THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2923, 23 March 1910, Page 63

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

At a public meeting held in the rooms of the Theosophical Society on Wednesday, 17th instant, an address, entitled "The Science of Peace" was delivered by Mr A. W. Maurais. The speaker said that civilisations rose and fell like the tides, except that each flood-tide of civilisation was a little higher than its predecessors: As the tide rose old forms of belief fell away. The. propitiation of a being who would certainly harm you if he were nob placated gave place to the idea of a benevolent deity who was all good and eoe do wed with the divine attributes of omni J science, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Still, the tide rose, and men, gazing with keener mental vision, found it impossible to reconcile the evil and misery manifest everywhere with a benevolent cause. At this point arose materialistic philosophers of matter and force, and semi-spiritual doctrines of ego and non-ego, self and notself, spirit and matter —all containing the truth, but none the whole truth. Not here was to be found the real answer "to the world-problem, said the lecturer. The real answer, given in the mysteries, and reproclaimed to-day by theosophy, was that the whole was the cause of each part within it. Nothing existed but •God, who, as the Lord Jesus pointed out, could raise children unto Abraham out of the very stones) —a fragment of the teaching preserved from the guile of the priesthood and the fury of the mob. Every grain of dust was on the evolutionary path, which led) through myriads of ages and countless vicissitudes of pleasure and pain to God and His peace. The ladder of evolution led onwards and upwards until lost in the light—but there was no end. Earths and hells and heavens were transitory traininggrounds for the fragments thrown down by God, that they might climb upwards to their source, and the science of peace was the sacred science, which pointed \ the path and give hints as to its treading. I Miss J. E. B ; llin.L. presided, and there w 5 | a fair attendance.