to capture
the whole organization. We did not understand
then; the utter unscrupulousness of it all astounded
us. Now we see that it was only part of the whole

^he ^ruth about the War 455

German scheme — an attempt to get hold of a world-
wide Society, through which something might have
been done to help the German plan of world-domin-
ation. Fortunately, the scheme was defeated, with
all its attendant calumny and treachery.

We have all known men of German race: were
they on the whole the kind of people who would be-
have in this fashion? They were not. This dire
change requires accounting for; it needs something
absolutely unusual, something entirely novel in the
way of an explanation. I will try to show exactly
how it did happen — how it is happening.

Here is another point. We all of us feel, I think,
that we are engaged more or less in a war of prin-
ciple, that there are great principles at stake, that
we are fighting for liberty, for what is called demo-
cracy. I have not personally by any means an un-
alloyed admiration of democratic methods; but
democrac}^ at least means an effort towards liberty
for the people, though I think there is a good deal
which is crude, unfinished and unscientific about it.

We are fighting for democracy and liberty on one
side as against terrible tyranny and slavery on the
other. It is not only the right of existence of smaller
nations. It has been quite openly stated in the Ger-
man press that the day of small nations is over, that
Germany does not want small nations, that they
have no right to exist. But it is not only that that
is at stake; more nearly than that is it honour, and
the keeping of a pledge. We know well how the
next man below the Emperor described a solemn
treaty as ''only a scrap of paper," and could not
understand how we could wish to go to war merely

456 The Christian Festivals

for this scrap of paper. It is against thai kind of
thing that we are fighting. The fact that our
enemies have miscalculated does not, after all, make
the matter any better; they cynically judged us by
themselves — they supposed that Ireland would be
certain to rebel (because it seemed on the verge of
civil war) if England were attacked; they believed
that men in Australia, with our fellow-citizens of
the Empire in Canada and the Cape of Good Hope,
would all take the opportunity to break away. That
is what they expected; they calculated on all that.
They have miscalculated, but that does not make
their case any better.

So quite clearly we are standing for principles;
more truly than most men know, and on a greater
scale than they know, is this a question of principle.

We know that there are forces which work against
evolution as well as those which work in favour of
it. We know that there is frequently a small, even
a personal, struggle taking place between these forces
over individuals, and sometimes over what seem to
us quite small things. But we know also that now
and then great world-crises arise, where good and
evil set themselves against one another in serried
array, and humanity is influenced by these powers
and driven into taking part on one side or the other.
The last occasion on which so great a w^oiid-struggle
took place was in Atlantis some twelve or thirteen
thousand years ago. There was a great fight then
between those who were on the side of good and
those who were on the side of selfishness.

We may read something of the action of the Lords
of the Dark Face in Atlantis in The Secret Doctrine,

^he ^ruth about the War 457

Madame Blavatsky devotes much time and energy
to expounding their line of work. We must try to
imderstand that there may be people who are do-
ing what to us seems absolutely evil, and yet they
may think themselves justified in their action. They
may think that the line which they are taking is
not evil, but in the long inin good. It is true that
when they say: "in the long run good," I think
they generally mean good for themselves; but these
Lords of the Dark Face had their own view of evo-
lution, and to themselves they justified it, much
along the line in which some people in these days
try to justify the action of Judas Iscariot on the
ground that he was more anxious than the rest that
the Master's gloiy should be shown forth to the
world, and so he put his Master in a position where
he thought that He must show forth His glory. How-
ever incredible it may seem, that view is gravely
put forward by some writers.

The Lords of the Dark Face in Atlantis were
intensifying themselves as separated beings against
the stream of evolution. We hold that the trend of
evolution is towards unity — ^that this vast multiplex
Universe that we see around us is all the expression
of One Mighty Power, and that as from Him we all
came out, so to Him one day we shall all return —
not losing our sense of individuality, not losing the
memory and the benefit of all our experience, but
certainly rising ever higher and higher into perfect
realization of our unity with Him. Therefore, we
know it to be pleasing to Him that we should work
ever towards that unity.

But those who hold the opposite view think that
the Deity sets up this current which we call evolu-

458 The Christian Festivals

tion in order that we may strengthen ourselves iby
fighting against it; and although we do not believe
that, we can see that it is a possible view, and it
is clear that men who hold it will not live at all as
we do. We think that such people are vitally in
error, that they are allowing themselves to be
clouded by the lower self; still we can see that they
try to justify their position by a certain line of
argument.

It is not necessary to suppose that those Lords
of the Dark Face were doing evil for evil's sake;
but they held what we consider a wrong and selfish
view as to the intention of the Deity. I have my-
self heard some of their successors of the present day
say : ' ' You people think you know what God means ;
your Masters hold these views, and, of course, you
follow Them. But we have a different view; we are
following the traditions of a very ancient school and
we contrive to hold our own fairly well."

In Atlantis this attitude led, among the ordinary
and comjnonplace followers, to extreme selfishness
and sensuality, t^o general unscrupulousness and
irresponsibility. It led to an extraordinary condi-
tion in which each man set up an image of him-
self and worshipped that as a god — a perversion of
the perfectly tiTie idea that God is within everyone
of us, and that if you cannot find Him within your-
self it is useless to look for Him elsewhere. So it
came about that there was a vast revolution against
the Ruler of the Golden Gate, and practically the
good and evil forces which are always seeking to
influence the world found physical expression in
that great series of battles in Atlantis. In that
case the majority of the population was distinctly

^he ^mth about the War 459

on tlie side of evil, and the evil won. Because the
evil won, it was necessary, more than one thousand
years afterwards, to whelm that great island of
Poseidonis beneath the waters of the Atlantic; and
sixty-five million people died within twenty-four
hours in that great cataclysm.

This time once more the forces of good and evil
have materialized themselves here on the physical
plane, and the mighty contest has come down again
to this level. Eememiber, we are the same people
who were in Atlantis, and it is prohaible that we
took our part in the struggle — with the minority, let
us hope — ^yet perhaps some of us with the majority;
it is a long time ago, and we cannot be certain.

I remember reading a terrible story (fiction only,
I hope, for it could hardly have been actual fact)
of the recovered memorj^ of a past incarnation.
There was once a man, an earnest and devout Chris-
tian, who through the accident of subjecting him-
self to mesmeric treatment, found that in a trance
condition he was able to gain glimpses of what he
felt to be past lives of his own. Incredulous at first,
the strength and vividness of his experiences soon
forced him to admit that they must be real reminis-
cences; and in this way he acquired much interest-
ing information about mediaeval periods. Then arose
in his mind a wild but fervent hope that if he could
press his memoiy further he might discover that
he had been on earth during the lifetime of JcvSus;
he yearned inexpressibly for a glimpse of that Divine
Presence ; he imagined himself following and ecstatic-
ally worshipping the Lord whom he so loved; he
even dared to hope that perhaps he might have had
the supreme honour of martyrdom for his faith.

460 The Christian Festivals

Further and further in successive trances he pushed
back his recollection, until at last with inexpressible
thankfulness and awe he realized that he had trod-
den the sacred soil of Palestine at the very same time
as that majestic Figure. And then, with a shock so
terrible that it left him a dying man, he knew the
appalling truth that in that life of long ago he had
been a rabid unit in an angry crowd yelling wildly:
*' Crucify Him! crucify Him!"

I trust devoutly that we were all on the right side
in that stupendous struggle in Atlantis; but, how-
ever that may have been, at least the very same
people are having their chance again now; but this
time the majority, thank Heaven, is on the side of
the good, and the good will win. This very fact,
that many who were on the wrong side then are on
the right side now, is full of hope and cheer for
us, for it shows that in spite of all appearances to
the contrary, the world is evolving; and, however
disheartening are our failures, we are on the whole
better men than we were twelve thousand years ago.

Therefore we may hope to avoid for some thou-
sands of years to come a cataclysm on the tremen-
dous scale that sank Poseidonis. But if the evil
won, the cataclysm would follow; it must follow,
for the Deity intends that humanity shall evolve,
and if part of humanity deliberately casts itself
out of the line of evolution, that particular set of
bodies and minds must be wiped out, and must be-
gin again under other conditions. These German
souls will come back to birth again presently, scat-
tered all over the world in various countries, so
that there can no longer be the same terrible

^he ^ruth about the War 461

strength of united unscrupulousness that has made
that nation a danger to the world.

We must not think, if we ean help it (I know
how hard it is to help it) that the people who fight
on the side of the evil are necessarily all wicked
people. Unquestionably many of them are appall-
ingly wicked; but equally unquestionably many of
them are not so by nature; they are victims of a
mighty obsession — ^an obsession so tremendous in its
power that if you and I had been subjected to it
we too might not have seen our way clear through
it and come out of it unstained; who can tell?
Thousands and thousands of people, as good as we,
have not come through it satisfactorily.

The power behind which is contrary to evolution
can and does seize upon a whole nation and obsess
it and influence it. It is true that it cannot do that
(just as is the case with individual obsession), unless
there is in the obsessed something or other which
responds. But if there be in any nation a majority,
or even a powerful minority, which — perhaps through
pride, perhaps through grossness and coarseness,
through not having opened up sufficiently the love
side of the nature, through having given itself too
entirely, too unscrupulously to developing intellect
— is already in that condition of ready response to
evil, then the rest of the nation, the weaker people,
are simply swept along with them, and they cannot
see straight for the time. We must try to realize
that.

What, then, was there in Germany which has made
this awful obsession possible? I find part of the
answer to this question in a remarkable set of statis-
tics which I came across recently in Fear son's Mag a-

462 The Christian Festivals

zine, in an article by Mr. F. W. Wile, the resident
correspondent in Berlin of various well-known news-
papers. They are taken from a book called The
Sold of Germany, written by a Professor of the
University of Erlangen, in Bavaria. He nuakes a
comparison between the amount of certain kinds of
crime which came before the Courts in Eng'land and
in Germany in a period of ten years. It must be
remembered, in making such a comparison, that the
population of Great Britain is about forty million,
while that of Germany is seventy million; so that
we must add 75 per cent, to the English numbers
to see what, if the two countries stood at an equal
level of moral development, we might reasonably
expect to find in Germany; but even after making
this allowance we shall see a truly appalling dispro-
portion. Forgive me if the statistics are unsavoury,
but we want to understand how this ghastly condi-
tion of affairs has arisen.

The professor takes first the crime of maliciously
or feloniously wounding. Of this there occurred in
England 1,262 cases, so we might expect in Ger-
many about 2,200; the actual numiber is 172,153.

During the same time there were in England 97
murders, which would lead us to estimate those in
Germany at 170; the number given is 350 — almost
exactly double what might be expected; and there
is a further complication due to the fact that (we
read) there are hundreds upon hundreds of man-
killings in the Fatherland which the German law
does not technically term murders — which, therefore,
do not appear in murder statistics.

Of rapes there were in Britain 216, which should
give 380 in Germany ; there were actually 9,381.

^he ^ruth about the War 463

Cases of incest were with us 56 ; we might, therefore
look for about 100 in Germany, but we find 573.

The number of illegitimate children was with us
37,041 — a sufficiently shameful total, which should
lead us to look for perhaps 65,000 in the larger
country; instead of this there are 178,115.

Of malicious damage to property — a peculiarly
mean and cold-blooded crime — I regret to say that
we had in England 358, so on the same scale there
might have been 627 in the Fatherland; but there
really were no less than 25,759.

When I first quoted these statistics they were
questioned; but I find them confirmed in Mr. de
Halsalle's book, Degenerate Germany^ where it is
stated that the English figures are extracted from
Home Office publications, and the German figures
from the Imperial Statistics of 1908 {op. cit, p. 180).
Any one who will procure and read the book which
I have just mentioned will find therein abundant
evidence for a worse and more far-reaching indict-
ment even than that. To quote from another and
quite distinct source, in a leaflet published in the
United States, Mr. George L. Fox, Principal of the
University School, Newhaven, Connecticut, makes
the following comparison of crime in the two
countries : —

''The population of Germany is to that of Eng-
land as 5 to 3. As to crime, the proportion in incest
is about 13 to 1 ; in procuring it is 264 to 1 ; in pro-
curing abortions it is 29 to 1; in unnatural offences
it is 7 to 1; in rape and other sexual crimes it is
about 9 to 1; in murder, manslaughter and other
death-causing crimes it is 5 to 1 ; in arson it is about

DD

464 The Christian Festivals

4 to 1. With regard to divorces it is 22 to 1; as
to illegitimate births it is 5 to 1; while the number
of suicides is four times as great as in England/*
In some cases the figures given in this last com-
parison are worse than those of the first, while In
others they are better; probably Mr. Fox worked
with data covering a much shorter time than the
Erlangen Professor. But in both cases alike the
results are astounding and terrible.

God foi^id that we should set ourselves up to
be self-righteous; we English have our faults, and
grave faults; but when we examine those statistics
we cannot but realize that there has been a difference
in the average level of morality; we begin to see how
this incredible and awful obsession has happened,
and why it was that the plan originally made by the
Great Ones for this particular little bit of human
evolution could not be carried out.

It was hoped that the Fifth Root-Race would
stand as a whole, or, at any rate, that the Fifth
Sub-Race would stand as a whole. And the hope
was nearly realized. The Powers that stand behind
human evolution worked long through Their pupils
to prevent this catastrophe. Whether those Powers
knew all the time that Their labour would not
achieve its end, I cannot tell. We sometimes tliink
of Them as knowing beforehand all that will hap-
pen; whether They do or not, I know not, but at
least it is certain that in many cases They work most
earnestly to produce certain results, and to give to
men certain opportunities. Through the failure of
humanity to take the chances offered, the results
may not then be attained, but often they are post-

^he ^mth about the War 465

poned for what to U5 seems an enormous time. The
Grreat Deity of the solar system knows perfectly all
that will happen, and knows who will take his
chances and who will not. That we must believe;
whether all who work under Him also know that, we
cannot tell. Certainly I know that a great conflict
between good and evil forces has been long impend-
ing over us. I know also that it need not have taken
precisely the form it has taken, if only some of
those to whom great opportunities were offered had
risen to the level of those opportunities and had
taken them.

Some have taken them. This mighty British
Empire has been formed, and has been welded to-
gether by bonds of close affection in a way in which
no Empire has ever been united before. There was
a huge Roman Empire; but it was self-interest, the
Roman peace, and the power of Rome which held
that together. It was not the love for Rome of those
subject races at all. There have been other vast
Empires in the past, but they were held together by
force, not by love. But what else than love holds
this Empire together? England, the little Mother
State, has no wish to coerce it. Once she did, under
utterly mistaken direction by an obstinate King and
a foolish Minister, try to coerce the American colo-
nies. The only result of that was that nearly half
of what should have been the Empire is not part of
it now, though it is being bound closely to it by
other ties. It should have been all within this one
great Empire; that was the plan, but the stupidity
of man overthrew that part of it. England has made
no later effort to coerce the far mightier Dominions
attached to her. She has left them perfectly free;

466 ^he Christian Festivals

yet they are bound to her more closely now than
they ever were before.

It was hoped that the other nations which be-
long to our sub-race would join in a great confedera-
tion. America and England have been drawn closely
together, so that war between them is now scarcely
thinkable; and the hope was that Scandinavia and
Germany would have come into a similar friendship ;
but Germany would not come in. There has been
for many years a curious and undesirable form of
national spirit arising in that country. There is
plenty of evidence as to this. If we read the Ger-
man literature, we shall easily see the direction in
which for forty years and more its people have been
going. Because of their intense pride, because of
the teaching of brutality and of force, of blood and
iron instead of the law of love, and because of the
low level of general morality which is the direct
consequence of such teaching, they have laid them-
selves open to this dreadful obsession, and some of
the great Lords of the Dark Face have again taken
their place among them.

Prince Bismarck was such an one, as Madame
Blavatsky told us long ago. While he was still alive
he laid his plans for the subjugation of Europe. We
may be thankful he has not survived till the present,
for his plans were far wiser than those of the men
who have followed him. Long ago Madame Blavatsky
explained to us that he had considerable occult
knowledge, and that before the war with Prance in
1870 he had travelled physically to certain points
to the north, the south, the east, and the west of
France, and had there cast spells of some sort, or
made magnetic centres, with the object of prevent-

^he ^ruth about the War 467

ing effective resistance to the German armies. Cer-
tainly the French collapse at the time was so com-
plete and unexpected that it seemed to need some
unusual explanation.

In the course of the work of the invisible helpers
on the battle-field I have several times encountered
and spoken to the Prince, who naturally watches with
the keenest interest all that happens; and some
months ago I had an interesting conversation with
him. SpeakiQg of the war, he said that if we were
servanlo of the Hierarchy and students of Occultism
we must know that Germany was in the right. One
of our party, becoming somewhat indignant, replied
that all the rest of the world was willing to be at
peace, that Germany had made an unprovoked at-
tack, and had caused all this awful carnage, and
was therefore entirely in the wrong. But the Prince
said :

'*No, no; you do not understand. This is a
struggle which had to come — a struggle between the
forces of law and order, science and culture on the
one hand, and on the other those of disorder and
license, and the degrading tendencies of democracy.
It does not matter how it started. If, as you say,
Germany began it by an act of unexampled aggres-
sion, v/hat of that? It is fate; it had to be — if not
in this way, then in some other; and this way offered
us the best chance of success; though for my part,
I should have set all these nations to fight one an-
other first, and I should have stepped in when they
were all exhausted."

We maintained that we also loved law and order,
science and culture, but we wished along with them
to have liberty and progress. The Prince would

468 The Christian Festivals

have none of such ideas ; he declared that democracy
cared nothing for culture, but wished to drag every-
body down to a common level, and that the lowest;
that it desired law to rob and restrain the rich, but
itself would obey no law; that it had no conception
of liberty under law (which is the only true liberty),
but desired a triumph of utter lawlessness, in which
selfish might should rule, and only those should be
restrained who wished to live and work as free men.
Further, he said that if we ourselves served the
true inner Government of the world we must know
that it is the very opposite of all democratic
theories, and that therefore it is Germany, and not
England, who is fighting for the ideals of the hier-
archical Government.

"Which," he asked, '4s nearer to the true ideal
of a King — our Kaiser, who holds his power from
God alone, or your King George, who can strike out
no line of his own, whose every action is limited by
his ministers and his parliament, so that he can do
no real good? And the French President, what is
he but the scum momentarily thrown to the top of
a boiling mass of corruption?"

We were most indignant at such an insult to our
brave Allies; but we could not but admit that there
was a modicum of truth in some of his earlier re-
marks. We tried to tell him that, though we shared
his utter disbelief in the methods of democracy, we
thought it a necessary intermediate stage through
which the world had to pass on its way to a nobler
freedom, because a scheme (however good) which
was forced upon a people could never lead to its
ultimate evolution; but that men must learn to
choose the good for themselves with open eyes, to re-

The ^ruth about the G)ar 469

nounce their brutal selfishness, not because they were
driven to do so at the point of the sword, but be-
cause they themselves had learnt to see the higher
way and the necessity that each should control him-
self for the good of all.

The Prince was absolutely unconvinced; he said
that our plan was Utopian, and that we could never
bring the canaille to understand such considerations
— that the only way to deal with them was the
method of blood and iron, forcing them for their own
ultimate good (and meantime for our convenience)
into the life which we who were wiser saw to be best
for them.

When some of this was later reported to the King
of England, he smiled, and said quietly:

"I believe that God has called me to the position
which I hold, just as much as He has called my
imperial cousin the Kaiser; I rule not by force, but
because my people love me, and I want no higher
title than that."

I fear we must admit the Prince's claim that man
as a whole is not yet fit for freedom; but he can
never become fit unless he is allowed to try the
experiment. Of course at first he will go wrong just
as often as he will go right. We shall have an inter-
mediate period when things are not at all as they
should be, when they are not by any means as well
managed as they would be under a benevolent des-
potism. Nevertheless we shall never get men to
advance unless we leave them a certain amount of
freedom. We must pass through this unlovely stage
of democratic mismanagement, in order to get a
time when the government of the people will be the
government of the best. At present frankly it is

470 The Christian Festivals

not that. Aristocracy means government by the
best; democracy means government by the people.
"We hope for a time when democracy and aristocracy
will be one. We expect to reach that by our system;
we should never get there along the line of military
despotism. That is the real fundamental point at
issue; so we see that this war is essentially one of
principles.

If any should be inclined to doubt that a whole
nation can be so obsessed from behind — a nation
which has a great deal that is beautiful in its past
history, which has produced some really fine people
— let him take the official German statements, and
read the proclamations of His Imperial Majesty the
Kaiser ; the proclamations in which he speaks of him-
self (and probably he believes it) as commissioned
by God to govern the world; in which he says: ''On
me the spirit of God has descended. I regard my
whole task as appointed by heaven. Who opposes me
I shall crush to pieces. Nothing must be settled
in this world without the intervention of the Ger-
man Emperor. '* See the insane pride of this, and
realize that the whole nation, so far as we know,
applauds and approves. Read Mr. Owen Wister's
''embodiment or composite statement of Prussian-
ism, compiled sentence by sentence from the utter-
ances of Prussians, the Kaiser and his generals, pro-
fessors, editors and Nietzsche; part of it said in
cold blood, years before this war, and aU of it a
declaration of faith now being ratified by action."
Read the calm statement: "Weak nations have not
the same right to live as powerful nations. The
world has no longer need of little nationalities."
"The Belgians should no-t be shot dead; they should

The Truth about the Q)ar 471

be so left as to make impossible all hope of recovery.
The troops are to treat the Belgian civil population
with unrelenting severity and f rightfulness. " Think
of the calculated devilishness of that instruction;
were there ever ruffians so inhuman, so unspeakable
since the the world began? Remember all the hor-
rors of the sinking of the Lusitania, and remember
how that great German nation went mad with joy
over the slaughter of non-combatants, of helpless
women and children. Except by that theory of
obsession how can we account for it? As I have
said, many of us have known people of that nation.
Were they such people as would have agreed to any-
thing of that kind? Of course they were not; no
more than you or I. Unquestionably it is true that
the powers from behind are working through these
people now.

This is the real explanation of all that seems so
incomprehensible; these people that fight us are not
fighting only of themselves. They are directed by
a power of will far stronger than their own, and
they are driven on to do awful things. They are
willing enough to be driven, for thai is all part of
the obsession. The men who drive them are utterly
unscrupulous, and will use any means whatever to
gain their end, for they know nothing of what we
mean by right or wrong. They hold it as a manly
duty to kill out all emotion or sympathy, because
they consider such feelings a weakness. They are
pitiless, exactly as a shark is. The slaughter or
torture of thousands or millions is nothing what-
ever to them, so long as they gain their end.

If this had not been; if the Fifth Sub-Race had
all combined together to present a perfect front, we

472 The Christian Festivals

should still have had a conflict, but it would have
been with some tremendous uprising of the much
less developed races — perhaps another attempt such
as Attila made to overrun Europe. The evil would
have expressed itself, but it would have been amiong
the backward nations. It is a great victory for the
powers that stand for darkness that they can take
a nation supposed to be in the forefront of civiliza-
tion, and twist that to their ends.

We must not think that all the members of that
nation are wicked people. We must not let our-
selves be brought down to their level. They have
made it their special boast to set up a stream of
hatred towards us, to compose hymns of hate and
teach them to the innocent school-children. We must
not be led away into such foolishness at that. We
must have no single thought of hatred. We shall
hear of the most terrible things being done, of in-
credible brutality and horror on their part; but if
we wish to take the occult point of view we must
have no shadow of hatred in our hearts for all this,
but only pity.

The tragedy of Belgium has horrified the world.
It has been one of the most terrible things that the
world has ever known; but the tragedy of the moral
downfall of Germany is greater even than that —
that such a great nation, with such possibilities,
should sink to this. That is, in truth, a more awful
thing to see than all the pain and misery of countless
ruined homes. That a race which produced Goethe
and Schiller should so fall as to become a byword
among the nations, so that for centuries to come
all decent men will be ashamed of any connection
with it, and none shall speak its name without a

The Truth about the 6)ar 473

shudder of horror and uttermost loathing — surely
that is a tragedy unequalled since the world began.

Therefore not hatred, but pity should fill our
minds. But on no account and under no circum-
stances must our pity be allov/ed to degenerate into
weakness, or to interfere with our absolute firmness.
We stand for liberty, for right, for honour, and
for the keeping of the pledged word of the nation,
and that work which has come into our hands must
be done, and it must be done thoroughly. But we
mus-t do it because we stand on the side of the
Deity, because we are in very truth the Sword of
the Lord, because this is, indeed, a holy war, in a
far deeper and more real sense than were the Cru-
sades of old.

Let us take care that we do not spoil our work
and our attitude by such an unworthy passion as
hatred. We do not hate the wild beast that is at-
tacking our children, but we suppress it. We do not
hate a mad dog, but for the sake of humanity we
shoot it. We do not hate the scorpion we tread
under foot, but we tread on it effectively. We do
not hate a lunatic; we are sorry for him; but we
defend our dear ones against his attack with un-
flinching determination, and we have no hesitation
in taking whatever steps are necessary to deprive
him of the power to do furtlier harm.

There must be no thought of hatred, but there
must be no weakness. There mnist be no sickly sen-
timentality or wavering. There are those who
clamour that the mad dog is our brother, and that
it is unfratemal to shoot him. They forget that the
men whom his bite would doom to an awful death
are also our brothers, and that they have the first

474 The Christian Festivals

claim on our consideration. Germany is the mad
dog of Europe, and must be suppressed thoroughly
and at all costs. ''Therefore fight, 0 Arjuna."
Remember, we are fighting for the liberty of the
world; Germany itself is a part of that
world, and we are fighting to free Germany from
its obsession. These German soldiers under their
present obsession are not men but fiends; no demon
from the lowest pit of the imaginary mediaeval hells
can rejoice in bestial cruelty more than they. The
kindest thing that we can do for them is to destroy
their physical bodies, so that they may be saved from
further and still more awful crime, that the devil-
ridden egos may be set free after their appalling
failure — (free to begin again to climb the ladder of
evolution from the depths of savageiy into which
they have allowed their lower vehicles to be cast.

Let us have that well in our minds, and we shaU
begin to see what is the attitude v/e must take with
regard to this terrible war; and if we do our duty
unfiinchingly in maintaining that attitude we shall
make the final settlement infinitely easier. When
this is over, as it will be over presently, when the
struggle is of the past, there will still remain the
aftermath. Those among the Allies who have hated
will find tlieir hatred turning into fiendish glee in
their victory; but, having allowed themselves to be
turned aside from the true view of the struggle,
those people will be in no condition to understand
calmly and rationally what is to be done. It is only
those who have kept their heads, who have shown
themselves philosophers, but nevertheless imissant
soldiers to stand and strike for the right — it is only

^he ^ruth about the G)ar 475

they who will be able to judge what can be done,
and what is best for the world.

So we who know the inner facts should hold a
firm and steady attitude, and not allow ourselves to
be misled. The path of wisdom is, as usual,
a razor edge. We must not fall over on one side or
the other, though we have to face fiendishness, wick-
edness, horror such as the world has never known
till now; we must have neither weakness nor vin-
dictiveness, but a grasp of the real reasons for it
all, and of what it is that is really happening.

The egos that have been swept into this vortex
of hate on the wrong side of the fight will come
back again; they will recover. It is indeed a ter-
rible thing to throw oneself open to such an obses-
sion. They will have a long way to climb, just as
had those who went wrong in Atlantis; but thou
sands of those who were on the wrong side in
Atlantis are on the right side now, and that is an
omen of great hope for us. The world has advanced,
otherwise the evil would win again; and this time
it will not win.

So our attitude must be one of unselfishness and
of firm attention to duty. But we must do our duty
because it is our duty, and not because of any per-
sonal feeling of hatred, or even of horror. We can-
not but feel uttermost loathing at the awful things
that have been done, at the deliberate way in which
they have been justified, at the terrible things that
have been said. We cannot help feeling horror, but
nevertheless we must try to hold ourselves steady,
with iron determination as to what is to be done, but
yet with readiness when all this is over to take once
more the philosophical point of view.

476 The Christian Festivals

The Lord who is to come, although when He came
last time He said to His people: ''I come not to
bring peace but a sword," is nevertheless the Prince
of Peace, the Lord of Love and the Lord of Life;
and when love and life and peace can be for these
people, He will lead them into love and life and
peace. But when the people have made that impos-
sible for themselves for this incarnation, when these
things cannot be for them, then will the other side
of the prophecy come tnie, that those who draw the
sword will perish by the sword.

In the midst of raging selfishness let us try to
live in utter unselfishness; let us be full of trust,
because we know; however dark and difficult things
may be, we cling to the certainty that evolution
is working. We went down in that gi^eat conflict in
Atlantis, and yet we never lost our faith in the
final triumph of good. This time good will triumph
even in the outer world; but remember, victory will
be achieved only by the greatest effort, by the most
utter determination, and the most thorough federa-
tion and trust among the people who are chosen to
rule the world and to do the work. To Germany
also a great opportunity was offered. To the egos
incarnated there an opportunity is offered even now
of protest and of martyrdom. They have not taken
it so far, but there may yet be those among them
who will take it. I trust and hope that it may be
SO; that there will be those who will shake off the
nightmare of obsession, who will say: ''Kill us if
you willj but we will not share in these horrors;
we will denounce them." Those people will earn a
better fate than their fellow-countrymen.

The Truth about the Q)ar 477

Let us take it all as part of the development of
tlie great world. That war is an awful thing, wrong
and wicked in itself, none can doubt; also tiiat it
is an utterly irrational way of deciding a disputed
point. The karma of the man who provokes a war
is more appalling than the human mind can con-
ceive. But for those upon whom it is forced, as it
has in this case been forced upon us, it is clearly the
lesser of two evils. Since it had to be. Those who
stand behind and direct the evolution of the world
are unquestionably utilizing it for great and high
purposes, and thus wringing good out of the very
heart of ill. Horrific as it is, it has yet lifted thou-
sands upon thousands of people clear out of them-
selves, out of their petty parochialism into world-
wide sympathy, out of selfishness into the loftiest
altruism — lifted them into the region of the ideal.
It has raised them at one stroke more than many
lives under ordinary conditions would raise a man.

We know how nobly people have thrown away
their lives — not even for their country in the ordi-
nary sense of the word. Remember that we were
not in immediate danger, though that would inevit-
ably have come later. It v/as not self-defence; it
was the honour of the flag; it was the name of Eng-
land ; the sacredness of a promise ; the duty of stand-
ing by the weak and defending them against bru-
tality. It was for an ideal in the truest and noblest
sense of the word that our fellow-countrymen have
shed their blood, and just because they gave to the
uttermost that which they had to give, they have by
that very act raised themselves greatly in the scale
of humanity. The ordinary man has not usually any
opportimity for a splendid effort such as this. It

478 ^he Christian Festivals

is true that wonderful and beautiful self-saerifice is
often shown by indiWduals in ordinary life: a man
will give up all his hopes and ambitions to minister
to some relation who is weak and ailing; but still
such chances come only here and there. I suppose
nothing else than a colossal war could have offered
an opportunity for so splendid an outburst from so
many simultaneously.

Remember that unselfish and awakened egos are
needed at this very moment for the Sixth Sub-Race,
which is beginning most prominently in America
and Australasia. Perhaps there was no other way
to get them in sufficient numbers and in a sufficiently
short time, except through some great world-conflict.
Be thankful that we, at least, are on the right side
in this. Be thankful, you who send to this great
war those whom you love, that the opportunity has
come to them thus to advance themselves ini one
incarnation more than otherwise they could have
done in a score of lives. You have sorrow and suf-
fering and pain as your share; but you are offering
that suffering for the freedom of the world ; you who
send the soldier are thereby also taking your part
in the fight, and the very sorrow and pain through
which you pass is lifting you, just as his devotion
to duty has lifted him. Many of those who die will
be worthy of birth in the new Sub-Race, but so
also will be many of the women who have bravely
sent forth their nearest and dearest to answer to
their country's call. They have given up husband
or son or brother. They win the advantage by that
noble sacrifice just as much as the men who go and
stand in the firing-line.

The Truth about the War 479

There are many who cannot for one reason or
another go and fight, though I hold very strongly
that everyone who can should do so. But we can
all do sometliing to help. Some of us are too old
to fight ourselves — or so the Government thinks: but
at least we can take up the work of some younger
man and set him free to go. That I have done
myself. So all may bear their share in this. All
can help, and furthermore, all must help ; certainly
all should be on the side of the right in a matter
like this, and all should do whatever they can to
help in any one of the many indirect waj-s that are
possible.

We are all trying, so far as may be, to prepare
for the coming of the Great Teacher. Realize that
this great war is part of the world preparation, and
that, however terrible it may be, there is yet the
other side — the enormous good that is being done to
individuals. Perhaps in, the distant future when we
come to look back upon it all with greater knowledge
and with wider purview, we shall see that the good
has outweighed all the frightful e\dl, and that though
the old order changeth, giving place to new, it is
only that God may fulfil Himself in many ways.

CHAPTER XXX

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE OUTBREAK
OF WAR.

A day has been appointed for what is called inter-
cession in connection with the great world-war. We
who belong to the Liberal Catholic Church assuredly
wish to take our part in all loyal activities, but in
this case we shall have to do it in some way a little
differently from the other branches of the Church,
because we do not pray in that sense at all. We
do not think ourselves competent to tell God what
He ought to do; we do not think that it is neces-
sary for us constantly to be asking Him to do some-
thing or other in connection with us. We should
consider such an attitude as showing a great lack
both of faith and knowledge. It is surely obvious
that to ask God to do this or that implies one of
two things — either tliat we have to persuade Him to
do something which otherwise He would not do, or
else that we have to remind Him of something which
He would otherwise forget. We do not cast such
slurs upon our heavenly Father. I am aware, and
I am thankful that it is so, that many people when
they talk about prayer really mean something like
the higher meditation. They mean that they v/ant
to raise themselves into communion with God — that
the God within shall rise to realize and become one
with the God without. Nothing can be more estim-
able than that, nothing can be better for them; but
to ask Him to do this or that implies that we know
better than He what is best for us, or for the world.

480

The Outbreak of War 481

We know that God is already doing all that can be
done in every way for the whole human race. How-
ever little we at our lower level may be able to see
and to understand, be sure that that is true even
in this awful war. I am not minimizing its horrors
in the least. Perhaps I know more about them than
many do, because it is my duty astrally to visiit
these battle-fields and try to hedp. I know that all
we have heard (and that has been dreadful enough)
is not half of the crime that those fiends have com-
mitted; that the atrocities of which we read in the
newspapers are as nothing to the atrocities which
have really been perpetrated; and yet, knowing all
that, I still say that God knows very well what He
is doing, and that He is training both us and our
enemies; for after all these incredibly diabolical
criminals wear the human form, even though they
disgrace it, even though they are at the lowest and
most savage stage of evolution.

I am stating facts based on knowledge and not
on supposition when I say that it is actually a kind-
ness to these ruffians to kill their bodies, for in that
way we save their souls from this madness; we
actually help in carrying out the training which will
show them that they must not again let themselves
be misled and hypnotized as they have been this
time. We must face the fact that the present genera-
tion of our enemies is not composed of at all the
same type of egos that used to inhabit that nation.
They are simply dangerous wild beasts who must be
sent back into the savage tribes to which they be-
long. That may sound harsh to some who do not
understand the inner meaning of what is happen-
ing; vet it is true. They are obsessed, and therefore

482 The Christian Festivals

not in all cases fully responsible on the physical
plane; but they are responsible for being liable to
obsession; they must learn their lesson. In their
pride they will not learn by reason, and therefore
they are being taught by the terrible national
calamity which is already overhanging them.

"We do not pray with regard to this matter; yet
we can join heartily in this celebration, for as sub-
jects of our King- Emperor, as citizens of this great
British Empire, we have on this anniversary cause
for great thankfulness. This day four years a^o
our country of England entered this war. We have
reason for thankfulness that in spite of well-mean-
ing but ignorant fanatics who talked peace at any
price, in spite of the spirit of commercialism, and
in spite of the natural shrinking from suffering and
from horror, England was wise enough to choose her
side in this great world-war — wise enough to see her
duty and bold enough to do it; and that she has
had the courage and determination to endure. So
must she endure to the end, for we have the highest
authority for the saying that he that endureth unto
the end, the same shall be saved.

There is an aspect of this terrible war that may
perhaps be new to us. We have thought of its
horror; we have thought of its loss; that has been
brought home closely and terribly to many of us.
We have the idea, most of us, that it is a struggle
between right and wrong; but we may not have
thought of it as an unparalleled opportunity. First,
certainly, for the soldiers, for those who are able to
go and fight. They risk their lives for their coun-
try, but how can man die more nobly than that?
To die thus is to gain, for by that one supreme act

The Outbreak of War 483

of self-sacrifice they make advancement whicli other-
wise might take them twenty lives. The soldiers
differ greatly; some of them are educated men of
high ideals, and others are perhaps much less de-
veloped ; but all have the one magnificent quality
of devotion to an ideal. They die for the sake of
what is after all an abstraction to them — their coun-
try, the right, the cause of justice; but that one
quality (and the fact that they have proved their
belief to be real by the greatest sacrifice that any
man on the physical plane can make) will carry
them far, and will fit them for the instruction now
being given to them in the astral world. That will
bring them back into life at a level far higher than
that at which they left it.

Assuredly everyone who can ought to fight; there
ought to be not one single eligible person who is not
taking up his cross and following his Master. But
there are some who are physically unable to go;
yet for them also the war is an opportunity. Every-
one can do something, and it is the duty of every
man, woman and child to find a way to do something ;
some direct work if possible. There are the women
who knit socks; there are those who save in order to
be able to help with money, who deny themselves in
various ways to do that; there are those who do
Red Cro&s work. All that is good and as it should
be. Certainly under these circumstances, and in this
emergency, any person who spends money on sport
and fine clothes, on drink or horseracing, any man
who strikes and refuses to do his work for petty
personal reasons in order that he should work a
few hours less or receive higher wages — such a man
is a traitor to G-od and to his country, and his action

484 The Christian Festivals

is a scandal and a crying shame. It shows an utter
lack of appreciation; it shows a lack both of intel-
lect and of heart. We must regretfully admit that
many people are still as undeveloped as this. We
cannot help it; we have to face tliat unpleasant fact.
It is a proof of their brutal selfishness and of their
blindness to the meaning of events. The karma of
this brutishness will be heavy; but what one feels
most is the pity of it all — that they do not see, that
they do not know. Christ said over Jerusalem long
ago: "If thou hadst but known, at least in this thy
day, the things that belong unto thy peace! but now
they are hid from thine eyes."

This is one of God's periodical examinations of
His people, to see liow the world stands. He gives
them this wonderful opportunity; who will rise to
it? who will take it? Who will rise superior to the
obvious appeal of the body for ease and comfort,
the appeal of the lower mind to forget all about
these horrors? Some people here on the other side
of the world still live in all sorts of foolishness, sport
and self-gratification. We in this Church have the
privilege of deeper knov>^ledge than many; shall we
then fail Him Who has given us that knowledge ? We
must staud boldly against the insidious treachery and
treason which veils itself under fair names, and tries
to make us apply to this extraordinary time of trial
apophthegms which would be right and reasonable
in ordinaiy times. They say that we should be for-
bearing rather than fight, that we should give up
things rather than enter into a contest. Ordinarily
we have the right to give up for the sake of peace
that which concerns ourselves alone, but when right
and wrong are met in open conflict we have no right

The Outbreak of War 485

to stand aside and say that it does not concern iis.
Now is the time to quit ourselves like men and fight,
as the apostle tells us; if not in one way, then in
another. If we cannot go out and take weapons in
our hands, we can give money, some of us, and
others can give time and work. If we cannot fight
with our hands, we can fight with our voices and
our pens, teaching the ignorant and rousing the
selfish; but at least each can do something; and he
who neglects the opportunity to do something will
regret his failure to see the light through many lives
to come.

It is very rarely in the world's history that God
makes a clear issue like this between good and evil.
In nearly all wars there is something to be said on
both sides; there is misunderstanding which might
be removed. Here is no misunderstanding; here is
the clear issue — freedom, right to develop as God
means us to develop on the one side, and on the
other a soulless tyranny which seeks only to crusli
out all individuality. The development of the indi-
vidual is God's plan for men. Therefore we are
fighting on His side; therefore everyone of us must
take some share in that work. Happy indeed are
they who can give their lives; but if we cannot all
do that, then at least let us be doing what we can.
Only let us be sure of this one thing, that we are
on God's side; that we stand for Him. Do not let
us stand aside and say it does not make any dif-
ference to us personally who wins. That is crass
selfisliness and blindness. It may not immediateb^
affect your daily pence, or the amount of food or
clothing you obtain, though it would assuredly affect
that presently if the evil were to triumph. It will

486 The Christian Festivals

not triumph; we know that; but there is something
we do not know — who will help in the triumph that
is coming, and who will stand aside and take no
part, saying that he does not want to take the
trouble. It is hard to believe it, but there may be
some so lost to decency and manliness as to say even
that. In the future under the unerring divine jus-
tice each man will receive the reward he has earned;
we who know a little more than many, through our
study of the inner side of life, have a responsibility
connected with that knowledge. We know the truth;
the truth shall make us free — free from prejudices,
free from selfishness, able to see and able to take our
part on the side of God Himself.

CHAPTEE XXXI

ON GOD'S SIDE

At all times, since we are human, there is going
on round us a struggle between good and evil. There
are those — both men and other entities to which
often we give the vague name of ''forces" — who
are striving for evolution; and there are also those
who, blindly and in ignorance, but none the less
really, are striving against it. So we find that there
is a constant struggle going on within ourselves and
round about us.

In ordinary life that struggle comes before us, I
think, in two different ways. First, personally and
with regard to ourselves. We find that we have to
maintain a constant fight against what we call our
lower nature. It is not in reality ourselves at all;
it is only the instinctive elemental consciousness in
one of our lower vehicles; but still there is a per-
petual contest going on, so that ii we wish to develop
the good within ourselves, and to repress the evil
within and about us, we must keep up a constant
effort to do so.

Secondly, we are constantly struggling against
public evils. \\e try to combat diTinkenness ajid
disease; we try to restrain the selfishness of our
lellowmen, which is constantly interfering with the
welfare of the community. These are ways in which
in ordinary times we can take our part in the con-
test between good and evil. We range ourselves
definitely on Grod's side; we recognize that evolution
is His will, and that we also are part of Him.

487

488 The Christian Festivals

The more we can realize the fact that we are divine
in essence, the more truly shall we be able to take
our due part in tins struggle.

In this daily erfort of ordinary life we have to a
large extent to make opportunities for ourselves;
we have to look carefully round and see what we
can do; but aUvays w^e muist be working on God's
side in some way or other. Sometimes in the world's
history, but only rarely, great crises occur when the
forces of evil come out into the open and try to
overcome, to overwhelm the world; when they try
to persuade a whole body of men to espouse their
cause, and to say frankly to themselves: ''Evil, be
thou my good. ' ' Now when that happens, those who
are on earth at the moment have an unequalled op-
portunity of magnificent devotion; some of them
may even have the opportunity of the extreme sac-
rifice, of ofltering up life itself.

Such a crisis as that has come to the world now —
now after many centuries, for some twelve thousand
years have elapsed since there was a like occasion; so
we must tiy to understand exactly what is happening.
The opportunity which has been offered sometimes
to individual martyrs, of giving up their life for
the sake of the truth rather than bowing doT\Ti be-
fore evil or wrong, is exactly that which comes now
to thousands upon thousands of men and women —
a chance to stand for the right and to take up a
position on God's side, even to the very uttermost,
even to the sacrifice of life itself.

When at these rare intervals that great call comes,
it would be unspeakably foolish not to take advantage
of it, to lose the immense amount of good karma that
may comparatively quickly be made by standing at

Or Gods Side 489

all costs for the right. More than that, any one
who fails to taJ^e that opportunity becomes recreant
and cowao^d before the God Who made him.
Happy, indeed, are they who are of such age and
health and position that they can enlist, and go
forth and bear a direct part in the fight. Shame-
ful beyond all words is their action if. being so able,
they turn their backs upon God and are cowards
before His face; for that is what such action is, and
it is useless to attempt to gloss it over by specious
falsehoods. The women have their part to play too.
As things are now they cannot well go out and
take arms in their hands, though in the last resource
they have even had to do that sometimes; hut they
can willingly, even joyfully, send forth those whom
they love to make that stupendous sacrifice; and be
sure that they who do that are just as much earning
their part of the good karma, are just as much fight-
ing on God's side, as the men whom they send. If
it were possible to conceive that there would be a
woman sunk so low as to wish to hold back her
man from such a glorious opportunity, she would
fall under the condemnation of the man who fears
to go. Such there will not be among us, I hope and
believe. If to our lasting shame as a nation there
should be any cowards among us, it must be because
such men and such women are still at a very low
stage of evolution — are incapable yet of understand-
ing that this is a grand and wonderful opportunity,
and that the risk of mere personal suffering cannot
weigh for a moment against God's need for His
people in this struggle.

I know what horrible suffering awaits many of
those who go forth to fight. I know, too, how those

490 The Christian Festivals

suifer who wait at home, longing for news and yet
afraid of it when it shall come. If this one life
were all, if there were nothing beyond this, I think
we oould almost understand that there might be
those who fear to make the sacrifice. But we all
know — somehow blindly and instinctively, I think
almost everyone knows — that this life is not ail —
that there is a grander and more glorious future,
and that they who do their duty now even to the
uttermost shall see the result of their work and be
satisfied in that higher life which lies before us.
In other lives than this we shall come back to a
world which we have helped to purify and to make
better, and because evolution is God's will, so is it
also His will in His lovingkindness to give an oppor-
tunity to those who have fought for Him now to
help prominently, wonderfully, in that future work.
"We can all help every day and all day long in small
ways, but those to whom there comes such an oppor-
tunity as this can make further progress by that
one supreme act of taking it than they would have
made in many lives of more ordinary work.

Terrible, dreadful beyond words, horrible, cruel,
wicked as is such a war as this, yet there is some-
thing of compensation. By means of paiising
through that furnace of affliction the world will
evolve more rapidly than otherwise it could have
done, and those who take their part in that war now
will be the leaders in that work hereafter. Not
only do they gain a rapid rebirth in that new Sub-
race which is now beginning to appear here among
us, but also they are themselves greatly uplifted by
the tremendous effort which they have made. Many

On God's Side 491

small efforts through many lives would perhaps
equal it, but here is the opportunity to do at one
stroke that which otherwise would occupy a very
long time indeed.

We cannot all actually go and fight, but we can
all help in some little way, in money or in service,
in making things easier for those who can do what
we cannot. No matter though it is little that we
can do, so long as it is all that we can give. Be
very sure that no effort is lost. Those who have
died are just as truly martyrs in God's cause as
ever were any of the great saints whose days are
kept iby the Church, and their reward is immediate
and great progress. The same reward comes to those
who have willingly sent them forth and blessed them
on their way.

We owe a great debt to those who have gone:
and whether they be dead or living, we can help
them by our love and our thought. We are not
helpless, we are not without resource. Every day
we help them as we send out loving thought toward
them; we strengthen and comfort them most of all
when such loving thought is offered along with
the sacrifice of the holy Eucharist, which Christ
Himself has ordained as the supreme method of
helping His people.

TiCt us one and all take our places on God's side
and do something definite to help in some way. It
is for each man and his own conscience to say what
he can do, and how much he can do. That no man
can dictate to him, but at least he must see to it
that, when this struggle between good and efvil is
over, it is not to be said of him that he failed to

492 The Christian Festivals

give aid to Grod. I hope tliere may be very few of
whom eventually that will be said; yet one cannot
but feel grave misgiving when one looks round and
sees how little in this favoured country the people
seem to know or understand of what is taking
place. It is disgraceful, but I believe it is rather
ignorance than selfishness. At least one clings to
that hope; so that whatever it be that we can do,
any of us — either directly ourselves to help, or to
persuade others who should be helping directly to
give themselves or their goods, or whatsoever they
can give — that thing I think w^e should do in God's
name and for Christ's most holy sake.

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE FUTURE

An armistice has been signed; the terrible world-
itruggle is drawing to an end; the horror of the
war at its worst is over, and victory lies with the
cause of right. In almost every war between nations
which have any pretence to civilization, each side
claims to be in the right; but here, more clearly than
in any other case in history — except perhaps in such
invasions as those of Attila, when Asiatic hordes
tried to sweep over Europe, or in the atrocious attack
of the Spaniards upon peaceful races in Mexico and
Peru — there is a definite right and wrong as to which
no unprejudiced person can possibly have any doubt.
The very method in which the war has been waged
on each side, and the acknowledged objects of each
of the combatants, show us that this for once is a
iilearly-marked struggle between the forces of good
and the forces of evil.

We who have studied these inner matters must
try to take this higher view, must realize that,
dreadful as the suffering has been, yet there is a
side to it which is not all bad. For the struggle
had to come, and the right has won ; and opportunity
has been taken to pay off masses of karma which
otherwise would have had to be spread over maiiy
lives. So, looked at from the point of view of evolu-
tion as a whole, and of the world as a whole, this
ghastly holocaust has its purpose, and is good in pre-
cisely the same way that a surgical operation is good

493

494 ^he Christian Festivals

when it is absolutely necessary. It is a formidable
thing at the best, and it means a vast amount of
suffering and anxiet}^ and yet it is often the only
way; and this is just such a case as that.

We have good reason to celebrate the peace when
it comes to us, and I suppose it will not be long now.
But when we have won our peace, when we have
defeated the enemies of evolution, what are we go-
ing to do then? The world will have to be carried
on; and the work must be done under serious diffi-
culties for a good many years to come. One cannot
kill millions of the best of all the leading races, one
cannot destroy vast amounts of shipping and enor-
mous quantities of goods and produce and machinery
and everything that we need for life, without pro-
ducing convulsion, without upsetting the order of
life; and we cannot put it all right again in a da}^
by signing a document. We shall have to live
under the shadow of this great war for some time
to come, and we shall have to carrj^ on evolution
from this particular point where the war has left
it. Conditions are very different in every countrj'
from what they were before the war. They are less
changed here in Australia than in England, because
we happen to be at the other side of the world, and
so are out of the centre of the struggle; only the
fringes of the great storm-cloud have touched us,
but nevertheless even here there is a tremendous op-
portunity opening before us, as it is opening before
all the nations of the world ; and the most important
question now is whether we are all going to take it.

How have we won this war, we, the Allies? We
have won it by standing together; we have won it

The Future 495

by subordinating every other consideration to that
great question of right and wrong; we have had to
put everj^thing else aside in order that we might win
it; and because at first we did not all of us do that,
we came near to losing in the beginning. The vic-
tory at first lay all with our foes, for they had forty
years of preparation behind them — forty years of
rigid organization, forty years of the most amazing
falsehood, intrigue and treachery that have even
been heard of in history — intrigue in every country
of the world. All this perfidy had been going on,
and we, innocent and unprepared, suffered for
our lack of preparation. And at first, because
we were many countries, and each country worked
along its own line, we were not brilliantly success-
ful. Glorious bravery was shown, but not much co-
ordination. There have been great men who drilled
the nations into unity until (but only quite lately)
all of these different Allies are absolutely working
as one nation under one Commander-in-Chief. The
moment that was done, victory began to come our
way.

The great lesson of this war, when we come to look
back on it, is first that we must all be ready, as
the heroes have been, each in our way to sacrifice
ourselves, and all our personal thoughts, feelings and
wishes, for the good of all. Not in war only, but
in peace must we learn this unselfishness, must we
learn to attain a condition in which we think first
not of ourselves, not of our own family, not of our
o^vn class, as it is called (hateful though the word
is), but of the community as a whole. A section
of the people here is trying, I see (and I see it with

IF

496 The Christian Festivals

great regret), to revive what in such a country as
this you should have absolutely conquered — the class
feeling, the idea that the capitalist is necessarily the
enemy of the labourer, and the labourer of the
capitalist. There has been great excuse for that
attitude in older countries — great excuse, when we
hear of the sweating, the ill-treatment, the under-
payment, and the appalling overworking of the
labouring classes; but surely here in this country
that is the one thing from which we ought to be
free. Where all stand equal before the State as far
as votes go, there is an unparalleled opportunity for
us to show that what are called classes need not, as
such, exist at all. There must be those who provide
the brains and those who provide the manual
labour; but their interests in the ultimate are one
and the same; and we must try^ to go back to those
ultimate interests — not to raise into prominence
petty little points of difference, but to penetrate
behind those to the greater considerations which are
interests for us all.

"We must return to the condition which Lord
Macaulay describes as existing in ancient Rome:

Then none was for a party;

Then all were for the State;
Then the rich man helped the poor,

And the poor man loved the great.

That is the first thing that we must learn — the
necessity of co-operation, the necessity of Brother-
hood— the taking of the wide view that shall embrace
the whole, and not the mere personal view that looks
only as far as it can reach with its hands. It is
going to be very hard for people to forsake their

The Future 497

old party shibboleths, for them to give up the atti-
tude into which by the enemy they have been sedu-
lously persuaded — 'because more and more, as we
look into it, is it clear that the difficulties and
troubles and disputes have been promoted ef\^ery-
where by German gold and by German influence.
It has crippled us sadly; surely we shall not be so
foolish as to let a trace of that evil work remain.

Surely now we shall learn that we must stand to-
gether, first of all for the world as a whole, and
then inside of that, for Australia as a whole — not
for this class or for that class, not for this State or
for that State, but for this great continent of yours.
Here you have a continent which could support
without the slightest difficulty fifty million, perhaps
a hundred million people, and in it you have a beg-
garly five million inhabitants, less than the popu-
lation of London. That is not the way to pros-
perity and to final victory. Eemember we have still
to pay for the war, not only in money but in many
other ways as well. The military victory is prac-
tically won; we are justified in singing that peace
is drawing near, and in giving hearty thanks that
it is so.

But there lies yet before us a long time of self-
sacrifice. For a long time we have been told how
necessary economy was in order that the war should
be won. Of course it was; and personal economy is
still necessary in order that the fruits of the war
may be garnered, in order that we may help on this
glorious current of evolution which is springing up
amongst us in the form of the Sixth Sub-race. We
must still live not for ourselves, but for all. We must

498 ^he Christian Festivals

put a^ide our private differences and work for the
common good. A whole generation of such work is
required if the best results are to be obtained.

We speak much and often of brotherhood; here is
an opportunity to live it. Therefore let us take to
ourselves that lesson. AYe give thanks that the
demon is defeated, we give thanks that the war is
won; let us see to it that the blood that has been
shed has not been shed in vain — that we gain from
our victory all that can be gained ; and in order that
that shall be so, let every individual man, woman
and child try to live not for self, but for the good
of all. Each may easily feel: ''I am an insignifi-
cant person; what can I do to help the Common-
wealth?" Every little economy that can be made,
every little help that can be given, is something done
towards the great cause. Everj^ penny that is
saved from extravagance in dress, and invested in a
w^ar savings stamp or bond, is a penny given to the
Cause. Think what an enormous saving might be
made every year if people would give up absolutely
unnecessary and selfish indulgences. Take three
things only — drink, smoking and horseracing; all
three selfish, all three unnecessary, all three posi-
tively harmful; if these three evils were extermin-
ated, think how soon we could pay off all debts,
and what a huge fortune could be devoted to the
development of the country. Think what might be
saved if people w^ould ignore the kaleidoscopic
changes dictated by the silly vagaries of fashion,
and dress only for comfort and beauty! Why can-
not these reforms be carried out? Only because the
vast majority of people are stall unevolved, stiJl

The Future 499

brutally selfish. They have quietly made up their
minds that they will have their drink or their
tobacco, their racing or their extravagant dress, no
matter what happens to their brothers or to their
country.

At least we need not follow the herd; we have
learnt a little more than they ; let us put into prac-
tice the knowledge that has been given to us. Each
of us can do some little thing. Remember the
story in the gospel of the widow's mite. Little
could she give as compared to the rich Pharisees,
and yet the Christ said that she had given in greater
proportion than they all, because she had done all
that she could. Let that be said of every one of
US; that every one of us is doing what he or she can
in the cause of righteousness, in the helping for-
ward of the great stream of evolution. So shall we
be fellow-workers together with God Himself; so,
in thanking Him, shall we show Him that that for
which we thank Him has not been wasted upon us.

A. M. S. (S-

INDEX

ABRAHAM; A STORY OF, 79. :

Accidents and SuLstance, 218.

Act of Faith, 436.

Adam, 246, ■

Advantage of Clairvoyance, 362, t
367. i

Advent, 16; dual nature of, 18. j

Aether of Space, 244.

Age; a new, 76. i

Alcohol, 389. I

All can help, 478, 491. j

All Saints' Day, 324.

All Souls' Day, 330. j

America, 45. I

Angel; of a grove, 279, 280; of i
the earth; 271; of the Presence, I
57, 226. 268; of the valley, |
274-7; the directing, 265. i

Angels; 57, 63, 236, 252; of
countries, 288 ; of music, 271
aura of, 266; description of
265; ensouling, 270, 272
guardian, 269, 317; help from
237; in church, 262; orders of,
258; the higher, 252; the low
er, 270; the planetary, 271
the work of, 257, 259, 261
tiny, 266, 267; wings of, 265.

Annunciation; the, 126, 250.

Aphrodite, 244.

Apollonius of Tyana, 29.

Apostles, 291.

Apparitions at the war, 318.

Appearances of Our Lady, 241.

Arhat; sufferings of the, 163, 170,
172.

As above, so below, 245.

Ascension; the, 13, 246, 249.

Ascension Day, 190.

Asceticism, 131, 174.

Asekha, 170, 202.

Ash Wednesday, 129.

Ashtoreth, 179.

Aspect; the feminine, 246, 2i8.

Assumption; the, 245, 246, 250.

Astral body; the, 70, 73, 371, 391;
colours in, 120; investigation
of, 331.

At (he Feet of the Master, 22, 388.

Athanasian Creed; the, 194, 210,
205.

Atlantis, 25, 458.

Attainment; methods of, 50: of
perfection, 415.

Atrocities, 481.

Attitude; towards God, our, 437;
towards life, 355; towards
others, 70 ; towards the bible,
352; towards the war, 452, 475.

Augoeides ; the, 119.

Australasia, 45.

Ave Maria, 251.

BACCHUS; THE INFANT, 430.
Bacon; Francis, 308; Roger, 307.
Baconian cypher, 308.
Baptism; of Christ, 118; of our

Lord, 12, 14, 101; the Sacra-
ment of, 269.
Baron Hompesch, 310.
Battle; the plan of the, 435.
Belief; freedom of, 347, 431;

scientific, 358: what it means,

421.
Believe and be saved, 419.
Besant; Mrs. Annie, 325.
Best in everything; the, 437.
Better plan; a, 77.
Be ye perfect, 103.
Bible; the, 23; authorised version

of, 309; our attitude towards,

352, 396.
Bigness, 51.
Birth; legends of the, 30; of

Jesus, 235; of Christ, 12, 16.
Bishop; title of a, 37.
Bismarck, Prince ; interview with,

466, 467.
Blavatsky; Madame, quoted, 163.
Blessed Virgin; feasts of the, 229.
Bodies of man; the, 301.
Body; the astral, 70, 73, 371, 391;

the causal, 119; the physical,

390.
Brahman; the, 407.
British Empire; the. 465.
Brotherhood, 362; the Great White,

12, 329, 446.
Brotherliness ; true, 74.
Buddha; the Lord, 20, 73, 91.
Buddhism, 20.

CALENDAR; OF CHURCH, 14,

two parts of the, 11.
Calmness necessary, 361.
Candlemas Day, 128.
Candle; the Paschal, 177.
Capital and labour, 496.

500

Index

501

Carelessuess ; danger of, 112.

Causal body; the, 119.

Cause and effect, 419, 439.

Certainty; of knowledge, 49; of
success, 71; of victory, 187.

Changed world; a, 52.

Change of religion unnecessary.
296.

Christ; a great Official, 41; and the
rich man, 402, 446; birth of the,
12, 16; child, the, 63; comes
wheel needed, 42 ; date of the,
29; idea, 88; members of, 55;
not crucified, 145 ; our best
friend, 439; our example, 175;
our Saviour, 350; power of the,
54; principle, the, 49; sayings
of the, 441; teaching of the, 19;
the Baptism of, 118; the hope
of glory, 89; the living, 24, 350,
405, 439; two natures of, 200;
what He will teach, 19; why He
will come soon, 45.

Christ-like life; the, 51.

Christian; and heathen, 409; mis-
sionaries, 443; mysteries, 126;
sects, 84.

Christianity; a brotherhood, 425;
an Oriental religion, 233, 442 ;
failure of, 43 ; mediaeval, 42 ;
somatic, 33.

Christians; persecution of, 311.

Christmas, 16, 27; an opportunity,
6]; seven meanings of, 28;
spirit, the, 64.

Christ's disciples, 443.

Ohrists ; pagan, 34.

Church; and politics, 396; and
science, 395; Angels in, 262;
calendar of, 14.

Church's; message consistent, 433;
year, 11.

Civilization; beginnings of, 85.

Civilizations; older, 379.

Clairvoyance, 133, 210, 220; ad-
vantage of, 362, 367.

Class consciousness, 77.

Clear issue; a, 485, 493.

Clergy; duty of the, 347.

Collect; the Lenten, 140.

Colours; ecclesiastical, 17; in the
astral body, 120.

Coming; preparation for His, 24,
40; signs of the, 98; the Second,
18, 25, 39, 95.

Commandments; the, 404.

Communion, 224; of the Saints,
327, 329.

Community; the good of the, 495.

Comte de St. Germain, 310.

Conception; Immaculate, 182, 235.

Confession of Faith; our, 360.

Conscience, 139.

Consciousness; class, 77; the high-
er, 377.

Consecration; of Elements, 160;
what happens at, 221.

Consolatrix Afflictorum, 251.

Construction of English, 309.

Contact with God, 301.

Control; lack of, 390; of vehicles^
174.

Conversion, 250.

Co operation, 495, 496.

Corpus Christi, 215.

Cosmogony, 123.

Counters; intellectual, 146.

Countries; angels of, 288.

Creed; interpretation of the, 39;
the Athanasian, 194, 205, 210;
to explain the, 352.

Crime; statistics of, 461.

Cringing and horror, 437.

Criticism, 137.

Cross; take up your, 173, 418; the
Pectoral, 276.

Crucifixion; no, 146, 155; the, 13.

Cypher; Baconian, 308.

DAIVIPRAKRITT, 206.

Damnation; no, 31.

Danger of carelessness, 112.

Dork Face; Lords of the, 456.

Date of the Christ, 29.

Dead, the; antiplion for, '^42, con-
ditions of, 336; help from, 237;
how we can help, 337, 342, 343,
491; praying for, 330, 339;
state of, 331; unchanged, 335;
very near us, 335; we must not
mourn, 337.

Death; misconceptions about, 333;
the life after, 432.

Deep; the Great, 243.

Definition of worship, 229.

Degenerate Germany, 468.

Deity; the Solar, 30, 180, 213.

Democracy, 468, 469.

Depression a crime, 339, 368.

Descent into matter; the, 30.

Desert; forty days in the, 112.

Devas, 254.

Development; lines cf, 153; path
of, 103.

Devotion; never wasted, 238, 239;
the spire of, 60.

Dickens; Charles, 64.

502

The Christian Festivals

Difficulties uevcr insurmountable,

368.
Diocletian, 306, 311.
Directing Angel; the, 265.
Direct testimony, 48.
Discernment, 384.
Disciple; Jesus the, 28.
Disciples; instruction to, 357; of

the Christ, 443.
Discrimination, 388, 392, 394.
Dispensation; the gospel, 19.
Divine Spark; the, 184, 406.
Doctrine; of the Trinity, 205; our

fundamental, 348, 366, 436.
Douleia, 230, 231.

Dragon; St. George and the, 315.
Drama; Mystery, 11.
Drill, 416.

Dual nature of Advent, 18.
Duty ; done in His N.ame, 403 ; of

the clergy, 347.

EACH; DOES HIS BEST WORK,
57; has influence, 107; man a
spirit, 184; must do something,
99, 116.

Earth- Angel; the, 271.

Easter, 16, 27, 179; new fire at,
175; the joy of, 185.

Easter greeting; the, 189.

Ecclesiastical colours, 17.

Economy; necessity for, 497.

Edifice; the Eucharistic, 59.

Eightfold Path; the Noble, 73.

Elements; new, 201; of consecra-
tion, 160.

Elizabeth, Queen, 308.

Elves, 267.

Emperor; libation for the, 312.

Empire; the British, 465.

End of the world, 44.

English; race, the, 85; the con-
struction of, 309.

Ensouling Angels, 270, 272.

Enthusiasm; misguided, 314.

Entities; non-human, 273.

Epiphany; the, 81.

Eternal truths. 43.

Eucharistic edifice; the, 59.

Eucharist; institution of, 160; of
the Presanctified, 168, 177: the
Holy, 56, 216; the plan of, 225.

Every encounter an opportunity,
417.

Evidence; cumulative, 363; first-
hand, 332; of St. John, 450;
worth considering, 436.

Evil; always temporary, 120; the
existence of. 361.

Evils; public, 487; three great,

498.
Evolution; Celtic theory of, 284;

object of, 69.
Examinations; God's, 484.
Example; Christ our, 175.
Expectation ; universal, 46.

PACTS ABOUT THE WAR, 453.
Failure; impossible, 142; of

Christianity, 43.
Fairy taith in Celtic Countries

282.
Faith, 144, 146; Act of, 436;

founded on observation, 355;

intelligent, 109; of our Fathers,

the, 347; our confession of.

360.
Pasting, 130, 132, 135.
Father-Mother; the, 247.
Fear of God; the, 150, 400.
Breasts of Our Lady, 229.
Feminine Aspect; the, 246, 248,

250.
Festival; the Wesak, 63.
Festivals of the Saints, 290.
Fifth sub-race; the, 464.
Pirst-hand evidence, 332.
Force never wasted, 57.
Forces; of good and evil, 456;

spiritual, 223.
Foreign missions, 296.
Forethought, 441.
Foreword, 7.

Forgiveness of sin, 149, 439.
Formula; St. Paul's, 90.
Forty days; the great, 179.
Pour qualifications; the, 17, 22.
Pour stages; the, 12.
Fragments of God, 300.
Francis Bacon, 308.
Freedom; from irritability, 381; of

belief, 347, 431.
Freemasonry, 128, 305, 310.
Freethinker; the, 386.
Free-will, 367.
Friday, Good, 160, 168.
Fundamental doctrine; our, 348,

366, 436.
Future; a grander, 490.

GAUTAMA; THE LORD, 20.

Gentiles; manifestation to the, 84.

Gentlemanliness, 114.

Gethsemane, 160.

Glory; the hope of, 89.

God; as Light, 426; contact with.
301; fragments of, 300; is Light,
348, 400, 433; is Love, 19, 22;

Index

503

limited views of, 212; many
paths to, 295, 386; our attitude
towards, 437; the fear of, 150;
the grace of, 61, 150; the Im-
manence of, 36; the Mother As-
pect of, 244; the Names of, 89;
the nearness of, 237, 299; the-
ories about, 363; union with,
302.

God's; almoners, 381; examina-
tions, 484; plan, 11, 30.

Good and evil; forces of, 456;
struggle of, 487.

Good Friday, 160, 168.

Good in everything, 394.

Goodness not sufficient, 298.

Good; resolution, 68, 72; works, .
419.

Gospel; dispensation, the, 19; in- |
ner meaning of, 38; of love, 372;
of wisdom, 375; myth, 32. I

Gospels: allegorical, 34; meaning I
of the, 12.

Gossip; evil of, 139.

Grace of God; the. 61, 150.

Grail; the Holy, 83, 245.

Grander future; a, 493.

Great; Deep, the, 243; Ones, 47;
War, the, 24, 53, 115; White
Brotherhood, the, 12.

Greatest of these; the, 370.

Greeting: the Easter. 189.

Grove; Angel of a, 279, 280.

Guardian Angels, 269, 317.

HABITS; HOW TO CONQUER,

71; bad, 173; old, 374.
Hartkatha, 279.
Harmful thoughts, 393.
Harmlessness, 114.
Heathen and Christian, 409.
Heaven; the kingdom of, 12, 446; :

what it is, 422.
Heights of heroism. 53.
Hell, 145; a false alarm, 349.
Help; bv thought, 237; for the

dead, 343; from the Angels, 237; j

from the dead, 237.
Hermits, 105.

Heroism in the war, 413. I

Hierarchy; the Great, 124. j

Higher consciousness; the, 377. j

Highest service; the, 106. i

Hinduism, 20, 36. i

Historic existence of Oesus, 32. J

Historical interpretation, 14.
Holy Eucharist; the, 56, 216, 262;

object of. 624.
Holy Ghost; the, 118, 194, 197.

207, 208; procession of the, 200. '

Holy Grail; the, 83, 127, 245.

Holy Saturday, 175.

Holy week, 154; events of, 157,

services in, 164.
Hompesch, Baron, 310.
Hope of Glory; the, 89.
Horrors of the war, 156.
How we know, 3 51.
Hunyadi, John, 307.
Hurry; the good and evil of, 379.
Hymns; undesirable, 134, 328;

wicked, 18, 19.
Hyperdoulela, 230, 231.

IDOLATRY, 231.

Idolaters; alleged, 426.

Illusion of separateness, 54.

Immaculate Conception; the, 182,
235.

Immanence of God; the, 36.

Incarnation; a past, 459.

Incense, 268.

India; an experience in, 279.

Influence; each hais, 107.

Initiator; the One, 124.

Initiation; the first, 31; the second,
31; the third, 123; the fourth,
155, 162, 164; the fifth, 170,
191; the mount of, 119.

Initiations, 12, 108, 109, 111.

Inner meaning of gospel, 38.

Institution of Eucharist, 160.

Instruction to disciples, 357.

Intellect; the, 75.

Intellectual counters, 146.

Intelligent faith, 109.

Intercession of the Saints, 293.

Interpretation: historical, 14; of
the Creed, 39.

Introduction, 11.

Investigation; of astral plane, 31;
of religious matters, 431.

Invisible Helpers, 110, 258.

Irritability; freedom from, 381.

Isis. 244, 247, 249.

Issue; a clear, 485, 493.

Ivan Rakoczy, 310.

JEHOVAH, 135, 180, 232, 365,

404.
Jesus; the birth of, 235; historic

existence of, 32; the disciple,

28.
Jesus or Paul? 87.
Jewish; prophets, 91; scriptures,

353.
Jews; the, 85.
Joan of Arc, 241, 318.
John Hunyadi, 307.
John the Baptist, 40. 113.

504

The Christian Festivals

Joseph, St., 235.

Joy; of Easter, 185; of the Lord,

429; the test of faith, 429.
Judaism; mistakes of, 86.
Judas Iscariot, 159, 457.
Judgment; the day of, 410.
Justice; the law of, 349.

KARMA, 132, 171, 385, 439.
King of England; the, 469.
King; the Spiritual, 124.
Kings; the three, 82, 96.
Kingdom of Heaven; the, 12, 446.
Kingdoms of Nature, 253.
Knowledge; the certainty of, 49.
Koilon, 244.
Koine; the, 90, 442.
Krishna; Shri, 21, 182.
Kwan-yin, 251.

LACK OF CONTROL, 390.

Latent qualities, 239.

Latreia, 230, 23L

Lazarus; the raising of, 157.

Legends of the birth, 30.

Lent, 129; object of, 143; our
attitude towards, 129.

Lenten collect; the, 140.

Libation for the Emperor, 312.

Life; after death, 432; the Christ-
like, 51; the spiritual, 105, 107;
our attitude towards, 355; of
love, the, 376; monotony of,
414; the wheel of, 54.

Lifters and the lifted; the, 448.

Light; God is, 348, 400, 426,
433.

Lights; the lower, 428.

Likeness between Religions, 38.

Limited views of God, 212.

Lines of development, 153.

Litany; the, 160.

Living Christ; the, 24, 350, 405.

Logos; the, 179, 196, 202, 213;
the Solar, 191.

Lord; baptism of our, 12, 14, 101;
the fear of the, 400.

Lord Buddha; the, 73, 91; a say-
ing of the, 440.

Lords of the Dark Face, 456.

Lore of Proserpine, 284.

Look for pearls, 75.

Lourdes, 242.

Love; St. Paul on, 373; the gos-
pel of, 372; the life of, 376;
what it is, 370; idealizes, 423.

Lower Angels; the, .270.

Lower nature; our, 487; to be sub-
dued, 173.

Lower lights; the, 428.
Lusitania; the, 471.

MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM,
125.

Mahdi; the, 46.

Magi; the, 82.

Maitreya; the Lord, 21, 46.
I Manifestation; a triplicity, 209;
! to the Gentil&s, 84.
j Man is divine, 349; immortal, 349.

Man; the bodies of, 301; three-
! fold division of, 301.
I Manu; the, 317.
1 3Ian Visible and Invisible, 371.
I Man, Whence, How and ^ hither, 261.
j Many paths to God, 386.

Martyrs; the, 413.

Mary Magdalene, 245.

Masters of the Wisdom, 350, 374.

Matter and Spirit, 242.

Matter; descent into. 30; qualities
of, 211; subtler fonns of, 218;
the Virgin, 242; varieties of,
255.

Maundy Thursday, 160, 161, 167.

Meaning of salvation, 420; of the
Gospels, 12.

Mediaeval Christianity, 42.

Meditation; the higher, 480.

Melody; the traditional, 264.

Membei':s of Christ, 55.

Memory; right, 73.

Mercy; demand for, 438.

Message of Church consistent, -433.

Methods of attainment, 50.

Middle Ages; the, 42.

Misconceptions about death, 333.

Misguided enthusiasm, 314.

Missionaries; Christian, 443.

Missions; foreign, 296.

Mistakes of Judaism, 8G.

Mite; the widow's, 499.

Monks; the, 105.

Monotony of life, 414.

Moral stocktaking, 68.

Morbidity evil, 135.

Mother-Aspect of God, 244.

Mother of Jesus; the, 235.

2>Iotives, 51; never impute, 74,
138, 393.

Mount of Initiation, 119.

Mountain; paths up the, 92.

Muhammadanism, 20.

Mulaprakriti, 196, 206, 242, 250.

Music Angels; the, 271.

Mystery-Drama; the, 11, 146, 227,
353.

Mysteries; the Christian, 126.

Myth of the Gospel, 32.

Index

505

NAME MEANS POWER, 300.
Names; of God, the, 89; uuimport-

ant, 240.
Nation; obsession of a, 470. •
Nations; small, 455.
Nativity of Our Lady, 249, 250.
Nature; kingdoms of, 253; our

lower, 487; secrets in, 399.
Nature-Spirits, 267, 273.
Nearness of God; the, 299. \

Need of understanding, 78.
Nervous strain, 378, 380.
New Age ; a, 76.
New fire at Easter; the, 175.
New Subrace; the, 45.
New Year's day, 66.
Nirvana, 302.
Nioritti Marga, 11, 201.
Noah, 25.

Noble Eightfold Path; the, 73.
No damnation, 31, 349.
None can be lost, 420.
Non-human entities, 273.
Not men but fiends, 474.
Nunc DimiUis, 123.

OBJECTIONABLE HYMNS, 134.
Object of the Holy Eucharist, 264.
Obligation; Holy Days of, 190.
Obsession; a mighty, 461; of a

nation, 470.
Occult Chemistry, 244.
Octaves, 66.

Official; Christ a great, 41.
Older civilisations, 379.
Old habits, 374.
One becomes many, 424.
On God's side, 384, 387, 447, 485,

487. ,

Opportunity : an unequalled, 76 ;

every encounter an, 417; war

an, 478, 482, 488. |

Order of the Star in the East, 24, '

46, 48, 95.
Oriental religions, 4U7, 409; teach-
ers, 442.
Oiigen quoted, 33. i

Orpheus, 91. '

Osiris, 182.

Others cannot harm us, 72.
Out attitude; towards God, 437:

towards life, 355; towards

others, 70.
Our fundamental doctrine, 348.

366, 436.
Our Lady, 196, 206; feasts of.

229; purification of, 122, visions i

of, 241.
Ours not the only way, 93. I

Outpouring; special, 16, 55; the

first, 126; the second, 127.
Outpourings; the, 250.

PAGAN OHRISTS, 34.

Palm Sunday, 13, 157; services on,

165.
Paraclete; the, 202.
Parables; the, 33.
Paschal candle; the, 177.
Paschal full moon; the, 15.
Passion Sunday, 154.
Path of development; the, 103.
Paths to God; many, 295, 386,
Paths up the mountain, 92.
Patron Saints, 299, 316.
Paul or Jesus? 87.
Peace; after the 494; the Prince

of, 476.
Pectoral cross; the, 276.
Perfection; how to attain, 415,
Peraona; meaning of, 213.
Perseus and Andromeda, 315.
Personal testimony, 431, 436,
Persecution of Christians, 311,
Perseverance, 413.
Physical body; the, 390.
Plan; a better, 77; a part of the,

464; of God, the, 11, 30; of the

Eucharist, 225.
PlanetaiT Angels; the, 271.
Pleiades; the, 309.
Politics and the Church, 396.
Polytheism ,247,
Poseidonis, 459.
Power of the Christ; the, 54.
Power of Thought, 340.
Power of the Spiritual Body, 351.
Prana, 201.

Prayer; what it implies, 480.
Praying for the dead, 330, 339.
Preparation; for His Coming, 24,

40; times of, 16, 17, 61.
Presanctified; Eucharist of the

168, 177.
Presence; Angel of the, 268, 226,

57; Real, 217, 222.
Presentation in the Temple, 122,

125.
Prince of Peace; the, 476.
Principle; the war of, 455.
Prisoner in Fairyland ; A, 286.
Procession of the Holy Ghost, 200.
Proclus, 307.
Progress, is it real? 68.
Progress through the War, 477,

490.
Progress; unending, 353.
Prophets; the Jewish, 91.

506

^he Christian Festivals

Propitiatory religions, 364.

Proselytizing presumptuous, 93.

Pride. 392.

Principle; the Christ, 49.

Prussianism, 470.

Public evils, 487,

Purification of Our Lady, 122.

QUALIFICATIONS; THE FOUR.

22.
Qualities; latent, 239; of matter,

17, 211.
Queen Elizabeth, 308.

RAISING OF LAZARUS; the, 157.

Rakoczy, Ivan, 310.

Ramanujacharya, 29.

Rational view of Religion, 35.

Ray; the sixth, 310; the seventh.
310.

Real Presence; the, 217, 222.

Reality of Progress, 68.

Re-birth; Celtic theory of, 283.

Refreshment Sunday, 151.

Reincarnation, 103, 104. 294.

Religion; a rational view of, 35; a
matter of birth, 240; the Egyp-
tian, 36; the Greek, 37; the Hin-
du, 20, 36; the Muhammadan,
20; the Roman, 37; the Zoroas-
trian, 37; Scientific, 151; must
be practical, 146.

Religions ; all alike, 41 ; are lenses,
108; eastern, 407, 409: identi-
cal, 92, 116; likenesses between,
38; propitiatory, 364.

Religious matters ; investigation of,
431.

Religious men, 384.

Repentance, 131; a sensible, 68.

Resolutions; good, 68, 72.

Responsibility; a serious, 76.

Resurrection; the, 13.

Right and Wrong, 388.

Right memory, 73.

Roger Bacon, 307.

Roman race; the, 86.

Rose colour, 17.

Rose-coloured vestments, 152.

Rosenkreutz, Christian, 307.

Rosicrucians. 307.

Ruysbroek quoted, 163.

SACRAMENTS AS HELPS, 347,

387, 401, 419.
Sacrifice, 406.
Saint Alban, 305.
Saint Clement of Alexandria, 289.
Saint George, 311; and the Dragon,

315.

Saint John, 22 : evidence, 430.

Saint Mark, 323.

Saint Patrick, 319.

Saint Paul; on love, 373; formula
of, 90.

Saint Peter, 291.

Saint; definition of a, 292.

Saints; the, 32; brief notes on,
305; communion of, 327, 329;
Festival of, 290 ; helps given by,
324; intercession of, 293; not in
heaven, 294 ; our attitude to-
wards, 290; Patron, 299, 316;
re-born on earth, 326.

Salvation, 147; meaning of, 420.

^alvator Mundi. 146.

Saturday; Holy, 175.

Savages; what they are, 349.

Saviour; how Christ is our, 350;
the, 31; of the world, 142.

Sayings of the Christ. 441.

Science and the Church, 395.

Science of Fairy Tales, 282.

Science of the Sacraments, 262.

Scientific; religion, 151; belief,
! 358.

Scriptures; the Jewish, 353,
I Second Coming; the, 18, 25, 39, 95.

Secret Doctrine; I he, 163, 456.

Secrets in Nature, 399.

Sects; Christian, 84.

Self; conceit, 38; dedication, 402;
examination, 135, 144; sacrifice,
nccessitv for, 497; mortification.
133.

Selfishness, 394.

Senses; the trained, 256.

Separateness; an illusion, 54.

Sermon on the Mount; the, 356,
441, 445.

Service; the highest, 106.

Seven meanings of Christmas, 28.

Seventh Ray; the, 310.

Sixth Ray; the, 310.

Shamrock; a symbol, 322.

Signs of the Coming, 98.

Sin; the forgiveness of, 148, 438,
199.

Slander, 73.

Small nations, 455.

Social unrest, 115.

Solar Deity; the, 30, 180, 213.

Solar Logos; the, 191; Trinity, the,
243.

Soul of Germany; the. 462.

Somatic Christianity, 38.

Spark of the Divine, 184, 406.

Special outpouring, 16, 55.

Spire of devotion, 60.

Index

507

Spirit; and Matter, 242; of Wis-
dom, 113; the Christinas, 64.

Spiritual; forces, 223; life, 105,
107.

Stages; the four, 12.

Star in the East; Order of, 24, 46,
48, 95.

Star; the glory of the, 99; the les-
son of the, 96.

Statistics of crime, 461.

St. Germain, Comte de, 310.

Stocktaking; moral, 68.

Story of Abraham; a, 79.

Struggle of good and evil. 487.

Sub-race; the fifth, 464; the new,
45.

Substance and accidents. 218.

Subtler forms of matter, 218.

Success; the certainty of, 71.

Sufferings of the Arhat, 170, 172.

iSun as a symbol; the. 426, 428.

Sun-God; the, 181, 182, 27.

Sun worship, 426.

Sunday, 67.

Superstitions, 145.

TAKE UP YOUR CROSS, 418, 483.

Tapestry; the design on the, 434.

Teachers; Oriental, 442.

Teaching of the Christ, 19.

Temper; a bad, 70.

Temple; Presentation in the, 122

Tenebrae, 164, 167.

Testimony; direct, 48; personal,

431, 436.
Theories about God, 363.
Theosophical Society; German plot

in the, 454.
Things that matter, 20.
Thoth, 91.

Thought Angels, 268.
Thought; help by, 237; power of,

340; the force of, 140.
Thoughts; harmful, 393; wander-
ing, 392.
Three-fold division of Man, 301.
Three great evils, 498.
Thursday; Maundy, 160, 161.

167.
Times of preparation, 16, 17, 61.
Title of a Bishop, 37.
Traditional melody, 264.
Trained Senses; the, 256.
Traitors, 483.
Transfiguration; the, 13, 14, 15.

118, 121.
Transubstantiation, 217, 219.
Tree Spirits; the, 278.
Trinity; the, 195, 206, 213; doc

trine of, 205; the Solar, 243.

Trinity Sunday, 204.

Troubles necessarily evanescent,

368.
Truth about the War; the, 451.
Truths; eternal, 43.
Tuatha-de-Danaan, 283.
Two natures of Christ, 200.
Two parts of the calendar, 11.

UXCOVENANTED MERCIES, 409.

Understanding; need of, 78.

Unending progress, 353.

Union with God, 302.

Unity; the reason of, 424; work-
ing towards, 457; working
against, 458.

Universal expectation, 46.

Unpractical Religion, 146.

Unrest; social, 115.

Unselfish effort, 416.

Unselfishness, 52, 76.
' Use the given channel, 102.
I Ushas; the, 179.

VALLEY; ANGEL OP THE, 274-
1 7.

! Varieties of matter, 255.
; Vehicles; control of, 174.
' Vestments; rose coloured, 152.
1 Vibrations; the higher, 224.

Victory is certain, 187.

Virgin; birth, the, 182; the bless-
ed, 196, 206; matter, 242.

Visions of Our Lady, 241.
; Vitality, 201.

Vyasa, 91.

WANDERING THOUGHTS, 392.
War; anniversary of, 480; an op-
portunity, 478, 482, 488; ap-
j paritions at the, 318; a true
crusade, 473 ; facts about the,
453; heroism in the, 413; our
I attitude towards the, 452, 475;
i preparation for the, 452 ; rapid
progress by, 477, 490; the
great, 24, 53, 75, 115, 434; the
horrors of, 156; the truth about
the, 451; woman's share in the,
478, 489.
i War of principle; the, 455.

Wesak Festival; the, 63.
, What the wicked are doing, 387.
What we fthall Teach, 372,
What will Christ teach, 19.
Wheel of Life; the, 54.
Whitsunday, 193.
i Whitsun; derivation of, 194.
j Why Christ will come soon, 45.
1 Why we are Christians, 35, 385.

508

The Christian Festivals

Why we evolve, 69.

Wicked hymns, 18, 19.

Widow's mite: the, 499.

Wings of Angels, 265.

Wisdom, 395, 397; how to attain,
369; Masters of the, 350, 374:
the gospel of, 375; the Spirit of,
113.

Wise Men; the, 96; the three, 81.

Wood; ruler of the, 280.

Working towards unity, 457.

Working against unity, 458.

Worship, 304; definition of, 229.

Worth His while, 58.

World ; a changed, 52 ; end of the,

44; the Saviour of, 142.
World Expectant; A. 48.
World is evolving; the, 398, 404,

460.
World-Teacher; the, 41.

YAHWEH, 365, 404.

ZOROASTER, 91,
Zoroastrian ceremony; a, 176.

THE SCIENCE
OF THE SACRAMENTS

By
CHARLES W. LEADBEATER

Regionarp Bishop of
The Liberal Catholic Church for Australasia

550 pages and Index. Frontispiece in Colours. 2 1 Diagrams. 27 Half-tone
Fiates. Cloth, crown 8vo., 12/6. Postage: Australia, 2d. ; New
Zealand, 7d. ; Elsewhere. 1,1.

This volume contains a clearly-worded description of what takes place
in the unseen worlds during the administration of the sacraments and the
services of the Church. The information given cannot be obtained else-
where ; it is absolutely new matter, resuhing as it did from careful
investigations extended over a period of three years. This book marks
the beginning of the exact science of Christian ceremonial, and is one of
the notable achievements of the twentieth century. The volume is pro-
fusely illustrated with excellent half-tones and carefully drawn diagrams,
while the coloured frontispiece gives a vivid idea of the lovely form
produced in subtle matter during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.
The chief object of the book is to show that this ceremony of the Holy
Eucharist is a most important factor in a great Divine plan for promoting
the evolution of the world by the frequent outpouring of floods of spiritual
force, and that all who take part in it are thereby fellow - workers
together with God, even though they may be all unconscious of the fact.

Chapter. Chapter Headings.

I. A New Idea of Church Worhip.

il. The Holy Eucharist.

III. Holy Baptism and Confirmation.

IV. Holy Orders.

V. The Lesser Sacraments.

VI. The Church Building.

VII. The Altar and Its Appurtenances.
VII!. The Vestments.

IX. Vespers and Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament.

X. Occasional Services.
Appendix. The Soul and Its Vestures.

THE ST. ALBAN PRESS

4 Bridge Street, Sydney

Address all letters: Box 1150, G.P.O.

THE LITURGY

according to the use of

THE LIBERAL CATHOLIC CHURCH

Postage

491 pages. Cloth, gilt, 51-

Australia, Id.: New Zealand, 3d., Elsewhere, 7d.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

The Liberal Catholic Church —

General Information.
Preface.
A Table of all the Feasts and Holy

Days.
A Table of the Sundays throughout

the Year.
Rules Governing the Precedence of

Feasts and Holy Days.
Rules to know when Moveable Feasts

occur.
Notes and Directions.
The Collects, Epistles and Gospels to

be used througliout the Year.
The Proper Graduals and Prefaces of

the .Season.
THE CELEBRATION OF THE
HOLY EUCHARIST.
The Liturgy of the Holy Eucharist.
Asperges.

The Holy Eucharist.
A Shorter Form for the Celebration

of the Holy Eucharist.
Form for the Administration of
Holy Communion.
VESPERS.
BENEDICTION OF THE MOST

HOLY SACRAMENT.
PRIME.
COMPLIN.
HOLY BAPTISM -

Form to be used for Infants.
Form to be used for Children.
Form to be used for Adults.

CONFIRMATION.

HOLY MATRIMONY—
The Marriage Service.
The Nuptial Mass.

I CONFESSION &• ABSOLUTION.

i HOLY UNCTION AND COM^

i MUNION OF THE SICK-

Procedure "In Extremis.''

THE BUKIAL OF THE DEAD—
The Burial.
The Requiem Mass.

HOLY OPvDERS -

The Conferring of Minor
Orders.

The Ordination of Subdeacons.

The Ordination of Deacons.

The Ordination of Priests.

The Consecration of a Bishop.
A Form of Admission to the Liberal

Catholic Church.
The Admission of a Singer.
The Admission of a Server.

BLESSINGS—

The Blessing of Holy Water.
The Blessing of Objects in

General.
The Blessing of a House.
The Blessing of Holy Oils.

THE CONSECRATION OF A
CHUPXH.i

OCCASIONAL PP.AYERS.

THE ST. ALBAN PRESS

4 Bridge .Street, Sydney

Address all letters: Box 1150. G.P.O.

\^

MAY 1 4 1943