Yet that is precisely the sort of thing that goes with the belief in special creation and special salvation--the teaching that we are not responsible for our sins and that by believing that another assumed them and died for us we can escape the results of our wrong doing and thus be saved. What are we to be saved from? From nothing but ourselves. From our selfishness, from our capacity to do evil, from our willingness to inflict pain, from our lack of sympathy with all suffering and from the heartlessness that is willing to let others suffer in order that we may escape. Salvation must necessarily mean capacity to enjoy heaven. The man who is willing to purchase bliss by the agony of another is unfit for heaven and could not recognize it if he were there. What do we think of a person here who shifts his sins upon another and while that other suffers he goes free and enjoys the fruits of his baseness? A heaven that is populated with those who see in vicarious atonement a happy arrangement for letting them in pleasantly and easily would not be worth having. It would be a heaven of selfishness and that would be no heaven at all. A real heaven can be composed only of those who have eliminated selfishness; only of those who want to help others instead of trying to dodge the consequences of their own acts; only of those who are manly and womanly and generous and just and true. Nothing less than a recognition of personal responsibility can lead to a heaven like that. Yet the theory of special salvation ignores it, waves it aside--in fact denies it! Reincarnation represents personal responsibility and therefore absolute justice. It shows that, not merely in all the vast future, but also in this life and in every life, and all the time, our degree of happiness depends upon our present and past course. If reincarnation were generally understood it would necessarily raise the average of morality. It furnishes a deterrent for the evil doer and a tremendous incentive for the man who desires to obey natural law and be happy. It shows the one that there is no possible escape from evil deeds; that he must return life after life to associations and environments determined by the good or the ill he has done; that he can no more escape from his evil deeds than he can escape from himself; that he must ultimately suffer in turn the pain of every blow and the humiliation of every insult he has inflicted upon others. It assures the man of good intentions and right desires that every good deed shall rise up in the future to bless him; that all whom he has helped shall become his helpers hereafter; that even his good intentions that failed in their purpose through mistaken judgment, shall bring him joy in the future.