The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-08-19

sees around him, but it is not custom
 ary, in the west, at least, to give to this law an eXtentensiye application. Kar-
 ma say they. or causatiOn, is as univer-
 sal as time or space. It pervades not
 only the physical but the moral and
 spiritual world as we'll and it is in its
 latter aspects that it is of far greater importance. Men are beginning to
 learn in way that their physical ills for instapce, colds. fevers and the like are readily traceable to certain acts of
 their own; that a long sickness in 1905
 say was nothing more than the effect
 of protracted period of dissipation or
 oVerwork, begun, perhaps, in 1900, and
 was not at all a mysterious visitation
 of Providence. But the law of K&rma
 goes much further than this. It says 1 that the law of cause and effect is of worldwide application. There can be no
 cause whatever without an effect, nor effect without cause. Thus every thought of our mind, every act of our body, has its cause and will in turn be a cause. Every thought, no matter
 how faintIy formulated or how Vehemently; every desire, be it plainly obvious or skilfuIly concealed in con- sciousness; every single aspiration will
 have it's individual effect on ones self. And that one to-day is nothing other than the sum of the thoughts, de-
 sires and aspirations of ones past.
 And this leads into that other broad doctrine which the Vedantist shares with so many millions of Orientals, that of reincarnation. In the West little is known of this principle except
 in an academic way, yet Vedantists say it will bear much study. Many of the gest scientific minds of the west ! have accepted it. Professor Huxley, ! with his usual studied scientific con-
 seryatism of statement, said there was
 nothing inherently absurd in it.
 This is no place for a discussion of it,
 but it Is nothing more. Vedanta, than a logical outworking of the law of causation. Cause and effect are equal. If one learns that projectile of a
 given weight has travelled through the
 air ten miles, one can calculate to a
 nicety the quantity of explosive which gave it it's impetus. Both terms of an
 equation must be equal. There is no escape. The law is abolute. If man is
 immortal and is to continue for an in- finite time to come, he must have been in existence for an infinite past time, else there is an equation which does not balance. Some human beings live one hundred years, others only a few days The average life is only thirty five years. Vedanata says it is viola tion of all knowledge of the law to as- sume that such an ephemeral existence, such a fieeting, evanescent cause, could produce an infinite effect Ex nihilo nihil fit. One cannot shoot 12-inch shell from a toy pistol.
 More than one-half of the civilized people of the world believe in rein carnation, and have so believed for a time far ante~dating the Christian era, For thousands of years the sages of India have applied their powers of in- tellect to these matters and they have concluded, as Vedanta, teaches, that reincarnation is the most logical ex- planation of the riddle of life. Vedan- lists do not ask one to belive it blind ly. They have no dogmas, They sug- gest merely to any one who is interest ed in these matters that it be studied.
 Understanding these great basic facts of Karma and reincaranation as under l stood by them, one can better appreci. ate the great teachings of Vedanta.
 That each man has soul which is potentially divine.
 That this soul had no beginning and will have no ending
 That it is now and always has been a part of the Infinite Spirit of the uni- verse.
 That the destiny of man is to mani- fest this infinite nature which is within him, and that this is what all are are struggling to do, whether they are con- scoiu of it or not.
 That there is no such thing as sin, so- called. One makes mistakes, they say, but only through ignorance, and even these are often valuable and beneficent. Adversity is accounted a better teacher than prosperity.
 That all these petty doings of men, whether it be piling up $1,OOO, 900, 900 or the streets, or editing a newspaper, are only part of the diversified curriculum of this great earth university, the many lessons which all must learn, whether it take one life or thousand, before | passing on to other things, and ultimately coming closer and closer to that eternal verity, which is ones sel. l. vo,,I-