vol. xxx, no. 4 april 1926 universal brotherhood - a fact in nature

THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH
suspect that morality and justice are the only paths, but in our own
microcosm we still hope that the doctor can give us a short cut or that
drugs or diets can undo the wrong done; as though Nature was to be
cheated or cajoled. Some of us still believe that on the moral plane it
is possible to be lawless, vicious, uncontrolled, and gain a forgiveness
and a wiping out of the consequences - oblivious of the obvious fact
that it is not true -that no amount of mere repentance ever repaired
a misused body, or healed a diseased mind.
If we can believe that a fresh set of laws come into play after
death, and that the sinner who has ruined his body, twisted his mind,
and distorted or atrophied his soul and moral nature, who has done evil
and thought evil and worshiped evil, can wipe a sponge of repentance
over himself and straightway think high and noble thoughts, feel lofty
ideals, love the good that he despised -if ure can believe that, we may
reasonably term ourselves optimists.
There is no more vital truth than that what we have done and
thought in the past has modified us mentally, morally, and physically,
to what we are today. We can for a time evade the consequences; our
pill claims to enable us to overeat with impunity; we wipe out this or
that germ of disease - scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox, one after
another. Those that are left only kill us the more certainly, and new
ailments arise. Nature checked at one outlet, finds another.
In the body politic we are doing the same thing; with each crop
of trouble we pass a new law or a fresh palliative. The past still " streams
up over our heads from behind." Tie fly to the Statesman as to the
Doctor to get us out of the consequences of our national and social
wrong-doing.
The fact that we do not remember the early sins and do not know
the chain of causes and effects, is ignored by Nature. You did not know
that dirt brought disease, that vice involved mental and physical de-
terioration, but you knew, says Nature, that it was dirt; you knew it
was vice; now you know it is disease. Better get clean!
When we have routed all the enemies without, there still remains
the enemy within, in the very structure and function of body and mind.
"HIJ~IANITY
is truly in the shadows; but in spite of retrogression, ma-
terialism, and a selfishness that is extreme, the finer atmosphere of the
world is even now,surcharged with hope."- Katherine Tingley