eem them from a terror which they have long cast behind them, with
the superstition by which it was bred and cherished.

Let us pause to remark that Mrs. Besant quotes from _Paradise Lost_ its
magnificent description of Death. She appreciates at least the splendor
of the diction, but she does not notice how poor in comparison are the
words she quotes from her "Masters." How is it that Milton beats the
Mahatmas? What objects they look when the great English poet rises "with
his singing robes about him"! How thin their music when he strikes upon
his thrilling lyre, or blows his rousing trumpet, or rolls from his
mighty organ the floods of entrancing harmony!

But to return to the main subject. It is absurd, as Mrs. Besant points
out, to claim for Christianity that it "brought life and immortality
to light." The belief in a future life was an intense conviction--or,
perhaps we should say, a perfect truism--among the people of ancient
India and Egypt. Yet here again, with her taste for dogmatic rhetoric,
Mrs. Besant gratuitously exaggerates. "The whole ancient world," she
says, "basked in the full sunshine of belief in the immortality of man,
lived in it daily, voiced it in their literature, and went with it in
calm serenity through the gate of Death." Now "calm serenity" is bad
tautology, and the general assertion of this passage is equally open
to censure. "The whole ancient world," as the Americans would say, is a
large order. Greece and Rome (to say nothing of the pre-Maccabean Jews)
were very important parts of "the whole ancient world," and whoever
asserts that _their_ citizens "basked in the sunshine of belief in
immortality" is simply making a confession of ignorance. Greek and Roman
poets and philosophers in many cases doubted, or even denied, a life
beyond the grave. Even when the doctrine was entertained it does not
appear to have been productive of much "sunshine." Does not the poet
make the shade of the great Achilles say that he would rather be the
veriest day-drudge on earth than command all the armies of the ghosts
in the cold pale realm of the dead? We do not ignore, on the other hand,
the Islands of the Blest; we are only objecting to Mrs. Besant's loose
and sweeping assertions, which prove very clearly that her new "faith"
is not remarkable in the cultivation of accuracy.

With regard to man--the _entire_ human being, mortal and immortal--Mrs.
Besant remarks that "un-instructed Christians" chop him into