CORRESPONDENCE.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17105, 29 March 1921, Page 7

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. TO THE EDITOR O? "THE r*£SS." Sir,—There is an Indian proverb which savs, "Why go to Kan (Benares) to seek the sacred tree, when it grows in your own backyard?" A long succession of Hindu students has drunk of the waters offered them in the Bhagavad Gita, and to this day their descendants are thirsty still. The modern Western student seeking to solve the problem of life will certainly not succeed in finding a satisfying solution where the subtle mind of his Eastern brother has failed. The music of Krielnia's lute can strike no responsive chord in the heart of the sincere searcher after truth. For beauty of stvle the Gita may be deemed incomparable, and tho sentiments expressed may exert a powerful influence over some minds, but the Gita, the Upanishads. and the Vedas still.leave unanswered the burning question of the Hindu and his brother-man, "whence, whither, how?" The sacred books of India teach that there is "a self-existent Lord." The origin of the universe is accounted for thus. Wishing to produce different beings from his own body he (the selfexistent Lord), having desired, first created water alone; in that he cast seed which became a golden egg-like in splendour to the thousand-rayed • sun; in that was bom spontaneously Brahma, the grandparent of all the world. That Lord, having dwelt in that eg" for a year, spontaneously, by his own meditation, split that egg in two, and with those two shares he fo ™ ied the heaven and the earth, in the middle the skv and the eight regions, and the perpetual place of waters. The creation of living beings is said to have taken place as follows:— Having divided his own body into two, he became a male by half, by half a females on her that Lord begat Viray. "But, O best of men! Know that lam he, the Creator of all this world whom that male Viray, having practised austerity, spontaneously produced." „,■.„. This is the fruit. "Student" is recommended to pluck' from tho sacred tree he will find by travelling to the land of the Gita and the Vedas. The wavfarinn- man may feed on the majestic simplicity of the, Genesis story of "whence" and "how," but it takes a mighty intellect to grasp the Vedio representation of tho origin of Me.— Yours, eto£ ATRICB M HARBAND . New Brighton, March 23th. TO THE EDITOR OF "Tnß VRESS." Sir,—Someone has truly eaid that 'ln Christianity there aTe shallows in whicn a child might wade but aeeps in which a giant must swim," and iu my small opinion it is the comparative neglect or the Churches to derive from and supply to the "hungry multitudes" spiritual sustenance in the shape.of "tee strong meat of the Word," derivable fromtw deeper, mystic, esoteric Bide of Christianity, that is very largely responsible for the present religious vnrcst. Christianity teaches that "The One God andi Father of all" is Infinite, Omnipresent, and Immanent in His Universe. JJrom this, it follows inevitably that the soul, the consciousness, the real man, must be an integral portion of this Infinite Consciousness—or else the Infinite is not the Infinite—man must be, as Browning suggests, "a god, though in the germ." The Latins had a proverJ —an axiom, obviously—"ex nihilo nihil fit," "out of notihingy nothing, cornea ; and unless man, here and how, has within him the germs of Divinity, unless he is potentially perfect, then tho words of the Great Founder of Christianity: "Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect," are unintelligible. Looked at in another way, Christianity teaches that one of the attributes of. T.he Deity is that of Absolute Juhtico, i.e.. Ho expresses Himself as a Principle of Justice, operative in regard to all persons, -nt all points, and at all times. Keeping this conception in mind, and turning our attention to tho world of cffectß, what do we findP We are confronted with all sorts of vexing anomalies; we see the "pairs of epposites" m operation; one child comes into the world in a slum, another is cradled in the lap of luxury; ono in embryo is a young athlete, another a distorted cripple; one.is born an idiot, another a genius; one is a potential saint, anothei a congenital criminal. If this attribute of Absolute Justice postulated by Christianity is a true one, it' follows irra sistibly that tho capacities given to, and the limitations imposed on, flho child at birth, must be deserved by, and be just to, tho child. If theTe be a Principle of Absolute Juatice, it operates here and now, and not merely in some "post-mortem" Btate. How, then, can we solve our problem and reconcile these apparent contradictious P We nro told that on one-occasion His disciples i(who mu;st, therefore, lhave had in mind the idea of pre-existence, as well as that of heredity) asked the Christ:' "Did this man sin, or his parents, thno he was born blind?" The first part of the question, relating as it does, effects back to causes, is illuminating. "Did this man sin, that he was born blind ?" The test of any hypothesis should be its inherent reasonableness; in other words t its explanatory In order to maintain my faith in a I/oity, Whose Nature is Love, and Who is absolutely Just, t3ie theory of re-incarnation, roducing, as it does, an apparently chaotio condition of things to order and intelligibility, is to me. a hypothetical necessity. It is one which, Max Midler informs us, some of the greatest minds the world has produced have accepted, and ono, therefore, which intelligent people cannot afford to idly brush aside as unworthy of investigation.—Yours, ! etc., | STUDENT OF THEOSOPHY. PROFESSOR CONDLIFFE'S LECTURE. • TO THE EDITOn OP "THE PRESS." Sirj—Professor Condliffo is to be congratulated on his lecture at tlhe Chamber of Commerce. It, was thoiightful and clear in every respect, and his general conclusions time will show to be fairly accurate: Howevor, students of political economy are at a disadvantage as to the methods tho Professor uses to arrive at these conclusion?. Extensive reading and deep thinking most people cannot take up for* various reason?, still, the majority could toilow such alecture mudli more easily had they only a few maxims or elemontals on which to centre their minds when they strive to grasp all the data and conclusions to which the lecturer referred. Our schools of economists have not yet pro duced a series of elementals such as Euclid drew up for mathematicians,.and until this is done, the labour in exam'n ing all these theories will remain severe One sphool will swear by Mill, another by Marx, others by Ricards, Macaulay, etc. All. however, leave the student to find his own maxims or elements, leaving no room to doubt that we still awaiv a second Euclid to draw them up. How mudh easier would the study become were our schools of economy to work on units as electricians work on volts. Arrive at the unit, fix it as a datum, reduce all quantities of weights, measurements, and measures of commodities to that unit, and your students of political economy would increase and multiply, and also save the world from Socialism, Bolshevism, and Red Fed nostrums thut now distraet and deceive the present age. My own idea is that our £1 sterling would be the best possible unit to adopt, as it is the unit of the Bank of England, and, per se, understood by the whole of the commercial world. Without this volt or unit we shall continue to practise political economy without understanding it, or understand it without being able to practise it. With my compliments to Professor Condliffe. —Yours, etc., W. H. SAXBY. Christchurch, March 26th.