power
in the church was directed against the "heresy." At several councils
were the teachings rebuked, and condemned, until finally in A. D. 538,
Justinian had a law passed which declared that: "Whoever shall support
the mythical presentation of the pre-existence of the soul and the
consequently wonderful opinion of its return, let him be Anathema."
Speaking of the Jewish Kaballists, an authority states: "Like Origen and
other church Fathers, the Kaballists used as their main argument in
favor of the doctrine of metempsychosis, the justice of God."

But the doctrine of Reincarnation among Christian races did not die at
the orders and commands of the Christian Church Councils. Smouldering
under the blanket of opposition and persecution, it kept alive until
once more it could lift its flame toward Heaven. And even during its
suppression the careful student may see little flickers of the
flame--little wreathings of smoke--escaping here and there. Veiled in
mystic phrasing, and trimmed with poetic figure, many allusions may be
seen among the writings of the centuries. And during the past two
hundred years the revival in the subject has been constant, until at the
close of the Nineteenth Century, and the beginning of the Twentieth
Century, we once more find the doctrine openly preached and taught to
thousands of eager listeners and secretly held even by many orthodox
Christians.

CHAPTER V.

THE HINDUS.

While Reincarnation has been believed and taught in nearly every nation,
and among all races, in former or present times, still we are justified
in considering India as the natural Mother of the doctrine, inasmuch as
it has found an especially favorable spiritual and mental environment in
that land and among its people, the date of its birth there being lost
in the cloudiness of ancient history, but the tree of the teaching being
still in full flower and still bearing an abundance of fruit. As the
Hindus proudly claim, while the present dominant race was still in the
savage, cave-dwelling, stone-age stage of existence--and while even the
ancient Jewish people were beginning to place the foundation stones of
their religion, of which the present Christian religion is but an
offshoot--the great Hindu religious teachers and philosophers had long
since firmly established their philosophies and religions with the
doctrine of Reincarnation and its accompanying teachings, which had been
accepted as Truth by the great Ar