The Jews believed in the Doctrine of Rebirth or they would not
have asked John the Baptist if he were Elijah, as recorded in the first chapter of John. The
Apostles of Christ also held the belief as we may see from the incident recorded in the
sixteenth chapter of Matthew where the Christ asked them the question: “Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” The Apostles
replied:“Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and
others Jeremias or one of the Prophets.” Upon this occasion the Christ tacitly
assented to the teaching of Rebirth because He did not correct the disciples as would have
been His plain duty in His capacity as teacher, when the pupils entertained a mistaken
idea.
But to Nicodemus He said unequivocally:“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” and in the
eleventh chapter of Matthew, the fourteenth verse, He said, speaking of John the Baptist:
“this[pg 047]is Elijah,” in the
seventeenth chapter of Matthew, the twelfth verse, He said: “Elijah
has come already and they knew him not, but have done to him whatsoever they listed, ...
then the disciples understood that he spoke to them of John the Baptist.”
Thus we maintain that the Doctrine of Rebirth offers the only
solution to the problem of life which is in harmony with the laws of nature, which answers
the ethical requirements of the case and permits us to love God without blinding our reason
to the inequalities of life and the varying circumstances which give to a few the ease and
comfort, the health and wealth, which are denied to the many.
The theory of Heredity advanced by Materialists applies only to
the form, for as a
carpenter uses material from a certain pile of lumber to build a house in which he
afterwards lives, so does the spirit take the substance wherewith to build its house from
the parents. The carpenter cannot build a house of hard wood from spruce lumber and the
spirit also must build a body which is like those from which the material was taken, but the
theory of Heredity does not apply upon the moral plane, for it is a notorious fact, that in
the rogues galleries of America and[pg 048]Europe there is no case where both father and son are represented. Thus the
sons of criminals, though they have the tendencies to crime, keep out of the clutches of the
law. Neither will Heredity hold good upon the plane of the intellect, for many cases may be
cited where a genius and an idiot spring from the same stock. The great Cuvier, whose brain
was of about the same weight, as Daniel Webster's, and whose intellect was as great, had
five children who all died of paresis, the brother of Alexander the Great was an idiot, and
thus we hold that another solution must be found to account for the facts of
life.
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