Theo. Because it is the most difficult of all our tenets. Some short time ago there appeared the following objection from a Christian pen:—
“Granting that the teaching in regard to Theosophy is correct, and that ‘man must be his own saviour, must overcome self and conquer the evil that is in his dual nature, to obtain the emancipation of his soul,’ what is man to do after he has been awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness? How is he to get emancipation, or pardon, or the blotting out of the evil or wickedness he has already done?”
To this Mr. J. H. Connelly replies very pertinently that no one can hope to “make the theosophical engine run on the theological track.” As he has it:—
“The possibility of shirking individual responsibility is not among the concepts of Theosophy. In this faith there is no such thing as pardoning, or ‘blotting out of evil or wickedness already done,’ otherwise than by the adequate punishment therefor of the wrong-doer and the restoration of the harmony in the universe that had been disturbed by his wrongful act. The evil has been his own, and while others must suffer its consequences, atonement can be made by nobody but himself.
“The condition contemplated ... in which a man shall have been ‘awakened and converted to a certain extent from evil or wickedness,’ is that in which a man shall have realized that his deeds are evil and deserving of punishment. In that realization a sense of personal responsibility is inevitable, and just in proportion to the extent of his awakening or ‘converting’ must be the sense of that awful responsibility. While it is strong upon him is the time when he is urged to accept the doctrine of vicarious atonement.
“He is told that he must also repent, but nothing is easier than that. It is an amiable weakness of human nature that we are quite prone to regret the evil we have done when our attention is called, and we have either suffered from it ourselves or enjoyed its fruits. Possibly, close analysis of the feeling would show us that that which we regret is rather the necessity that seemed to require the evil as a means of attainment of our selfish ends than the evil itself.
“Attractive as this prospect of casting our burden of sins ‘at the foot of the cross’ may be to the ordinary mind, it does not commend itself to the Theosophic student. He does not apprehend why the sinner by attaining knowledge of his evil can thereby merit any pardon for or the blotting out of his past wickedness; or why repentance and future right living entitle him to a suspension in his favour of the universal law of relation between cause and effect. The results of his evil deeds continue to exist; the suffering caused to others by his wickedness is not blotted out. The Theosophical student takes the result of wickedness upon the innocent into his problem. He considers not only the guilty person, but his victims.
“Evil is an infraction of the laws of harmony governing the universe, and the penalty thereof must fall upon the violator of that law himself. Christ uttered the warning, ‘Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee,’ and St. Paul said, ‘Work out your own salvation. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ That, by the way, is a fine metaphoric rendering of the sentence of the Puranas far antedating him—that ‘every man reaps the consequences of his own acts.’
“This is the principle of the law of Karma which is taught by Theosophy. Sinnett, in his ‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ rendered Karma as ‘the law of ethical causation.’ ‘The law of retribution,’ as Mdme. Blavatsky translates its meaning, is better. It is the power which
Just though mysterious, leads us on unerring Through ways unmarked from guilt to punishment.