o speculative question can supply the
missing link. Very likely the accepted Christian doctrine of the
finality of life after death has given Theosophy an opportunity in the
West. Protestantism particularly has allowed absolutely no place after
death for repentance, has offered no new chance to the adventuring soul;
its Hell and its Heaven have been final states. Catholicism has eased
the strain of this with purgatory, a belief wholly without Scriptural
basis, but nevertheless evolved in answer to great necessities of life.
We need neither purgatory nor reincarnation; we need only the
recognition of what is so centrally a part of any conception of
immortality as to make one wonder why we have so greatly missed it; the
reasonable confidence, that is, that we really go on very much as we
left off here.

If there be in a future existence--and there must be if there be a
future existence--any room for repentance born of a clearer recognition
of fault and new and holier purposes born of a clearer understanding of
the true values of life, then we shall go on in a truly moral process of
growth, availing ourselves always of the teachings of experience and
working toward the true well-being of our souls, and if the mercy and
justice of God be not the figment of our imagination those who have been
hardly dealt with here will be given new opportunity, the deficient and
the handicapped released from what weighed them down will find a new
departure, and the justices of eternity complete what time began. All
this will be accomplished not in a series of existences, separated one
from the other by abysms of forgetfulness, but in a remembered
continuity of life deepening through endless growth. If this be only
faith and speculation it is at least a far more reasonable faith and
speculation than the alternative which Theosophy offers. Theosophy is a
side issue in the real solution of the problems of life.

_Pantheism at Its Best--and Its Worst_

Finally, though this is possibly unfair, Eastern Pantheism generally
must be tested by its fruits. We ought not, if we are to deal justly
with it, to ignore its better side. The East at its best has been strong
in a type of life wanting in the West; the East has been rich in
patience and gentleness and in consideration for every kind of life,
even the ant in the dust or the beast in the jungle. The East at its
best has weighed conduct in delicate balances and traced the play of
cause and eff