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So far as this doctrine being "the highest conception of the Immortality of the Soul," as contrasted with the "pagan and heathen" doctrine of Reincarnation it is not a "conception of the Immortality of the Soul" at all, but a flat contradiction of it. It is a doctrine of the "Immortality of the Body," which bears plain marks of a very lowly "pagan and heathen" origin.
The various Church Councils, however, frowned upon these outcroppings of the doctrine of Reincarnation, and the influence of those who rose to power in the church was directed against the "heresy."
"Ah, the beautiful pagan world!" said Rodney; "morality is but a dream, an academic discussion, but beauty is a reality." "Out of the billions of men that have been born into the world," said Carmady, "I am only sure that two would have been better unborn; and the second was but a reincarnation of the first." "And who were they?" said Rodney. "St. Paul and Luther.
I will give two instances when that belief in reincarnation was plainly manifested.
+57+. There is an obvious relation between the belief in reincarnation in animal form and the worship of animals; both rest on the assumption of substantial identity of nature between man and other beings, an assumption which seems to be universal in early stages of culture, and is not without support in modern philosophic thought.
The teeming millions of India live and die in the full belief in Reincarnation, and to them it is accepted without a question as the only rational doctrine concerning the past, present and future of the soul.
It was, in fact, a fallen god, imprisoned in the body as a punishment for antenatal sin, and it deserved our care in this sense, that it was our chief business in life to purify it so as to secure its release from the necessity of reincarnation in another body. But, during this present life, they held that this divine element slumbers, except in prophetic dreams.
Quite young men often marry quite old women; a reason sometimes given is that these young men were on earth before and loved these same women, but died before their initiation, so could not marry until now in their reincarnation. Certainly, amongst the blacks, age is no disqualification for a woman; she never seems to be too old to marry, and certainly with age gains power.
How reincarnation first began on Mars is unknown, though the natural people, the Dendas, have traditions about it, vague and contradictory. It must have been slow. The supernatural people thus brought to Mars have created its civilization, discovered the phosphori, and established Music, which is so much of their life, and accelerated in the way you have learned the process of materialization.
Isaac Disraeli was an artist in feeling; he must have been a reincarnation of one of those bookmakers of Venice who touched hands with Titian and Giorgione and helped to invest wisely the moneys the merchants of the Rialto made. Never a Gratiano had a greater contempt for a merchant than he.
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