CHAPTER XII.

“THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.” (By a Member of the Order of The Brotherhood of India.) Perverse and degenerate Soul: I have heard your cry, and have come once more to admonish the wilful and wayward child of evil. I approach you from a plane of life so far above and beyond the physical that these children of the flesh neither see my form nor hear my voice. By the exercise of a power which has been wisely withheld from you, I have arrested the forces of nature which have been but clumsily employed to entrap you. For a few fleeting moments of earthly time I have lulled to harmless sleep the conscious powers of these earth-bound Souls. My message is for you and for you alone. Listen: Before you were permitted to open the door of knowledge which leads to the exalted spheres of spiritual illumination and power, you were informed by him who held the key, that no man can ever pass that sacred portal and hope thereafter to evade any of the responsibilities which lie beyond. Patiently and explicitly you were instructed as to the nature, the scope and the meaning of those responsibilities, and the penalties which nature imposes for their conscious and intentional evasion or violation were made plain. Of your own free will and accord you elected to enter and assume those responsibilities, well knowing the consequences of their violation. When you first entered our sacred Temple of Light, and knelt as a voluntary initiate at our Altar of Truth, you took upon yourself a solemn and binding Obligation. Well you knew its import. You have not forgotten it. Neither can you now evade the penalty of its violation. That Great One, in the light of whose deific presence all other light is but a somber shadow, has fixed the seal of his judgment upon it. That judgment is irrevocable. From it there is no appeal. You stand condemned. Before you were permitted thus to bind yourself to the faithful discharge of a sacred trust you were carefully and minutely instructed as to all the principles, forces, activities and processes of nature on which that obligation rests. That instruction was given to you as the tribute of a higher knowledge and the dispensation of a higher Power. You knew then, as you know now, that the only compensation required from you is that which must flow to all mankind from your right use of the knowledge and power with which you were then and there invested. Under that instruction you learned to know the fundamental Attribute with which the Great Universal Intelligence has invested you as an intelligent Soul. You have not forgotten it. Under that instruction you learned to know the fundamental Power with which you were invested as one of our special messengers of Truth. By the development of that power you have opened the door to higher and nobler possibilities of life. You have not forgotten that lesson, nor the responsibility it imposes. Under that instruction you learned to know the meaning and the application of the Great Law of Compensation to your own life and intelligence. You accepted the responsibilities which that knowledge inevitably imposes. Nor have you forgotten. Under that instruction you learned to know the primary and fundamental Duty which rests upon one who voluntarily enters the portal of our venerable Order, and when that duty is fully performed. These conditions you have not forgotten. Under that instruction you learned to know the great underlying _Purpose_ of your individual being, as well as the ethical effect of that purpose accomplished. You have not forgotten them. From a yet higher Intelligence and an Authority more transcendent you learned to know the full measure and scope of your own Personal Responsibility to yourself and to your fellow men. None of these things have you forgotten. Thirteen searching questions were asked you and your answers are inscribed in the records of our Order. You have not forgotten them. Each question and answer form an immutable link in the chain of your individual record. This golden chain of thirteen mighty links of truth was accepted by you as the rule and guide of your conduct toward yourself and all mankind. Behold it now! Each link is broken into many pieces, and each piece becomes a new link in an unbroken chain of evidence against you. You knew then and you know now, that the right application of knowledge and the right use of power lead upward to the Pathway of Light and Life; and that the perversion of knowledge and the abuse of power inevitably lead downward to the Way of Darkness and Death. Notwithstanding your knowledge of all these things, you, of your own free will and accord, have turned your face from the light of truth and your feet from the pathway of eternal life and infinite joy. You have scorned the counsels of the just, ignored the judgments of the wise, defied the immutable an inexorable penalties of broken laws, and have walked boldly down the broad highway of darkness and death. Your feet are now hovering on the brink of despair, and your eyes are peering over deep down into the blackness of everlasting darkness. And what then? Ah, yes, what then? Then it is you cry out to the Master whose loving admonition you have ignored so often, and you entreat him to save you from the doom you so persistently have invited. You cry for help, but what is the motive that prompts your cry? Is it humility? No. Is it love? No. Is it any motive which could possibly inspire an honest prayer? Alas, no. It is, instead, the lowest and meanest impulse that ever moves the springs of human action--the impulse of Fear. And fear of what? Fear of Justice. Fear of the inevitable penalties which you so deliberately and persistently have invited; penalties which your own conscience recognizes and your reason approves. Fear of the operation of nature’s most beneficent law, the Law of Compensation. Oh, selfish lover! false friend! unworthy student! obdurate sinner! unconscionable outlaw and indefensible miscreant! Where now is all your boasted power? Why do you cringe and writhe in an agony of fear? Why are you here, the helpless plaything of forces under the control of this witless child of earth? Listen, and I will tell you: The Law of Retributive Justice is but a single phase of the great Law of Compensation. That Law is immutable, irrevocable and inexorable. Whosoever invites its judgments must suffer its penalties. Under its inevitable and relentless decree you stand a guilty and condemned Soul. You have violated the most sacred law of your being--the Law of Love. Neither time, place, circumstance, duty nor responsibility has deterred you from your unholy purpose to wreck the happiness and fortunes of a defenseless home. You have betrayed the trust of a faithful friend. You have abused his generous hospitality, and violated the sanctity of his household. You have permitted your own degenerate and selfish desires and passions to override every principle of Equity, Justice and Right. To accomplish an ignoble purpose you have employed all your little knowledge of our noble science in conscious and deliberate violation of a most sacred and binding obligation; and I am come to behold you now, a blackened and perjured Soul, expiating your crimes and suffering a self-invoked and righteous penalty. Nay, more: It is you and such as you who have made it possible for offended ignorance to travesty our noble science, misinterpret our exalted philosophy, bring our ancient and honored Order into ignominy and shame, and all our beneficent instructions under the blighting and humiliating ridicule of this Occidental world. It is you and such as you who have made it necessary for us once more to shut the doors of our sacred Temple of Light against all who shall come to us from your western shores. It is you and such as you who have furnished the inspiration which prompts the vulgar wit of your overfed, western semi-civilization to amuse itself in derisive ridicule and mockery of the splendid legacy which our Oriental civilization is but waiting to bequeath to your people. It is you and such as you who furnish the plots and dramatic settings for your literary travesties; and because of your trivial and degrading uses of magical powers, our august Fraternity becomes the target of your caustic, western wits and merciless satirists. It is you and such as you who deliberately, persistently and flagrantly violate and misrepresent the most beneficent and sacred law of life--the Law of Affinity and Love--and by your wicked perversions and vicious subversions fix upon our noble Order a burden of cruel and unjust criticism, in the presence of which we who are thus maligned and misrepresented bow our heads in humiliation, in sorrow and in shame. It is you and such as you who knowingly and intentionally substitute sensuality for affinity, lust for love, license for law, and by your brazen and shameless disregard of noble principles and benign teachings, say to the world, “Thus saith our Ancient Order of Light.” You cringe and writhe in double agony, and well you may, as you look upon the picture in all its hideous deformity; but your punishment is not yet completed. Listen yet further to the voice of one who would have spared you this unhappy hour. You were informed by one whose words you can not doubt, that no man can apply his knowledge of our higher science to selfish or ignoble purposes without himself, sooner or later, falling a victim to the forces and processes he thus employs. Had you been true to yourself, true to your friends, true to your instructors, true to the obligation which God or Nature fixes upon every intelligent Soul, this would have been the day of your triumph and joy. Instead of this you have made it the dark and gloomy hour of your humiliation and exile, and in the records of our Order it marks the closing earthly scene of one more dismal and ignominious failure. When this sleeping child of the flesh shall awaken and once more shall set in motion the forces which hold you in their relentless grasp, what then? Ah, yes, what then? I will tell you. The vital element which still binds your spiritual body to its far-away physical counterpart will soon be dissipated. Nature’s magnetic chain which heretofore has enabled you to return to the physical body will be broken. Physical death will have overtaken you. The element which enables you to manifest yourself to these children of earth no longer will be at your command. You will pass from their vision and their knowledge for time, and who knows but for eternity. In the realm of spiritual darkness you will be left to wander alone, and alone to expiate your crimes. As it has been here, so will it be there, for you and you alone to determine whether you will follow the path which leads onward and upward to infinite light, perfect happiness and eternal life; or backward and downward along the pathway of deepest darkness to disintegration, dissolution, individual extinction, and a resolution back into nature’s elements. Farewell.