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 to the same tireless
note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies
are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which
separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually
rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls.
But according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God
and man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God