CONDUCTED BY J. H. FUSSELL.

"No one can intelligently pursue the path of Brotherhood without frequent and heavy condemnation of acts, and of persons as revealed in their acts."

"Judge no man."

"Judge the act, not the person."

Is there a reconciliation between the three policies thus indicated? In trying to follow the path of Brotherhood and promote the best interests of our fellows, we make a series of critical judgments. Seeing a cause about to come into operation, we make a judgment as to whether its effects will promote Brotherhood. The usual "causes" are the acts of persons; we judge whether their effects will be satisfactory; deciding No, we condemn such acts, saying, "I regard Smith as acting against the interests of Brotherhood." That is not to say "The motive of Smith in those acts is self-interest." The chief point to be observed in my attitude is that I shall not injure Smith's evolution. Our final judgment concerning most things is compound, and the factors that enter into it are two. These are (1) MY self-originated judgment, (2) the judgment of others, expressed in words, or, more potently, silently, and in the last case subtly infusing itself into my mind and blending with my own proper judgment. The resultant of these two factors is my final judgment. The judgment that Smith arrives at respecting his acts is, therefore, a blend of his opinion and of my opinion respecting their tendency, and it is none the less true even if after consideration of my opinion he rejects it and leaves his own, as he thinks, unmodified. But suppose I strongly think that Smith acts from motives of self-interest. I have made a judgment respecting Smith as well as his acts. Am I wrong? Not necessarily. My mind will become a mirror wherein Smith may see himself and reform. It will induce a self-examination that must be beneficial in tendency. But if my judgment to that effect respecting Smith is consciously or unconsciously colored with personal feeling, that is, if I consciously or unconsciously feel that Smith's self-interestedly based actions may interfere with my personal interests or comfort, then that feeling of potential or actual anger or irritation will tend, not only to darken my judgment but that of Smith, and to excite similar detrimental emotions in him.

No human being can avoid making such judgments as to another. The right counsel of perfection would be, not to avoid them, for the higher we go the more numerous are the people we have to help, and, therefore, preliminarily to judge that intelligent help may be given; but to aim at the exclusion of the personal self from the judgment, making it as lofty as possible. To judge should be to sympathize, that is, to feel like. To judge Smith is to understand him, that is, for a moment to feel as he feels. To compare what I have thus sympathetically ascertained to be his feeling with my ideal of the highest feeling of a judgment on Smith.

Let us throw away fear; learn to know ourselves and others, and unhesitatingly compare with an ideal. That men act wrongly is always from ignorance of even their own real welfare. No judgment should, therefore, contain anger, irritation, or any similar feeling. Bearing that in mind as an ideal, criticism and judgment become duties.

Universal Brotherhood does not necessarily imply either of these. For the purposes of this question we may define Brotherhood as acting towards others in such a way as to help them in their life and development, at the same time regarding them as inseparable units of humanity. Now there may be and are times in the lives of all of us when the condoning of a fault, i. e., the pardon or overlooking of a fault, may be the greatest help. Then again there are times when the outspoken condemnation of a fault—not of a person—may be the one thing needed to help that person.

But Brotherhood is not sentimentality, it is justice as well as compassion, it is that love for the real inner man that is not afraid of hurting the personal man when this is for the sake of principle and actuated by true love. The sentimental condoning of a fault does not help and those who follow a sentimental idea of Brotherhood too often swing to the other extreme and indulge in wholesale and unfounded condemnation, not simply of a fault, but of persons.

Brotherhood is not extreme in either direction. The middle path is the path of Brotherhood, this above all is the path of principle—the path of the principle of love and the principle of justice. If we apply to our conduct the injunction: "do unto others as ye would they should do unto you," we shall not go far wrong.

True it is that our responsibility increases as our knowledge increases and as the knowledge of the physician and surgeon may require him to amputate a limb or give temporary pain in order to save the patient's life, so every true man is a physician and surgeon, first in his own life and then in the lives of others. On the other hand, the true physician will often draw away the mind of the patient from his sickness or disease, and how often can we not help a failing brother by apparently ignoring a fault and calling out the nobler side of the nature!

If we are true to the better side of our own natures we shall soon learn in what true Brotherhood consists. But no one can be a true Brother to another who is afraid to apply the knife to his own failings, or who is not honest in his own endeavors. We students may make mistakes in our acts of Brotherhood, but if we keep in the light of the soul and keep our motives pure the realization of Brotherhood will not be far distant.

Whence arises the sense of duty? In what does it originate?

It is above all things requisite that the expression of great ethical or moral or religious principles should be universally applicable. That is to say, they should take the simplest form. Most of our religious divisions are the result of an endeavour to make a local or special condition a standard to which all must conform. Great moral principles are as adaptable and as elastic (and no more) in their own sphere, as great physical principles. The laws of gravitation, cohesion, and the other great forces set duties for material objects to which the perfection of their evolution enables them to respond. But circumstances alter cases. A piece of ice will fall to the ground if dropped; if released at the bottom of a pail of water it will rise to the top; no further. The duty of the ice in one case is to fall; in the other, to rise.

In the region of the soul duty is understood usually to be the sense of moral obligation.

We are told that duty is what we owe. It is to be remembered that when we have done all we are unprofitable servants. The talent hid in a napkin was duteously safe. But there is a higher duty to Him who gathers where He has not scattered. What is due is, in fact, greater than what we owe. The educative and evolutionary quality of our experience depends upon this. And it is here that the distinction between the higher and lower duty may be found. It is a principle in chancery law that he who seeks equity must do equity. Similarly those who desire to ascend or progress must fulfil all the lower stages of growth and be free of what they owe before they can undertake the rendering of their due. Renunciation also begins here. The old story of the servant, forgiven a large debt, and turning on his fellow and debtor illustrates this. The ceremonial law of the Jews for example, was an educative force in the direction of insuring the recognition of those in authority, crude symbols of the divine. Our modern taxes and tariffs have precisely the same educative effect as the tithes and offerings of old, the modern method reaching a more practical result.

There is a Principle or Power in the Universe which provides for all creatures. It is generally known as Providence. It is called God and Karma and the Law. When men consciously ally themselves with this Power they also become Providers. They learn that it is more blessed to give than to receive. They also learn which is the river, the water or the banks that confine the water. The promptings of evolution, of the Kumara, the immortal One that ensouls a man and makes him divine, carry him forward along the line of least resistance. It is the business of the river to reach the ocean, not to break down the banks. All this implies action, and the formation of character. While Fohat is in manifestation, duty means to act, to do. To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly before the inner god. To love that Holy One with all the heart and mind and strength, and to see in one's brothers the same object of devotion is to conform to the will of the Higher Self. Duty on the lower levels of life is a means for the development of the lower manas or brain mind.

Let us dissect away certain overgrowths which obscure this point. Obedience to duty is often only conscious, half conscious, or unconscious fear of the consequences of neglect. A child who has burned his finger thereafter dreads the flame, and the dread persists when the memory of the burn has died out of his practical consciousness. Many honest people do not steal because they retain an unconscious memory of the disgrace attending a revealed theft in childhood or in a previous incarnation. Fear, hope of reward or commendation, these two, whether conscious or existing in their effects as the fixed habit of performance, must be eliminated as inspirers of action before we can see how much remains. It is possible that with most of us not much of the pure golden sense of duty would remain in the bottom of the crucible.

Actions whose performance is a duty are not always unpleasant. For instance, to eat is a duty, because at a proper time the Law, manifesting as hunger, demands it.

The Law arises twofold; outwardly it manifests as circumstance, presenting at every moment a tangled maze of paths of which any one may be selected; internally as the impulsion to select one particular path of these many. In his spiritual thought, the inner man has already traversed that path. In outer fact it remains for the terrestrial man to imitate in the concrete. The sense of duty is the reflection in the outer consciousness of this picture of action existing in the inner, which picture, in the inner world, is action. It may be dimly or brightly mirrored, the sense of duty weak or strong; its concrete imitation may be effected or not, duty done or not.