<Jhe Golden Age

Volume VII                        Brooklyn, N.Y., Wednesday, May 19, 1926                         Number 174

The Yellow Pope By 0. L. Rosenkrans, Jr.

WE ALL know that Pius XI claims to be, as vicegerent of God, the legitimate spiritual head of Christendom; but not everyone is aware that he has an Asiatic counterpart who receives homage from more millions of devout adherents than does he whose insignia are the keys of Peter. We allude to the supreme pontiff of northern Buddhadom, whose title “Ocean Priest” arrogates an authority as “wide as the ocean”.

Indeed, he is held in the profoundest reverence by the adoring laity, especially in Thibet and Mongolia, who credit him with godlike attributes of omnipotence and. omniscience. They imagine that nothing transpires the world over without his cognizance, and that the regular processes of nature may be abrogated at his behest, so that rivers may be caused to run upstream and barren hills become suddenly en~ forested. This is a more ambitious tax on secular credulity than even the Roman pope’s pretensions to infallibility'

Of course the more sophisticated Buddhist priesthood are discreetly skeptical of these preposterous assumptions, cherishing no such grandiose illusions concerning their pontiff; but they are careful not to disabuse the lay mind of its fallacies lest they weaken their own prestige. The Dalai Lama docs not claim to exercise his authority as God's vicegerent; for Buddhism concurs with Western Modernism in discerning no particular necessity for a divine creator, establishing its cosmology on evolution.

Still, though abjuring God, Buddhism is prolific in gods; so it proclaims its pope a god, a veritable incarnation of the Buddh, or, more specifically, of Amitabha, his Ethereal Substance, of whom more anon. Strange to relate, in supposedly enlightened Christian Europe and America, the “Yellow Pope" has scores of ardent proselytes, enthusiastically eager to concede his most extravagant pretensions—which

duced his admiration during his exile in India, and which he has been trying to introduce into Thibet since his reinstatement by the president of China in 1912. Innovations of all kinds are looked on with askance in this land of Living Buddhas and reincarnated saints.

The Thibetan Vatican

THE official residence of the Dalai Lama is the -*■ Potala, or Citadel of Lhassa, a truly imposing edifice with lofty walls and grand architectural lines, bold in outline and design; standing upon a hill west of the city, which it dominates together with the surrounding countryside. It is admittedly striking in appearance; its towering gray-white buttressed walls being pierced by innumerable windows; immense flights of steps ascending to the narrow doorways, dotted with the figures of lamas in dark red robes, going up and down. In contrast with the whitish general structure is the central temple-portion, madder red in hue.

The interior is at variance with the outward sublimity, consisting of a labyrinth of tortuous, dimly-lighted passages and halls, narrow stairways and rows of diminutive cells, with only a few^T spacious domed chambers, the sepulchers of defunct pontiffs whose images stand herein. The vaults are reputed to be the repository of incalculable treasures in golden, silver and brass images of the Buddhs, besides great stores of golden butter-lamps.

The Potala is an ominous, awe-inspiring place within whose precincts lurk impenetrable mysteries. It is a nest of plots and counterplots, a spider’s lair for unsuspecting prey to' occult practices; a tomb for living dead, the scene of nameless crimes and hideous cruelties.

One might designate the Potala the Vatican of Lamaism, within 'whose red temple-portion is situated the official residence of the pontiff; though lie has, in addition, a. private palace, the Norbulinga, one mile farther west. His favorite promenade is on the flat roof, ornamented with golden spires, whence he may enjoy a panorama of the park-like landscape of groves and meadows encircled by the snow-peaked mountain chains.

To the southward winds and twists the manychanneled Kyi-chhu, the “River of Delight”, amid groves of willow and poplar. Spanning an ancient dry-bed of this stream is the Yutok Sampa, or “Torquoise Bridge”, an appellation allusive of its roof of blue-green tiles.

To the east is the city of Lhassa, a huddle ofi flat-roofed, two-storied houses, built around court-yards and narrow, filthy lanes. Egress to the city is gained from the west through the Pargo-Kaling, a picturesque chorten, or relic shrine, with a gateway in its base. These names fall flat on Western ears, but to the visitor from TJrga or Tali-fu they are as replete in sacred historic associations and as suggestive of sanctity as St. Angelo or the yellow Tiber to the Jubilee Centennial pilgrim.

Lhassa— The Rome of the East

LHASSA is mediaeval in its plan, with only two wide streets, one of vdiich environs the outskirts, the other, the Parkor-ling, or “Sacred Road”, enclosing the “Holy Square”, the civic center, ■wherein are situated the offices of the chdl government and also the renowned Jo-Khang Cathedral, the St. Peter’s of Lhassa, a mecca of pilgrimage from all over Northern Buddhadom.

The pilgrims perform a daily circumambula-tion of the Sacred Road, hoping thereby to insure themselves a felicitous transmigration and to escape the progressive sequences of hells through which the most sinful souls must pass.

Some in expiation of extraordinary flagitiousness cover the entire journey from their homes by what is termed “prostration-walking”, i. e., by alternate standing and lying-down, thus measuring the entire distance with their bodies. Lucidly there is no motor-traffic on Thibetan highways!    ’

The circumambulation is a cheerful rite, accompanied by dancing and the jingling of strings of bells, with frequent pauses to touch off fire-crackers. Reminiscent of repulsive accessories of the Catholic shrines are the swarms of cripples and beggars, and jostling venders ofi relics and charms, hanging about the stalls' which deal in sacred wares.

Looking westward the pontiff may direct his gaze toward Drepung Monastery, the most considerable gompo in Thibet, housing 10,000 inmates, the implacable rival of Sera, to the north, between whose ruffianly bands of “Temple Guardians”—illiterate monks who fail to pass their examinations—pitched battles sometimes take place.

During the Log-g-Ssar, the New Year Festival—one of the three principal ones—which symbolizes both the annual solar victory over winter and the polemical triumph of Sakiyamuni over six heretic teachers, monks from adjacent gom-pos crowd into Lhassa to mingle with the great throng of pilgrims, and aggravate the confusion by their drunken brawls. Monastic discipline is relaxed for the occasion, and no restrictions are placed on the sale of beer and arrack; so lawlessness is rife.

A Paradise for Priests

THOUGH Lhassa has neither police nor street-lighting, it has a curfew at 8:30 o’clock wliich is announced by exploding a giant fire-cracker at each corner of the Holy Square. On February 16th each year the two civil mayorjudges ceremoniously abnegate their authority to ecclesiastical ‘‘lords of misrule” for two weeks. The festival is a time of spiritual and spiritous exaltation and of public rejoicing, and is the harvest season for the townspeople, when business is brisk.

The Pakor-ling is sprinkled with sand to protect pious soles from pollution, and is traversed daily by pageants and processions. The normal population of the capital is quintupled for the nonce by the host of devotees and of sanctimonious holiness-fakirs who come to prey on them. There are many other centers of pilgrimage in Thibet, besides the Holy City, to shrines of departed saints and localities venerated as the abodes of Bodhisattvas in antiquity.

There is no preaching in Buddhadom, for public expounding of their doctrine is foreign to Buddhist notions; indeed, the Dalai Lama enjoys the unique distinction of being the only preacher in Thibet ; but it is not an onerous duty considering that he preaches only one annual sermon from a pulpit in Lhassa, which is the sole one in his domain.

The pontiff’s, elevated promenade is doubtless a splendid post of observation to appraise the flow of travel to and from his capital. He notes caravans from Mongolia, strings of hairy, two-humped camels with their swaying loads and sheep skin-clad drivers; or long pack-trains of yaks and sheep laden with wool and borax, in which the great religious houses habitually traffic. Soldiers, travelers and couriers, are intermittently arriving and departing.

Two miles off in the southwest is a hill crowned with a gigantic urn, in which devotees of means acquire merit by burning incense. This is an act of devotion performed vicariously; for coolies are sent to make the arduous climb, while their masters recline at ease and reap the spiritual profit.

On the east side of the capital, along the encircling outer-street, are rude hovels, constructed of horns and mud; the accursed habitations of despised outcasts, corpse-cutters and thieves, who retaliate on their contemners by criminal predaciousness. The profession of corpse-cutting is a necessity in Thibet, where the dead are not interred, being cremated by the wealthy but exposed by common people to the dogs and ravens. The corpse must be dismembered to facilitate a speedy disposal of it by the carrion-creatures. In the rarified atmosphere the custom is not so unhygienic as it would be in more humid climes.

A Forbidden and Forbidding Land

FROM his lofty perch it must almost seem to the pontiff that he is esconced on the roof of the Avorld. However, the Lhassa plain is not the highest part of the plateau, being only some 12,000 feet in altitude, whereas the Chang-tang basin is 17,000 feet and the spacious Kampa plain 15,000. But Thibet itself constitutes the most extensive elevated area in Asia—the greatest land mass on the globe—and is intersected by towering mountain ranges whose peaks not infrequently exceed 20,000 feet.

Thibet is a country difficult of access and vexatious to traverse, consisting of flat-bottomed basins of varying altitudes, separated by steep mountain walls which the travelei- is continually climbing up and down. It is rendered virtually impenetrable on the south by the dizzy Himalayas, and isolated from contact with the west and north by vast reaches of steppe and desert.

These natural barriers have conduced to discourage outside intrusion, and have been reinforced by barriers of religious prejudice; accordingly, for ages Thibet has deserved its epithet of the “Forbidden Land”, a region enveloped in mystery and fabled enchantments, where gods are a corporeal reality and the miracles performed by holy men are familiar in current life; a country whose inhabitants, obsessed with an inoppugnable conviction of their superior xnctity, are supremely indifferent to> the world outside, and rigorous in their exclusion of foreigners. They have shunned all intercourse with strangers who were not co-re-Hgionists, and few of the latter have had the temerity to test their reputation for inhospitality, and expose themselves to the risk of diabolical tortures.

So Thibet has remained to the outside world an unknown quantity, being too poor to tempt any serious interruption of its holy serenity by rapacious neighbors, and no rumors percolating out of “lodes” to incite a headlong rush of gold-seekers. But to the natives and to Buddhadom at large the country’s fame transcends such carnal considerations; for it is esteemed a holy land, hallowed by manifold saintly memories, a superlatively precious soil which it were profanation for the feet of unbelievers to tread upon. Is it not, moreover, the roof to Agharti, the subterranean realm of Brahytma, unsuspected arch-king of the nations, who regulates all their public affairs through occult influence over their leaders?

Dreary Wind-Swept Solitudes

Topographically, Thibet has little to attract the tourist, accustomed to viewing cheerful and inspiring scenery without sacrificing modern comforts and luxuries. Its general aspect is barrenness, mostly devoid of trees, much of it semi-arid, and the remainder sheer desert.

On account of the high altitude, combined with a sub-tropical latitude, the extremes of temperature are sudden and severe, alternating frigid nights with sweltering days. Especially is this noticeable in winter, when the daily variation is sometimes as much as 150°. The thin air precludes heat radiation, so that at midday when the naked skin blisters under the vertical solar rays, tea will freeze into blocks of ice indoors, in the sparingly heated houses.

The Ocean Lama’s domain is characterized by tremendous solitudes, swept by piercing winds which from some yet undetermined cause rise with clock-like regularity in the afternoon and subside toward evening; and by appalling loneliness, the vast untenanted spaces only revealing at rare intervals the existence of human life, where little groups of stone huts, unsheltered by groves or orchards from the bitter blasts, afford refuge to separated communities.

In winter even these hamlets are hidden under a blanket of snow which virtually cuts off outside communications from the benumbed, fever-racked denizens who, cowering over their meagre fires of yak’s dung, have their natural fears and worries aggravated by superstition. But their summers are more cheerful and less constrained; for they can then exchange their hut-life for golvngchas, black waterproof tents woven of yak’s hair, while they range about with their flocks and herds.

What Superstition Does to a Country .

THE larger towns are very few in number;

though in past times the country must have supported a much heavier population, as evinced in the numerous ruins of ancient cities and fort-alices. Every indication is that Thibet is both moribund and dcssicating, and must formerly have been more fertile and capable of furnishing sustenance to a denser population. The network of dry water-courses ’which intersect the plains proves tins; it is evident likewise in the steady recession of beaches of the treeless-margined lakes. It is a dying land, haunted by the specters of impending drought and depopulation..

As is to be expected in a thinly-settled territory, game abounds; cranes,' ducks, and other wild fowl, wild yaks, both white and black; and the vicious kiangs, or wild ponies that treacherously slink down on travelers to suddenly attack them with their teeth. Packs of ferocious half-domesticated dogs hang about the settlements to prey upon exposed corpses. The natives are debarred by religious scruples from using game for food, consequently the wild creatures multiply unmolested. The fresh-water lakes swarm with fishes, so wormy as to be inedible, according to some, reports; though they were an article of diet until prohibited by an edict of the present Dalai Lama—not on hygienic but on religious grounds!

Some of the villagers keep poultry, ostensibly to exercise the virtue of benevolence in caring for them; but the flesh is abhorred by the Buddhist as indescribably filthy, and to eat an egg is tantamount to sacrilege, and liable to frustrate the reincarnation of a Buddh. Still, it is said that the natives risk their salvation now and then, by slyly eating an egg!

. Inconsistently enough the Thibetans, who regard milk as excreta, undrinkable except for medicinal purposes, discern no impropriety in gorging themselves to repletion on beef and mutton. Nor have the lamas any repugnance to human blood, which they drink as a tonic. The lamas are even accused of ghoulishly devouring the putrid carcasses of victims of loathsome diseases which even the carrion birds and beasts possess discrimination enough to reject.

The Origin of Holy Candles

dp'HE natives are fond of frozen raw meat, but •i- their staple provisions are tsamba of'barley-meal and butter-tea! Tea is consumed in inordinate quantities, one consequence being the national peculiarity, coated tongues. It is not drunk from cups as a beverage, but mixed with tsa&iba and butter into a gruel; and it is etiquette to conclude by licking the bowl clean! Brick-tea is the variety in general use.

Sugar is a rare luxury, even among the opulent ; no sweets of any kind being partaken of to any appreciable extent; but the native partiality for butter is pronounced; and old, rancid butter is a delicacy reserved for the guest of' honor.

Butter is esteemed not simply as a viand; it has a superior sacerdotal function as the only fuel permissable in shrine-illmninations. Pious people donate sums of money to the temples to keep the butter-lamps aglow, and during festivals thousands of extra ones are lit before the images. In secular life the populace rises and retires with the sun, without lucernal aid; preparing their meals over fires of dried yak’s dung, which imparts a pungent flavor to the food. But prodigious sums are squandered by the wealthy on butter-lamp illuminations for the temples—as much, sometime’s, as $5,000 for a single night’s display! Sacred edifices suffer dilapidation for want of repairs, vrhile the departed saints are being entertained sumptuously.

This lavish expenditure for lucernal exhibitions parallels the Romanist candles; but the latter are unsuitable for Lamaist worship, butter alone being sanctioned as canonical, both for lighting and for decorative purposes in the temples. As decorations colored butter is moulded into the form of flowers and bas-reliefs, called forma. Imported candles are utilized in secular life by the wealthy, but never for sacred purposes ; tills were equivalent to blasphemy!

The Curse of a False Religion

OULD their illustrious potentate, as his subjects never doubt, dispatch his astral body on reconnoitering excursions, what an indictment of the system personified in himself must the invisible presence witness as it journeys about the realm, in the ubiquitous signs of national decadence! Here, as perhaps never elsewhere on the earth, has ecclesiasticism been granted full scope to experiment with human welfare and justify, if possible, its own existence.

Here for uncounted generations a devout and docile race has surrendered its will to clerical spiritual guides; and the sequel to it, instead of prosperity and enlightenment, is to convert the central table-land of Asia into a vast sepulchre of dead communities; an infirmary, psychopathic ward, and pauper asylum for the steadily diminishing survivors.

Throughout Thibet and Mongolia are spread the comeornitants of superstition, which are ignorance, depravity, squalor and disease. Even the livestock are said to be infected with anthrax and other diseases communicable to man, making their flesh unfit for human consumption; but there are no state veterinarians in Thibet to condemn diseased herds.

To travel in Thibet is to turn hack the pages of history a few centuries; to witness in our age of public schools, laboratories, gas and electricity, .the culture which obtained in Europe when “Mother Church” reigned supreme, which Mark Twain, epitomized in his “Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”.

Thibet is still in the feudal-castle age, and the djongs of military chieftains stand out in bold prominence on rocky eminences. A.haughty aristocracy lords it over an abject peasantry, and is abetted in its oppression by the church. The civil government is bankrupt and fain to recruit its finances by debasement of the currency. Officials embezzle public fluids and neglect public works. The only roads are prairie trails; one solitary wheeled-vehicle is to be found in all Thibet—a cart for parading idols in Lhassa!

Ecclesiasticism Gone to Seed

THE impoverished masses support a horde of unproductive priestly parasites in idleness, while themselves receiving scant proteo-tien from the government from organized brigandage, even the monks occasionally turning da ;oit and plundering lonely villages. Crip-plejj, .nd beggars swarm on every hand. Illiteracy is the rule, even among the majority of the clergy, very few of whom have any real acquaintance with their own sacred literature. All learning is monastic, and much of this ritualistic or occult lore. Inhuman tortures are a regular adjunct of judicial procedure in this holy land.

The traveling noble helps himself without remuneration to saddle or pack-animals from the peasants’ herds, and the latter have no redress when their property is lost or worked to death. He is counseled by his “ghostly comforters” to bear the loss with resignation; his reward will be hereafter in a reincarnation. Lamaism has hardly proved a beneficent institution; rather it has acted like a cancerous growth, eating out national vitality, substituting retrogression for progress, steeping the national spirit in a stupor of discouragement and apathy.

The Thibetan native bears in himself eloquent testimony to the baneful effects of untrammeled ecclesiastical rule. His bodily uncleanliness is proverbial, though palliated on the score of climate; because bathing is inexpedient in such a high altitude, and a greasy skin affords the only positive resistant to the searching winds. Poverty is a factor in unchanged garments emanating an “ancient and fishlike odor”, not agreeable to foreign nostrils.

Filth is a culture for disease; hence poor health is chronic, with every symptom of racial degeneration and corrupted blood manifesting itself in old and young.

Racial degeneracy betrays itself in native abnormalities, such as supernumerary fingers and toes (accounted for by Lamaist theurgies as demoniac gestatory experiments), hare-lips, webbed-toes, spinal curvature, displaced shoulder-blades, crooked legs, humpbacks, club-feet and malformed skulls. The toxin-laden blood of the natives shows itself in facial eruptions, contracted pupils and loose teeth; while the frequent cases of epilepsy and St. Vitus dance proclaim undisguisedly an almost universal syphilitic pollution. Rheumatism is a common complaint, and goitre likewise, owing to the distance inland from the sea.

The Effect .of Clergy Rule

AMAITE medical practice represents approximately the same rudimentary stage as mediaeval therapeutics. Silver caps are hammered over decayed teeth, without any attempt made to clean out the cavities. In amputations no bones are sawed or arteries tied, but the limb is simply and rudely hacked off; and ordinarily the patient succumbs. Victims of hernia have no relief except from coarse belts which fail to prevent swellings.

The unfailing panacea for illness is exorcism. On the principle that demons enter human beings to assuage a craving for blood, the lamas repeat incantations to entice the pestilent spirit out of the sick person and into some other creature, usually a dog or cat, which is tied nearby. The unfortunate victim of this barbaric superstition is then buried alive at a crossroads, or if none is convenient, a small cross of sticks is erected over it.

How reminiscent this is of raw-rat. poultices for the plague in 14th Century Europe, or of the mediaeval practice of hanging a patient up by one leg and putting out an eye to let the fever drain out of him I The lamas treat cases of convulsions with hot irons, much as ill-informed veterinarians used to “fire” a horse for weak tendons.

For certain of the people’s infirmities their vices are directly responsible, and the latter are attributable to the practice of polyandry. The population is disproportionately male, the ratio being about 15 to T. The probable explanation is that femininedom, aware of the enhancement of its own prestige by polyandry, exerts less care to preserve its female than Its male offspring.

The tragic consequence is to condemn a large percentage of the men to involuntary wifelessness, provoking solitary vices among them, with debilitating reactions of nervous depression and timorousness amounting to pusillanimity. Their uneasiness in the presence of a stranger is extreme; they will scurry awmy from a chance encounter, or stand trembling and stammering, with jerking limbs and twitching features, avoiding his gaze. On the other hand, when they imagine they have the advantage, they are prompt to bully and bluster; but quickly subside into abjectness before a firm demeanor.

The national pooja, or obeisance to a superior, outwardly manifests the inward abasement of spirit; it is a prostration on all fours with, the tongue distended full length. The women are bolder and are more independent than the men; but themselves, owing to abuse of the marital relation, are prone to melancholia which often drives them to suicide.

A Hopeless Sex Muddle

J NEWT ABLY a people in the thrall of hunger, fear, and misery will be morally of inferior calibre; accordingly mendacity, dishonesty, treachery, cowardice and cruelty are salient defects in Thibetan character. Redeeming traits are habitual cheerfulness and a congenital obtuseness to suffering, which in a measure extenuates their unsympathetic natures.

The women doubtless owe their superior reputation over the men for frankness and courage to the quite unusual consideration they receive from Asiatics. Here there is no fernale seclusion or slavish concession of male preeminence; the women appreciates her own value and exacts male homage; she participates freely in public life and has her own way to a marked extent. She is not the weaker sex in Thibet; neither is she prepossessing from a. European standpoint, and exaggerates her natural uncomeliness by smearing black ointment on her countenance to avert skin-cracking in the rar-ifted air.

The national dark complexions are said to be really artificial and due to the life-long innocence of facial ablutions; when subjected-to soap and water a startling transformation ensues into almost European paleness. Similarly the Middle Ages held personal cleanliness in low esteem as an outlandish un-Christian custom, a snare of the arch-fiend, peculiar to followers of the Black Mahound.

Polyandry is a legal institution endorsed by the Thibetan church. It is a logical sequence to the Lamaite conviction that celibacy is the pure, godly condition, and that matrimony is intrinsically disreputable, representing a base surrendsr to the carnal appetite. So, likewise, Roman monachicism deplored this indulgence of human frailty. In effect, polyandry is a species of communal marriage whereby the bride, within certain limitations, espouses all her brothers-in-law.

The custom is regulated by a complicated code which tends to hedge in marriage with many vexatious and arbitrary restrictions, bringing it completely under clerical control. Obviously, idealization of the sex-relationship which monogamy fosters is absent in Thibet, 'True love” being scandalous fallacy from the lamas’ viewpoint, and marriage only tolerated as a regrettable necessity in order to provide a perennial crop of neophytes.

Divorces are difficult, though not absolutely unobtainable if the parties concerned are possessed of worldly goods. Cases of irreconcilable incompatability are then disposed of by a tripartite division of the property among the wife, husband, and monastery—the same as though our divorce courts should claim one-third of the litigants’ estate as court fees!

The Nobility and “Uppah. Clawses”

INDIAN caste does not obtain in Buddhist

Thibet, the same being repugnant to the spirit of Siddhartha’s teaching, who proclaimed that “there is no caste in blood, which runneth of one hue; nor caste in tears, which trickle salt for all!” Nevertheless, ecclesiasticism here as in Europe has contrived to conform its religion to a feudal gradation of ranks. There is an upper class of forty leading families, and a “lesser noblesse” of two hundred families, resting upon the masses of peasantry and petty traders; and beneath these is a substratum of outcasts, butchers, tanners, and corpse-cutters — occupations degrading, according to Buddhist ideas, through their association with animal bodies.

The nation is not homogenous, but differentiated provincially, with a corresponding diversity of local dialects; though the two main branches of the language, the Tsang ami U, spoken respectively in Lhassa and Shigatse, serve as a lingua franca for the country at large. A potent factor in maintaining class distinctions is the subdivision of 'these dialects into noble and ignoble terms of address; the ordinary, honorific, and high-honorific, which entails a vocabulary of three separate nouns for every single object. It is obligatory to address a superior or equal in the honorific style, and failure to do so would be an unpardonable affront; while to use anything but the high-honorific in addressing either of the two popes would ba construed as high-treason.

In this land of super-sanctity the most im« portant and respected class are, as to be expected, the clergy. Indeed, in Lamaite estimation the laity’s existence is justified primarily by reason of their furnishing a foundation for the hierarchical structure, and supplying a recruiting ground for the monastic ranks.

The clergy is likewise numerically important, being variously estimated at one-seventh to onefourth of the population. Every family is proud of the distinction of having one or more sons in holy orders. Hence, the system is firmly rooted —like the Roman Catholics—in the social units; loyalty to the church being identified in the popular mind with, parochial pride and fidelity to kindred.

Theoretically the priesthood is open to all, irrespective of rank, excluding only outcasts; and merit is the sole road to preferment. But in pr- -Vice the higher offices are monopolized by se..ons of the aristocracy, and the ambitious young cleric without a “pull” has a small chance of rising.

The state church of Thibet is the G-elugpa, or “Yellow Hat” sect of Lamaism, founded in 1357 A. D. by Tsong Kapa, an avatar of the Bodhisattva Aviiiabha. He consolidated an organization which grew out of the reforms inaugurated by the Indian priest, Alisa, who may be designated the Ignatius Loyola of Lamaism, since the Yellow Hat Reformation bears a certain affinity to the Jesuit order within the Catholic Church calculated to cheek the rising tide of Protestantism. In contradistinction to the latter, however, it. is the unregenerate Red Cap “stand-patters”, nonconformists to the reformed and purified doctrine, who in Thibet are stigmatized “heretics”, communion with whom is interdicted to good Lamaists.

Popes, Cardinals and Bishops

IKE the Church of Rome, Lamaism has an elaborately organized hierarchy with regular gradations of rank, the first degree including the two colleague popes. In theory, both popes are equal in rank and authority but, except for brief intervals, the Dalai Lama’s supremacy has always been virtually undisputed; the principal function of the Tesho Lama, whose seat of government is Shigatse, being to determine on his colleague’s demise into what avatar the spirit has flown. He does this by consulting oracles and sacred books.

• An episodical ascendency has sometimes been gained by the Tesho Lama through an alliance with the Chinese government, and indeed the Chinese policy has been to systematically favor him; but their patronage has been a detriment to him rather than an asset, inasmuch as it tended to identify the Dalai Lama with nationalism in the popular mind. The sonorous, high-sounding title of the Tesho Lama is “Right Reverend Great Teacher Jewel”. During the periods of his temporary ascendancy the division of allegiance among Lamaists is somewhat analogous to that in Christendom when there were rival popes at Rome and Avignon.

The second degree of ecclesiastics are the huiuktus, the so-called “cardinals”. These are rated as reincarnated saints, and are generally at the head of the larger monasteries. The less important gompos have abbots called kempos specially appointed for extraordinary merit by either of the two popes, from among the geshes, or Doctors of Theology. The latter is the highest rank in the five lower orders of clergy • novices, genye, gebsul, ge-long, and geshe. The ge-longs are full-fledged monks, graduates from the monastic schools, qualified to perform all the rites and eligible to office within the lamaseries. Below the abbot or gompo official is the chand-zo, or treasurer; the chinyer, or high steward; the lob-pon, or professor, who supervises education; a dean, a sacristan, and several tea dispensers. ■

Studying for the Priesthood

HE geshe, or scholarship degree (Maramba in Mongol), is aspired to by all monks, but attained by so few that the average number in all Thibet does not exceed 100. The reason assigned is that twenty years of unremitting study are required to acquire a textual knowledge sufficient to pass the examinations. This appeals to the Western mind as a prodigious misdirection of energy, since Lamaist learning is almost exclusively thedlogic, resembling in that respect the learning of the mediaeval schoolmen and as such completely out of harmony with modern thought.

Utterly unfamiliar with Western philosophy or science, Buddhism has a cosmogonic scheme conforming to its own theory of existence, whereby the orbs of day and night are conceived of as tiny lamps circling around a cylindrical earth. However, there are better prospects for scientific education from this viewpoint than from Voliva’s horizontal planes or from Kor-eshan concavities

Geshe erudition is oblivious of physiography, concerning itself with abstruse speculations over the subtleties of being and non-being, the nature of substance, and the inherence of attributes. In holy seclusion the geshe ascetics mourn over benighted, sentient human beings, fettered by desire and ignorance to the wheel of existence, revolving with it through interminable cycles of transmigration until liberated by the power of wisdom and purity.

We question not that even as the Boman clergy has always included some truly altruistic souls, so likewise among the lamas there are honest and unselfish spirits, striving with mistaken zeal to attain Nirvana by the Eight-fold Path.                                      •

Without prejudice to their orthodoxy as loyal professors of the Yellow Faith the geshes are free to distribute their allegiance among the three main schools of Buddhist philosophy; so they devote much effort and enthusiasm to polemics. The libraries are cluttered with musty tomes, interpretive of the divergent doctrines of Sarvastivadins or ''‘Realists”, Yogacarins or ‘Idealists”, and Madhyamikas or “Transcenden-talists”.                    .

The rare treasures reputed, to repose on lamasery book shelves should arouse cupidity in Western bibliophiles; here are ponderous elucidations of the G-olugpas creed and expositions of the Bed Cap heresy, works controversial, lives of the saints and Bodhisattvas; volumes in cuneiform, Sanskrit, Pali, and Mongol; works on metaphysics, magic and yogiism.

Books other than liturgical are not much in demand, so they are not kept in stock by the book shops in the Thibetan towns. When copies are desired they are printed to order at the monasteries, the purchaser furnishing his own paper. The monks hold a monopoly of the publishing business, just as they did in Europe prior to the Renaissance.

Learning Limited to the Clergy

SACRED Thibetan literature is chiefly represented by translations of ancient Sanskrit works, the originals of which have disappeared. Though they perpetrate the imposture on the undiscerning laity, few monks have any real familiarity with Sanskrit, but a smattering is sufficient to insure the reverent admiration of their auditors. The Lamaite “Bible” comprehends two collections of canons, the Kang-yur and Teng-yur. The Kang-yur comprises 108 volumes in folios of 1000 pages each. This is a record of the actual discourses of Sakiyamuni, ■with thirteen volumes dealing with the Vinaya or canon law.

The Kang-yur has seven subdivisions. The Dulba (Sanskrit, Vinaya), or “Disciplines”; Sher-phyjin (Sanskrit, Prajnaparamita), on philosophy and metaphysics; Phal-chhen (Sanskrit, Buddhavata Sangha), or doctrine of the Buddhas and theirincarnations; dKan-br-Tsegss (Sanskrit, Rhatnakuta), or “collections of precious things”; mDo-ss-De, or collection of Sutras; Mjang-’dass, (Sanskrit, Nirvana), doctrine of the liberation from earthly pains; and rGhjud (Sanskrit, Tantras), or incantations.

The Teng-yur comprises 225 volumes, and is the official Lamaite commentary and interpretation of the foregoing. It was composed by the eminent Indian philosophers, N a gar j ana, Asangha, and Vasabandhu, besides Thibetan worthies. This work was compiled during the golden age of Thibetan literary activity, between the 9th and 14th centuries A. D.

. Learning, as in Mediaeval Europe, is a prerequisite of the clergy, though the majority of its members are as crassly ignorant as the gluttonous, toping, lecherous friars of old. Indeed, even geshe erudition comprehends, as a rule, little more than a verbal knowledge of their scriptures without proper appreciation of the basic principles of Buddhist philosophy. This duplicates the ignorance of ecclesiastics in Wycliff’s time, when even bishops often were distressingly unconversant "with the G ospels and their message, but glibly proficient in the chronicles of saints.

The difficulties of acquiring an education in Thibet are aggravated by a cumbrous and arbitrary system of spelling, rather than by an un-unwieldy alphabet or vocabulary. They have only thirty letters and vowel marks; but phonetic decay has rendered silent many letters which were probably pronounced in full in the eighth century, when spelling became standardized. Thus, mkas-po is ke-po in the vernacular, and pjin-pa is chinpa.

Superstition as a Stock in Trade

’pi^?r the rank and file of the clergy do not find ■*-' their educational deficiencies a serious impediment to success, the utilitarian aspects of learning appealing most to them. If they are able to patter the ritual and mumble pious objurgations in a dead tongue, the undiscriminating multitude will revere them as holy men.

As the more illiterate Catholic parishioners are apt to credit their priest with supernatural powers, so likewise the lamas enjoy a reputation among the Buddhist laity for infallibility and for being able to bring on storms at a moment’s notice, make themselves invisible, etc. This reputation arises in large measure from their practising of occult arts, whereby they amass increment by casting horoscopes, telling fortunes and detecting crimes by clairvoyance.

The Buddhist clergy are accomplished hypnotists, and reinforce the popular superstition at convenient intervals by disclosing apparitions of the Buddh to the awed gaze of solitary wayfarers. In their sacred dances they enter the cataleptic state, assuming a variety of unnatural postures.                     .

Of these dances, the Black Hat Dance is the most celebrated. The actqrs, grotesquely attired and hideously masked, impersonate demons; the ceremony itself symbolizing humansacrifice, but nowadays with a doll substituted for what was perhaps originally a child-victim.

A full-fledged gelong is always in request at births, marriages and funerals, and to exorcise demons in sickness; but the lower grades of monks, incompetent to perform the offices, have recourse to less reputable expedients, being inveterate beggars and haunting the places where travelers and traders congregate to importune an alms in return for their blessing, or for chanting sutras for the souls’ welfare. Monks are even accused of highway robbery and of banding together to attack villages.         .

Such an aggregation of unproductive clerical parasites is a serious drain on even a prosperous country’s resources; but in poverty-stricken, moribund Thibet they are a crushing burden, a deadly blight, enfeebling national vitality, debauching the moral sense of the race, arresting progress, perpetrating stagnation. A preponderant share of the national wealth has already been garnered into the religious houses, but the insatiate clergy incessantly clutch for the rest, preying on the public in their spiritual capacity and also as usurers; for the lamaseries are the banks, and charge exorbitant rates of interest, payable monthly.

The delinquent debtor is harshly treated in Thibet, being subjected to forfeiture of his property; and if this is inadequate to meet his obligations his person is enslaved to the gompo. As the laws are based on the Buddhist scriptures, with the lamas for the sole interpreters, there is no appeal from their exaction.

Monastic tenants pay as rent one-third of their produce; and are then intimidated by the monkish collectors into purchasing charm-boxes, offering-bowls, rosaries, and other sacerdotal gimcracks made of human bones, which articles they manufacture and deal in privately. The tenants, moreover, are required to furnish gratis transport animals for the monastic wool and borax caravans.

Dodging Taxation as Usual

THE lamaseries or monasteries are exempted from taxation, and even receive state subsidies. The lamas are issued a regular food stipend from the government; slender enough, but supplemented in a variety of lucrative ways. It is customary for opulent families with a son in holy orders to apportion the harvest from a certain acreage, called the "lamas field”, to his maintenance.

Sloth and gluttony are predominant in the lamas’ lives save v⁷hen periodically punctuated by fasts, when the rule of silence is rigidly observed. Butter-tea is the favorite dissipation. Tobacco is eschewed as contrary to law and gospel; indeed tobacco smoking is legally a misdemeanor, even for the laity.'

The clergy are celibate, and not permitted to return to secular life after a term of years, as are the Purist bonzes of Ceylon and Burmah. Southern Buddhism has a looser organization, differentiating from Lamaism much as the Greek Church, -which allows its priesthood to marry, does from the Roman.

Both monks and nuns bear a reputation for gross immorality, since no canonical penalties are provided for infraction of the vow of chastity; the apprehension of an infelicitous reincarnation being presumed to be an ample deterrent. Travelers in Thibet stigmatize the lamas as a bestial, degraded lot, superior in average intelligence to the laity, but nevertheless mendacious, dishonorable and barbarously cruel. No moral test of eligibility is required of candidates for holy orders—swindlers, thieves and murderers being eagerly gathered into the ecclesiastical fold.

The nuns are domiciled in separate convents, but are not debarred from promiscuous relations with the opposite sex; and with both lay and clergy they are said to be guilty of the loosest relations. They are described as lewd, cruel, and practisers of witchcraft and magic. All Buddhist nuns shave their heads, and then disguise their baldness under enormous wigs of red-wool, which give them a tousle-headed appearance. They are generally dirty and offensive from an olfactory point of view.

Like Two Peas in a Pod

STRIKING analogy has been remarked between Kanishkan Buddhistic observance and Roman Catholic, in the retort once made to a Romanist Father by a sought-after Buddhist convert, who said that both religions were essentially alike, differing only in one particular —the Buddhists worship a man and the Catholics a woman.

Howbeit, Chinese votaries bum punk-sticks before P’u Sa, the Goddess of Mercy, whose veiled image with the infant Foh in her arms is enshrined in the yellow-roofed temples among those of the past, present, and future Buddhs. The comparison has evoked mutual recriminations; the Buddhists accusing the Catholics of plagiarism, and the Jesuits denouncing Buddhism as a Satanic counterfeit of true religion, directly calculated to ensnare sinners to their eternal perdition.

The chief points of. correspondence between Buddhism and Catholicism that may be cited are: (1) The trinity, (2) the virgin and child, (3) a celibate priesthood, (4) prayers in an unknown tongue (Sanskrit), (5) self-imposed austerities and macerations, (6) formal daily services, (7) chants, (8) fasts and feast days, (9) confessional, (10) candles (butter-lamps), (11) holy water, (12) religious processions, (13) sacred images and pictures, (14) miracles and legends, (15) bells, (16) relics, (17) works of merit and supererogation, (18) prayers for the 'dead, (19) intercession of saints, and (20) mutual dependence on purgatory as an adjunct to ecclesiastical finance.

Lamaism, however, is more merciful than Romanism in one respect—it has no abode for the irrevocably damned. All its infernos, 136 in number, are places of probation for sinners, with definite sentences for incarceration, the least of which is 10,000,000 years. These sentences may be curtailed and the sufferer’s pangs alleviated by works of merit on his behalf by the living, such as paying for religious services.

Lamaism has icy hells and fiery hells located like the mediaeval papal inferno, in the bowels of the earth, reserved for the most flagrant sinners, whose Karma does not entitle them to make amends for their misdeeds by rebirth as a woman, animal, plant, or piece of inanimate matter. Souls who have passed lives of exalted virtue are rewarded by blissful celestial existence in one of the many heavens, lingering there for 10,000,000,000 years before a new reincarnation.

Where the Holy Bells Came From

OF COURSE, exact uniformity cannot be expected between two systems, one of which was adapted to a primitive European idolatry, and the other to an Asiatic; but the parallel is close enough to excite amazement and suggest common origin. For instance, the bell feature is mutally prominent in both rituals. Thrice daily the lamas are summoned to divine services by the tolling of the big convent bells. Bell foundries are an important industry in Buddhist lands. Some bells are of colossal proportions, as large as houses, and being immovable, serve a commemorative rather than a utilitarian end. During the Southern Sung period in China so much copper was devoted to bell-making and other sacerdotal uses that the metallic base of the currency, which was copper, was undermined; and the government eventually w^rent bankrupt, swamped under a flood of inconvertible paper.

The Buddhist services consist chiefly in the intonation of hymns, with a discordant accompaniment of gongs, cane flutes, tinkhng handbells, and the banging of double-headed drums fashioned of human skulls. An inharmonious jangling is more grateful to Asiatic tympana than the peals of solemn organ melodies, and inferentially to their departed saints and gods.

Every Buddhist temple has collection boxes ensconced at points of vantage to mutely invite donations; and holy water amphorae, wherein the afflicted may dip veils to be worn as specifics for certain ailments. Katas, or ceremonial scarfs, bought from the larnas, accompany every gift in public or private life, suggestive of priest-blessed crucifixes and the like, worn by Catholic devotees. Rosaries are carried both for orisons and for casting accounts; so the pious abstraction of the holy Buddhist fingering his lieads may camouflage a quite carnal employment.

Sacraments and Hermitages

T AMAISM, like Romanism,-has seven sacra-meats, with baptism and confirmation rated as the most indisponsible. Confession is confined to the clergy, the laity being exempted from this duty. Pilgrimages to the shrines of saints and to sacred mountains and lakes keep thousands annually in a state of peregrination.

Lough Derg in Ireland has its counterpart in Lake Mansarowar, adjacent to the sacred red Kolas mountain, which long ago the demon Rakas strove unavailingly to pull down. Mt. Chanial-hari is the residence of the goddess of that name; and the surrounding peaks, of her attendant maidens. Cliortens, or relic shrines, decorate the landscape at not infrequent intervals, • some containing large barrel-like prayer-wheels which every passer-by gives a turn.

When Chosroes Parveez and his fire-worshiping Persians captured Jerusalem they are said to have carried off and burned the “True Cross”, to their own jubilant satisfaction and the discomfiture and distress of Christendom; nevertheless “Holy Church” contrived to preserve divers “true” splinters therefrom, which, it now displays among its most precious relics.

Buddhism cannot duplicate these treasures, though Lhassa proudly boasts of an ancient willow tree which sprang from a veritable hair of Gautama. It stands in proximity to a monolith commemorating a treaty between a Thibetan king of old time and a Chinese emperor.

Hermitages are sprinkled throughout the country; some on hill-tops, some on islets in the lakes. The latter offer unsurpassed opportunities for a life of seclusion and holy med-

Baaoxint, N. I, itation,- as they are only accessible in 'winter across the ice. The Thibetans possess no boats, though round coracles of hide .similar to the ‘'''bull boats” in use among the Sioux a century ago, are employed in fording rivers. One monastic anchorite, perched upon a dizzy crag, deprecated the suggestion of loneliness, explaining that his astral body made neighborly calls and that noctural spirit visitors banqueted on his flesh; the latter, however, being miraculously restored at daybreak.

Substitutes for Beads and Glass Windows

rpiIE lamas possess liturgic manuals, but J- mechanical praying is their main reliance in their devotional ■ exercises. Several contrivances are in use, the ubiquitous prayer-wheel being the most common. Every devotee carries one of these revolving apparatuses, which has a roll of paper inside- inscribed with the sacred formula, “Omi Mani -padme Ham!”

Diminutive prayer-cylinders are so arranged as to be rotated by the hot air ascending from butter-lamps—an ingenious application of the conservation of energy principle worthy of a better .cause! Enormous prayer-barrels, receptacles for the entire prayer book written in nute characters, are kept in motion by running water. On the principle that motion renders prayer efficacious, even the winds are made instruments ; and flapping flag-prayers are a characteristic spectacle in Thibetan scenery—strung from house to house, like washing on a line, or stretched across the channels of the rivers. Even mountain passes have their flag-prayers fluttering from tall poles.

While the Catholic of substance signalizes his devotion by presenting to his cathedral a stained glass window or a pair of silver candlesticks for its altar, the Thibetan nobleman erects a prayer-wall embellished with bas-reliefs of the Buddhs and Bodhisattvas and inscribed with sacred texts. These prayer-wmlls are supposed to communicate merit to the passer-by without any special effort on his part. They vary from a few rods to a mile in length, and are usually set in the middle of the road so as to benefit traffic from both directions; but to pass them on the right hand, even inadvertently, is deemed most sacrilegious.

Buddhist prayer-wheels must always be revolved in clock-wise fashion. Extraordinary emphasis is ever placed on formal observances in worship, in both the Roman and the Lamaist systems; indeed, they become logically of stupendous importance in a religion which ignores an overruling Providence, staking personal salvation on the concatenation of cause and effect.

Super-Holy “Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Moes”

THE same reliance which Roman Catholics put in “Ave Marias!” the Thibetan Buddhist reposes in the six-syllabled charm, “Om! Mani padme Hum!” reiterated interminably in this land of ineffable holiness. The literal translation is, “Hail! Jewel in the Lotus,” symbolizing the act of parturition which blessed the world with a Buddh. The initial word, “Om,” is the name of the first Goro or arch-priest of Agharti (from the Sivaist guru or teacher), and is said to correspond to the Hebrew Jah.

Om is a word of incalculable potentialities; continued repetition of it and meditation on its meaning develops mental concentration and increases introspection, conducing to dyamma, or ecstatic trance, so instrumental in divesting the soul of desire, preliminary to Nirvana. Om is termed the primordial sound, whose components, A. U. M., represent the whole phenomena of sound-producing. Hinduism has incorporated this word into its doctrine as the manifesting sound of Brahm, the Creator.

The profound significance of this “Hail! Jewel” incantation eludes the Western mind, until it is understood that the six syllables correspond to colors in the six-hued realm of space; that each syllable has the quality of excluding the believer from its particular sphere. The goal of the seeker is to escape from the spatial universe altogether!

The esoteric core-philosophy, of which both Buddhism and Hinduism constitute mere exoteric superficialities, claims to rest on a mysterious super-science, immeasurably vaster in scope than Western material science, and indeed comprehending all the principles of the latter. The West, the Buddhist contends, is just commencing dimly to grasp the rudiments of this all-embracing super-science and to apply laws and forces of nature known to the adept in occultism for ages past, but jealously guarded from popular knowledge lest they be disastrously abusea by the ignorant and irresponsible.

Spiritism East and West

TN SUBSTANTIATION of their claims the

Buddhist mystics call attention to those invisible light rays, the ultra-violet and infra-red, and the inaudible sound or radio waves whose existence was quite unsuspected in the Occident until the last two decades, though now generally recognized and practically applied to some extent. They point out that at least forty years ago works ■were published which show that the occult fraternity then distinguished fourteen rays instead of merely the seven common-colors of the spectrum, and that they had detected a correspondingly extended scale of notes in music.

Their magic, these priests declare, is not accomplished through the spoken word (which is simply mummery to deceive the vulgar) but through the correlations of the vibrations of these inaudible notes and invisible light-rays, whereby the adept commands the agency of semi-intelligent forces, the “Elementals”, the consciousness of inanimate substance. In other words, they apply kinetic force. No new substance is or can be created; material is merely reconstructed in ancient forms. Nature does this without ostentation when it fertilizes the crops with dead men’s bones. Here is an enlargement of the ectoplasm theory.

In accentuation of formalism and creatureworship, the two systems, Romanism and Lamaism, are undisguisably in accord. To the average Thibetan, religion signifies primarily adoration of the saints. He nothing doubts but that religious services are effectual to control the forces of the universe, and that all nature is suspended when Brahytma communes 'with the saints.

In like manner, the Roman Catholic peasant is confident that “Te Deumshave power to abate floods and halt lava flows. Austerities are esteemed in both religions; to mortify the flesh is the way to Nirvana, as well as to heaven. So the ascetic testifies to his abstraction from mundane affairs by eating indiscriminately of ordure and carrion when proffered him in lieu of food. This is a Sivaish feature.

In Lamaism, certain elements of the worship of the double-natured god have been amalgamated with the philosophy of Sakiyamum; among them yogiism; accordingly, the practice of suppressing and arbitrarily regulating res piration as a factor in acquiring the six superhuman faculties to which all yogis aspire is resorted to by the lamas.

Sects in Buddhism

THIBETAN Buddhism is as divergent from the idealistic philosophy promulgated by Siddhartha as the Nicene creed is from the true apostolic faith. Each is a debased departure by transfusions of extraneous ideas; the latter from its antecedent paganry, the former a fusion with Scythian Shamanism and Hindu Siva-worship. In both instances the falling away had a political aspect. The Constantine of Buddhism was Kanishka, the puissant Kushan monarch of Kabul, whose widespread dominions embraced Kashmir, the Punjaub, eastern Iran and great tracts in Central Asia.

In A. D. 78, King Kanishka summoned the fourth great (Ecumencial council of Buddhism to meet at his capital Takka-sila (Taxila of the ' Greeks), where under his auspices a new orthodoxy was formulated, calculated to appease the ' prejudices of the majority of his subjects, but destined to estrange from Buddhism the great mass of the people of India and turn them to Hinduism. This was two hundred and fortyseven years before Constantine dictated the Nicene Creed for Romanists.

In this way the Great Schism was born which irrevocably sundered Northern from Southern Buddhism—as notable in Buddhistic annals as is the splitting apart of the Catholic Church into Greek and Roman, over the image-controversy. The “Purists” of the South never accepted the Kanishkan “heresy”, as they stigmatized it-; nor the substitution of Sanskrit, the almost obsolete tongue revived by Kanishka, for Pali, as their sacred language.

The restitution of Sanskrit to its ancient importance contributed measurably to the Hindu Renaissance which ensued in India, where Kanishka’s innovations brought to a climax the disrepute into which Buddhism was already falling. Sanskrit became the “Latin” of the Northern church, but the Singhalese and Siamese continued to adhere to their sacred Pali literature.

Neither was the Dalai Lama ever recognized as their spiritual head by the Purists, any more than did the Russians or Bulgarians ever acknowledge the spiritual suzeranity cf the Bishop of Rome. In fact, the Dalai Lama’s ascendency in the⁴ Far East has been a matter of gradual development during the course of the centuries, like that of the Roman pontiffs in the West.

Buddhism was first introduced into China in A. D. 67, by the After Han emperor Ming-ti. At first it flourished merely as an exotic plant among the intellectuals, its subtleties being uncongenial to the ordinary prosaic Chinese mind; however, its philosophy of fraternism doubtless contributed to that subversion of feudal class distinctions which the Han centralized autocracy had brought about.

But not until the northern provinces became semi-Tartarized did the congenial Kanishkan doctrine take root in China; it flourished especially under the royal patronage of Yao-hing, the After Tchin monarch, who promoted a great Buddhist revival, partly by causing a translation of the Buddhist scriptures into Chinese and partly by militant proselytizing among his subjects.

Northern China became almost solidly Buddhist, thence the religion spread into Korea, and eventually to Japan where it actually functionec as a civilizing agency, the monasteries acting as radial centers for disseminating the arts and sciences, as well as learning.

Buddhism in Politics

T TNDER the mighty T’ang Dynasty, a strong nationalistic reaction supervened in China. The semi-Tartar states of the North were reincorporated; imperial integrity was reasserted; and the Chinese frontiers pushed out once more across the Gobi and into Central Asia. It marked ebb tide in Northern Buddhism, with state patronage withdrawn and the religious houses in disfavor; indeed the latter came under legal surveillance, and were subjected to periodic prosecutions for alleged gross immoralities and the harboring of criminals.

Tea was now supplanting samshu as the national beverage, and the monasteries were accused of dispensing liquor from their subterranean spirit-stills and debaucliing the population. So Buddhism went into eclipse in the Middle Kingdom until reestablished by Kublai Khan.

Kublai was the Charlemagne of Northern Buddhism, playing a similar role in the Far East to that enacted by the famous Frankish king in Europe; and like the latter, he was partial to forcible conversions. Under him Buddhism regained its prestige to become the state religion, not in China alone but throughout the immense territories which the Mongols had overrun.

Correspondingly, this era represents the pinnacle of glory for the Dalai Lama, when his authority as supreme head of religion was stretched over many nations; and the ceremonious visits which he made in person to Peking were made the occasion of extravagant pomp and rejoicing.

But when the Mings drove out their foreign conquerors, Buddhism once more lost favor. It is only in recent Manchu times that a decadent regime hit upon the almost ludicrously utilitarian expedient of coalescing Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism into the San Chiao, or “Three Religions”; a triad of tolerance professed by virtually every son of Ilan who made use of each in its proper sphere to minister to some phase of his spiritual wants. The bland explanation was, “Religions are many; the code of etiquette is one; we are all brothers.”

Lamaism is a conglomeration of innately antagonistic dogmas derived from Buddhism and Sivaism, cemented together by the indigenous Shamanism, or demon-propitiation. Its pantheon is headed by a holy trinity, composed of Gautama, Amitabha (his ethereal Buddha) and Avalokitiswmra (his celestial Bodhisattva).

In contradistinction to the Nicene Triune God, the Lamaist one is finite, this curious anomaly evidently arising from an anxiety to retain the Hindu Trimurti without disavowing Buddhist negation of a supreme being. Gautama is conceived of in no sense as the Creator, like Bra-hama, but only as the super-eminent saint and founder of the law. The Buddh is held to be incarnated in the law.

The essence of all that is sacred is embodied in the title Kong-chog-sun, the “Three Precious Jewels”: Buddha Jewel, Doctrine Jewel, and Priesthood Jewel—a species of rationalization of the trinity concept. Subordinate to the legions of saints, in the spirit and in the flesh, which make up the third person, are innumerable gods and demons.

Managing the Saint Business

OMAN Catholics are taught that Christ, the Mediator, must Himself be approached through intercession of the Virgin Mary. Similarly (though unlike the Southern Purist who “takes refuge in Buddh”) in the Chinese temples of Foh, the votaries, predominantly women, address their appeals to P’u Sa, petitioning oftenest to be reborn men in good social standing, or to evade the punishments of the Blood Lake Goddess, who condemns infanticides to a diet of the salted-flesh of their own slain girlchildren.

The Thibetans direct their trillion-times mechanically repeated prayer-wheel devotion particularly to Amitabha, the “Lord of Mercy’', honored as their tutelary deity because he transformed their . supposed simian ancestors into men. In this spiritual laboratory of mahattnas w^Tho superintend planetary evolution it of course seems quite appropriate to find traditions of monkey-men. Lamaism is the original exponent of this hypothesis. Though scorning such shallow subterfuges as “missing links”, it relates how Amitabha made men out of the aboriginal monkeys by feeding them a magic grain; since which time his worshipers have assiduously sought to make monkeys of men.

More audacious than the Catholic cardinalate, the Lamaite clergy claim for themselves participation in the holy trinity; not as vicegerent but as one of its integral “jewels” or elements. As such, they exact lay homage as the agents or invisible representatives of defunct saints in general, and in specific instances as departed saints reinhabiting an earthly tabernacle to bless with their hallowed presence a sinful world.

Catholic doctrine makes no provision for the apotheosis of a Saint Thecla or St. Boniface, but contents itself with creeping, nodding, and bleeding statues to reinforce popular faith. Nevertheless in both systems adoration of the saints is an obligation. The saints of Buddha-dom comprise five Dhyana Buddhas (Buddhas of Contemplation), many Pratyeka Buddhas, and myriads of Bodhisattvas and pious persons who have attained canonization after death. Bodhisattvas are beings who in some future life will gain the crown of Buddhadom, or supreme enlightenment, the ultimate step before Nirvana.

The Fruits of Demonism

IVING Buddhas” are reborn manifestations of the “Perfect One”. A Living

Buddha, with seat of government located at Urga, is the spiritual and temporal autocrat of Mongolia, with subordinate khans for his vicer roys. The Chone monastery in Kansuh harbors no less than five. There are other of these incarnate gods in Yunan and elsewhere. Some are mere children, yet their godlike power over mundane affairs and the powers of nature is never doubted by the devotees.

When a Living Buddha becomes demised the method of determining his successor is to lay out his personal belongings before the various male infants of the neighborhood and observe which one grabs a rosary to play with. This baby is assumed to be the body into which his spirit has flown, and is carried off triumphantly to the Gompo, where it is accorded divine honors.

Inferior to the Buddhist clergy are the multitude of gods and spirits which have for the most part been incorporated from the Sivaite pantheon. At their head are the five Spirit Kings: Indra, god of the firmament; Yama, corresponding to Pluto; Yamantaka, who is also Siva in his aspect of Avenger; and Vaisravana, god of wealth.

Lamaism, like Rome, is not ostentatiously idolatrous; both systems excuse their idols as mere ocular reminders of invisible presences. Nevertheless every temple shelters its twenty-six statues of the Buddh—twenty-four who appeared in past cycles; Gautama, the present redeemer ; and the savior who will come after this cycle is ended.

Curiously enough, the Coming Buddha is represented as a blonde with aquiline physiognomy, seated European-fashion in a chair—incongruous among the remaining squat-faced cross-legged figures! He corresponds to Salava-hana in Hinduism, the tenth avatar of Vishnu, the serpent deity.

Whether or not the world-old serpent myth be “fossil-thought”, preserving dim recollections of canopic phenomena, as Prof. Vail imagined, the sinuous trail intersects ancient philosophy with persistent intermittency as the personified spirit of wisdom, perpetually renewing life by destroying it.

Fairy Stories, and Poor Ones at That

OBVIOUSLY demonology is the underlying sub-stratum of Thibetan religion, as of all false religions. Many latter-day folk are smugly incredulous of the supernatural, because their appetite for wonders has been satiated with scientific legerdemain. The magic carpets and magic mirrors of old folk lore are with us a tangible reality. The spirit manifestation without unimpeachable credentials is apt to be mistaken for television. We forget how our ancestors spiced ths'humdrum routine of their lives with tales of ghosts and fairies.

The point of view of our own late ancestors was similar to that of the Thibetan, who supplements the tangible world of the senses with an imaginary one, peopled with fiends and demigods. He is conscious of invisible malignancy besetting his path at every turn, undermining his health, imperiling his mundane prosperity and impeding his efforts toward spiritual salvation. There are devils of the mountain passes who precipitate avalanches: who bring on “mountain sickness”; and who must be prop!.-* tinted by the passer-by, who adds a stone to the numerous oboes or cairns. There are ferocious giant “snow men”, seldom seen but firmly believed in. The mountain slopes are haunted by gnomes and hobgoblins.

Any extraordinary natural phenomenon is construed as of diabolical contrivance; earthquakes are caused by the convulsive wriggling of long-necked, sniall-mouthcd goblins, while swallowing; rainbows are formed from countless swarms of infinitesimal, guitar-playing sprites, toboganning. as it were, down to vzater. And woe betide the incautious thirsty soul who drinks of this, since it is impregnated with fevers!                  ’

When we were little, Grimm’s Fairy Tales revealed to our puerile minds a country of enchantments, where wizards waved their wands and three-headed giants loomed up like mountain peaks on the horizon. The adult Thibetan revels in just such a romantic environment; our childhood fancies are accepted by him as veritable realities. In the thrice-holy land of Thibet no Buddhist feels safe from the malicious spells of sorcerers or watches unless he carries an amulet or charm box, containing a miniature image of Buddh or some equally efficacious gimcraek, blessed by a priest, in lieu of accident insurance.

In Mediaeval Europe there was a “white magic” endorsed by holy church, not to be confused with the ’’"black magic”, which was placed under anathema; so likewise in Thibet legitimate necromancy is an honorable profession, and the state magician at Lliassa resides in an exquisite little palace, whose garden is gay with nasturtiums,^; hollyhocks, stocks, and feathery-foliaged bamboos. There are oracles consulted on all public exigencies, and soothsayers who privately determine the auguries of every visitor io court. If the visit is deemed inauspicious to the pontiff, the court physician is made his entertainer, after which the unwelcome guest is likely to succumb to an acute attack of fatal illness 1

SV!akina Fools of the People

OTII the Roman Catholic and the Thibetan churches are prolific in miraculous legends of the saints, of which we will cite but a single example, the Circe legend of the Samding Convent. Samding is literally rendered, '‘Temple of Soaring Meditation.” It is unique among Thibetan religious houses in several particulars. Its inmates are composed half of monks and half of nuns; and its parish is a Red Cap community—the only one excepted from the general ostracism extended to that heretical sect by the Yellow Hat hierarchy. Indeed, the venerable abbess of Samding is accorded high honor, enjoying the rare privilege of being allowed to travel in a sedan-chair like the two popes; but she makes amends for this by never assuming a recumbent position, even while sleeping.

This abbess is considered a reincarnated embodiment of Dorje-pamo, the “Pig-faced Goddess” ; and the story goes that when, in 1717 A. D., a horde of Moslem Tartars swarmed over the mountain passes and beleaguered this convent, their ribald leader demanded as the price of ransom a personal interview with the abbess, so that he might verify or disprove the current reports of her porcinity of countenance.

This irreverent request was indignantly refused, and the Tartars battered breaches in the walls and made entrance, but found no holy men and women to wreak their spite upon, but only a herd of eighty pigs and eighty sows surrounding a ponderous and venerable sow of colossal proportions. Amazed by the inexplicable spectacle the Tartars relinquished their nefarious design, whereupon the seeming swine suddenly resumed their natural shapes. Properly abashed, the intruders retreated, after bestowing rich gifts on Dorje-pamo. • At a subsequent date, the water-of the nearby tiny Dimo Lake turned poisonous as a consequence of the visit of the Indian Sarat Chandra Das, since which time visitors are rigidly excluded from the convent estates. •

A Virulent Spiritual Pestilence

TT IS plain from the foregoing pages that in occult Lamaism we find prepared the culture for a virulent spiritual pestilence, ripe for contamination of mankind whenever the psychological moment might arrive for its propagation. From this bleak, lonely inaccessible attic of Asia where, perpetually incarnate in the person of a crafty, plotting, sacerdotal politician, Amitabha broods over a hopeless, sick, solL segregated, demon-haunted race, once emanated a spiritual contagion which, perverted all flesh, adding a plus sign to the Eternal Verities, neutralizing them, making man apostate to the inherent Light within him.

Here, in the inner sanctuary .of esoteric philosophy, the Mystic Fraternity were allowed full scope to evolve their occult science which, while falling into obvious disrepute in the West under Christian ascendancy, has nevertheless continued in the Orient as the core philosophy of all false religions. What even the apostate Roman Church outwardly placed under malediction was cultivated as a specialization not alone in the Far East but secretly in Occidental mon-astaries, until occultism, while .scoffed at by modern rationalism, has assumed proportions formidable to human spiritual welfare in the aggregate.

Lurking in its obscure lairs, Eastern occultism waited for missionaries to inoculate Western ethical standards with its insidious sophistries. Such apostles of Oriental mysticism eventually presented themselves in the persons of renegades from Christian culture. These ardent students of Indian philosophy, misled by a misplaced enthusiasm, esteemed the “light of Asia” more radiant than that which shone from Calvary, and the doctrine of metempsychosis as more logical than the philosophies of man* kind’s redemption through a second Adam.

Some forty years ago the "Mystic Brothers”, affecting to deplore the lapsing of the world into materialism and skepticism, decided that the moment was propitious for inaugurating a world-wide psychic campaign which should effect the spiritual regeneration of mankind. These Brothers are described as great hidden personalities who abide in seclusion and obscurity, revered in their own country merely as studious monks and holy hermits, unknown to the outside world, but recognized by the initiates in esoteric philosophy as mahatmas, adepts in super-scientific wisdom, fully cognizant of all terrestrial happenings, in constant touch with current events through unsuspected telepathic rapport with the ruling minds of the nations.

A Reconciliation in Unrighteousness

H1HE program of this mystic brotherhood was to reconcile Oriental mysticism to Western rationalism by gradually familiarizing Europe and America with forms of occultism adapted to suit Western prejudices. To the scientist they would present it in a scientific aspect, as hypnotism, telepathy, mental science, etc.; for the Christian, they would cull out Scriptural texts which seemed to justify it. To attract a variety of temperaments they would present it in various guises: Theosophy for the admirer of Buddhism; Raja Yoga for such as preferred Hinduism; Omoto Kyo for the Japanese; Em-manuelism for the biologically inclined, and Christian Science and modern Spiritism for those who pretend to recognize the Bible.

But all these so-called "mental science” cults are based on the same pantheistic dogmas of godhead self-existent in the incarnate human will, and of personal salvation achieved by coming into harmony and ultimate reunion with the “universal consciousness”. The lure was" temporal success through will-culture, with promised super-normal ability to control the minds of others, and. the assurance of immortality. ■

Such abstruse doctrines found, it is true, few actual proselytes in Europe and America; but the scattering of disciples acted like yeast to leaven the masses; for the applied phases of mental science, the practice of it, obliged all flesh to respond in sheer self-defense.

The Mystic Brothers’ program has been to effect the “spiritual regeneration” of humanity by imparting to the masses certain powers hitherto jealously restricted to initiates who were carefully selected and rigidly trained by a long novitiate until their competency to use without abusing these mysterious powers had become manifest. These powers, known to us as hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance, clair-audience, etc., were now to be flung broadcast to the multitude to be used indiscriminately by irresponsible and ignorant minds.

The introducing medium was to be the New Thought Cults, formulated by Occidental disciples of occultism. They were calculated to popularize this pantheistic gospel in Europe and America by familiarizing the matter-of-fact public there with its point of view—a point of view made plausible by subtly conforming itself ter Western rationalism. The program was inaugurated some forty years ago. It required about one and one-half decades for its full fruition, when all men, whether they understood its principles or not, became parties to it.

In the last century, Bulwer Lytton, the English novelist, with prophetic pen beguiled the fancy of his readers with his “Coming Race”. Today his "Vrill” has become the common heritage of all flesh; and the rising generation is oblivious to the fact that the same is an abnormal accretion abhorred by early Christians and denounced in the Bible as an abomination. During the present century, even as the lamas proclaim, Buddhism has accomplished the “spiritual conquest” of the world, to be followed shortly by a militant evangelism.

After civilization, through the insensate greed and folly of the nations, has collapsed into a welter of anarchy and ruin, Agharti’s gates will swing open, to vomit out the subterranean hosts—like the locust-horsemen of the Apocalypse—to subjugate the earth and establish a new order "founded in righteousness and peace”.

Satan Would Forestall Christ

ATAN would forestall the reign of Christ, or at least mislead humanity with false expectations, by a spurious interpretation of the divine prophecies. The truth of God focusses on the Eternal Verities, but our new day and age has invented a new angle of refraction whereby a distorted image is beheld. The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, and much of our latter-day wisdom consists in denying His immutable ordinances. "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.” We are like people who find the ground slipping under them and who have to run hard to stay in the same place.

Finally, in this time of the end, when Satan is permitted a latitude in power of deception vastly greater than hitherto, and bewildered humanity comes more unreservedly under his spell, traditional restraints and safeguards will be cast off, to the confusing of ethical values and the forfeiture of that sense of proportion in the interrelations of life which guarantees social cohesion. In summoning the gathering to Armtu geddon, no factor is more potent than this—-the gradually dawning conviction that all existence implies a sheer mutual will-contest, in the face of which stupefying revelations, pity and mercy must be relegated to the discard as suicidal weaknesses.

Radio Programs

[Station WBBR, Staten Island, New York City.—272.8 meters.J

The Golden Age takes pleasure in advising its readers of radio programs which carry something of the kingdom message—a message that is comforting and bringing cheer to thousands. The programs include sacred music, vocal and instrumental, which is away above the average, and is proving a real treat to those who are hungering for the spiritual, Our readers may invite their neighbors to hear these programs and thus enjoy them together. It Is suggested that the local papers be asked to print notices of these programs.

Sunday Morning, May 23

Sunday Morning, May 30

Sunday Evening, May 23

9: 00 Watchtower String Quartette.

9:20 Bible Questions and Answers.

Monday Evening, May 24

8: 00 Irene Klelnpeter, soprano.

8:15 World News Digest, from The Golden Age Magazine.

8: 30 George Twaroschk, violinist.

8:40 Bible Instruction from The Hasp oe God.

8: 50 Irene Klelnpeter, soprano.

Thursday Evening. May 27

8: 00 Watchtower Trio.

8:10 Walter Stoll, tenor.

8: 20 “The Three Great Worlds”—R. S. Seklemlan.

8: 40 Walter Stoll, tenor.

8: 50 Watchtower Trio.

Sunday Evening, May 30

9: 00 Watchtower Violin Choir.

9:20 Bible Questions and Answers.

Monday Evening, May 31

8:00 Joseph Bonacorso, violinist.                 .

8:15 World News from The Golden Age Magazine,

8: 25 George Twaroschk, pianist.

8: 40 Bible Instruction from The Hakp of God,

8: 50 Joseph Bonacorso, violinist            .

Thursday Evening, June 3

8:00 Josephine Locke, violinist

8:10 L. Marlon Brown, soprano.

8: 20 Bible Lecture—W. E. Woodworth, “The Inheritance of the Meek.”

8:40 L. Marion Brown, soprano.

8: 50 Josephine Locke, violinist.

Saturday Evening, May 29

8: 00 Dr. Hans Haag, violinist

*   8: 20 Bible Questions and Answers.

¹   8:45 I* Marion Brown, soprano.

Saturday Evening, June 5

8:00 Professor Charles Rohner, violinist.

8:10 Forrest J. Kleinhans, baritone.

8: 25 Bible Questions and Answers.

8:50 Professor Charles Rohner, violinist.

On American Shores

'Annie Besant's New Christ

Annie Besant’s new Messiah, selected by her personally some eighteen years ago, will come to America in August. Mr. Kunz, the advance agent of the new Messiah, Mr. Krishnamurti, believes that he will take America by storm. Probably he will. America, especially New York, is always ready to take up any plaything for a few days, no matter how foolish. As Mrs. Besant and Mr. Krishnamurti, her new Messiah, and all parties concerned, are spiritists, and a wave of spiritism is about due to sweep over the western, world, Mr. Krishnamurti may make more of a splash than now seems outwardly probable.

Liberty Does Not Mean License

ANEW YORK publisher, arguing for liberty to publish, even in motion pictures, anything he liked, stated that he allowed his children to see himself and his wife naked. The Scriptures, which are our proper standard of conduct, always speak of the heavenly Father as clothed, and He has so made mankind that clothing of some sort is almost a necessity for them, at least in this climate. Liberty does not mean the abandonment of all common sense.

Don't IFant Militarism Taught

THE president of the Federal Council of churches is reported as saying, “We don’t want our children taught the beastly arts of murder and killing, and I say to the War Department with all my heart, Keep your, hands off the public schools.” This new attitude is all the more remarkable as all the churches, in all ages past, have always been for war, at least whenever there was a w’ar; and if war is right in war time then it would seem to be right to prepare for it in peace time. There would have been no World War if all the churches, all over the world, had been for peace and had taken an heroic stand for it.

$25 raise in salary now only means an increase in buying power of $15,

The Eagle Cries for Help

THE Brooklyn Eagle claims that there are

234,000 churches in the United States with 47,000,000, members. It mentions twerdy-three general groups of denominations, which are, in actual fact, split up into 120 more. Then it says that these must unite or the United States will fall, but that each may continue to believe what it likes. Then why should they unite?

First National Not Suffering

A LMOST any honest business feels that it is ■^A- doing pretty well if it clears six to ten percent annually on its investment. But the First National Bank of New York in 1925 earned 140 percent and paid 100 percent cash dividends, besides increasing its surplus by $7,742,119. Does anybody believe that such profits as these represent a healthy condition in our civilization I

Prosperity Benefits Some Farmers

K SURVEY of four townships in Foster

County, North Dakota, shows that the average net worth of forty-six farm owners increased in two years by $2,333 each, while the average net worth of thirty-eight tenant farmers in the same territory increased $1,525 each. The net assets of the farm owners is about $18,000 and of the tenant farmers about $3,000. On the same farms the average number of cows has increased from six to eight, and the sheep from two to eight.

Getting Pictures at the Front

WHILE the textile strike was on at -Passaic,

N. J., and many of the strikers were marching past the mills, with gas masks strapped on ready for use, two of the enterprising newspapers of New York sent armored cars, covered with signs reading: “News Photographers Getting Pictures at the Passaic Front.” This was because the police on the previous day had smashed some $3,000 -worth of cameras and attacked photographers and reporters; all, of course, in violation of the law. An airplane circled above the town, taking motion pictures of the situation. .

Bobbed Hair Reduces Accidents

YYF TWO million factory workers in the

United States one million nine hundred thousand have bobbed hair. The bobbing of the hair has reduced the factory accidents to women workers by about one-sixth, Instances are on record where long hair has caused the death of women workers in factories, and under the most horrible conditions,

Neic York’s Telephone Books

^rn±IE New York Times tells us that to print the six million separate telephone directories used in New York City last year required 520 carloads of text paper, 220 tons of cover paper and 160 tons of printing ink. The New York Telephone Company claims that the publishing of this directory twice annually is the largest single publishing job in the world.

-Louisiana Sulphur Deposits                 ~

AMERICA uses annually about, one million tons of sulphur, most of which comes from the inexhaustible deposits which, underlie a considerable portion of Louisiana. Though sulphur is mostly used in the manufacturing processes, such as batteries, paints, rubber and textiles, yet a large quantity is also used for spraying fruit trees; and nine tons go down the throat . of young America in the form of sulphur and molasses.

Four States Will Advertise

FOLLOWING- the examples of a score or more of cities that are now widely advertising their advantages, the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and California have now made appropriations intended to make widely known the scenic and climatic advantages for which these states are already famous. No doubt other states will follow their example.

Prodigies are Diseased

IT IS better not to be a prodigy. Madrid had a little girl seven years old •who at that uncanny age entered the University of Madrid. At the age of eleven she is ready for her degree. Numerous instances are on record lately where children of ten to twelve years have shown un-Tlie world’s experience with prodigies has been unsatisfactory. Few of them have ever amounted to anything after graduation from the colleges or universities that, carried them through their higher education.

Buying on Time                        ■

THE 'United States Chamber of Commerce estimates that seventeen percent of. all the goods sold at retail are sold on time. The practice is a bad one for the buyer and a bad one for the merchant. The buyer often gets more goods this way than are needed. They are not always the best goods. The prices must always be higher. The merchant is faced with the unpleasant prospect of having to force payment of some debts and to lose others entirely. Bookkeeping operations are expensive, inaccurate and unsatisfactory.

Wide Use of Artificial Leather

ARTIFICIAL leather is now used in a volume equivalent to more than four times the cattle hides produced. If well made, the artificial leather, as a covering for books, settees, automobile equipment, car seats, etc., is superior to the genuine leather, both in appearance and in length of wear.                       ■

Gold Is Getting Cheaper

THE United States has half the gold in the world. Economists tell us that this is what makes prices so high, and keeps them up. But other countries have largely increased their holdings of gold also, particularly Britain, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Japan and Argentina.

Nine-Year-Old Lies Disowned

THE War Department has authorized tha statement that it was not true that Belgian babies had their hands cut. off, that Belgian women were maimed or that Canadian soldiers were crucified. The Germans did none of these things. Of course they did not, and only the most absolutely 100 percent foolish fools ever swallowed the lies at any time. But there were many 100 percenters. For a while the average man in the United States could be made to be-

The Downward Trend' By c. e. stewart

IN THE ^wSt. John’s Radio”, published in the interest of St. John’s Evangelical Church, Buffalo, N. Y., we read about a small organization called “The Tithers’ Band”, which is to promote stewardship in the church. The members have “self-denial banks” in which the tithes are put. A tithe is a tenth; but this band is not supposed to give the tenth; the name is a misnomer. A special effort was put forth during Lent to make a killing in the way df self-denials; and this is the way it was done:

If a church member ordinarily smoked four ten-cent cigars a day, he was to deny himself one of these cigars and thus during Lent make a saving of $4.60 “for the Lord”. Then as a Christian, following in the footsteps of Jesus, he could go on his way rejoicing, with only three ten-cent cigars per day.

If a member habitually eats ten cents’ worth of candy daily, by cutting the supply in two the saving during Lent would be $2.30. If a Christian goes to the picture shows three times weekly, paying twenty-five cents for each admission, by denying himself or herself one show weekly the saving would be $1.50. By so doing they would also be setting a good example for their worldly friends and neighbors by going to the movies only twice a week.

By denying oneself of one fifteen-cent icecream soda weekly, the self-denial would amount to ninety cents. By denying oneself a tencent cut of pie three days each week, the saving would amount to $1.80. If a person who is in the habit of getting three shoeshines a week will stoop to do it once each week himself, seventy cents would be added to the “self-denial banks” of the “Tithers’ Band” (if he did not forget it), and thus money would be brought to the church and glory to the Lord. We read:

Let the girls and the women figure a bit regarding their hair-dressing, bobbing and waving. Easter is coming, many hats will be bought; many dresses for women and suits for men will be sold. Perhaps a garment can be purchased at a little cheaper price, if we really want to practise a little self-denial.

Is it not strange that full-grown adults in our enlightened day will tolerate such pusillanimous begging in the name of the Lord and think that they are doing Him service ? The lust for money is degrading, and a begging institution is not a Christian institution at all. How many people learn the truth by being hounded for money upon every pretext!

In an advertising circular headed “The Visible Church”, a certain textbook by that name is recommended for Catholic schools. It is claimed that Roman Catholics are broad-minded and liberal in the education of their children. But the perpetuity of the Roman church' depends upon ignorance. Many enlightened Catholics know that something is wrong with their church, and have long sought for something better. Many of them are examining other faiths, seeking to find the truth. This is commendable, and eventually will be rewarded with success. The Protestant denominations are not attractive to the Catholics; for they have nothing better, except a little more freedom in education and privileges in Bible reading.

That all the religious systems. Catholic and Protestant, are fearful of the light is evidenced in the concerted efforts of their clergy to throw dust into the eyes of their constituency and keep them from reading books or attending meetings which may lead them to a better understanding of the Bible. The only Christian organization of which we know, whose meetings are entirely undenominational, having nothing to join, which makes no solicitations for money, which has no domineering clergy, and whose ministers ar* elected by each congregation' to serve the interests of the congregation without money and without price, is the International Bible Students Association.

That the book in question, “The Visible Church,” is designed to keep the children within certain limitations, is evident. The circular describes it as follows:

Adapted to the classroom, a. thorough explanation of the external practices of our [Catholic] church; that is, her government, clergy, religious communities, sacra-mentals, ceremonies, festivals and devotions. . . . This book teaches the what, the why, and the when. . . . To get this knowledge, children are sent to Catholic schools.

Why do people insist on going beyond the Bible in church government, liveried preachers, sacramentals, ceremonies, festivals, etc., and use these as a means of devotion? The trouble with the religious world is that it is too much churched; it is hobbled, blinded, weighted with encumbrances and hindrances, sandbagged, and made to dance to formulas concocted by men

whose minds are cramped with ecclesiastical regalia. The reckoning day is coining, and what will the harvest be?

A card gotten out by the Purgatorial Society of the St. Mary’s church, of Toledo, Ohio, entitled, “Commemoration of the Faithful Departed,” represents the souls in purgatory pleading to those on this side: “Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you my friends.”

Upon the theory that the soul is immortal and cannot die, a great mint for coining money has been built around so-called Christian churches ; the one profiting the most being the Roman Catholic church. The Catholic Bible at Ezekiel 18:4, reads: “The soul that sinneth, the same shall die.” The Protestant Bible reads: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Many texts agree with this, and establish the thought that when a person is dead he is actually dead, and awaits the resurrection.

A text which some claim supports praying for the dead is found in 1 Corinthians 15:29, and reads: “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all?” But notice that the text speaks of being baptized for the dead, and not praying for the dead. This is important. The dead are dead. The true Church is a part of the sin-atoning sacrifice. 'Jesus asked His disciples if they were able to be baptized with the baptism that He was baptized with, referring to His death and not to His immersion in water. (Matthew 20:20-23) The church joins Jesus in sacrificial death for the world of mankind; and if the world is not dead, and if the world will never be brought forth in the resurrection, why live the sacrificial life, dying daily, was Paul’s argument. Praying for the dead, then, and saying “masses” for the dead, have never availed one iota for the benefit of anybody, and never will!

The only text in the Bible which supports the immortality-of-the-soul theory is the Devil’s lying statement, recorded in Genesis 3:4, which reads: “Ye shall not surely die.” This is the foundational hypothesis for all the “mass” folderol.

The above mentioned “Purgatory” card further says:

High masses, according to the amount contributed, will be sung every week during the year, for the repose of the souls of the deceased relatives and friends of the members of the Purgatorial Society.

This shameful, commercial doctrine is a degrading, blinding device; it fosters superstition and benumbs the conscience; it blasphemes true Christianity; it enriches the priests at the cost of the poor, and seeks to lower the standards of Christian ethics to the plane of the basest sort of criminal profiteering. Thank God, the light of a new day is now dawning; and the shadows of night must soon flee away before the advancing Sun.

Review of “Comfort for the Jews”

IT WOULD be a little hard to convince the cynics of this generation that within the past year a book has been produced, the message in which was foretold by the Prophet Isaiah nearly three thousand years ago; nevertheless we feel fully justified in taking that view of Judge Rutherford’s book bearing the above title.

A careful reading of the book convinces us that it is epochal. Even before the book appeared, and before there was any promise of it, many of the readers of this magazine were of the opinion that something of the sort was sure to make its appearance soon.

The reason for this is evident. The time set by Jehovah for the blessing of the Jews has come. Their 1845 years of favor have been followed by 1845 of disfavor, which period ended in full in 1918, when the reestablishment of the Jews in Palestine actually took place.

The long period of seventy jubilees, seventy periods of fifty years each, which the law showed would be visited upon the Hebrew people for their failure to properly observe the jubilee sabbatic arrangements, have all come to their full end. The fall of the year 1925 marked the last limit to which they extend.

And now, with the full end of their period of disfavor reached, and with the full time come for ushering in earth’s great jubilee, toward which each of the seventy jubilees pointed, and with the Jews actually back in Palestine in large numbers, and continuing to return, at the rate of forty thousand a year, it is certain that the time has come to cry out with the Prophet Isaiah:

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”—Isaiah 40:1,2.                    .

In order for such a cry to be effective it must ■take the form of a book, wherein the reasons for giving forth the words of comfort may be put down in siudi a way as to convince all who read. Judge 1 Jutherdsrd's book .is just that. It contains the truth on the subjects of greatest interest U> Jews ami Ueulilos alike, for with the blessing of the Jews will come the long promised blessings In ad the 'foifoies of the earth.

IVe wish that.every Jurist .hi the world could road Judge Kwherford’s book “Cornfort for the Jews”. We fool that: they could have hut one opinion of it, and that is that he has proved in most eonvincrug fashion what he started out to prove.

Every CiirLtinn ought to read it, that he may have part in the work which the Lord now wishes (kmc, namely, the comforting of His ancient pimple, whom He foreknew, and who are yet beloved for their fathers’ sake. But with even, wore reason every Jew should read it, because the message it contaius will clear up the entire mystery which has surrounded God’s dealings with the natural children of Israel.

After a careful reading of Judge Rutherford’s book, we conclude that the best possible review of it is to be found in the words which he has himself made use of in the closing pages. What he has here summarized is proven step by step in the earlier pages of the book:

It must be apparent to every Jew who has followed the, argument, herein get forth, which has been based exclusively upon the Holy Scriptures, that God intends Israel, the-Jews, to have the land of .Palestine; that He promised that land to Abraham and to his seed after him, and that lie purposes to keep that promise: that for many centuries God has been by various experiences teaching the Jews, and through them other peoples, that He is Jehovah God and that there is none beside Him ; that God lias permitted the evil one to pursue his nefarious course and has overruled this to serve as a great test of the faithfulness of men; and that all who prove their love for God and loyalty and. faithfulness to Him shall receive His blessings.

The Jews now, in fulfilment of prophecy, are being regathered to Palestine. But it must bo admitted that the major portion of them have little faith iii the Lord and in His promises. From the long experience of the Jews, as recorded in the Bible, it must be apparent, that God will never permit them to succeed in rebuilding their home land and be restored there unless they learn, io exercise faith in Him. Let the Jews therefore turn to their God, to His Word, study the prophecies, and rely upon the Word of the Lord: and then according to. His promise He will guide them in the way they should go, and lead them into ways of everlasting blessings.

A eareful study of the Scriptures will reveal the fact that this is the plan of God stated briefly, to wit: That God made man perfect; that man sinned and was sentenced to death; that God promised to redeem him* that he who will, be the Redeemer must also bo the Messiah and the 'seed of promise’ through which the blessings shall come to the people; that this redeemer must be a perfect man who must give his life as a ransom price for mankind; that no man on earth could meet these requirements; that the obedient and faithful Son of Jehovah, the Logos, was sent from heaven to earth, being begotten by the power of Jehovah and born as a perfect man-child; that He grew to manhood’s estate; that He suffered death as a sin-offering; that lie arose I com the dead and ascended on high; that at the end of the world He returns to establish His kingdom; that the time has come for the Jews to be restored to Palestine; that the blessings of the people will be restoration; and that the time for the comfort of Israel is here because her warfare is ended,

The day has come when Israel shall know as never before that Jehovah is her God. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord: and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance.” (Psalm 33:12). The day of jubilee is come; the good news must be given to the people of Israel and then to all the peoples of the earth.—See Psalm 89:15.

The long dark period of Israel’s warfare is ended. The favor of God is being extended to her; and the Messiah, her Lord and Prince of Peace, the Savior of the world, must be identified and pointed out to her. Some one who loves the Lord must speak the message of comfort to the Jews. The time has come for the prophecy to have its fulfilment. To the praise of Jehovah God and in His name let the good tidings be told, to wit:

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. ... 0 Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain: 0 Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength: lift it up, be not afraid: say unto the citis* of Judah, Behold your God!”—Isaiah 40:1, 9.

[Radiocast from Watchtower WBBR on a wave length of 272.6 meters, by Judge Rutherford.]

GOD established with Israel the true religion;

namely, that they should worship Jehovah as the only true God and have no other gods beside Him.

Satan the enemy, the chief of devils and the invisible ruler of the other nations, established with those nations the false religion; namely, the worship of devils.

God erected a shield for the protection of Israel, by the terms of the law which He gave them. That law provided severe punishment for any one who indulged in devil worship. (Exodus 22:18: Leviticus 20: 26, 27; Deuteronomy 18: 9-11) The experiences through which Israel passed were primarily to demonstrate to them the necessity of loyalty and faithfulness to Jehovah. The evil one, Satan, hated the loyal Jews and sought to destroy them in whatsoever way he could. His constant effort was to turn them away from Jehovah God. During the time of Joshua the Israelites were faithful to God. Shortly after his death they began to forget God and fell into sin.

“And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the. Lord, and served Baalim: and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them , into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.”—Judges 2:11-14.

Then the Lord raised up Judge Samuel, who was true and faithful to the Lord, and because of his faithfulness the Lord delivered Israel out of the hand of their enemies during all the days of the judge.

“And when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them.” (Judges 2: 18) Then the Lord permitted the heathen to dwell near Israel to test them.

“Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan; . . . And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Periz-zites, and Hivites, and Jebusites; and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves.”—Judges 3:1,5-7.

Again the Lord permitted the Israelites to have great tribulation, and when they cried unto Him again He heard their cry and delivered them. (Judges 3:9,10) Time and time again the Israelites were unfaithful to their covenant, and time and again were they punished therefor, and when they cried unto the Lord He heard them and delivered them.—Judges 4:1-15; 6: 7.

Be it noted that whenever Israel was faithful to the Lord He always delivered them from their enemies. Without doubt He did this to teach them that He was not only their great God but their true and only friend and that Satan was and is their enemy. Some marked demonstrations of God’s loving kindness to Israel are shown in the instances recorded in the Scriptures. A few of these are here recounted:

Gideon, who served God and who prayed unto God for help, with a little band of 300 men put to flight a host of 200,000 Midianites; God causing them to slay each other. Without a doubt the Lord thus showed His favor because Gideon obeyed the voice of Jehovah and defied the Devil and his organization. (Judges '6:11-40; 7 :l-25) In this great conflict Gideon and his little company of 300 did nothing but hold high their lamps and cry: “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” The Lord God did the rest and caused the destruction of the Midianites.

When Jehoshaphat was king the combined armies of Ammon, Moab and mount Seir came up against the Israelites. Jehoshaphat knew that he could not withstand the assault of this great enemy. He gathered the Israelites before the temple at Jerusalem, to wit, the men, women and children. Standing before the temple, and as the mouthpiece of Israel, Jehoshaphat prayed to Jehovah God thus: “O Lord God of our fathers, art not thou God in heaven? and rulest not thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in thine hand is there not power and might, so that none is able to withstand thee ? . . . And all Judah stood before the Lord, "with their Ht-tle ones, their wives, and their children.”—2 Chronicles 20: 6,13.

Then the Lord heard the prayer of Jehoshaphat and He caused Jehaziel, a son of the tribe of Levi, to prophesy and to tell Jehoshaphat to be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of the great multitude, but that he should go out to battle and the enemy should fall. He said: “Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, 0 Judah and Jerusalem; fear not, nor be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them: for the Lord will be with you.”—2 Chronicles 20:17.

And then under the instructions of the Lord Jehoshaphat appointed singers unto the Lord who should praise the beauty of holiness as they went out before the army and praise the Lord for His mercy and goodness. Next day they went out to battle; and as the enemy approached, these singers began to sing the praises of the Lord. “And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab and mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten.”—Verse 22.

On another occasion, to wit, the fourteenth year of the reign of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came to give battle against the city of Jerusalem. The king of Assyria was an arrogant, haughty heathen who worshiped the Devil. This arrogant heathen king with his great army sent messengers unto Hezekiah and defied Almighty God. "When Hezekiah heard this message he rent his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and ashes and went down to the house of the Lord. Hezekiah was greatly in fear and in trouble and he sent his servant, who came unto Isaiah the prophet. And Isaiah prophesied:

“Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith the Lord, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land: and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.” —Isaiah 37: 6, 7.

Again the king of Assyria sent messengers to Hezekiah with a letter, attempting to weaken the faith of Hezekialrin Jehovah God.

“And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed unto the Lord, saying, 0 Lord of hosts, God of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubim, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth: thou hast made heaven and earth. Incline thine ear, 0 Lord, and hear; open thine eyes, 0 Lord, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent to reproach the living God. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations, and their countries, and have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them. Now therefore, 0 Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord, even thou only.”—Isaiah 37:14-20.

Then Isaiah prophesied and said unto King Hezekiah:

“Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it for mine ora sake, and for my servant David’s sake?’—Isaiah 37: 33-35.

The silence of night settled down upon the holy city of Jerusalem, but the inhabitants thereof slept not. They knew that there stood before the gates of the place of their habitation a mighty and terrible army which had never known defeat, an army so powerful that it could snuff out the Israelites as the wind drives the chaff before it. They knew that nothing could save them from this terrible enemy except the mighty hand of God. The Lord God had heard the prayer of Hezekiah, and the people waited. And while they waited the Lord God performed His great work for His name’s sake and for the sake of David His beloved servant, and the Devil and all of his angels could not lift a finger

to aid his servant Sennacherib and his mighty army.

When the curtains of night lifted, there lay spread out before the city upon the hills and plains 185,000 dead men of Sennacherib’s army. The Israelites had not struck a blow. The God of heaven, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had delivered them out of the hands of the enemy, as it is recorded: “Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” ■—Isaiah 37: 36.

Many other examples appear in the Scriptures of how Jehovah defended Israel His people. All these things Jehovah did that Israel might learn that He is the Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that His power is without limitation; that He is their friend and deliverer and could deliver them at any time out of the hands of the greatest of all enemies. Notwithstanding this great deliverance Israel again yielded to the seductive influence of Satan the enemy and turned away from God.

These things are recounted here, not for the purpose of reproaching the Jews but for the purpose of proving that their hope, and only hope, is to trust Jehovah God and obey His voice. In the law God had warned Israel what they might expect to suffer if they disobey His law. To them He said:

“Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God. Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.

“If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. For I will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, and establish my covenant with you. And ye shall eat old store, and bring forth the old because of the new. And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen ; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.

“But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; and if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your souls abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant: I will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you: and ye shall flee when none pursueth you. And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. . . . And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours. And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.”—Lev. 26:1-18, 30-33.

Because of their repeated violation of their covenant in forsaking the only true God and falling to the wiles of the enemy, Jehovah caused his prophet Jeremiah to say unto them:

“Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the Lord, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment and an hissing, and perpetual desolation.”—Jeremiah 25:9.

Zedekiah was Israel’s last king. He did evil in the sight of God. He mocked the prophets whom Jehovah sent and despised the words of God spoken bv the prophets and misused them. (2 Chronicles 36:12-16) Then the Lord, through the mouth of the Prophet Ezekiel, pronounced the final decree against Israel, which was enforced in the year 606 B. C., which decree follows:

“Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Because ye have made your iniquity to be remembered, in that your transgressions are discovered, so that in all your doing your sins do appear; because, I say, that ye are come to remembrance, ye shall be taken with the hand. And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, thus saith the Lord God, Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him.”—Ezekiel 21: 24-27.

Then the Lord brought upon the Israelites the Chaldeans, who broke down, the wall of Jerusalem and burned the house of the Lord and all the places thereabout and carried away the people captive, to Babylon; and they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and then put out the eyes of the king, bound him in fetters, and carried him to Babylon. All this was done in fulfilment of the prophecy which had been given as a warning to Israel.—See 2 Kings 25: 6, 7; 2 Chronicles 36: 21.

Why did the nation of Israel fall? The answer is, Because of their unfaithfulness to Jehovah God, It is true that a portion of the Israelites returned from Babylon seventy years later, but never again did they have a king and never again did they have full possession of the land. They were subject to other nations, and finally they were completely overthrown by the Romans, and in the year A. D, 73 the last vestige of their power disappeared from Palestine,

But is Israel cast off for ever? The answer is, No indeed, Mark the statement made by the Lord to Ezekiel at the time of pronouncing the final decree against them, It is: “I will overturn, overturn, overturn it; and it shall be no more until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." (Ezekiel 21:27) The mere fact that the Lord said He would overturn it until a set time, is conclusive proof that it is God’s purpose to restore Israel to His favor upon certain conditions. But when® The answer is, With the coming of Shiloh, the Messiah, to whom shall the gathering of the people be, as promised in Genesis 49:10. Then he of whom Moses was a type shall come into his own. (Deut. 18:15-18) “And at that time shall Michael [the Messiah] stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people.” (Daniel 12:1) That will mark the time when the favor of God may be expected to return to Israel.

Since it was unfaithfulness to Jehovah that caused them to be cast off, what should we expect will enable Israel to be restored to God’s favor? The answer is. Faith in God and in His Word, and full obedience to Him. What is the reason why they were unfaithful to God? Clearly the answer is, Because Satan the enemy, the god of this world, blinded them to the great truths which God had told them. But this blindness is not- to continue for ever; and when it. is removed there shall come unto them the great Messiah, who shall turn away ungodliness from the descendants of Judah; and his house shall be saved and returned to God’s favor.

“Let there be Light” By f. a. Fros’t

IT IS not my belief that a consecrated person should read only on one subject. He will be benefited by reading concerning all the ten principal fields of human interest. We have for example the late Pastor Russell, also Judge Rutherford, whose broadminded discourses are illustrated and brightened by thoughts drawn from every field of human, activity. This would be impossible had they not read and kept informed on these matters.

STUDIES IN THE "HARP OF GOD” ( ¹⁰¹⁵ LA'raST^HBOOK^{RD 3} )

«With issue Number 60 we began running Judge Rutherord’s new book, ITTTI “The Harp of God”, with accompanying questions, taking place of both Advanced and Juvenile Bible Studies which have been hitherto published.

⁵¹°When Jesus was in the earth He was despised and rejected of men. He was dishonored of men, and has since been dishonored of all except those who have come to a knowledge of the truth. The time will come, however, as the apostle declares, when 'every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’. (Philip-pians 2:7-11) The members of His body, the truly consecrated children of God, following in the footsteps of their Master, have been, despised of men, have been counted as the offscourings of the earth, have been persecuted and imprisoned, and many of them killed; and the world has known them not, even as it knew Him not. But in due time all those horn in the glorious kingdom of our Lord will be honored among men; because mankind will know of their position, as it is written: “Of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her; and the Highest himself shall establish her. The Lord shall count, when he writeth up the people, that this man was born there.” (Psalm 87: 5, 6) Then shall the people rejoice that it has pleased the heavenly Father to select out from amongst poor, imperfect men the 144,000, and to make them perfect through Christ Jesus. He will cause the peoples of earth to honor them, as He has promised: “I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations; therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.”— Psalm 45:17.

⁵¹¹The apostle says also that these are seeking immortality. That word here means incorruptibility; a condition not subject to death. The Messianic class, Head and body, will not be subject to decay, sickness, or death. Even a perfect human being requires nourishment to sustain his organism; but the exalted church, the Messiah, the Christ, will need nothing in the way of food to replenish any powers, because their powers will not be exhausted. These will have life in themselves in such an abundant measure that they can give it out, and will give it out, and still need no replenishing. Of Himself Jesus declared: “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given the Son to have life in himself.” —John 5: 26:4:14.

⁵¹²This same promise is made to those who participate in His sacrificial death. (John 6: 53, 54) These have the promise that they shall be partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and thus shall have power to give life unto others. The great prize that is here to be given is eternal life; and immortality is that quality of eternal life that is indestructible. To those who have entered into relationship with the Lord through Christ, He says: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” (Revelation 2:10) And again says St. James: “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation [trial]; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”—James 1:12.

QUESTIONS ON “THE HARP OF GOD”

To what extent has Jesus been honored by the world? fl 510.

What Scriptural proof is there that the world will yet honor Him? fl 510.

How have the body members of the church been regarded by the world? fl 510.

Will they be honored in the future? fl 510.

Will the world know who is born a member of the glorified church? Give Scriptural proof. fl 510.

What effect will this knowledge have upon the world? fl 510.

How will the people regard the church in the future ages? Give Scriptural proof, fl 510.

Besides glory and honor, what else is the church seeking? fl 511.

Define immortality, fl 511.

What will be the difference between a perfect human being and a member of the new creation with reference to requiring nourishment to sustain life? fl 511.

What Scriptural proof is given that Jesus possesses inherent life? fl 511.

What Scriptural promise is given to the body members that they will have inherent life? fl 512.

With what power will they be clothed with reference to giving life to others ? fl 512.

Give some Scriptural proof of the degree of life to be possessed by the church, fl 512.         ..

What is meant by the “crown of life” ? fl 512.

643                               .

The New LB.S.A. Publication

DELIVERANCE

A first edition, a sort of pre-ihm, just about ample to supply the first demand of interested readers, is just off the press.

The desire to have our interested readers supplied early fixed the copies of the first edition both in quantity and price.

Other editions will follow but copies will only be available in about two months’ time.

Delivebance contains 384 pages. With Scriptural Index of Bible quotations it proves to be a book for ready reference. An exhaustive index locates the reading matter by subjects.

Deliverance is cloth-bound and gold-stamped— 50c per copy in IL S. A., 55c in Canada, and 2/3 in England.