The Washington herald., 1914-09-20
LOST SOULS.
By DIR. W. w. BAKER.

1t is a great relief TO be set free by
the common sense of theosophIcal teach
ing from the awful nightmare Of the
doctrine of eternal damnation which is
still held by the more ignorant among
the Christians, who do not understand
the real meaning of certain phrases at
tributed in their gospels to their
Founder.
1t is true that God allows man to use
his free will. but only within certain
well-defined limits; II the man uses that
will well, those limits are quickly widen
ed, and more and more power over his
own destiny is given 10 him; but II he
uses that will for evil, he thereby IN
creases his limitations, so that while
his power for good is practically un-
bounded. because ii has in 1t the po-
tentiality Of infinite growth, his power
for evil is rigidly restricted.
The term lost SOUL is not well
chosen, for il is almost certain to be
misunderstood. and taken to imply much
more than il really means. In every
day parlance. the word soul is used
with vagueness, but on the whole IL is
generally supposed to denote the subtler
and more permanent part of man, SO
that to the man in the street to lose
ones soul means TO lose oneself, to DE
can never happen; therefore the express
sion is misleading. and a clear statement
of the facts which 1t somewhat mac
curately labels may be of use to stu
dents. OF such facts there seems to be
three classes; let us consider them one
by one.
l-Those souls who will drop out of
this evolution during a certain age of
the world. This dropping out is precisely
ErsVa
of which the Christ spoke as a very real
danger for some Of His unawakened hear
ers-the condemnation meaning merely
the decision that they are incapable as
yet OF the higher progress, but not imply
ing blame except in cases where opportu-
mites have been neglected. Theosophy
teaches us that men are all brothers, but
not that they are all equal. There are i'm
mense differences between them: they
have entered the human evolution at vari-
Gus periods, so that some are much older
souls than others, and they stand at
very different levels on the ladder of de-
velopment. The Older souls naturally
learn much more rapidly than the young
er, and so the distance between them
steadily increases, and eventually point
is reached where the conditions necessary
for t>e one type are entirely unsuitable
for the other.
We may obtain a useful working an
alogy by thinking of the children in a
class at school The teacher of the
class has a years work before him, to
prepare his boys for a certain examina-
tion. He parcels out the work-so much
for the first month, so much for the sec
ond, and so on, beginning Of course with
what is easiest and leading gradually up
TO what is more difficult. But the boys
are of various ages and capacities; some
learn rapidly and are in advance of the
average, while some lag behind.
A little later the teacher can already
clearly foresee that some of his boys
will certainly pass the examination, that
the chance of others is doubtful, and
that there are Yet others who are sure
to fail It would be quite reasonable II
he should say to these last:
We have now reached a stage when
the further work Of this class is use
less for you. You cannot possibly by any
effort attain the necessary standard in
time for the examination: the more ad-
vanced teaching which must now be
given to the others would be entirely
unsuited for you, and as you could not
understand it you would be not only
wasting your time, but would be a hind
rance to the rest Of the class 1t will
therefore be better for you at once to
transfer yourselves to the next class be-
low this, perfect yourselves there in the
preliminary lessons which you have not
yet thoroughly learned, and come back
to this level with next years class, when
you will be sure to pass with credit"
That is exactly what will be done dur
ing the age referred to. Those who can
not by any EFFORT reach the prescribed
goal in the time which remains will be
put back into a lower class, and II the
classroom doors are not yet open they
will wait in peace and happiness until
the appointed time. They may be de-
scribed as lost to US, lost to this par
ticular little wave of evolution to which
We belong; they are no longer 'men of
our year" as We say at college. But
they will very certainly be "men of the
next yeaT''-even leading men in 1t, be-
cause of the work that they have al
ready done and the experience that they
have already had.
Most Of these people fail because they
are too young for the class, although
they were too old to be put in the first
place into the class below.
But there is another large class vho
might succeed by determined effort but
fail for want Of that effort These ex
actly correspond to the boy who drops
behind his class not because he IN foo
young, but because he is too lazy to do,
his work. 1t Is to men of that class
that the Christ's exhortations were ad-
dresssd-msn who had the opportunity