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within the transformed soul; and in no case is it a repetition firom the "old seed after its kind". Hence it is, that the new order of spiritual life appearing in the West so diverse in its manifestation to that of the East, is scarcely comprehended by the latter, in the light as I have shown it. In the Hebrew Record we read that the young Sampson "as yet, knew not his strength". Neither, as yet, is the spiritual power of the child of the Occident known or comprehended by his elder Brother of the Orient. Will the Brothers of the Orient take to the stripling by recognising him as the "Heir of the Inheritance," and send down a little of the hoarded stores to nature the new-born life in the valley below?
The Theosophist admits that notwithstanding the vantage ground of the possession of ancient stores of occult knowledge the Oriental system has, from time to time, declined: and in spite of repeated revivals at different epochs, every effort to restore it to the traditional pristine glory of the Golden Age has failed.*[1]
Now assuming that one section of the Brothers succeed in resuscitating their order on the old lines, what security can we have that, at best, it would be but a sprouting out from the decaying trunk of the old tree of knowledge: as is proved by the history of the past.
The ancient Hindu, Brahminical, Buddhistic, Egyptain, Hebrew or Arabic, Christian and Mahomedan systems are mere variations from the same stock, and all of which were best at their beginnings. How comes it, that notwithstanding the more immediate presence, influence, and tutelage of the
- ↑ * We beg to be permitted to emphatically deny the statement. Neither the Theosophist—i..e., its editor nor any one of the Founders, has ever admitted anything of the sort about the "Oriental System," whatever some of its contributors may have remarked upon the sabject. If it has degenerated among its votaries in India (a fact due entirely to the cunning of its dead letter interpretation by the modern orthodox Brahmin who has lost the key to it) it flourishes as high as ever in the Himalayan retreats, in the ashrum of the initiated Brahmin, and in all the "pristine glory of the Golden Age."—Ed.
