Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/318

 2(

��')o

��Esoteric BiiddJnsni. — A Review.

��Devachan. All will remain linked by their destiny to this planet, until the moment when all — a few rare, unfortu- nate, negligent laggards excepted — shall have passed through their last mortal probation, in the* seventh root- race. Then will the tide of humanity overflow to the planet Mercury, and this earth, abandoned by conscious men, will for a million years fall back into desolation, gradually deprived of all life, even of all development. In that condition it will remain, sleeping, as it were, for ages — "not dead, but sleeping"; for the germs of mineral, vegetable, and animal life will await, quiescent, until the tide of human soul shall have passed around the chain, and is again approaching our globe. Then will earth awake from its sleep. In successive eons, the germs of life, mineral, vegetable, and animal, in their due order, will awake ; the old miracle of creation will begin again, but on a higher plan than before, until, at last, the first human being — something vastly higher in body, mind, and spirit- uality than the former man — will make his appearance on the new earth. From this explanation of the doctrine that life moves not by a steady flow, but by what Sinnett calls gushes, it follows, of course, that there must come a time when each race, and each sub-race, must have finished its course, completed its destiny. There are no more human souls in Devachan to pass through that stage of progress. For a long time the number has been diminishing, and that race has been losing ground. Now it has come to its end. So, within a hun- dred years, has passed away the Tasma- nian. So, to-day, are passing many races. The disappearance of a lower race is therefore no calamity; it is evidence of progress. It means that

��that long line of undevevoped humanity must go up higher. " That which thou sowest, is not quickened except it die." If there be "joy among the angels of God, over one sinner that repenteth," why not when the whole human race, to the last man, has passed successfully up into a higher class in the great school ?

I am constantly turning back to a thought that I have passed by. Let me now return to the consideration of Buddhism as a religion. It is evident that, viewed on this side, Buddhism is one thing «to the initiated, another to the masses. So was the religion of the Romans, so is Christianity. It is necessarily so. No two persons receive the formal creed of the same church in the same way. The man of higher grade, and the man of lower, cannot understand things in the same sense because they have not the same fac- ulties for understanding. Hence the polytheism among those called Bud- dhists. There could be no such thins among the initiated. Religion, then, like everything else, is subject to growth. Such must be the Buddhist doctrine. If, then, Buddhism, or the philosophy which bears that name, originated with the fourth root-race of men, does it not occur to the initiated that the fifth race ought, by this same theory, to develop a higher form of truth? Looking at the matter merely on its intellectual side, ought not the higher development of the power of thought to bring truer conceptions of the highest things ? Again, a query : Is the rise of the Brahmo-Somaj a step toward the practical extension of Chris- tianity into the domain of Buddhism?

This brings to discussion the whole question of the work done by mission- ary eff'ort among the lower races. I do

�� �