ey conceived the idea of voluntary blood-sacrifice, and we read of
repeated occasions in which fanatical ones offered themselves freely
on the sacrificial altars as atonement for the sins of their people.
At length this contagion of sacrifice consummated in the idea that the
only Son of God Himself became a voluntary offering to pay the final
debt of transgression and set men free from death, that they might
have eternal life, which to them meant life in the physical body.

It is not at all possible that Jesus had any such idea of his mission.
He was far too illumined for that, even judging from the meager
accounts which we have of his life and message. But when the story of
his mission on earth came to be told and retold the idea of
blood-sacrifice as _payment_ for the privilege of physical virility,
so implanted in the race-thought from centuries of such belief, could
not die immediately, and thus it reaches us today adown the centuries
and is re-told (though we trust not believed) in most of the Christian
churches in this civilized century.

And yet there is an esoteric truth underlying this universal idea of
sacrifice, and when we come to this in a subsequent chapter, we will
better understand how and why it has persisted throughout the
centuries.

CHAPTER III

PRESENT-DAY CONDITIONS: THE COSMIC CAUSE

From the study of ancient sex-worship to our twentieth century systems
of religion; our scientific discoveries; our intellectual standards of
philosophy and social ethics; and above all, perhaps, our marvelous
commercial order, connecting, as it does, the entire globe, seems a
far cry; but it is only another link in a chain and fits into the past
as accurately and as inevitably as the morning follows the night.

There is an erroneous idea current that public institutions, such as
law-courts, religious creeds, educational systems, reform movements,
et cetera, are causes of race-advancement. As a matter of fact they
are not causes but results. They do not determine progress; they
reflect it.

Causes start from the Center and radiate outward. We may realize this
more readily if we will remember that if we throw a pebble into a pool
of water, it starts innumerable little waves which traveling outward,
reach a point some distance from the central source, and if we were to
see the outermost wavelet only, we might imagine that the disturbance
begins and ends far fr