This Law is the major corollary of the Law of Evolution. It has never been grasped or properly understood in the West and, in the East, where it is acknowledged as a governing principle of life, it has not proved useful because it has been soporific in its effect, and a detriment to progress. The Eastern student regards it as giving him plenty of time; this has negated the driving effort to achieve a goal. The average Christian confuses the Law of Rebirth with what he calls "the transmigration of souls," and frequently believes that the Law of Rebirth signifies the passing of human beings into the bodies of animals or of lower forms of life. Such is by no means the case. As the life of God progresses onwards through [116] form after form, that life in the subhuman kingdoms of nature proceeds progressively from mineral forms into vegetable forms, and from these vegetable forms into animal forms; from the animal form stage, the life of God passes into the human kingdom, and becomes subject to the Law of Rebirth and not the law of Transmigration. To those who know something of the Law of Rebirth or of Reincarnation, the mistake seems ridiculous.

The doctrine or theory of reincarnation strikes the orthodox Christian with horror; yet if one asks him the question which the disciples asked Christ about the blind man, "Master, did this man sin or his fathers that he was born blind?" (John IX, 2.), they refuse the implications; or they express amusement or dismay as the case may be. The presentation to the world of the thought by the average occult or theosophical exponent has been, on the whole, deplorable. It has been deplorable because it has been so unintelligently presented. The best that can be said is that they have familiarized the general public with the theory; had it, however, been more intelligently presented, it might have been more generally accepted in the West.

This doctrine will be one of the keynotes of the new world religion, as well as the clarifying agent for a better understanding of world affairs. When Christ was here, in person, before, He emphasized the fact of the soul and the value of the individual. He told men that they could be saved by the life of the soul, and of the Christ within [117] the human heart. He said also that "except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." (John III, 3.) Only souls can function as citizens of that kingdom, and it was this privileged functioning that He held, for the first time, before humanity, thus giving men a vision of a divine possibility and an unalterable conclusion to experience. He told them to "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." (Matt., V, 48.)

It should be remembered that practically all the occult groups and writings have foolishly laid the emphasis upon past incarnations and upon their recovery; this recovery is incapable of any reasonable checking - anyone can say and claim anything they like; the teaching has been laid upon imaginary rules, supposed to govern the time equation and the interval between lives, forgetting that time is a faculty of the brain-consciousness and that divorced from the brain, time is non-existent; the emphasis has always been laid upon a fictional presentation of relationships. The teaching (hitherto given out on [118] reincarnation) has done more harm than good. Only one factor remains of value: the existence of a Law of Rebirth is now discussed by many and accepted by thousands.