f-regarding, the effect on the sinner's Karma would be a
matter of minor consequence. The fact that every thought and act
through life carries with it, for good or evil, a corresponding
influence on the members of the human family renders a strict sense of
justice, morality, and unselfishness so necessary to future happiness
and progress. A crime once committed, an evil thought sent out from
the mind, are past recall--no amount of repentance can wipe out their
results on the future....

"Repentance, if sincere, will deter a man from repeating errors; it
cannot save him or others from the effects of those already produced,
which will most unerringly overtake him either in this life or in the
next rebirth."

We will also quote a few lines from E. D. Walker in _Reincarnation_:

"Briefly, the doctrine of Karma is that we have made ourselves what we
are by former actions, and are building our future eternity by present
actions. There is no destiny but what we ourselves determine. There is
no salvation or condemnation except what we ourselves bring about....
Because it offers no shelter for culpable actions and necessitates a
sterling manliness, it is less welcome to weak natures than the easy
religious tenets of vicarious atonement, intercessions, forgiveness,
and death-bed conversions....

"In the domain of eternal justice, the offence and the punishment are
inseparably connected as the same event, because there is no real
distinction between the action and its outcome.

"It is Karma, or our old acts, that bring us back into earthly life.
The spirit's abode changes according to its Karma, and this Karma
forbids any long continuance in one condition, because it is always
changing. So long as action is governed by material and selfish
motives, just so long must the effect of that action be manifested in
physical rebirths. Only the perfectly selfless man can elude the
gravitation of material life. Few have attained this, but it is the
goal of mankind."

The danger of a too brief explanation of the law of Causality consists
in the possibility of being imperfectly understood, and consequently
of favouring the doctrine of fatalism.

"Why act at all, the objection will be urged, if everything is
foreseen by the Law? Why stretch out a hand to the man who falls into
the water before our very eyes? Is not the Law strong enough to save
him, if he is not to die; and if he is, have we any right to
interfere?...

"Such reasoni