THE TRUTH PERCEIVERS.

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 15335, 8 September 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

THE TRUTH PERCEIVERS.

A THIRD SOMETHING. (By "Darius.”) No- 2. No one can convince or persuade me that the story of an old garden in an old. old world is an empty tale, because I know that such a paradise, somewhere containing a Tree of Life, did exist, and the birds know it, for they have longer instinctive memories than we, and they remember and' shall remember it fop ever in silence and in song, in mating and in nesting, in brooding and in watching the final flight of the feathered well-beloved. The Tree of Life was in the garden and the fruit of the Tree of Life is the knowledge of good and evil, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. Before* the Tree of Life was planted and bore fruit, mere man as such, had not come into being. He had not yet become a living and responsible soul.

I think it is the Creator who is represented as having said “In the day thou eatest of the fruit thereof thou shalt surely die,” and the Tempter who is represented as saying, “Thou shalt not die but become as gods.” That both appear to have been right seems indubitable, for man, while he lias become subjecL -to death, has dominion not only over the beasts of the field but also over the earth, and air and sea. Even while giving the devil his due we are too much in the habit of giving it to him grudgingly. And one will say lo the wise thrush, “But what of the death penalty,” and the wise thrush will answer, "wherein is any penalty, when life renews life and man goes on from achievement to achievement and from glory unto glory? And what is death when we arc in the midst of eternal life? With full knowledge man knew that the tree which bore .the fruit called Life also bore the fruit called Death, and that the acceptance of life entailed the acceptance of death. It could not be otherwise. Choosing to live we also chose to die, and none dares say man had no choice, for the p'ower to accept or decline life may be hidden deep in embryogeny yet still inherentPast, Present and EternaU Was that then a fable concerning the giving of the fruit of the tree to the male of mankind: from whence came life to you but from the form, the one form, created to give it sanctuary? It is all so simple, this truth, that wise men looking for the solution of an age-old piddle, fail see what the rapt vision of the thrush beheld.

And why should not one grand life, by relinquishment, And in death a means of overcoming death and of establishing an immortal state. We have not yet plumbed the deeps of the occult where all things are possible. In the day we eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life we surely die. Is it not so? And would you, were you a responsible life germ, refuse to accept the responsibilities of life because of a fear of death? If so, then, coward and dastard 1 Would you, having life, destroy it through a peevishness, a disappointment or an overwhelming sense of guilt, and be in haste for extinction? Poor Soul! Christ never wept over any single individual sin or sinner. He said, “Go and sin no more.” It was not , the sinner that mattered, but the sinner. The sin was past and done with. The sinner was present and eternal-

Apprehending,

I learned then that the Third Something of the bird and the flower is' an infallible perception of Truth, indeed the bird and the flower each appear to me as visible Truth. The old Alchemist, Nature, has made them out of that wonder alloy, the earth, just as she made our first parents out of red baked earth according t.o a Hindoo tradition, but no matter how o the truth is put we are all the children of the earth. Having attained to a knowledge of good and evil we naturally proceed to a discrimination between truth and falsehood, but the determination of good and evil does not begin nor end with one generation. It is true that Buddha offered his body to the starving tigress that she might nourish her young. It is true ■because it is typical of. the altruism of Buddha and of Jesus Christ. It is true because it symbolises' Divine pity incarnate. It is true that of old one 'piled the faggots and whetted thq knife to slay his son, because the spirit of extreme sacrifice fills-''the adoring heart. It is true that God in man offered up Himself on the cross because it is a Divine revelation that immortality can only be attained through sacrifice- It is as true that eternal life is conditional upon belief in eternal life as it is’ that eternal death is a condition of the mind that believes itself to be eternally dead, or that happiness cannot exist without the necessary mental and moral condition.

Almost all through the ages there has been a Tree of Life, cherished, jealously guarded and often worshipped. Sun worship, and tree worship and sacrifices of the fruits of the earth are natural and must have belonged to the first religions. Even we place around and about our altars sheaves of wheat and ears of corn from the beauty, and abundance of harvest, and yet we do not stand charged with idolatry on that account, because that, in the misty past, our ancestors sought to appease and conciliate the Corn God It is all very strange how life has been compared to a tree alike by Christian and by Pagan, and yet this only serves to show how nearly wo are akin. Ido not, in retrospect, see much in my old arboreal ancestors to be ashamed of, but their departed spirits, if knowledge lives with them, may see a good deal to be ashamed of in me,' and yet I don’t know, for it is possible that bird and beast and flower, no longer companioning us on this globe, once their home, may have developed a large charity looking upon the harmony in which the ordered spheres revolve, neither loving their life nor haling, but joyously being and abiding in a strange progressive felicity. I believe I have learned from the Truth Perceiver that there is not, with any honest soul, an unhappy land of yesterday, and that, if you will pardon the tautological emphasis,, the only vital thing is life, to-day and tomorrow. and that to-morrow' shall bo like to-day, but much more sweet, and so on day after day, until life stands full at blessed noon, when we shall feast beneath green orange boughs with friends, the rose of Doctor MacDonald and the thrush or Darius.