ENQ. Do you mean to suggest that neither the teachings of Buddha nor those of Christ have been heretofore rightly understood? THEO. What I mean is just as you say. Both Gospels, the Buddhist and the Christian, were preached with the same object in view. Both reformers were ardent philanthropists and practical _altruists—preaching most unmistakably Socialism_ of the noblest and highest type, self-sacrifice to the bitter end. “Let the sins of the whole world fall upon me that I may relieve man’s misery and suffering!” cries Buddha; ... “I would not let one cry whom I could save!” exclaims the Prince-beggar, clad in the refuse rags of the burial-grounds. “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest,” is the appeal to the poor and the disinherited made by the “Man of Sorrows,” who hath not where to lay his head. The teachings of both are boundless love for humanity, charity, forgiveness of injury, forgetfulness of self, and pity for the deluded masses; both show the same contempt for riches, and make no difference between _meum_ and _tuum_. Their desire was, without revealing to _all_ the sacred mysteries of initiation, to give the ignorant and the misled, whose burden in life was too heavy for them, hope enough and an inkling into the truth sufficient to support them in their heaviest hours. But the object of both Reformers was frustrated, owing to excess of zeal of their later followers. The words of the Masters having been misunderstood and misinterpreted, behold the consequences! ENQ. But surely Buddha must have repudiated the soul’s immortality, if all the Orientalists and his own Priests say so! THEO. The Arhats began by following the policy of their Master and the majority of the subsequent priests were not initiated, just as in Christianity; and so, little by little, the great esoteric truths became almost lost. A proof in point is, that, out of the two existing sects in Ceylon, the Siamese believes death to be the absolute annihilation of individuality and personality, and the other explains Nirvana, as we theosophists do. ENQ. But why, in that case, do Buddhism and Christianity represent the two opposite poles of such belief? THEO. Because the conditions under which they were preached were not the same. In India the Brahmins, jealous of their superior knowledge, and excluding from it every caste save their own, had driven millions of men into idolatry and almost fetishism. Buddha had to give the death-blow to an exuberance of unhealthy fancy and fanatical superstition resulting from ignorance, such as has rarely been known before or after. Better a philosophical atheism than such ignorant worship for those— “Who cry upon their gods and are not heard, Or are not heeded—”