The special doctrine of re-incarnation is said to be absent in the fragments of the Avesta and in the Zend commentaries, and absent also in the latter Pahlavi doctrines. It is not held by the modern Parsis. “On the other hand,” says G. R. S. Mead, B.A., M.R.A.S., “Greek writers emphatically assert that the doctrine of re-incarnation was one of the main tenets of the Magian tradition.” The same author elsewhere remarks: “Since Bardaisan, like all the great Gnostics, believed in re-incarnation, such a conception as the resurrection of the physical body was nothing but a gross superstition of the ignorant.” (The _Theosophical Review_ for March, 1898, p. 17.) To judge Christianity fairly, it was necessary to know something of its origin, its antecedents and the early phases of its life. We had to follow the history of its early sects and observe the changes effected in the Church by forces playing upon it from without. The Church gradually rose into a position of social influence and authority, from which it again declined, and it was during the latter condition that in its struggles to maintain power and supremacy amid adverse forces it dropped out the mystic beliefs difficult of apprehension by Western minds; it ceased to order and classify its adherents, and it ultimately adapted its doctrines to the materialistic spirit of the dawning era of modern science.[16] Nevertheless, the Church retained its pure _ethical_ teaching. It has held up to view the noble unselfish life of its founder Jesus of Nazareth. No one could deny that during the period even of its degradation, this religion has proved to millions of human beings a source of vital comfort and joy, and to some extent of spiritual light. Footnote 16: Tertullian complains: “They have all access alike; they hear alike, they pray alike, even heathens if any such happen to come among them.” The tendency of Protestantism was to assert the claims of all men—the weak and childish as well as the thoughtful and intellectually strong—to a clear understanding of the Church’s whole teaching. In pursuance of a policy to meet this demand, the Church gave forth a simplified presentation of God and Nature that contradicts the plainest facts of science, and creates within minds of deeper, more expanded faculty, a conscientious revolt from the Christian faith to an attitude of honest scepticism. Outside the Church, however, other forces of evolution have prevailed to carry man forward, and to-day there exists an earnest and devout spirit of inquiry, and a strong dissatisfaction with the purely materialistic theory of Nature.