THE REV. W. HASTIE’S KARMA AND THE PROGRESS OF POESY IN BENGAL

[The Theosophist, Vol. V, No. 2(50), November, 1883, p. 51.]

According to some contemporaries:—“A copy of the pamphlet containing a full account of the trial of Pigot vs. Hastie, has been presented by the plaintiff to the Revd. defendant, with the following lines written on the fly-leaf:
“To the Revd. Mr. Hastie, with inexpressible admiration and gratitude for his hasty condemnation and relentless Christian persecution of the donor.

“O false Priest! in your hours of ease,
I’m wanton—vile—whatever you please,
And deadly as the baleful shade
By the poisonous Upas made.
When pain was yours, crookedest of men!
Wasn’t I a min’st’ring angel then?”

Rev. Mr. Hastie has indulged in defaming and slandering, in a pseudo-Christian pamphlet 200 millions of living Hindus collectively, the milliards of their dead ancestors retrospectively, their gods, lares and penates; and besmeared generously with theologico-missionary mud their wives, mothers and sisters. He has set off Christian morality and virtues against heathen “immorality and vice,” and proclaimed in bitter tones his regret that he, the “reverend” writer, and his colleagues of the missions in general, and the Scotch Mission in particular, should not be accepted by the unredeemed gentile of India as exemplars of Christian righteousness. And now he has fallen the first victim to karma—a heathen doctrine accepted unreservedly by the Theosophist, whom, in his day, he spared as little as their pagan brethren, the natives. Miss Pigot, as the
––––––––––
badinage of the St. James’ Gazette, it has evidently been taken seriously, with no idea that I was poking fun at the critic and not at the Theosophists. . . .”—Compiler.]
––––––––––

Page 351

avenging (not “ministering”) angel, has left the “Reverend” Hastie to point a moral and adorn a tale, showing at the same time the danger of—telling tales. We, the “unredeemed” and much slandered Theosophists of the UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, can only admiringly exclaim:—“See how these Christians love each other, and how morality is practised by some of them!”

––––––––––