THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 February 1918, Page 7

THEOSOPHICAL LECTURE.

"Paint and Sinner: Their Final Goal the sfame." was tr.i title ?f Mis,- Christie's first lecture for this visit recently delivered to a fair audience in the Medina Tea Rooms, Stratford, the other night. It will probably be given in New Plymouth shortly, a brief resume will suffice. The contradictory doctrines stating (1) That God is love, pure, all-seeing, all-powerful, and omnipresent; and (2) that God, knowing the future of every soul, deliberately creates thousands whom He knows will choose evil and so reap eternal hell, wqre shown as mutually destructive. Saint and sinner, according to tlie lecturer, are but the names for a sold when at two different points in evolution. Sin is ignorance, so when a man is a savage, or but half developed in conscience, he is a great sinner, but as he grows wiser he ceases to break certain of God's laws, because he has proved by experience that such a course does not 'pay. He discovers that he is a portion of God. blinded by matter which he has moulded into a body or prison for himself, and whicli has shut out from his vision, for a time, the true nature of God; he sees himself as a temporarily lost soul, which has wandered into the wilderness of ignorance, so he turns round—i.e., is "converted He sees his goal and makes for it; but he has wandered far and the return journey is long and arduous; full of obstacles he 'has left in his ' path during many life periods, but he struggles on bravely because he knows he must return to his source—the bosom of God. Life after life on earth be learns life's lesson. Life after life in heaven he builds lijb experiences into character and conscience until at last he is strong enough to meet his Divine Teacher face to face and be. taught how to wield the finer forces of nature, for now bis knowledge is not held for himself alone, and it is given to all, he is no longer a sinner, hut a saint, licing only to help others, consciously divine, and showing forth in his own person the result of many life periods devoted' to learning and proving that man reaps what he sows, and can shape his destlnv as he will, can choose his path back to His Father, and choose, too. how long or how short he will make the journey. The present sinner is the future saint, and as hoth are of God. and in God, their final goal must be the same—conscious divinity. There are no eternally lost souls.