Connecticut western news., 1893-10-26

woman by the name of Mme. Blavat- sky, but the oarswoman now is Annie Besant. So many are getting aboard the boat it is worthy of examination, both because of the safety of those who have entered it and because we ourselves arc invited to get in.
 Its theory is that everything is God. Horse and star and tree and man are parts of God. We have three souls-an animal soul, a human soul, spiritual soul.r The animal soul becomes, after awhile, a wandering thing, trying to ex- press itself through mediums. It enters beasts or enters 8 human being, and when you find an effeminate man 1t is because Q woman's soul has got into the man, and when you find a masculine woman it is because @ mans soul has taken possession of Q womans body.
 If you find woman has become a platform speaker and likes politics, she is possessed by dead politician, who 40 years ago made the platform quake. The soul keeps wandering on and on, and may have 50 or innumer- able different forms, and finally is absorbed in God. It was God at the start and will be God at the last. But who gives the authority for the truth of sucha religion? Some beings living in a cave in central Asia. They are invisible to the naked eye, but they cross conti- nents and seas in flash.
 My Baptist brother Dr. Haldeman says that theosophist in New York was wis., tied by one of these mysterious beings from central Asia. The gentleman knew it from the fact that the mysterious be- ing left his pocket handkerchief, en- broidered with his name and Asiatic res idence. The most wonderful achieve ment of the theosophists is that they keep out of the insane asylum. They prove the truth of the statement that no religion ever announced was so absurd but it gained disciples.
 Societies in the United States and Eng land and other lands have been estab- lished for the promulgation of theosophy. Instead of needing the revelation of a Bible you can have these spirits from a cave in central Asia to tell you all you ought to know, and after you leave this life you may become prima donna, or robin, or a gazelle, or a.sot, or prize fighter, or a Herod, or Q Jezebel, and so be enabled to have great variety of experience, rotating through the uni verse, now rising, now falling, now shot out in 8 straight line and now de- scribing parabola, and, on and on, and up and up, and down and down, and round and round. Don't you see? Now, that theosophic lifeboat has been launched. It proposes to take you off the rough seq of doubt into everlasting quietude. How do you like the lifeboati My opinion is you had better initiate the mariners of my text and cut off the ropes of that boat and let her fall off.
 BOAT THAT LEAKS.
 Another lifeboat tempting us to enter is made up of many blanks of good works. It is really beautiful boat almsgiying, practical sympathies for human suffering, righteous words and righteous deeds. must admit like the looks of the prov, and of the rowlocks and of the paddles, and of the steering gear, and of many who are thinking to trust themselves on her benches. But the trouble about that lifeboat is it leaks. I never knew man yet good enough to earn heaven by his virtues or generosi- ties.
 If there be one person here present on this blessed Sabbath all of whose thoughts have been always right, all of whose actions have always been right, and all of whose words have always been right, Jet him stand up, or if already stand ing let him lift his hand, and I will know that he lies. Paul had it about right when he said, S"By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified" David had it about right when he said, "There is none that doeth good, no not one."
 The old book had it about right when it said, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" Let man get off that little steamer called The Maid of the Mist, which sails up to the foot of Niagara falls, and then climb to the top of the falls on the descending floods, for he. can do it easier than any man ever will be able to climb to heaven by his good works.
 If your thoughts have always been ex- actly right, and your words exactly IlSub3 dlll JOul uCCQo always cAdCblH right, you can go up to the gate of heav- en, and you need not even knock for ad- mittance, but open it yourself and push the angels out of your way and go up and take one of the front seats. But you would be so unlike any one else that has gone up from this world that you would be curiosity in heaven and more fit for heavenly museum than for a place where the inhabitants could look at you free of charge.
 No, sir, I, admire your good works, end that lifeboat you are thinking of trusting in is handsomer than any yawl or pinnace or yacht or cutter that ever sped out of boathouse or hoisted sail for race. But she leaks. Trust your soul in that, and you will go to to the bottom. She leaks. So I initiate the mariners of the text, and with cutlass strike the ropes of tho boat and let her fall off.
 Another ifeboat is Christian Incon- sistencies. The blanks of this boat are composed of the split blanks of ship wreoks. That prow is made out of hy- pocrisy from tho life of man who pro- fessed one thing and really was another. One oar of this lifeboat was the false hood of a church member, and the other oar was the wickedness of some minister of the gospel, whose iniquities were not for long while found out. Not one plank from the oak of Gods eternal truth in all that lfeboat. All the blanks, by universal admission, are decayed and crumbling and fallen apart and rotten and ready to sink.
 "Well, well," you say, "no one will want to get into that lifeboat." Oh, my friend, you are mistaken. That Is the most popular lifeboat ever constructed. That is the most popular lifeboat ever launched. Millions of people want to get into it. They jostle each other to get the best seat in the boat. You could not keep them back though you stood at the gunwales with @ club, as on our ship Greece in a hurricane, and the steerage m econ cyoru xyora 6ofar,piro1 +n co,,,a ,,x~