Once the faith is grasped that life between birth and death is only a tiny fragment of the æons allotted to us, in which to develop spiritually, divine harmony; love and justice reappear. Only thus can one see light. But if the tardy growth of this all-sufficient illumination is slow to take root, it must be remembered that to the ordinary, well-to-do person it makes no appeal.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" is generally answered in the negative, and the hypocritical rejoinder, covering a mountain of selfishness, that it is an impertinence to pry into the lives of the poor, is the facile excuse for sitting at ease and cozening the conscience into the belief that the poor are God's affair. Even the devout and pious, who may feel deep compassion for the sorrow of the destitute, have no spur to prick their mental apathy, unless they mix freely and constantly with the poor and oppressed. Only then will come the perplexed question: Where can I see in all this overwhelming misery the Divine hand of love and justice?
The Christ who established his Brotherhood with us, by proclaiming God the Universal Father, told us that "Before Abraham was, I am," and I suppose that most people, who accept anything, accept the pre-existence of Christ. Yet how few of us can remember anything of our own past lives, and how merciful it is that we cannot. How utterly overwhelming such memory would be! The future is as carefully hidden from us as the past, yet our previous lives have been by no means unfruitful.
The experiences we have gathered in the past years of this life are nearly all forgotten, yet our development has gone on, and the records are stored in the subconsciousness, sometimes to be pulled across the threshold and displayed in a complete panorama before the dying eyes. The statements to this effect made by those who have been resuscitated when at the point of death by drowning, are too numerous to be discarded as mere fables.
Undoubtedly we all contain the germs of sin at birth, but few educated people now accept the statements that we are born sinful because our parents sinned, or because of the moral delinquencies of those of Eden. Certainly we all bear the consequences of others' sins, but the cruel injustice of a God who deliberately punishes present humanity for the sins of past humanity is too revolting a conception of the Creator to gain acceptance to-day.