ithout shame. Yet you can experience
them without horror; can weigh, observe and test them, and wait with
the patience of confidence for the hour when they shall affect you no
longer. But do not condemn a man that yields; stretch out your hand to
him as a brother pilgrim whose feet have become heavy with mire.
Remember, O disciple! that great though the gulf may be between the good
man and the sinner, it is greater between the good man and the man who
has attained knowledge; it is immeasurable between the good man and the
one on the threshold of divinity. Therefore, be wary, lest too soon you
fancy yourself a thing apart from the mass." And again, the same writer
says: "Before you can attain knowledge you must have passed through all
places, foul and clean alike. Therefore, remember that the soiled
garment you shrink from touching may have been yours yesterday, may be
yours tomorrow. And if you turn with horror from it when it is flung
upon your shoulders, it will cling the more closely to you. The
self-righteous man makes for himself a bed of mire. Abstain because it
is right to abstain, not that yourself shall be kept clean."

It is also argued that Reincarnation is necessary in order to give the
evolving races a chance to perfect themselves--that is, not through
their physical descendants, which would not affect the souls of those
living in the bodies of the races to-day, but by perfection and growth
of the souls themselves. It is pointed out that to usher a savage or
barbarian to the spiritual planes after death, no matter how true to his
duty and "his lights" the soul had been, would be to work an absurd
translation. Such a soul would not be fitted for the higher spiritual
planes, and would be most unhappy and miserable there. It will be seen
that Reincarnationists make quite a distinction between "goodness" and
"advancement"--while they recognize and urge the former, they regard it
as only one side of the question, the other being "spiritual growth and
unfoldment." It will be seen that Reincarnation provides for a Spiritual
Evolution with all of its advantages, as well as a material evolution
such as science holds to be correct.

Concluding this chapter, let us quote once more from the authority on
the subject before mentioned, who writes anonymously in the pamphlet
from which the quotation is taken. He says: "Nature does nothing by
leaps. She does not, in this case, introduce into a region of spirit and
spiritua