V.

(1.) I desire very strongly to obtain conquest over “self;” would my using the occult means for so doing, which apparently to me lie without the _ordinary_ experience of Christians, necessitate my sacrificing any iota of my belief in the _power of Christ_?

(2.) If I submit myself to the occult conditions under which the four first rules in “Light on the Path” may be “engraved on my heart and life;” will these conditions permit me to _pray throughout_ for the Divine help and strength of the Eternal Christ, who has passed the portal, opened the “way,” and whom I believe to be the “Master of Masters,” the “Lord of Angels”?

(3.) Do the words—“the disciple” ... “must then so shut the gates of his soul that _no comforter_ can enter there nor any enemy”—mean, that we are wilfully to exclude ourselves from any desire for the sympathy, strength, and support of the spirit of One who said “No man cometh unto the Father but by Me,” and who drank the cup of agony to the very dregs for love of the Brotherhood?

L. H. FF.

_A._ (1.) Not any iota of your belief in the power of the Christ-spirit would or should be sacrificed; it would rather increase, for that spirit is the same Divine overshadowing which has inspired every Redeemer.

(2.) It matters very little by what name you call the Master of Masters, so that you do appeal to “_Its_” power throughout.

(3.) Man can find no comforter save in the Divine Spirit within himself. Does not the tale of the life of Jesus illustrate this, looking at it from one point of view? In what dread isolation he lived and died; His disciples, even those who were most beloved by Him, could not reach His spirit in its sublime moments, or in the hours of its keenest suffering. So with every one who raises himself by effort above the common life of man, in however small a degree. Solitude becomes a familiar state, for nothing personal, not even a personal God, can comfort or cheer any longer.