f better ones, we
shall no longer be astonished at finding that any particular
Messenger, in his compassion for the humanity he has to enlighten and
to direct to the ancient, eternal Source of Truth, has clothed himself
with a body of flesh the ancestry of which was far from being adapted
to the expression of his lofty faculties; courageous Souls are well
able to put on the robe of pain and to submit to slander and calumny
when the world's salvation can only be achieved at such a cost. We
know scarcely anything of the conditions that control the return to
earth of the Avataras, the "Sons of God," except that sometimes great
Initiates, after purifying their bodies, voluntarily hand them over to
the "gods," who come down to earth--a sublime sacrifice which, like
that of the Saviours who consent to come amongst us, shows forth that
supreme characteristic of divinity; the gift of oneself.

Nor is heredity always realised; many a physical characteristic is not
reproduced; in families tainted with dangerous physiological defects,
many children escape the evil, and the diseased tendencies of the
tissues remain latent in them, although they often afflict their
descendants. On the other hand, as already stated, extremely divergent
mental types are often met with in the same family, and many a
virtuous parent is torn with grief on seeing the vicious tendencies of
his child. Here, as elsewhere, the hand of Providence, as Christianity
calls it--the Intelligence that brings about evolution, the Justice
that controls and the Love that animates it--the hand of God or of
those who, having become divine, collaborate in the divine plan, comes
to make up for the imperfection of the vehicles, and they permit only
what is necessary to come to each one--only what he has deserved, as
is generally said: this hand can create a physical or a psychic malady
even where heredity and environment could not supply it, just as it
can preserve a pure soul from the moral infection of the surroundings
into which it is thrown.[76] This is the reason we find that heredity
and environment either fail to fulfil their promise or else give what
was not their's to give.

OBJECTION.

Reincarnation is not necessary, it has been alleged; the soul's
evolution is continued after death in the invisible worlds in finer
bodies; consequently it is needless to return to the denser bodies of
earth.

In our opinion, the trials of life, so exhausting to the will, must