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THEOSOPHY
105
Is this message trne? How are we to judge? What is the evidence? There is a point that, until the word was spoken that it was not inevitable to take human ignorance as the root, had not struck the religionis world. The evidence is clear and plain that all may read who care to study. Did the savage evolve in his brutality, from his idol worship, from his fetichism, and from his totemism, did he evolve the idea of that wondrous over-arching Presence which he dimly believes in to-day, and says is a tradition of the past? How out of his narrow brain, how ont of his ignorant mind, how out of his cruel and blood-thirsty heart, did there rise this wondrons idea of a Universal Father, of one over-arching Presence, that embraces all in love? What savs, not the savage, but the literature of the past, the literature of China, the literature of Persia, the literature of India, the literature of Egypt
what does it say? It tells us of mighty thonghts, that no modern has been able to rival in sublimity. Take the Classic of Purity from China, and tell me if modern China can produce a gem of spiritual and philosophic thonght fit to place side by side with that inheritance that, they say, came from far off Atlantis ! Take the mighty teachings of India, the glorions Upanişhats, and tell me what modern writer, great as he may be, can write with that sublimity, with that depth of philosophic thought, with that magnificence of poetic diction, of the Supreme and Universal Self ? Take the Gathās of Zoroastrianism, mangled and fragmentary as they are; can yon read them without feeling the breathing of a kuowledge
