ver bad the
dishonest might be it would make them worse. It would necessarily lower
the standard of their morality by shifting the burden of their sins to
others. It would destroy personal responsibility, and personal
responsibility is the basis of sound morals and the foundation of
civilized society.

Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with the belief in
special creation and special salvation--the teaching that we are not
responsible for our sins and that by believing that another assumed them
and died for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing and thus be
saved. What are we to be saved from? From nothing but ourselves. From
our selfishness, from our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to
inflict pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and from the
heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer in order that we may
escape. Salvation must necessarily mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The
man who is willing to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit
for heaven and could not recognize it if he were there. What do we think
of a person here who shifts his sins upon another and while that other
suffers he goes free and enjoys the fruits of his baseness?

A heaven that is populated with those who see in vicarious atonement a
happy arrangement for letting them in pleasantly and easily would not be
worth having. It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be no
heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only of those who have
eliminated selfishness; only of those who want to help others instead of
trying to dodge the consequences of their own acts; only of those who
are manly and womanly and generous and just and true. Nothing less than
a recognition of personal responsibility can lead to a heaven like that.
Yet the theory of special salvation ignores it, waves it aside--in fact
denies it!

Reincarnation represents personal responsibility and therefore absolute
justice. It shows that, not merely in all the vast future, but also in
this life and in every life, and all the time, our degree of happiness
depends upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were
generally understood it would necessarily raise the average of morality.
It furnishes a deterrent for the evil doer and a tremendous incentive
for the man who desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the
one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds; that he must
return life after life to as