one religion in the world, that all
faiths were only versions or perversions of it, and that she was
quite prepared to say what it was. According to Mrs. Besant this
universal Church is simply the universal self. It is the doctrine
that we are really all one person; that there are no real walls of
individuality between man and man. If I may put it so, she does not
tell us to love our neighbours; she tells us to be our neighbours.
That is Mrs. Besant's thoughtful and suggestive description of
the religion in which all men must find themselves in agreement.
And I never heard of any suggestion in my life with which I more
violently disagree. I want to love my neighbour not because he is I,
but precisely because he is not I. I want to adore the world,
not as one likes a looking-glass, because it is one's self,
but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different.
If souls are separate love is possible. If souls are united love
is obviously impossible. A man may be said loosely to love himself,
but he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if he does, it must
be a monotonous courtship. If the world is full of real selves,
they can be really unselfish selves. But upon Mrs. Besant's principle
the whole cosmos is only one enormously selfish person.

It is just here that Buddhism is on the side of modern pantheism
and immanence. And it is just here that Christianity is on the
side of humanity and liberty and love. Love desires personality;
therefore love desires division. It is the instinct of Christianity
to be glad that God has broken the universe into little pieces,
because they are living pieces. It is her instinct to say "little
children love one another" rather than to tell one large person
to love himself. This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism
and Christianity; that for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality
is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God,
the whole point of his cosmic idea. The world-soul of the Theosophists
asks man to love it only in order that man may throw himself into it.
But the divine centre of Christianity actually threw man out of it
in order that he might love it. The oriental deity is like a giant
who should have lost his leg or hand and be always seeking to find it;
but the Christian power is like some giant who in a strange
generosity should cut off his right hand, so that it might of its
own accord shake hands with him. We come back