SHALL I BE BORN AGAIN ?
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The highly interesting and informative article on " Shall I be born again ? " by the late John St. Loe Strachey. published in your issue of September 17th, has encouraged me to add a few words to the discussion of this vast subject. From very ancient times the idea of Rebirth has been held by different religions in various forms. In Hinduism it has taken the shape of the doctrine of " Transmigration of Souls," in Buddhism that of Reincarnation. The three Semitic religions. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which are markedly identical in their fundamental doctrines as taught by their great prophets, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, have quite a different conception of man's rebirth.
The idea of Rebirth presupposes a life after death. All religions worth the name are at one on the existence of a life after death, but it is about_ the nature of this " life after death " that differences arise. According to Islam, death is merely the translation of the soul from one form of existence into another. The human body being too dense for the realization of the finer aspects of the spiritual universe, this translation is essential for the development of the great faculties which the soul has been endowed with.
With its severance from the physical body the human soul starts on a new path of progress which has no limit and end and from which there is no coming back to this world in the body of an animal or human being. The only form of Rebirth in which Islam and possibly Christianity and Judaism believe has been very beautifully elucidated by Jesus Christ in the New Testament. When he put his claim of Messiahship before the Jews he was quite pertinently asked by them, where was Elijah, who, according to Malachi iv. 5, was to come before Him. Jesus told them that John the Baptist was Elias and that they might accept him if they would, suggesting thereby that by the Rebirth or Second Advent of a person was meant the coming of another with His power and spirit. The same explanation applies to his own Second Coming.—I am, Sir,
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