⁂ The Editors regret that the pressure on their space prevents their noticing in detail the various Theosophical Magazines:—The Theosophist, The Path, Le Lotus, and L’Aurore. A full summary of their contents for November and December will appear next month. The same remark applies to a letter on “Karma,” received from Mr. Beatty, which will be published and fully answered next month.

From the Note Book of an Unpopular Philosopher

I am Sternly Rebuked for some remarks made in the last number. My reflections with regard to the respective value of Mussulman and Christian pledges exchanged, as also on the doubtful propriety of zoological symbolism in the Churches—are pronounced wantonly wicked and calculated to hurt the tender feelings of Christian readers—if any. Protestant England—it is solemnly urged—is full of truly good men and women, of sincere church-goers, who “walk in the ways of the Lord.” No doubt there are such, and no doubt they do, or try to, which is a step in advance of those who do not. But then none of the “righteous” need recognize their faces in the mirror presented by the “Unpopular Philosopher” only to the unrighteous. And again—-

“The Ways of the Lord....” The ways of which Lord? Is the jealous Lord of Moses meant, the God who thundered amidst the lightnings of Sinai, or the meek “Lord” of the Mount of Olives and Calvary? Is it the stern God that saith “vengeance is mine,” and who must be “worshipped in fear,” or the “man-God” who commanded to love one’s neighbours as oneself, to forgive one’s enemies and bless those who revile us? For the ways of the two Lords are wide apart, and can never meet.

No one who has studied the Bible can deny for one single moment that a large proportion (if happily not all) of modern Christians walk indeed “in the ways of the Lord”—Number I. This one is the “Lord” who had respect unto Abel, because the meat of his sacrifice smelt sweet in his nostrils; the “Lord” who commanded the Israelites to spoil the Egyptians of their jewels of silver and gold;[[57]] also to “kill every male among the little ones,” as “every woman ... but all the women children (virgins) to keep alive for themselves” (Numb. XXXI., 17, et seq.); and to commit other actions too coarse to be repeated in any respectable publication.

Hence the modern warriors who achieve such feats (with the modern improvement occasionally, of shooting their enemies out of the mouths of big guns) walk, most undeniably, “in the ways” of the Lord of the Jews, but never in the ways of Christ. So does the modern trader who keeps the Sabbath most rigorously, attending Divine Service thrice on that day, after treating during the whole week his hired clerks as the brood of Ham “who shall be their (Shem and Japhet’s) servants.”

So does, likewise, he who helps himself, David-like, to a Bath-Sheba, the wife of Uriah, without the least concern whether he simply robs or kills the Hittite husband. For he has every right to take for his sampler “a friend of God”—the God of the old covenant.

But will either of these pretend they walk in the ways of their Lord of the new Dispensation? Yet, he who raises his voice in a protest against the “ways” of the Mosaic God, therefore, in favour of those preached by the very antithesis of Jehovah—the meek and gentle “Man of Sorrow”—he is forthwith set up on the pillory and denounced to public opprobrium as an anti-Christian and an Atheist! This, in the face of the words: “Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven.... And every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.... and great was the fall thereof!”

The “Will of My Father?” Is this “Father” identical with the God of Mount Sinai and of the Commandments? Then what is the meaning of the whole Chapter V. of Matthew, of the Sermon on the Mount, in which every one of these Commandments is virtually criticised and destroyed by the new amendments?

“Ye have heard that it hath been said ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say unto you that you resist not evil,” etc.