Æons have passed to produce the most exquisite crystals, the highest forms of vegetation, of animals, of men. Then came the slow processes of civilising and educating men; the dim instincts of fear and propitiation, merging, by slow degrees, in the first conceptions of Love, as something apart from desire, and so forth.
Was I to be expected to shut my eyes to all these known facts, and bolt down the theories contained in one Book, written by human authors, no matter how admirable?
I felt it was impossible.
Then I remembered with relief that these very dogmas, as a matter of fact, were in so fluent a state, that my own bare fifty years of living had seen at least four different high-water marks!
Here again therefore, under my very eyes, was the universal law of progress working, the moment it could work, by being released from the swaddling-clothes of the Roman Catholic Church, which, so far as it is orthodox, is fossilised.
I saw also that the whole body of dissent had moved on, taking up its pegs and planting them a little further on each time; till a City temple, with its widening theology, was an established fact.
Progress everywhere—slow, but sure—and the pace getting quicker, even in my short span! Still, the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth and His influence over the nineteen centuries was a puzzle.
Buddha's influence has lasted longer, Mahomet's almost as long (the two cancel any way), but I have always recognised an advance in the teaching of Jesus Christ. He brought a fresh element, in the personal note of the Sonship with GOD.
I was at this point when I came over here. Now through your mind I have been able to see, and, oddly enough, to quicken in your soul, the seed already planted there.
They tell me the illumination came to you years ago, at Oberammergau—no, not when you were there for the Passion Play—four years earlier.