♦The last Message♦ “Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Hold the truth as a lamp. Hold fast to the lamp of truth. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to any besides yourselves.” ♦The goal is Nirvana♦ Sainthood is attained through long struggle. The writings tell of the thirty-seven stages which must be passed before the Eightfold Path is trod,--stages which represent the severest Self-discipline, but which lead out to the life of entire freedom and serenity, until in the end emancipation from the Self-life with all its attendant evils, and the repose of Nirvana in at-one-ment with the Universe, has been attained. “This is the ultimate goal. Caught in the vortex of evolution there is no rest from birth to death even in highest heaven; and until you realize Nirvana, this changefulness must go on. On earth the purified perfected nature enjoys Nirvana, and after the dissolution of the physical body there is no further birth in an objective world. Neither man nor gods see him again.” THE WAY OF SALVATION. CHRISTIANITY “_If God is Love, why do we need a Mediator? I think the best answer is, I do not know. Nor do I know why, God being Love, the intervention of maternal suffering is the indispensable condition of existence, or why suffering is the necessary medium for the procuring of anything that really deserves the name of blessing. Why are knowledge, civilization, health, purchased only by severe labour for us by others, that is by mediation? I only know that it is so, an unalterable law, the beauty of which I can dimly see, and always most brightly in those moments when I am least earthly in feeling, and most disposed to reckon nobleness immeasurably above physical, or even mental comfort. And seeing that as the law of the Universe, I am prepared to believe and acquiesce in it when found in the Atonement, as part of the Divine Government--a philosophically as well as theologically demanded necessity. It is no exception to the great system, but in perfect harmony with it._” I ♦The Father-thought♦ The fundamental thought of the message of the Christ, as of His life, is the thought of the Fatherhood of God, man being in His view the child of God, brought into being for a great purpose. None have been so conscious as He of the failure of man to maintain this high relation, or of the disastrous effect of the failure upon the whole of human life. It involved the breaking up of the Home, unutterable pain to the Father, unutterable loss to man, as is recorded in St. Luke XV. The self-life, as opposed to the child-life, had been set up; there are two centres where one had been, two conflicting wills in a universe in which one Will alone must reign.