Theos-Talk Archives (September 2002 Message tt00175)

Sept 27 2002

Dear Larry and Reed:

I think this will be of interest.

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LUCIFER TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: "Greetings..."


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Lucifer: I # 4, Dec 1887, pp 242-51

(not H P B -- Harte? or B. Keightley ? )
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LUCIFER TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, GREETING!
Lucifer, Vol. I, No. 4, December, 1887, pp. 242-251

MY LORD PRIMATE OF ALL ENGLAND,
We make use of an open letter to your Grace as a vehicle to
convey to you, and through you, to the clergy, to their
flocks, and to Christians generally - who regard us as the
enemies of Christ - a brief statement of the position which
Theosophy occupies in regard to Christianity, as we believe
that the time for making that statement has arrived.
Your Grace is no doubt aware that Theosophy is not a
religion, but a philosophy at once religious and scientific;
and that the chief work, so far, of the Theosophical Society
has been to revive in each religion its own animating
spirit, by encouraging and helping enquiry into the true
significance of its doctrines and observances. Theosophists
know that the deeper one penetrates into the meaning of the
dogmas and ceremonies of all religions, the greater becomes
their apparent underlying similarity, until finally a
perception of their fundamental unity is reached. This
common ground is no other than Theosophy - the Secret
Doctrine of the ages; which, diluted and disguised to suit
the capacity of the multitude, and the requirements of the
time, has formed the living kernel of all religions. The
Theosophical Society has branches respectively composed of
Buddhists, Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees, Christians and
Freethinkers, who work together as brethren on the common
ground of Theosophy; and it is precisely because Theosophy
is not a religion, nor can for the multitude supply the
place of a religion, that the success of the Society has
been so great, not merely as regards its growing membership
and extending influence, but also in respect to the
performance of the work it has undertaken - the revival of
spirituality in religion, and the cultivation of the
sentiment of BROTHERHOOD among men.
We Theosophists believe that a religion is a natural
incident in the life of man in his present stage of
development; and that although, in rare cases, individuals
may be born without the religious sentiment, a community
must have a religion, that is to say, a uniting bond - under
penalty of social decay and material annihilation. We
believe that no religious doctrine can be more than an
attempt to picture to our present limited understandings, in
the terms of our terrestrial experiences, great cosmical and
spiritual truths, which in our normal state of consciousness
we vaguely sense, rather than actually perceive and
comprehend; and a revelation, if it is to reveal anything,
must necessarily conform to the same earthbound requirements
of the human intellect. In our estimation, therefore, no
religion can be absolutely true, and none can be absolutely
false. A religion is true in proportion as it supplies the
spiritual, moral and intellectual needs of the time, and
helps the development of mankind in these respects. It is
false in proportion as it hinders that development, and
offends the spiritual, moral and intellectual portion of
man's nature. And the transcendentally spiritual ideas of
the ruling powers of the Universe entertained by an Oriental
sage would be as false a religion for the African savage as
the groveling fetishism of the latter would be for the sage,
although both views must necessarily be true in degree, for
both represent the highest ideas attainable by the
respective individuals of the same cosmico-spiritual facts,
which can never be known in their reality by man while he
remains but man.
Theosophists, therefore, are respecters of all the
religions, and for the religious ethics of Jesus they have
profound admiration. It could not be otherwise, for these
teachings which have come down to us are the same as those
of Theosophy. So far, therefore, as modern Christianity
makes good its claim to be the practical religion taught by
Jesus, Theosophists are with it heart and hand. So far as
it goes contrary to those ethics, pure and simple,
Theosophists are its opponents. Any Christian can, if he
will, compare the Sermon on the Mount with the dogmas of his
church, and the spirit that breathes in it, with the
principles that animate this Christian civilization and
govern his own life; and then he will be able to judge for
himself how far the religion of Jesus enters into his
Christianity, and how far, therefore, he and Theosophists
are agreed. But professing Christians, especially the
clergy, shrink from making this comparison. Like merchants
who fear to find themselves bankrupt, they seem to dread the
discovery of a discrepancy in their accounts which could not
be made good by placing material assets as a set-off to
spiritual liabilities. The comparison between the teachings
of Jesus and the doctrines of the churches has, however,
frequently been made - and often with great learning and
critical acumen - both by those who would abolish
Christianity and those who would reform it; and the
aggregate result of these comparisons, as your Grace must be
well aware, goes to prove that in almost every point the
doctrines of the churches and the practices of Christians
are in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus.
We are accustomed to say to the Buddhist, the Mohammedan,
the Hindu, or the Parsee: "The road to Theosophy lies, for
you, through your own religion." We say this because those
creeds possess a deeply philosophical and esoteric meaning,
explanatory of the allegories under which they are presented
to the people; but we cannot say the same thing to
Christians. The successors of the Apostles never recorded
the secret doctrine of Jesus - the "mysteries of the kingdom
of heaven" - which it was given to them (his apostles) alone
to know.1 These have been suppressed, made away with,
destroyed. What have come down upon the stream of time are
the maxims, the parables, the allegories and the fables
which Jesus expressly intended for the spiritually deaf and
blind to be revealed later to the world, and which modern
Christianity either takes all literally, or interprets
according to the fancies of the Fathers of the secular
church. In both cases they are like cut flowers: they are
severed from the plant on which they grew, and from the root
whence that plant drew its life. Were we, therefore, to
encourage Christians, as we do the votaries of other creeds,
to study their own religion for themselves, the consequence
would be, not a knowledge of the meaning of its mysteries,
but either the revival of mediaeval superstition and
intolerance, accompanied by a formidable outbreak of mere
lip-prayer and preaching - such as resulted in the formation
of the 239 Protestant sects of England alone - or else a
great increase of skepticism, for Christianity has no
esoteric foundation known to those who profess it.	For even
you, my Lord Primate of England, must be painfully aware
that you know absolutely no more of those "mysteries of the
kingdom of heaven" which Jesus taught his disciples, than
does the humblest and most illiterate member of your church.
It is easily understood, therefore, that Theosophists have
nothing to say against the policy of the Roman Catholic
Church in forbidding, or of the Protestant churches in
discouraging, any such private enquiry into the meaning of
the "Christian" dogmas as would correspond to the esoteric
study of other religions. With their present ideas and
knowledge, professing Christians are not prepared to
undertake a critical examination of their faith, with a
promise of good results. Its inevitable effect would be to
paralyze rather than stimulate their dormant religious
sentiments; for biblical criticism and comparative mythology
have proved conclusively - to those, at least, who have no
vested interests, spiritual or temporal, in the maintenance
of orthodoxy - that the Christian religion, as it now
exists, is composed of the husks of Judaism, the shreds of
paganism, and the ill-digested remains of gnosticism and
neo-platonism. This curious conglomerate which gradually
formed itself round the recorded sayings (????a) of Jesus,
has, after the lapse of ages, now begun to disintegrate, and
to crumble away from the pure and precious gems of
Theosophic truth which it has so long overlain and hidden,
but could neither disfigure nor destroy. Theosophy not only
rescues these precious gems from the fate that threatens the
rubbish in which they have been so long embedded, but saves
that rubbish itself from utter condemnation; for it shows
that the result of biblical criticism is far from being the
ultimate analysis of Christianity, as each of the pieces
which compose the curious mosaics of the Churches once
belonged to a religion which had an esoteric meaning. It is
only when these pieces are restored to the places they
originally occupied that their hidden significance can be
perceived, and the real meaning of the dogmas of
Christianity understood. To do all this, however, requires
a knowledge of the Secret Doctrine as it exists in the
esoteric foundation of other religions; and this knowledge
is not in the hands of the Clergy, for the Church has
hidden, and since lost, the keys.
Your Grace will now understand why it is that the
Theosophical Society has taken for one of its three
"objects" the study of those Eastern religions and
philosophies, which shed such a flood of light upon the
inner meaning of Christianity; and you will, we hope, also
perceive that in so doing, we are acting not as the enemies,
but as the friends of the religion taught by Jesus - of true
Christianity, in fact. For it is only through the study of
those religions and philosophies that Christians can ever
arrive at an understanding of their own beliefs, or see the
hidden meaning of the parables and allegories which the
Nazarene told to the spiritual cripples of Judea, and by
taking which, either as matters of fact or as matters of
fancy, the Churches have brought the teachings themselves
into ridicule and contempt, and Christianity into serious
danger of complete collapse, undermined as it is by
historical criticism and mythological research, besides
being broken by the sledge-hammer of modern science.
Ought Theosophists themselves, then, to be regarded by
Christians as their enemies, because they believe that
orthodox Christianity is, on the whole, opposed to the
religion of Jesus; and because they have the courage to tell
the Churches that they are traitors to the MASTER they
profess to revere and serve? Far from it, indeed.
Theosophists know that the same spirit that animated the
words of Jesus lies latent in the hearts of Christians, as
it does naturally in all men's hearts. Their fundamental
tenet is the Brotherhood of Man, the ultimate realization of
which is alone made possible by that which was known long
before the days of Jesus as "the Christ spirit." This
spirit is even now potentially present in all men, and it
will be developed into activity when human beings are no
longer prevented from understanding, appreciating and
sympathizing with one another by the barriers of strife and
hatred erected by priests and princes. We know that
Christians in their lives frequently rise above the level of
their Christianity.	All Churches contain many noble,
self-sacrificing, and virtuous men and women, eager to do
good in their generation according to their lights and
opportunities, and full of aspirations to higher things than
those of earth - followers of Jesus in spite of their
Christianity.	For such as these Theosophists feel the
deepest sympathy; for only a Theosophist, or else a person
of your Grace's delicate sensibility and great theological
learning, can justly appreciate the tremendous difficulties
with which the tender plant of natural piety has to contend,
as it forces its root into the uncongenial soil of our
Christian civilization, and tries to blossom in the cold and
arid atmosphere of theology. How hard, for instance, must
it not be to "love" such a God as that depicted in a
well-known passage by Herbert Spencer:
The cruelty of a Fijian god who, represented as devouring
the souls of the dead, may be supposed to inflict torture
during the process, is small compared with the cruelty o£ a
god who condemns men to tortures which are eternal. . . . .
The visiting on Adam's descendants through hundreds of
generations dreadful penalties for a small transgression
which they did not commit; the damning of all men who do not
avail themselves of an alleged mode of obtaining
forgiveness, which most men have never heard of; and the
effecting a reconciliation by sacrificing a son who was
perfectly innocent, to satisfy the assumed necessity for a
propitiatory victim; are modes of action which, ascribed to
a human ruler, would call forth expressions of abhorrence.
. .2
Your Grace will say, no doubt, that Jesus never taught the
worship of such a god as that. Even so say we Theosophists.
Yet that is the very god whose worship is officially
conducted in Canterbury Cathedral, by you, my Lord Primate
of England; and your Grace will surely agree with us that
there must indeed be a divine spark of religious intuition
in the hearts of men, that enables them to resist so well as
they do, the deadly action of such poisonous theology.
If your Grace, from your high pinnacle, will cast your eyes
around, you will behold a Christian civilization in which a
frantic and merciless battle of man against man is not only
the distinguishing feature, but the acknowledged principle.
It is an accepted scientific and economic axiom to-day, that
all progress is achieved through the struggle for existence
and the survival of the fittest; and the fittest to survive
in this Christian civilization are not those who are
possessed of the qualities that are recognized by the
morality of every age to be the best - not the generous, the
pious, the noble-hearted, the forgiving, the humble, the
truthful, the honest, and the kind - but those who are
strongest in selfishness, in craft, in hypocrisy, in brute
force, in false pretence, in unscrupulousness, in cruelty,
and in avarice. The spiritual and the altruistic are "the
weak," whom the "laws" that govern the universe give as food
to the egoistic and material - "the strong." That "might is
right" is the only legitimate conclusion, the last word of
the 19th century ethics, for the world has become one huge
battlefield, on which "the fittest" descend like vultures to
tear out the eyes and the hearts of those who have fallen in
the fight. Does religion put a stop to the battle? Do the
churches drive away the vultures, or comfort the wounded and
the dying? Religion does not weigh a feather in the world
at large to-day, when worldly advantage and selfish
pleasures are put in the other scale; and the churches are
powerless to revivify the religious sentiment among men,
because their ideas, their knowledge, their methods, and
their arguments are those of the Dark Ages. My Lord
Primate, your Christianity is five hundred years behind the
times.
So long as men disputed whether this god or that god was the
true one, or whether the soul went to this place or that one
after death, you, the clergy, understood the question, and
had arguments at hand to influence opinion - by syllogism or
torture, as the case might require; but now it is the
existence of any such being as God, at all, or of any kind
of immortal spirit, that is questioned or denied. Science
invents new theories of the Universe which contemptuously
ignore the existence of any god; moralists establish
theories of ethics and social life in which the
non-existence of a future life is taken for granted; in
physics, in psychology, in law, in medicine, the one thing
needful in order to entitle any teacher to a hearing is that
no reference whatever should be contained in his ideas
either to a Providence, or to a soul. The world is being
rapidly brought to the conviction that god is a mythical
conception, which has no foundation in fact, or place in
Nature; and that the immortal part 'of man is the silly
dream of ignorant savages, perpetuated by the lies and
tricks of priests, who reap a harvest by cultivating the
fears of men that their mythical God will torture their
imaginary souls to all eternity, in a fabulous Hell. In the
face of all these things the clergy stand in this age dumb
and powerless. The only answer which the Church knew how to
make to such "objections" as these, were the rack and the
faggot; and she cannot use that system of logic now.
It is plain that if the God and the soul taught by the
churches be imaginary entities, then the Christian salvation
and damnation are mere delusions of the mind, produced by
the hypnotic process of assertion and suggestion on a
magnificent scale, acting cumulatively on generations of
mild "hysteriacs." What answer have you to such a theory of
the Christian religion, except a repetition o£ assertions
and suggestions? What ways have you of bringing men back to
their old beliefs but by reviving their old habits? "Build
more churches, say more prayers, establish more missions,
and your faith in damnation and salvation will be revived,
and a renewed belief in God and the soul will be the
necessary result." That is the policy of the churches, and
their only answer to agnosticism and materialism. But your
Grace must know that to meet the attacks of modern science
and criticism with such weapons as assertion and habit, is
like going forth against magazine guns, armed with
boomerangs and leather shields. While, however, the
progress of ideas and the increase of knowledge are
undermining the popular theology, every discovery of
science, every new conception of European advanced thought,
brings the 19th century mind nearer to the ideas of the
Divine and the Spiritual, known to all esoteric religions
and to Theosophy.
The Church claims that Christianity is the only true
religion, and this claim involves two distinct propositions,
namely, that Christianity is true religion, and that there
is no true religion except Christianity. It never seems to
strike Christians that God and Spirit could possibly exist
in any other form than that under which they are presented
in the doctrines of their church. The savage calls the
missionary an Atheist, because he does not carry an idol in
his trunk; and the missionary, in his turn, calls everyone
an Atheist who does not carry about a fetish in his mind;
and neither savage nor Christian ever seem to suspect that
there may be a higher idea than their own of the great
hidden power that governs the Universe, to which the name of
"God" is much more applicable. It is doubtful whether the
churches take more pains to prove Christianity "true," or to
prove that any other kind of religion is necessarily
"false;" and the evil consequences of this, their teaching,
are terrible. When people discard dogma they fancy that
they have discarded the religious sentiment also, and they
conclude that religion is a superfluity in human life - a
rendering to the clouds of things that belong to earth, a
waste of energy which could be more profitably expended in
the struggle for existence. The materialism of this age is,
therefore, the direct consequence of the Christian doctrine
that there is no ruling power in the Universe, and no
immortal Spirit in man except those made known in Christian
dogmas. The Atheist, my Lord Primate, is the bastard son of
the Church.
But this is not all. The churches have never taught men any
other or higher reason why they should be just and kind and
true than the hope of reward and the fear of punishment, and
when they let go their belief in Divine caprice and Divine
injustice the foundations of their morality are sapped.
They have not even natural morality to consciously fall back
upon, for Christianity has taught them to regard it as
worthless on account of the natural depravity of man.
Therefore self-interest becomes the only motive for conduct,
and the fear of being found out, the only deterrent from
vice. And so, with regard to morality as well as to God and
the soul, Christianity pushes men off the path that leads to
knowledge, and precipitates them into the abyss of
incredulity, pessimism and vice. The last place where men
would now look for help from the evils and miseries of life
is the Church because they know that the building of
churches and the repeating of litanies influence neither the
powers of Nature nor the councils of nations; because they
instinctively feel that when the churches accepted the
principle of expediency they lost their power to move the
hearts of' men, and can now only act on the external plane,
as the supporters of the policeman and the politician.
The function of religion is to comfort and encourage
humanity in its life-long struggle with sin and sorrow.
This it can do only by presenting mankind with noble ideals
of a happier existence after death, and of a worthier life
on earth, to be won in both cases by conscious effort. What
the world now wants is a Church that will tell it of Deity,
or the immortal principle in man, which will be at least on
a level with the ideas and knowledge of the times. Dogmatic
Christianity is not suited for a world that reasons and
thinks, and only those who can throw themselves into a
mediaeval state of mind, can appreciate a Church whose
religious (as distinguished from its social and political)
function is to keep God in good humor while the laity are
doing what they believe he does not approve; to pray for
changes of weather; and occasionally, to thank the Almighty
for helping to slaughter the enemy. It is not "medicine
men," but spiritual guides that the world looks for today -
a "clergy" that will give it ideals as suited to the
intellect of this century, as the Christian Heaven and Hell,
God and the Devil, were to the ages of dark ignorance and
superstition. Do, or can, the Christian clergy fulfill this
requirement? The misery, the crime, the vice, the
selfishness, the brutality, the lack of self-respect and
self-control, that mark our modern civilization, unite their
voices in one tremendous cry, and answer - NO!
What is the meaning of the reaction against materialism, the
signs of which fill the air today? It means that the world
has become mortally sick of the dogmatism, the arrogance,
the self-sufficiency, and the spiritual blindness of modern
science - of that same Modern Science which men but
yesterday hailed as their deliverer from religious bigotry
and Christian superstition, but which, like the Devil of the
monkish legends, requires, as the price of its services, the
sacrifice of man's immortal soul. And meanwhile, what are
the Churches doing? The Churches are sleeping the sweet
sleep of endowments, of social and political influence,
while the world, the flesh, and the devil, are appropriating
their watchwords, their miracles, their arguments, and their
blind faith. The Spiritualists - oh! Churches of Christ -
have stolen the fire from your altars to illumine their
séance rooms; the Salvationists have taken your sacra-mental
wine, and make themselves spiritually drunk in the streets;
the Infidel has stolen the weapons with which you vanquished
him once, and triumphantly tells you that "What you advance,
has been frequently said before." Had ever clergy so
splendid an opportunity? The grapes in the vineyard are
ripe, needing only the right laborers to gather them. Were
you to give to the world some proof, on the level of the
present intellectual standard of probability, that Deity -
the immortal Spirit in man - have a real existence as facts
in Nature, would not men hail you as their savior from
pessimism and despair, from the maddening and brutalizing
thought that there is no other destiny for man but an
eternal blank, after a few short years of bitter toil and
sorrow? - aye; as their saviors from the panic-stricken
fight for material enjoyment and worldly advancement, which
is the direct consequence of believing this mortal life to
be the be-all and end-all of existence?
But the Churches have neither the knowledge nor the faith
needed to save the world, and perhaps your Church, my Lord P
rimate, least of all, with the mill-stone of £8,000,000 a
year hung round its neck. In vain you try to lighten the
ship by casting overboard the ballast of doctrines which
your forefathers deemed vital to Christianity. What more
can your Church do now, than run before the gale with bare
poles, while the clergy feebly endeavor to putty up the
gaping leaks with the "revised version," and by their social
and political deadweight try to prevent the ship from
capsizing, and its cargo of dogmas and endowments from going
to the bottom?
Who built Canterbury Cathedral, my Lord Primate? Who
invented and gave life to the great ecclesiastical
organization which makes an Archbishop of Canterbury
possible? Who laid the foundation of the vast system of
religious taxation which gives you £15,000 a year and a
palace? Who instituted the forms and ceremonies, the prayers
and litanies, which, slightly altered and stripped of art
and ornament, make the liturgy of the Church o£ England?
Who wrested from the people the proud titles of "reverend
divine" and "Man of God" which the clergy of your Church so
confidently assume? Who, indeed, but the Church of Rome! We
speak in no spirit of enmity. Theosophy has seen the rise
and fall of many faiths, and will be present at the birth
and death of many more. We know that the lives of religions
are subject to law. Whether you inherited legitimately from
the Church of Rome, or obtained by violence, we leave you to
settle with your enemies and with your conscience; for
mental attitude towards your Church is determined by its
intrinsic worthiness. We know that if it be unable to
fulfill the true spiritual function of a religion, it will
surely be swept away, even though the fault lie rather in
its hereditary tendencies, or in its environments, than in
itself.
The Church of England, to use a homely simile, is like a
train running by the momentum it acquired before steam was
shut off. When it left the main track, it got upon a siding
that leads nowhere. The train has nearly come to a
standstill, and many of the passengers have left it for
other conveyances. Those that remain are for the most part
aware that they have been depending all along upon what
little steam was left in the boiler when the fires of Rome
were withdrawn from under it. They suspect that they may be
only playing at train now; but the engineer keeps blowing
his whistle and the guard goes round to examine the tickets,
and the breaksmen rattle their breaks; and it is not such
bad fun after all. For the carriages are warm and
comfortable and the day is cold, and so long as they are
tipped all the company's servants are very obliging. But
those who know where they want to go, are not so contented.
For several centuries the Church of England has performed
the difficult feat of blowing hot and cold in two directions
at once - saying to the Roman Catholics "Reason!" and to the
Skeptics "Believe!" It was by adjusting the force of its
two-faced blowing, that it has managed to keep itself so
long from falling off the fence. But now the fence itself
is giving way. Disendowment and disestablishment are in the
air. And what does your Church urge in its own behalf? Its
usefulness. It is useful to have a number of educated,
moral, unworldly men, scattered all over the country, who
prevent the world from utterly forgetting the name of
religion, and who act as centers of benevolent work. But
the question now is no longer one of repeating prayers, and
giving alms to the poor, as it was five hundred years ago.
The people have come of age, and have taken their thinking
and the direction of their social, private and even
spiritual affairs into their own hands, for they have found
out that their clergy know no more about "things of Heaven"
than they do themselves.
But the Church of England, it is said, has become so liberal
that all ought to support it. Truly, one can go to an
excellent imitation of the mass, or sit under a virtual
Unitarian, and still be within its fold. This beautiful
tolerance, however, only means that the Church has found it
necessary to make itself an open common, where every one can
put up his own booth, and give his special performance if he
will only join in the defence of the endowments. Tolerance
and liberality are contrary to the laws of the existence of
any church that believes in divine damnation, and their
appearance in the Church of England is not a sign of renewed
life, but of approaching disintegration. No less deceptive
is the energy evinced by the Church in the building of
churches. If this were a measure of religion what a pious
age this would be! Never was dogma so well housed before,
though human beings may have to sleep by thousands in the
streets, and to literally starve in the shadow of our
majestic cathedrals, built in the name of Him who had not
where to lay His head. But did Jesus tell you, your Grace,
that religion lay not in the hearts of men, but in temples
made with hands? You cannot convert your piety into stone
and use it in your lives; and history shows that
petrifaction of the religious sentiment is as deadly a
disease as ossification of the heart. Were churches,
however, multiplied a hundred fold, and were every clergyman
to become a center of philanthropy, it would only be
substituting the work that the poor require from their
fellow men but not from their spiritual teachers, for that
which they ask and cannot obtain. It would but bring into
greater relief the spiritual barrenness of the doctrines of
the Church.
The time is approaching when the clergy will be called upon
to render an account of their stewardship. Are you
prepared, my Lord Primate, to explain to YOUR MASTER why you
have given His children stones, when they cried to you for
bread? You smile in your fancied security. The servants
have kept high carnival so long in the inner chambers of the
Lord's house, that they think He will surely never return.
But He told you He would come as a thief in the night; and
lo! He is coming already in the hearts of men. He is coming
to take possession of His Father's kingdom there, where
alone His kingdom is. But you know Him not! Were the
Churches themselves not carried away in the flood of
negation and materialism which has engulfed Society, they
would recognize the quickly growing germ of the
Christ-spirit in the hearts of thousands, whom they now
brand as infidels and madmen. They would recognize there
the same spirit of love, of self-sacrifice, of immense pity
for the ignorance, the folly, and the sufferings of the
world, which appeared in its purity in the heart of Jesus,
as it had appeared in the hearts of other Holy Reformers in
other ages; and which is the light of all true religion, and
the lamp by which the Theosophists of all times have
endeavored to guide their steps along the narrow path that
leads to salvation - the path which is trodden by every
incarnation of CHRISTOS or the SPIRIT OF TRUTH.
And now, my Lord Primate, we have very respectfully laid
before you the principal points of difference and
disagreement between Theosophy and the Christian Churches,
and told you of the oneness of Theosophy and the teachings
of Jesus. You have heard our profession of faith, and
learned the grievances and plaints which we lay at the door
of dogmatic Christianity. We, a handful of humble
individuals, possessed of neither riches nor worldly
influence, but strong in our knowledge, have united in the
hope of doing the work which you say that your MASTER has
allotted to you, but which is so sadly neglected by that
wealthy and domineering colossus - the Christian Church.
Will you call this presumption, we wonder? Will you, in
this land of free opinion, free speech, and free effort,
venture to accord us no other recognition than the usual
anathema, which the Church keeps in store for the reformer?
Or may we hope that the bitter lessons of experience, which
that policy has afforded the Churches in the past, will have
altered the hearts and cleared the understandings of her
rulers; and that the coming year, 1888, will witness the
stretching out to us of the hand of Christians in fellowship
and goodwill? This would only be a just recognition that
the comparatively small body called the Theosophical Society
is no pioneer of the Anti-Christ, no brood of the Evil one,
but the practical helper, perchance the savior, of
Christianity, and that it is only endeavoring to do the work
that Jesus, like Buddha, and the other "sons of God" who
preceded him, has commanded all his followers to undertake,
but which the Churches, having become dogmatic, are entirely
unable to accomplish.
And now, if your Grace can prove that we do injustice to the
Church of which you are the Head, or to popular Theology, we
promise to acknowledge our error publicly. But - "SILENCE
GIVES CONSENT."

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