tending by a swifter course towards perfection, while others, again, follow close at hand, and some, again, a long way behind.”

He also says:  “Those who, departing this life in virtue of that death which is common to all, are arranged in conformity with their actions and deserts—­according as they shall be deemed worthy—­some in the place called the ‘infernus,’ others in the bosom of Abraham, and in different localities or mansions.  So also from these places, as if dying there, if the expression can be used, they come down from the ‘upper world’ to this ‘hell.’  For that ‘hell’ to which the souls of the dead are conducted from this world is, I believe, on account of this destruction, called ‘the lower hell.’  Everyone accordingly of those who descend to the earth is, according to his deserts, or agreeably to the position that he occupied there, ordained to be born in this world in a different country, or among a different nation, or in a different mode of life, or surrounded by infirmities of a different kind, or to be descended from religious parents, or parents who are not religious; so that it may sometimes happen that an Israelite descends among the Scythians, and a poor Egyptian is brought down to Judea.” (Origen against Celsus.)

Can you doubt, after reading the above quotation that Metempsychosis, Re-incarnation or Re-birth and Karma was held and taught as a true doctrine by the Fathers of the Early Christian Church?  Can you not see that imbedded in the very bosom of the Early Church were the twin-doctrine of Re-incarnation and Karma.  Then why persist in treating it as a thing imported from India, Egypt or Persia to disturb the peaceful slumber of the Christian Church?  It is but the return home of a part of the original Inner Doctrine—­so long an outcast from the home of its childhood.

The Teaching was rendered an outlaw by certain influences in the Church in the Sixth Century.  The Second Council of Constantinople (A.D. 553) condemned it as a heresy, and from that time official Christianity frowned upon it, and drove it out by sword, stake and prison cell.  The light was kept burning for many years, however, by that sect so persecuted by the Church—­the Albigenses—­who furnished hundreds of martyrs to the tyranny of the Church authorities, by reason of their clinging faith to the Inner Teachings of the Church concerning Reincarnation and Karma.

Smothered by the pall of superstition that descended like a dense cloud over Europe in the Middle Ages, the Truth has nevertheless survived, and, after many fitful attempts to again burst out into flame, has at last, in this glorious Twentieth Century, managed to again show forth its light and heat to the world, bringing back Christianity to the original conceptions of those glorious minds of the Early Church.  Once more returned to its own, the Truth will move forward, brushing from its path all the petty objections and obstacles that held it captive for so many centuries.