The Immediate Future

 

 

THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE

AND OTHER LECTURES 

I 

IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES 

 

FRIENDS: When I chose as the subject for my Sunday lectures this year “The Immediate Future," I felt that some of the subjects were rather far removed from ordinary thought. While such questions as the Growth of a World-­Religion, the Coming of a World-Teacher, might, without introduction, be sufficiently familiar to the Theosophist to be placed before him directly, I felt on the other hand that to the general public, who had not made a study of Theosophical ideas, some kind of introduction was necessary in order to make the more obscure subjects intelligible and rational. And so I thought that in the opening lecture I would try to give a common-sense and rational foundation for the hopes that are spreading so widely within and without the Theosophical Society of today; that I would try to show you that these hopes [1] were based on a study of the past as well as on observation of the events of the present; and that our feeling that the world is standing on the threshold of mighty changes is justified by knowledge and is not the mere dream of the enthusiast.

In pointing you to the impending physical changes, I want to show you that similar changes have also happened in the past before the other changes which I have classed together as the Growth of a World-Religion, the Coming of a World-Teacher. For just as you may look upon the plan of an architect stretched out before you on a table, may know that part of the building is already completed, that part is still building, that another part is not yet raised above the surface, but that the whole is one building, traced out on a single plan, so you may look at the great plan whose field of evolution is our world. On that world a great drama is played, divided into different acts. In every act the setting is different, but the plot is carefully carried on. And so in the world’s story, past, present, and future are all part of the  same plan, all filling up some of the great out­line, and the present becomes more intelligible  and the future more hopeful if we see how it is growing out of a past, if we understand how it is linked with events that have gone before. And so, looking at what is being done today, amid all the confusion of the building we may see how, as a matter of fact, the plan is being [2] followed, and may forecast the future because we have caught a glimpse of the whole.

Now I know of only two books in which an outline is given of the whole story of evolution from the beginning to its ending on our globe. One is a series of ancient books, repeating very much the same story that has come down from the far past, in India, whose name, Purana, simply means old. There you may read the story of the world with no distinction made, save that of succession, between past and future. Similarly, in H. P. Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine you may also find an outline of the world’s story from beginning to end consecutively traced. Both those come from the same source, from the reports of great seers who have studied the occult records, where there is neither past nor future, but all is looked upon as present. Because they are the work of great seers reading the same records they tell us the same story, though in the one case in ancient and in the other in modern words. The Secret Doctrine is less obscure, less difficult to follow, than the Puranic writings, but both give the same outline; and it is to that outline that for a moment I would direct your attention now.

I am conscious that in running over for a few moments that record of the past, I may be seeming to give you a somewhat dry and un­interesting history; but if it seem to be dry, if to you it appear uninteresting, it is the fault of the speaker and not of the subject. For [3] what can be more profoundly interesting to humankind than to see outstretched before it some record of its immemorial past; what more inspiring than to realise that you and I and all the nations of the world, made up of countless I’s and You’s, have been treading an appointed  path, have been working out a definite destiny, have been passing from strength to strength,  from knowledge to knowledge; that, as we have climbed in the past, so shall we climb higher in the future; that, as we have evolved in the millennia behind us, so a mightier evolu­tion stretches in the millennia in front of us? Oh, if I could convey to you one tithe of the interest and the inspiration that I have found in the study of those records, then, though names, races, dates, may be dry in themselves, they would form an entrancing story of the past stretching onward into the dim regions of the future.

And now for the rough outline. The occult records tell us that the story of our globe has as a drama seven acts: seven great Continents form the stage on which the drama is played; seven great Races, each on its own continent, are the actors who play in the drama; and as the actors on the stage pass on from act to act, so the nations of the world, in new forms, pass on from act to act in the world-drama. We are not newcomers in our world; we have lived here many times before; and the story of the past is the story of our childhood; now [4] we are reaching our maturity, to go onward to the highest point that on this earth we shall reach. I need not trouble with the first of those two continents, nor the Races that dwelt upon them, for they were scarcely human; rather embryos of humanity were they than men as we know men. But there are four great continents that I would ask you to glance at for a moment: two of the past that have largely vanished; one of the present that is threatening to change; one of the future that is beginning to emerge. The names are all given in the Puranas, but the Samskrt would interest you but little; in fact, the only interest lies in the fact that they are given in a list; just as you might give a list of the countries of Europe, so m that ancient book are the names of the continents given one after another, without caring whether they be of the past or the future. They are there recognised as part of the world-story, and each has its own name. Three of them you will recognise the two of the past and the one of the present, under names more familiar in the West. The first, Lemuria, which stretched where now the Pacific rolls. Australia forms the southern part of that mighty continent, New Zealand also was related to it; Easter Island was a mountain top, the rest submerged beneath the ocean; then Madagascar was also a part of that great land; and so up northwards where the mighty Pacific Ocean stretches, there [5] in far-off days lay the continent of Lemuria, which the great German Haeckel speaks of as the cradle of the Human Race. And rightly so. For, as I said, the two preceding continents had but the embryos of humanity upon them, and man, full-formed as we know man, took birth on that third continent of Lemuria It has passed away; it was destroyed by volcanic outbreaks, by fire, by tremendous explosions, as the sea rushed into gulfs rent by the subterranean fires. And so Lemuria was torn into pieces, vanished, having played its part; and the mighty waves rolled over it, leaving only here and there a remnant, and a tradition in the older story of mankind.

And then the growth of humanity passed on from that third Race that occupied Lemuria, of whom the pure negroes are the remnants in the world of today, to another great stage of growth on another continent that has also disappeared, the continent that stretched from Europe to America, the mighty continent of Atlantis. That Atlantis existed is now practi­cally being accepted on all sides. Some of you may have noticed lately how archaeological research on the western coast of Africa has been unburying the ruins of mighty cities, which their discoverer points to as evidence of the high place attained by the Atlantean civilisation. Atlantis, after having sent its children over the whole world of today, living many of them in North America as the North [6] American Indians, colonising Egypt and making one of the mighty Egyptian Empires, spread­ing over the North of Asia as the Turanians, the Mongols - a tremendous stretch of a Race that still forms the majority of mankind on earth. But its great civilisation perished, not by fire, but whelmed under the waters of the ocean, leaving myths and legends behind in many a country - the Flood of Noah, the Flood of Deucalion, and many another story spread over practically the whole world. Atlantis, by several mighty catastrophes split into pieces, whelmed under floods, also perished, though so many of the Race of its blood survived.

And then another great continent, slowly rising, was prepared for the habitation of the next great Race, the fifth. Europe, swampy for ages after it rose above the level of the sea, began to be prepared for the inhabitants that should dwell upon its surface. The great country of Hindustan, rising also south of the Himalayas, was for long one mass of swamp, uninhabitable by man, until, before the Aryans entered it, some of the outlying nations of the  Atlantean people had poured through the Himalayan gorges, and made a mighty civilisa­tion where now India stretches and her Aryan peoples are found. And the fifth Race, the Aryan, was taken away from Atlantis nearly 80,000 years before the Christian era - for in the lifetime of Races you must count by mil­lennia, not by centuries - gathered before one [7] of the great catastrophes, led out by their leader, the Manu, stopping for a short while in Arabia, then northwards to the north of Asia, and finally settling where now the Gobi Desert spreads, where at that time there was a great inland sea, and the land was fertile, fitted for the dwelling and the support of a huge population; that was the cradle-land of our Race, that the home of the mighty people who gradually stretched their power and their numbers over the lands that had risen for their habitation out of the seas.

Before I deal further with them let me turn to the next point, with regard to the continents, so that I may link the coming continent with those that have perished, and with the conti­nent of Asia and Europe, which is the heritage of the great fifth Race. Here, because I would not have you think that I am only tell­ing you Theosophical dreams, let me turn to the eminently respectable body, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and learn from the geological section, as it met in the last annual meeting, how this question of continents, new as well as old, is being studied by the scientific mind today. I find that Association discussing the formation of a new continent in the Pacific Ocean. Now if you turn to the Secret Doctrine you will find that H. P. Blavatsky declared (she published her book in 1888, when science had not yet dreamed of what now it recognises) that the [8] new continent would arise where Lemuria disappeared, that as Lemuria vanished under the waves of the Pacific Ocean so would the new continent rise above those waves for the home of the new Race. We find in the discussion that occurred that that continent is already beginning to rise. The rapid emergence of the Bogoslof Islands, near Alaska, has caused some alarm among geologists, for they think that if the new continent should emerge at the same rate at which these islands have arisen, a tidal wave would be created which would practically engulf the world. That is the point which was discussed last autumn, and details were given as to the area of the new continent. It is to stretch from the Philippine Islands, Japan, and the Aleutian Islands to the islands of south-eastern Asia, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo, being about some 4000 miles long, so far as the formative forces are con­cerned. Then our scientists went on to explain that there is under the Pacific an area called the Fiery Ring of the Pacific, that it is an area of earthquake activity, so active that during the last twenty months no fewer than 1071 earth­quakes have been observed, earthquakes so powerful, bringing about such sudden changes, that the officers and crew of the United States steamship “Albatross” watched a great out­burst which formed an island round the volcanic peak that was thrown up, and the peak climbed upward till it reached a height of 1000 feet [9] above sea-level. Obviously, if you have great earthquakes under the ocean, there is a danger of tidal waves; as we saw not so very long ago, when a vast tidal wave swept down upon the coast of Japan and spread ruin for many a mile. And if, say the scientists, this continent arises over so vast an area at a rate so rapid, so peril­ous, then will not a wave be generated which shall sweep away the whole of humanity, and engulf the world in a flood to which the Flood of Noah was but as nothing?

But it is not thus that these mighty changes come. Destruction, yes, that is true, but limited, not world-destruction. When Atlantis was perishing by catastrophe after catastrophe large numbers of people perished, certainly; vast waves swept over the adjoining lands; when its last island, Poseidonis, sank, a great tidal wave swept over the Mediterranean Sea, spreading ruin along all its coasts, emptying, by the accompanying disturbance, the Sahara Sea, so that the desert stretches now where once that ocean rolled. Such great catastrophes in the past most certainly may be followed by great catastrophes in the future; but they are not all together; they are spread, with intervals of thousands, tens of thousands of years. These great seismic changes, while locally destructive, shall never destroy the human Race, and while  that continent is rising, gradually, now and then an outburst and then a rest of thousands of years, the Race that is to inhabit it will be [10] slowly preparing on the adjacent continent of  America.

Looking, then, at that as one of the great impending, physical changes, you can see it is only on a line with the past story of our globe. Other continents have sunk, other continents have risen; why, then, should men’s hearts be troubled when the old story is told once again on earth? Convulsions and catastrophes, they are one of the means of human progress; unless they took place from time to time the world would not he able to support her children, for the soil of earth grows exhausted with the multitude of the people who are fed from it; and from time to time the old soil is wisely whelmed beneath the waters of a new ocean, in order that it may become virgin again - may arise for the building of a new civilisation, for the home of a new people. Oh! nature is only the garment in which God enshrouds Himself; her catastrophes are only means for the working out of mightier ends; and why should you be troubled, you who are immortal spirits? For continents may break up, continents may emerge, but the human Race is immortal in its origin and in its growth, and there is nothing to be afraid of, even if the foundations of the earth be moved.

Looking at that calmly, quietly, knowing it has happened in the past, and will happen again in the future, let us glance at the Races to which I alluded who are connected with the [11] continent; I am only concerned now with our own fifth Race. But I want you for a moment to follow me, thinking of it as in Central Asia, in the cradle-land, sending out its sub-divisions to subdue and inherit the world. Two of these have well-nigh passed away. The second sub-race, as we call it, an offshoot of the mother Race, this sub-race went out to Arabia, to Egypt, to  Africa, built great empires, but now has passed away, and only remnants of it are left in the Arabs and some of the tribes allied to the Arabian peoples. We may let it go; its story is over.

Then came the third sub-race, the Iranian, which made the great Persian Empire - not the later Empire of Cyrus and Darius, but the old Empire that lasted for 28,000 years in the Persian and Mesopotamian lands; that also has practically vanished. Only a remnant, 80,000 Parsis in India, represent that once splendid people, that once mighty sub-race that made so great an empire.

But two sub-divisions of the Race remain as well as the mother-stock, the fourth and the fifth. They left Central Asia some 20,000 years ago, the fourth settling in Georgia, Armenia, and Kurdistan, and on the southern slopes of the Caucasus, spreading down into Asia Minor, and there giving rise to many nations known in history. The most ancient Greeks of all, really Greek in stock, usually called Pelasgians, who, according to the priests who spoke to Plato, checked the great wave of Atlantean invasion [12] when it rolled towards Egypt, and threatened the ancient land of Greece, they were the first European families that grew out of this great sub-­race, and they only entered Europe some 10,000 years before the time of Christ. The fifth, leaving Central Asia about the same time, went along a more northerly course to the shores of the Caspian Sea, settling themselves in Dag­hestan and on the northern slopes of the Cau­casus, and remaining there for long, long ages, for some 11,500 years. The fourth sub-race spread through Europe along the southernmost part; it gave us the mighty power of Greece, with its splendid art, with its wonderful litera­ture; it made the Republic and the Empire of Rome; it spread onward into Spain, Spain that well-nigh grasped a World-Empire when she sent her children across the Atlantic, conquered Mexico and Peru; she might have made a World-Empire, had it not been for the national sins of the Inquisition, of the expulsion of the Jews, the expulsion of the Moors, and the cruelties that undermined her rule. For there is a justice which weighs the deeds of nations as well as of men, and no nation may go against righteousness and against mercy, and hope to keep its place among the leading nations of the world. And then that same great fourth sub-race went upwards through France, popu­lated the British Isles, and settled down for many a long, long year, building up the civilizations in the lands it had conquered. [13]

Meanwhile, its successor, the fifth sub-race, coming into Europe about 1500 years later, settled first in Poland, and then, as the swamps of Central Europe gradually dried up and made Europe habitable, it sent out a great Slavonic family; then the Letts, Lithuanians, and Prussians; then the great Germanic peoples; and, lastly, the Goths and the Scandinavians.  Of different types, those two sub-races; just as you see in the Root-Race type the difference  between yourselves and, say, the Mongolian, the Turanian, the racial type, so you can see the difference between the Kelt and the Teuton in the general form of face, of head, of colouring.  You see in the Kelt the round head, dark hair, dark eyes, the somewhat slight and shorter form; you see in the Teuton the longer head, fair hair, blue or light-coloured eyes, large,  strong stature. Then, mixing the one with the other, of course the type is largely lost, but if  you look at them in the pure type, say, the Italian and the Scandinavian, you see at once the difference between these two great sub-races that have made Europe their home.

And now, if we follow these sub-races further, we find that they gradually spread over the world; especially is that true of the last offshoot, the fifth, or Teutonic, sub-race. You find it there with the Goths and Scandinavians that belong to it, making nations, kingdoms, in Northern Europe; but it has not stopped in Northern Europe, it has spread over the known world. [14] You see it leaping across to America and mak­ing there the mighty Republic of the West, and the northern Canadian Dominion, becoming mightier year by year; and just as it leapt across the Atlantic, so also it leapt southward, colonised Australia, New Zealand, took partly South Africa - there mingling with the Dutch blood - where the great Federation is being built up today. And it was not satisfied with spread­ing over many a colony and making the English tongue practically the language that more than any other today can carry you over the civilised world; we find that it also spread into Asia, and there arises a question of immense interest that I will turn to in a moment.

But before turning to that, for that has to do with the great Empire of the fifth Race, let me remind you that a fifth Race is not final - a sixth and seventh have to come; also as the Teutonic represents the fifth sub-division of the great Aryan stock, there must still be two more sub-divisions to grow, to develop, to evolve. Once more H. P. Blavatsky tells us in the Secret Doctrine that on the American continent will gradually develop the sixth sub-division of this mighty Race; that it is there, near the home of the Root-Race that is to be born, that this sub-race of our own Race will grow up and differentiate itself as the earlier sub-races have done. That is happening in America today. Once again I do not ask you to take Theosophical ideas, but evidence that comes from [15] the scientific world outside. Now Europe has poured her people, immigration on immigration, into the great crucible of the United States. America has welcomed them, has allowed them to settle; for long has it been building up a nation. But what a change! The first settlers that came from England, that settled in what they called, in their love for the old country, New England, those were a type very different from the type growing in America today. It was affected by climate, by conditions, and was  shaped largely into the North American Indian type - the rather lantern jaws, the long face,  the prominent cheek-bones, the rather straight hair, the type that you know, if I may use a not very courteous word, as the Yankee. That is a type of the North American Indian sort, resembling the previous possessors of the land.

The new type is nothing of the kind; the new type is really new, and the leading ethno­logist of America, in making a report to the American Government on his investigations, gave this as the result: That a new race is growing up in America, marked, distinguishable, and clear. He gave the measurement of the head, the type of the features; he pointed out the square jaw, the well-cut face; a type in­tellectual, strong-willed, and becoming more and more numerous in the United States. Why, you can see it yourself if you keep your eyes open and happen to visit America, for the type is becoming marked in every restaurant [16] that you go into; you can pick them out as a new type, a fine type, full of intellect and power,  and promising much for the future of the world. It is the sixth sub-race, the sixth sub-division of the great Aryan people. It has the promise of the future within it; it is the type that will give birth to the next Root-Race in humanity, that will inhabit the continent that is beginning to emerge in the Pacific.

So that you have there, from outside sources entirely, evidence of the new continent, evidence of the new sub-race, physical changes round you and before you that pass by you unnoticed, because you do not realise the significance which underlies them. There is really the advantage the Theosophist has over most of you. He has studied the subject in the history of the past; he has acquainted himself with the records where that history is told; he has looked at the great plan, seen its outline, and when some little bit is tossed up, as you might see a fragment of a child’s puzzle thrown up and wonder what the fragment meant detached from all the rest - if you have seen the picture, ah, then you know where the fragment will fit in when the other fragments have been found. And so, in the study of the great picture we recognise the fragments as they appear, and know the place which they will occupy in the finished picture, because the plan indicates their meaning, and in the great mosaic each fragment has its place. [17]

And so we see a growing sub-race, a growing continent; but what is to come before that race grows into power, before that continent is fit, thousands upon thousands of years hence, for human habitation? Other changes are going on right before our eyes. What is their significance? Your feeling - the older amongst you will, I know, agree with me in this - is changing towards your Colonies, and their feel­ing is changing towards you. I spoke of the great change which had occurred by the spread­ing of the fifth sub-race; but when I was a young girl, brought up as I was in a Whig family, I used to hear remarks about the Colonies very different from the remarks I hear today. They were spoken of grudgingly, with the hope that they would break away and make Kingdoms, Republics, as they pleased of their own. They were not looked on as parts of a mighty Empire; they were not considered as daughters of the Motherland, who in other parts of the world should keep links close and loving with the land whence they had gone out. And in the Colonies themselves there was much of the same idea - independence, separation, each in its own country, its own nation, its own people. But how different now! Now the Mother Country is loved in every Colony, now the Mother Country sends out her love to all her many children far across the seas. Now they come and gather together in great Imperial Conferences. What would have been thought [18] of an Imperial Conference in the days, say, when any of you of my own generation were children? An Imperial Council is being spoken of, not a mere Conference now and again, but a permanent Council, in which every part of the Empire shall be represented, not once and again coming across for a few weeks, but permanently, regularly, one Empire, and one Imperial Council to deal with all with which that Empire is concerned. Oh, if that feeling had been in England and in her Colonies more than a century ago, our American brethren would not have made tea in the harbour at Boston and begun the American Revolution. Those Colonies would still be part of the Empire, still bound in love to the Motherland; and that great blunder of trying to tyrannise and making need for resistance will never again be permitted within this Empire, for that lesson has been learned once for all, and it will never need to be learned again. But there is a lesson that is needed to be learned. I spoke of the Mother Race, I spoke of the cradle-land, and that land was emptied through some 8000 years as immigration after immigration crossed the Himalayas, and took the great Aryan Root­-Race into India. Beginning in 18,000 B.C., those incursions finished perhaps some 10,000 B.C., and since then the Aryan has multiplied and increased, until that mighty land of India is peopled by children of that Race. Many have tried to conquer, to rule, India. The [19] Greeks came; they were rolled back, leaving many a precious trace behind them. For the conquest of one country by another is not, as many people think, an evil thing. It mingles the peoples, it gives the knowledge of one to the other. The Greeks, who conquered and then were chased out of India, left behind them many a trace on Indian Art which made it more beautiful, more gracious than it was before. And then the Mughals came and made their mighty Empire, coming from Turkestan and other parts of Asia. In a great flood they rolled down into India and made a mighty Empire whose centre was at Delhi, and they lived among the Indian people. But India has conquered them more than they have conquered India; for they are no longer foreigners, they are at home in the house of India the Mother, and those children of the conquerors of the past are proud today to call themselves Indians, for they have grown into the land, and they will never leave again the land that has become so much their own.

And then from Europe many another nation came. The Dutch came and made colonies - ­how much of them now remains? The Portu­guese - they have fragments of Indian land today. The French came, but where are the  French colonies now? Chandernagore and Pondicherry - that is all that France can claim of Indian soil. And then England came, the youngest child of the Mother-Race, and grew [20] and increased in power, spread over the Indian land, conquered with the help of Indians the Indian people. Ah, you should never forget that! You could not have conquered India by your own power; you only conquered her because many of her children desired your coming and joined their swords with yours. I have seen in an English paper: “We conquered India by the sword, and we hold her by the sword”. You never conquered her by the English sword, but only by alliance with large numbers of the Indian people, and you do not and cannot hold her save by her own consent. The late Viceroy, Lord Minto, spoke a true word when he said: “If India did not want us to stay here, we could not remain three weeks”. That is true. A few thousand English people, many millions of Indians. Oh, never forget, when you blame the English rule in India, that it could not be if against India’s will. Here and there, yes, you may find a few, but very few, who would break the link, and if it is broken it will be England’s fault.

Now you cannot leave out India in the World­-Empire that you are building; and that is where your Colonies are making a terrible, a frightful mistake. There is no land in all the world in which the Indian cannot travel freely save in English Colonies and under the English flag. Do you realise what that means? A Japanese can go into British Columbia if he has fifty dollars in his pocket, but if one of the citizens [21] of this great Empire, an Indian, goes there, 200 dollars he must produce before he is allowed to come in. Any other Oriental may travel freely in Canada; the Indian, no. He must come direct from India, otherwise he is not allowed in, and if some of his friends have settled in the United States he cannot visit them and go back into Canada. There is another side to self­-government in the Colonies; for it is under­mining the Empire in India. The Indian resents being treated as an outcast under the flag that he is asked to be proud of, and to shed his blood to defend. You might have lost South Africa had it not been for the Indians who died there, and who nursed your wounded on the battle-field. But now for many a year the Indians have been struggling for decent treatment, and they are treated shamefully under the self-government of South Africa. You must remember this, and recall that you cannot have an Empire, imperial, world­-governing, without India as an integral part thereof. You have made this necessary. Young India is working for a United India because you have taught her the ways of liberty, and given her a single tongue. Oh, do not think only of the few mad boys who, pressed on into crime by their elders, who remained safe here in Europe, sacrificed themselves, thinking that they were patriots when they were only criminals - saddest of all disillusioning for the young and the deceived. Oh, do not think of [22] that; they are but a handful; but think of the millions of Indians who love and honour England, who support her rule, who defend her flag.

There are two men living here today who have done more to touch the heart of India and knit her to England than any other two living men. One is the Prince of Wales who went through India, and who said at the Guild­-hall in a famous speech that India must be ruled by sympathy; he is now George V., King of England, Emperor of India, whom may God preserve. And the other is the Viceroy who has left her shores, Lord Minto, who in the midst of danger stood firm and calm, who trusted Indians in the day when assassina­tion was prevalent in the capital, and kept an Indian guard round Government House when others would have put Scotchmen there and sent away the Indians from guarding him. For how shall India trust us, he said, if we do not trust India? And he said those words and acted on them at a moment when his life arid his wife’s life were in peril, for he held that love and trust are mightier weapons than fear and suspicion. You do not always know your greatest men, and the debt that the Empire owes to him will be a difficult debt to pay.

And now a great change is to occur. For the first time in the history of the world, a Monarch of the West is to be crowned in the East. He who a few days hence will sit upon

[23] the ancient stone to be crowned and anointed King in Westminster - he, with a statesman’s  insight, with an Imperial thought, is going over to the Indian capital, capital of Hindu and  Mussulman alike, that again the Crown may be set upon his head, and that in India he may  be crowned as Emperor of India. Never before has that been seen in history; never before has such an honour been paid to a part of the Empire; and when thus England and India are linked together by the most powerful of all ties, the tie of imagination and emotion, can you not see in that the promise of a mighty Empire in which East and West shall be joined together, and each shall help the other with the special powers that it has? And since this change of policy, a change is coming over India. The Indian Civil Service, on the whole a splendid service, though many an error may be laid to its charge, is trying honestly, bravely, thoroughly, to accommodate itself to the new position, and to show sympathy to rather than to stand apart from the Indian people. Viceroy, Governors, and others, one after another, have called for courtesy, for gentleness, for mutual respect; and that Service is loyally trying to meet the changed conditions, and to do what its rulers have demanded. And so there is hope; if only the Colonies do not destroy it.

But among these impending changes on the surface of our globe it is necessary that men should understand how Empires are builded [24] and how Nations grow. This mighty World-Empire of the fifth Root-Race will have England and India for its centre, and the great outlying countries of America and Germany for a mighty buttress on either side. America is drawing nearer to us, nearer day by day. Oh, will not Germany also link herself by bonds of peace with this country? And when Britain, America, Germany, India, the great Colonies, are all linked together in one pact of peace, who shall dare to break that peace proclaimed on earth, who shall dare to speak of war when such a Power speaks for peace?

Looking around on all the changes, trying to grasp their meaning, and seeing them, not as isolated facts, but as part of a divine plan, you may realise that under the growth of a World­-Religion, and the preparation for the coming of a World-Teacher, the nations are drawing nearer together, the land is being builded for the future, for the Race that shall inhabit it; and while that slow building is going on the mighty Empire of the fifth Root-Race is arising. Oh, if you would have it so, learn that it means responsibility, that it means duty, that it means righteousness. If you would be part of an Empire that will last, you must grow into a liberty which is self-controlled, and learn that only m service to the race is perfect freedom. [25]

 

II

 

THE GROWTH OF A WORLD­ RELIGION

 

 

FRIENDS: Not very long ago I was speaking in Manchester on the same subject with which I am to deal tonight, and the question was raised by a very interesting letter that was sent to the Editor of The Christian Commonwealth, whether the truer view of a World-Religion was the view that I had put, a synthesis of all the world-faiths, or whether it would come by the triumph of a single religion - Christianity. Of course, when the writer spoke of Christianity, he used the word in the widest, the most liberal sense; but he said that he thought that each religion following another in the world’s history made an advance on those that had preceded it in religious evolution, and that, therefore, it seemed likely that Christianity, as the latest of the great religions, should be the crown of the whole, and thus the World-Religion. Strictly speaking, of course, Christianity is not the latest of the world’s religions, for the great [26] Prophet of Arabia, Muhammad, is later, reckon­ing by dates, than is the Christ.

I am going to try to show you this evening why it is that, looking to the World-Religion, I think we can see something of its outline, some­thing of the way in which it will present itself to the intellect and the heart of man; but, so far as all the religions of the world are concerned, I believe that the men of every religion will see in the World-Religion the soul of their own faith; that it will not be a question between this faith and the other, this prophet and the other, but that in every faith the noblest, the most liberal spirits, those who have most of the divine con­sciousness, and therefore most love for their fellow-men - that such in every faith will re­cognise in the World-Religion all that is noblest and dearest in their own, and that each will feel that it is their own faith carried to its highest, and will recognise in it the glory and splendour of their own.

And now I am going to try to trace, so far as I can, something of what, studying the past and looking at the tendencies of the present, we may gradually see unfolding around us as the religion of the world. Naturally, I do not pretend that my imperfect sketch can be all-inclusive, nor have within it all the wonder and the beauty which that world-faith will take on the lips of the World-Teacher. Not for me to hope to describe what His divine consciousness will reveal; only as the humblest of disciples [27] I will try to sketch for you something of the broad outline which He will sketch with a firm­ness of touch that only the World-Teacher shall possess, with a wealth of detail and of power to reach the hearts of men that can only come from Him who spake as never man had spoken nor can speak save from that pair of lips.

And in order to deal with our subject fairly clearly, let me put first of all the departments into which a religion naturally must fall, if it is to meet the many-sided necessities of men. First of all, evidently, it must be a Religion - I will define my terms as I deal with them separately - ­then it must be a Philosophy; then it must bring with it Art; it must also be a Science; and, lastly, it must be a Morality. Those are the great departments, it seems to me, under which all human needs may be included. Those cover human life, and under one or other of those names all human thought must fall.

I have put in the forefront, as is fitting, the word Religion. What is Religion, whether you look at religions in the plural or the essence of Religion? Religions in the plural mean God’s answer, through men in whom divinity shines out more than in their fellows - His answer to the search of man after Himself. Man is ever searching for the source whence he has come, searching for the life which is upwelling within him, immortal, nay, eternal and divine; and every religion is the answer from the Universal [28] Spirit to the seeking Spirits of men that came forth from Him. Just as water, flowing down­wards, rises again and will ever rise to the height of its source, save as obstacles come in the way, so man’s Spirit, being divine, rises ever to the height of divinity which he seeks to realise, and the strongest proof that man is fundamentally divine is his immemorial search after the God whence he comes. That is the true meaning of the word religion; not rites and ceremonies - man has made them and can make them again; not churches - man has built them, and were they all in ruins he could build them again; not even sacred books - for those also are written by human hands inspired by the God within the prophet, and were they all swept out of the world the power that wrote them could write them once again. But the essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men. The essence of religion is the knowledge of God, and when God is known all else can be builded by man. And the World-Religion will in its very essence be a way of finding out the knowledge, and will proclaim as the foundation of its teaching the Immanence of God.

What is the Immanence of God? It is that in everything that lives, in a universe where all is living; there the Universal Life that is God is present, supporting and maintaining. It [29] is written in the Bhagavad-Gita: “There is nothing moving nor unmoving that can exist bereft of me”. And there is nothing in the whole of the mighty universe, imaging in its great immensity all that infinity of which it is an image, however imperfect; nothing in all the systems of worlds, in suns unnumbered, in space that knows no ending, in lives that know no numbering; nothing from the very lowest grain of dust to the very Logos of a system, that can exist bereft of the Life which is the root, the support of all. If you would bring this great truth closer - for the infinity of space is awe-inspiring, but does not warm the human heart - then think of all that most you love, all that most you admire, all that most you prize; the look of love in the eyes of husband or wife, the smile of the child, the steadfastness of the friend, the grandeur of external nature, the rolling of ocean, and the stillness of the star­lit sky; everything that is most beautiful, every­thing that is most splendid, everything that warms your heart and cheers your life; all that is God individualised in the living object, and all that is beautiful and exquisite is but the reflection of His smile and of His strength. That is what is meant by the Immanence of God, and that will be the foundation-stone of the religion of the future, the World-Religion that is coming. Every religion teaches it, but it has hardly the influence on life it ought to have. [30]

And after that great teaching will come the next; that there is one Teacher of the worlds, one Teacher of angels and of men, one mighty Instructor who reveals God to man and man to God. And that is the mighty Being whom in Christendom they call the Christ, whom in the East they call Him whose essence is Wisdom, the Lord of Compassion, the Lord of Love. Oh, there are many prophets great and dear to the human heart; there are many teachers, many helpers of the world; but above them all, as our sun throws the stars into invisibility, shines the Master of Masters, the Founder of every faith, the Inspirer of every prophet, the World-Teacher.

You think of religions other than your own, and you hear other names. You do not remember that in different languages one object is called by many names. Why, if you name a man, a metal, a stone, in different tongues, if you had not the object before you, you might deem that each name indicated a different thing. And so, when the Hindu speaks of the World­-Teacher, and the Buddhist speaks of the Lord of Compassion, then you do not realise that they are speaking of Him who is your Christ, and of none other. The names are different, but that Superman is the same. He loves all faiths, blesses them all alike, sends His Messengers to every one of them, and is the heart and life of each. Oh, is it not a greater thing, you who are for the most part Christian, [31] that the Lord whom you worship is worshipped in eastern lands as well as here? And what matters the name, when the Being is the same? What matters the word that our child-lips may utter, when all words ascend to Him who is but One? For when the Indian worships Shri Krshna, unknowingly he is worshipping One in whom the Christ was incarnate; when the Buddhist raises up his heart to the coming Buddha, unknowingly he is worshipping the Christ. Is it not better, fairer, more beautiful, that all the streams of homage centre in one mighty individual, and that the Divine Man of every faith is one and the same, although His children know it not and do not realise the unity which flows therefrom? And yet, when Christ came in the form you know, He spake words clear and definite enough: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd”.  And when He spake those words, ere Christi­anity as a separate faith was born, whom could He have spoken of save of those who followed the other great religions of the world? And mark the words: “Other sheep I have,” not “I shall have”.

And in the world-faith, as there is recog­nised the Immanence of God, so will there be recognised the one World-Teacher. And then will follow the recognition of the great company of those who look to Him as Master, [32] those whom we speak of as Masters, as Apostles, as the Prophets to many nations and many peoples; they are His disciples, they are His messengers, they carry His word abroad among many peoples, and they also are recognised in all the great faiths. The Theosophist is only treading there in the footsteps of the faiths of the world.

And the other great point in the World­-Religion after the three I have mentioned will be the Path of Holiness that leads to conscious realisation of Divinity, that leads to union with the Supreme. The great faiths speak of that in the West and in the East alike. And here again the difference of the name clouds and veils the identity of the teaching. Surely all of you must know that in the Christian Church there is a path, which they divide into three stages, that leads to what is called, in the Roman Catholic books, the Divinisation of man, Union with God. It is divided into three - the path of Purification, the path of Illumination, the path of Union. Those are the three divisions that the Christian makes. First, purification, which must come before all else; then illumination, when the divine light begins to flash on the darkness of the soul, until from flashes it becomes a steady light in which everything is seen; and then the third part, the realisation of God, the conscious union of the God within with the God  without. The Hindu and the Buddhist teach the same path. Their path of Probation is the

[33] path of purification of the Christian; the Path of Holiness, marked by the five great portals of Initiation, that is the path of illumination, and also the path of union; they use the same name,  Yoga, which means union. Oh, there is no great religion in the world which is left outside the greatest, the most spiritual teachings. And in the religion of the future that Path will be made clearer, will be again proclaimed, and will be seen to exist by all. And as in the old days,  men will tread it; as in the past, men will enter it; and, though it be true that strait is the gate  and narrow is the way that leads to that union with the Supreme, still in modern days as in  the elder days there are men ready and willing to tread it, and they, through the study of the  Mysteries, know the wonders of divine and human life, and realise as men realised of old,  that the Union of Man and God is possible.

Those points, it seems to me, must be the points most salient in the World-Religion. They are the points which the religious consciousness has clearly and definitely marked out for ages upon ages. I know that sometimes people challenge the testimony of the religious con­sciousness. But why? The surest thing you have is your consciousness. That you exist is to you the one fact beyond all possibility of challenge, made firmer by no argument, and, unshakable by any argument. And in that, consciousness which is your life, that which has responded to Divinity, which has sought and [34] found Divinity, is a part which cannot be taken out of it. It is the most universal testimony of the human consciousness; in all times and ages and countries the religious consciousness has arisen, and claimed the knowledge which is today as of old the bread of life. When it is not admitted, when ignorance dwarfs it and blinds it, then it asserts itself as superstition, the most fatal enemy of man. Man will believe whether people tell him he should believe or not, and superstition, by its very degradation, shows how the religious consciousness strives to find an object, and will rather have a superstition than nothing. “Oh, but,” you say, “it drives people in different directions; here one person believes this and the other that.” Aye, but it testifies not to the names, but to the fact; it is not the labels, but the result on life. You may call God by what name you will; you may worship Christ under what title you please; you may talk as you like in your language about your faith; but if it makes you lead a noble life, if it turns you from evil to good and from selfishness to service, if belief in God under any name makes men heroic, then the consciousness is divine, and the names are matters of indifference when the result is the same.

Next, the religion of the future must have a Philosophy. What is a philosophy? It is an answer satisfactory to the reason to all the great problems of life. That is what is meant [35] by philosophy. It must satisfy the reason, and it must show the unity underlying the endless diversity of the facts that science observes. To see the One under endless forms, to realise the unity amid infinite diversity, and so to satisfy the reason, that is the function of philosophy. Broadly speaking, all schools of philosophy divide themselves into two, ma­terialistic and idealistic: the one sees in matter the source and root of all; the other sees in life the maker and the master of matter; under one or other of those two flags the philosophies evolved by the reason of the race group them­selves inevitably. Now there is no doubt that in the World-Religion the philosophy must be idealistic, for it must recognise Spirit as the basis of all, the immanent life of God as the foundation of all. Its answer to the great problems, roughly, we may run over. What is the constitution of the universe? The uni­verse is the manifestation of the divine thought; the thought of God embodies itself in the thought-forms that we call worlds. Bruno said once: “The act of the divine thinking is the substance of the universe”, and I doubt if any philosophy can go beyond that phrase. The substance that underlies all manifestation, that which shows itself with dual aspect as life and matter, Spirit and matter, that substance which underlies everything and is the final unity - that is the divine thought. If that thought were checked, all would vanish. It [36] is the substance, the Reality, that underlies the changing worlds. And when that idea is grasped, that the divine substance is the basis of all, then we realise that from that substance emanates, as it were, the dual force, Spirit and matter; Spirit the source of life, the source of all intelligence, individualising itself in the life of the object, and one in every form; matter, taking countless forms, innumerable shapes, the vast diversity of the worlds that fill space, but one in its essence. Forms pass and take one shape after another, change and make an endless panorama of bodies; but matter is ever  there, changeless in itself, the one material of which all forms are but shapes and kinds; life one and matter one, life individualised and matter shaped into form - that is the worlds as  seen by philosophy; they are the outcome of thinking, manifesting as the substance I spoke  of, and all changes in forms, all diversities of life, are reducible to the one life and the one matter; for, as I said, philosophy seeks unity in every­thing, and only when diversity is reduced to unity is the reason satisfied, is the intellect at rest.

What is evil? Philosophy must answer that. Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end. And if for a moment you will think along a line that requires close atten­tion, you will realise that imperfection is neces­sary m a universe. For what is a universe? [37] Diversity of forms. But every form, not being the whole, must, of necessity, be imperfect; less than the whole, it cannot be identical with the whole, and being less than the whole and, there­fore, imperfect by itself, it shows imperfection or evil, and only the totality of a universe can mirror the image of God. Evil is not a positive thing; it is the absence of perfection, the state which is ever growing towards perfection. Evil is only absence of light, but the light is ever becoming. And so it ceases to be a trouble, to weigh upon the heart. And even in the form of evil that we call sin, that which is evil in man, we shall see in a moment that there also there is no reason for discouragement, that that also is on the way to good. But so far as the problem of evil is concerned, without taking humanity for the moment into consideration, it need not trouble you for a moment; for the very condition of manifestation is diversity, and the inevitable result of diversity is imperfection in the isolated objects. But let us come to man, for the answer will not be complete until we have dealt with him. How does philosophy regard man in the deepest, fullest, greatest sense? It sees in man the image of God, and therefore a triplicity: first, imaging the sub­stance, the highest, purest reason, the Self, as we sometimes say, in man; and then it sees, secondly, what is often called the human soul, aspiring to the divine above it, dragged down by the brute below it, the dual principle in man, [38] on which the growth and evolution of man depend; one hand stretched upward towards heaven, the other still clinging to earth. Bruno compared the soul to the moon that always has one side turned to the sun and the other turned to darkness. And you could not have a more vivid image of the soul in man. This is the reflection of the universal life; it is the indi­vidualised life incarnate in a form. And, thirdly, the body, representing the matter of the universe. Spirit, soul, body, that is at once the simplest and most philosophic view of man. There are other sub-divisions, but they are all classified under this great triplicity. And so you have the divine m man, which shows itself by thought; you have the soul in man, which is the individualised life; you have the body in which that soul is unfolding. And when you ask: What is sin? you have to answer: It is when the man is doing that which he knows to be the worser when a better is before him. That is sin. It has its root in ignorance, the only original sin in man. He grows out of ignorance into knowledge. Drunkenness, murder, theft; they are not sins in the savage who knows no better; they are sins in the civilised man, because he knows better, and allows the soul to be drawn downwards by the body, instead of rising upwards to the Spirit. And that is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not [39] present. S. Paul said quite truly: “Sin is the transgression of the law”. When the higher law is known, then to transgress it is to sin. But even then it is not hopeless, for as the law changes not, as the law is inviolable, the law we disregard strikes us and suffering is the out­come of the attempt to transgress; and in that suffering lies the lesson, and in that lesson lies the remedy; for in a universe of law you must learn to harmonise yourselves with law, other­wise pain, misery, suffering are around you, and, weary of the suffering, you turn at last to the right. That is why we need not break our hearts over sin; we are growing out of it, passing beyond it, and every struggle - even that which ends in failure - is one step on the ladder by which the soul is climbing to the Spirit.

And what is the creative force in the universe? I have already said that the creative power in God and in man is thought. God’s thought makes universes; your thought makes your­self; thought is the one creative force, the one thing by which you shape, mould, build,  your character. Thought everywhere is the creative agent, and it makes the road for the evolution of the soul. The soul grows by re­incarnation in bodies provided by nature, more complex, more powerful, as the soul unfolds greater and greater faculties. And so the soul climbs upward into the light eternal. And there is no fear for any child of man, for in­evitably he climbs towards God. [40]

And Art? I have said that a World-Religion must have art, and I often think that in the modern world men and women fail to realise the greatness of the influence of art on human life.

Beauty is no dead thing. It is the manifesta­tion of God in nature. There is not one object in nature untouched by man that is not beautiful, for God’s manifestation is Beauty. It shines through all His works, and not only in those that may give pleasure to man. If you take  the diatom and look at it through the microscope, you find that invisible shell, invisible to human eye without artificial aid, traced in the most exquisite mathematical patterns, every line ac­curate, every angle perfect. The divine sculptor has carved it into beauty, although no eye see it save the eye of God. In every natural work there is beauty - it is the condition of manifesta­tion; and even when man makes ugliness, nature soon re-clothes his ugliness in beauty. And the artist? The artist is the priest of the beautiful, whose eyes see more of God than ours do. He is able under the form of nature to see the beauty that that form is veiling, and the duty of the artist is to show to our blinded eyes that which without his genius we cannot see; anything less than that is a profanation of art not worthy of the name. Colour is more to the artist than to you and to me; form is more to the artist than it is to us; melody is more to the artist than to our untrained ears. [41] And every form of beauty hidden in nature, it is for the artist to bring out and place before the eyes of men; he has to see the ideal under every form, the perfect under every imperfection, and his splendid mission is to show the perfect beauty to the blinded eyes of men, so that, seeing it, they may remodel themselves after it, and their lives may be beautiful as is nature which is the life of God. That is what art means. Greece understood it, but scarce a nation save Greece has known the divinity of art; but Greece knew that art is not a luxury as it practically is today. Art is wanted for the masses of the people far more than for you whose lives are fair on the outside. The slum in a great town is not only degradation to the people who live in it, but its hideousness lowers the vitality of the nation. All suffer because of its hideousness amongst us. When you see the face of the slum woman, lined and drawn and haggard, and often vicious, all womanhood is degraded by the misery of her. When you see a man rolling drunken out of a public-house in the East End of London, sodden, brutalised, disgusting, from the vice that is destroying him, all manhood is the lower for the horror that he embodies. And no man can be perfect while one man is brutal. And art is a way of purify­ing, of refining, of raising. You talk about the beauty of the Greek people. Why were they beautiful? Because they put beauty in their streets, because they had it everywhere for the [42] people to look upon, because their women who were to become mothers were surrounded by the beautiful on every side, and the unborn child took lines of beauty because beauty was the breath of life to Greece. And that we have to learn. When you have a statue too ugly to put in a gallery, you put it in the streets; when you have a picture you hang it always in a gallery, but the people who want it most do not go to galleries. I know things are getting better. I know that down in the East End of London efforts are being made to bring  more art within the reach of the people; but is it yet understood enough that to show beauty, to make beauty a common thing in life, is to refine, to make more delicate, more gracious, the common life of man? Good music, good painting, good sculpture, these are among the educators of the race, and every object should have its own beauty. The common household objects should be beautiful. There is nothing to prevent it; but you would rather have a drawing-room crowded like a bazaar with use­less things, than have one beautiful object in a room that would make all its atmosphere pulse with delicacy and with life. And your schools for the children ought to be beautiful, for the child-heart and the child-brain are very plastic. And those hideous things you call Board schools, or Council schools, in London are enough to make the whole nation ugly. Whatever room in your house lacks beauty, do not let the [43] nursery lack it. You put miserable paintings there, the degradation of art. “It is good enough for the children.” There is nothing too good for the child, and the religion of the future will bring this bread of life into the home of everyone, and it will be realised that one home devoid of beauty condemns the luxury which wallows in it and shares it not with others.

And the religion of the future must have a Science; but it will not be a science restricted to the physical world, but including all worlds of matter; for just as philosophy is the recogni­tion of unity in diversity, so is science the observation of the diversity, the observation of the facts in nature. And the science of the future in the religion of the future will be a science of all worlds, and not only of the lowest and densest, those of the physical plane. It will observe the world of the emotions, clothed in subtler matter; the world of the mind, clothed in subtler matter still; the world of the Spirit, where matter is but the obedient expression of the life, and hampers it in nothing, being utterly plastic to the will. The science of the future will observe the facts, the forces and the laws of nature in all of the worlds in which man’s evolution is going on. It will study the laws of nature, not only physical, but moral and mental, so that evil-doing and evil-thinking will be realised as against the law of progress. And science must do it by observation, by observing the result of evil thought and evil [44] act, and so establishing in those worlds as well as in the physical that law of action and reaction that in the East is called karma. If you feel wrongly, you will think wrongly, you will act wrongly. If you desire wrongly, then thought and action will go along the same line.

What you think, you become inevitably. That is the law. And when science studies the three worlds of human evolution, it will be able to place that law on a definite scientific basis. We reap in one world what we have sown, not always in the same world; but in one world or another that which is sown we reap, and from that law none may escape. It will be  the duty of the science of the future to do what only a few can do today - to observe the laws  of human evolution, to see how that law works out in thought and character. And just as it examines the laws of nature in the three worlds, so it must examine the forces of nature in those worlds, and thus establish, on the basis of observation, that thought is the creative power. That is done now, I know, by those who are trained in the science that is called Occultism, but the ordinary science of the future will extend its ken to those subtler regions of our life, and then, observing the forces of nature, it will speak with authority on their scope and their results. It will not only examine the laws of nature and the forces of nature in all the  worlds in which we are living, but the facts of nature as well in all those worlds. The inter-[45] mediate world beyond what we call death, the world beyond the intermediate world that is known as heaven - those will be as much subject to observation as the world of the physical body. And the science of the World-­Religion will give observation of laws, of forces, of facts, as the basis for the teaching of morality, bringing morality into the realm of law instead of it being the sort of chance subject that it is today.

And then that science will train men in study­ing as science trains men today in the way that they should use their apparatus and their instru­ments; only the science of the future will train the student in developing the powers that lie hidden within himself, and not only in shaping iron and brass and glass into instruments to supplement the senses. The finer bodies of men, the keener, subtler senses, those will be developed in man by that science which is the material side of Yoga. Man’s power to know will thus be increased. The bodies in which  emotion and thought work will thus more swiftly be evolved, and just as surely as science, by  studying animal and vegetable nature, has taught man how to evolve in a few years what  nature, unaided, would take centuries to accom­plish, so shall that science of Yoga teach man  to evolve his own bodies to fuller usefulness by an application of the laws of the subtler nature, by the quickening of the evolution along the lines on which ah cannot work today. [46]

And when this World-Religion has thus taught the essence of Religion, satisfied the reason with a true Philosophy, raised Art to its rightful place in life, and given a Science for the establishment of the basis of the whole, then it will finally crown its work by a noble Morality, applying the truths it possesses to the elevation of human life. It will teach man to live a noble life, and tell him why it is desirable. Remember what I said to you of the soul - one hand stretching upward to the Spirit, one clinging to the body, with all that the body means. Man will be taught to lead the heroic life, when he realises in himself the possibilities that lie before him and in the power of thought the instrument whereby his ideal may be realised. He will begin to understand that since the life eternal is inhabiting the body, all that is base, mean, animal, is below the height of his responsibility and his duty; he will begin to understand that the man who knows that life is one and that life embodied in himself can only live the life that is noble; for very shame’s sake he cannot live the life of the animal, whence his body is derived.

You must realise your own Divinity; realise what man really is, an evolving Son of God. You do not need threats, curses, anathemas. It is said that pleasure is easy and that good is difficult. That depends in what part of your­self you are living. Where is the centre of your consciousness? If it is in the body, yes, [47] then animal pleasures are attractive; but if you live ever in the mind, the animal pleasures shrink down into insignificance. Beside a splendid picture, beside a noble melody, beside a noble book, what are eating and drinking and the pleasures of sense? Man needs no threats, he only needs understanding. He needs no curses, he only needs illumination. Give him a chance of the better, and he will spring forward to it and embrace it and love it, for the highest pleasures are the most delicious, as the air of the mountain tops is pleasanter than the atmosphere of a slum.

And out of that growing nobility of the in­dividual, out of the same basis, the oneness of life, will grow the realised Brotherhood of Man. I have come back at the end to that with which I began. I spoke first of the Immanence of God. With that there must be Brotherhood of Man; for as a circle returns upon itself and, starting from one point and going round, you  come back to the same point again, so the World-Religion, starting with the Immanence of  God, His presence in every object, must fulfill itself in Universal Brotherhood, the recognition of the unity of life. And it means all that that word implies. Oh, if it were your brother, your sister, dying of starvation, rotting with disease, crushed under ignorance, hopelessly impover­ished, would you sit easily, comfortably, happily, in your better homes, in your pleasanter sur­roundings? Would not your own happiness [48] become intolerable while brother or sister was writhing in pain or anguish? And that is what Brotherhood means; it means holding every­thing for all, and using all you have that others also may share, and rise to where you are today. I t means sharing all willingly, not by com­pulsion of law, but by the more imperious com­pulsion of the Spirit within, which knows the unity of all. And Brotherhood realised means the lifting of the human race; it means the real becoming of man into God. And as you know the beauty of your own lives, that which you have around you to make life fair and pure, oh, when you realise that all are brethren, then you will be impatient of your enjoyments until you are working for the good of all. That is the lesson, that is the last that comes, that nothing is so great for embodied Divinity as service taken freely to all who are in need. If you are learned, share your learning; if you are pure, share your purity. There are women amongst you pure and clean and good; there are women in the streets who lack every virtue you possess. Oh, your purity would be brighter if you shared it with the impure, and tried to raise your sisters to that which is the blessing of your own lives.

And as the World-Religion comes with all the force that He will give it who is the World­-Teacher, these truths that stammeringly I utter will become full of the most inspiring power to your hearts. He will make living that [49] which I can only describe; He will make attractive that which I can only put to you in poor human words; for He will speak to your Spirit where I can only speak to mind and heart, and His voice will raise the world towards Divinity because Divinity will shine out so clearly from Himself. [50]

 

III

 

THE COMING OF A WORLD­ TEACHER

 

 

FRIENDS: I will ask you to throw your thoughts back for a moment to the first lecture of this series. I shall have to refer to it more de­finitely in a moment, for deliberately in that lecture I tried to lay the foundation on which the superstructure of tonight might appear to you more natural and more convincing; for an isolated fact, separated from all those to which it is related, may seem strange, bizarre, incred­ible. Just as a fragment of a child’s puzzle, lifted from the table, unrelated to any surround­ings, shows curious outline, unintelligible form, but dropped into its proper place in the puzzle completes the whole, which is seen to be natural and significant, so the great happenings in the history of the world, looked at divorced from all else, seem unintelligible, impossible; but when they come in a regular sequence, when they are recognised as part of a perfect whole, then that which was strange becomes [51] natural; that which was incredible becomes believable; and we realise that, however strange it may have appeared, torn away from its place in history, there is nothing in it incredible or even strange when we see it in its rightful place.

But before I turn to the right place of the great World-Teacher in history, let me for a  moment raise you above the outer story of events that men call history, and ask you to turn your eyes to Those who guide the events in history, who shape human evolution, who  administer the laws of nature. There is be­yond and behind all physical happenings a mighty Hierarchy of graded order, in the hands of which lies the government, the direction of the world; a mighty Hierarchy, the true Rulers of men, of whom all earthly Kings and Teachers are but the shadows or the symbols; a great Hierarchy which has guided our race and shaped its destinies from the birth of our humanity down to the present day, and which will guide in the millennia of the future as it has guided in the millennia of the past. That mighty Hierarchy has two chief departments concerned with the growth and the evolution of man - one the department that guides the outer evolution, that shapes the forms of races, that raises and casts down civilisations, to whom Kings and the nations of the world are as pawns in the mighty game of life; the other the department of teaching, which gives religion [52] after religion to the world as the world has  need of it, which, holding in its hands the vast circle of the Truth, gives out portions of that Truth from time to time in forms to be understanded of the people; that which gives to the world its spiritual Teachers, the Founders of all its faiths, and guides all its spiritual and moral unfolding: And in those two great de­partments visible throughout human history by their working, you have in each of them a Head, who uses the forces of the whole, who directs their energies to foreseen ends.

At the head of the ruling department - so far as appearance in the world is concerned - stands the mighty Being from whom our very name of man is drawn. He is the Manu, The Man, the type of each race as it gradually is builded, the perfect man of every race, who gradually develops in the race the qualities embodied in Himself. And as the name Man means the thinker, the reasoner, the intelligent one, so this name of the typical man, the Manu, stands for the Ruler, the Lawgiver of the race. And side by side with him, his Brother in the great work of evolution, stands the World-Teacher, called by that name in some of the ancient books of earth, known as the One who em­bodies in Himself the wisdom which is the truth that feeds the human race. And those two, the Ruler and the World-Teacher, stand at the head of the two departments of which I have spoken, stand as types of the Hierarchy [53] as a whole in its ruling and its teaching power. And in the Scriptures of the faiths from time to time this comes out, although unless you know the underlying truth, the fact as it occurs in history may not strike you with its full significance. And yet, to those of you who have been brought up from childhood on the Christian Bible, the Jewish Bible, this fact ought to come out as natural and customary; for you see there at the head of the young Jewish nation the two types of which I am speaking, in the well-known familiar names of Moses the Lawgiver and Aaron the High Priest of the Jewish people; for in all these Scriptures you have represented over and over again the same great facts of human evolution. And under those two names the same facts come out of the Lawgiver and the Teacher, the Head of the State and the Head of the Religion. And that which is sometimes called the Great White Lodge, that mighty body of the Guides and Teachers of mankind, that is the root of all the great thought which from time to time comes out to the helping of the world. Its messengers are ever moving among men, bringing to them the truth of which the age has need. And you may trace in the long line of the great geniuses in literature, in art, in science, the messengers of that one great Hierarchy which, hidden out of sight, guides the destinies of men.

In the old days, long; long ago, ere our own [54] proud fifth Teutonic sub-race had taken into its hands the sceptre and the leadership of the world, among the earlier peoples and in the earlier days, the messengers were honoured, the teachers were welcomed and revered. Only with the growth of the concrete mind in man, and of that self-assertive individuality which is priceless for the evolution of man, although in many of its manifestations repugnant and distressing; only since that particular part of human nature took the predominant place and stood at the head of evolution, only since then have the messengers been slighted instead of reverenced, been despised instead of welcomed. And hence the danger today, that the story of the Messenger, of the mighty Teacher rather, who came to the childhood of the fifth sub-race, the Teutonic, may be repeated again in our own days when that sub-race has reached its maturity; for the story of the messengers since Christ came to earth has been a story of persecution, of torture, of murder, of uttermost re­jection. And sometimes one wonders, looking over the recent past, whether the world be ready for the coming of a World-Teacher once again, or whether the measure meted out to the smaller teachers may perchance again be meted out when the Greatest stands on earth, visible once more.

But ere we challenge that question, let us consider that the World-Teacher is the one  who is the Founder and the central figure of [55] each great faith in turn; for each sub-race, as you know, has its own religion, given to it in its earlier days, moulding and shaping its ex­pression as it grows to youth and to maturity. So, looking at the world-faiths in relation to the world sub-races, we find a great succession of mighty Teachers who in very truth are all one and the same Teacher, appearing upon earth again and again for the helping and the teaching of the people. For while the Ruler gradually evolves the people and shapes sub-race after sub-race, the World-Teacher, standing beside him, comes out to sub-race after sub-race, and gives each a religion appropriate to its needs, carefully designed for its own special and peculiar evolution.

And ever the World-Teacher is connected with what are called the Mysteries; that is the Secret Teaching, the esoteric side of the reli­gion which is given to those strong enough to receive it, old enough to understand it, the backbone of every exoteric religion, that which Origen called Gnosticism, the Knowledge, with­out which a religion tends gradually to decay and to pass away. The World-Teacher, when He comes, ever gives to the religion its Mysteries, in and by which the truth shall be kept alive. Ready you are to recognise that in the past history of faiths older than your own; but many of you do not realise that the World-Teacher, when He came to you; re­established for Christianity the Mysteries that [56] the elder faiths also had enjoyed, and that, in the writings of the early Church those Mysteries are spoken of; that, as seen in the teaching of the early bishops and martyrs of the Church, it was in the Mysteries that they gained their knowledge. But these Mysteries pass away when pupils are lacking, though the teaching belonged in the early days to the Christian Church, quite as much as to any of the elder faiths of the world.

And in those Mysteries the teaching of the World-Teacher was ever one and the same.  You may recognise them when glimpses of the teaching come out in the philosophy or the religion of the time. It is ever the proclama­tion of the universal Self, and of the particular or specialised Self which is the individualised fragment of the whole. The existence of those is the fundamental fact that man needs to know for his progress - the identity of nature between the two, and the need for man to realise that identity and to know himself as one with the Universal Life - that supreme teaching by symbol, by allegory to the outer world, and plainly expressed to the inner, is the very central truth which all the Mysteries were established to teach, to impart to their Initiates.

If we look at the different sub-races and trace it thus, using the knowledge that may be  gained of those inner things, we may see how each time the World-Teacher used a symbol a  little different, but ever enwrapping the same [57] fundamental truth. We may look over the sub-races that have preceded our own, and see how in each of those the teaching was given which left traces on the outer Scripture, on the exoteric teaching of the faith. In the stock of our race, the first great Aryan people, there they had as the World-Teacher the great One known under the name of Vyasa, and He taught the one truth by the figure and the symbol of the Sun. The Hindu today will  tell you of the Person, of the Spirit, in the Sun, and the most sacred formula, the most power­ful mantra of Hinduism is still a cry to that supreme Sun, and the prayer that it may irradiate the hearts of men. The Sun in the heavens - yes, the visible symbol of the God­head; the Sun in the heart of man, the Self individualised in him; that both were identical, and that man must find the Reality within him­self ere he can know it as a certain truth outside him. It was in that form that the teaching was given to the mother of our sub-race, and still exists in the Indian land today.

Then when He came to the second sub-race, and taught in Egypt under a different name, the name of Thoth whom the Greeks called Hermes, there He took the light as symbol, and first spoke those words familiar to you in the Egyptian fourth gospel that you find in your New Testament today; for He then proclaimed “the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world”, the Light in the [58] heart of man as well as the Light in the universe outside. And the King of Egypt was taught to “Look for the Light”, because only the King who sees God in his subjects’ heart can be verily a King, and evoke the divine side of the nature of his people. And you find that just as the King was taught to look for the Light, so the people were taught to “Follow the Light”. And the doctrine of the Light within and the Light universal was the very centre of the Egyptian or Hermetic Mysteries.

Then He came to the third sub-race, to the Iranians, and He came then under the name of Zarathustra, better known as Zoroaster, and there the Fire was the symbol by which the same great truth was taught; Fire in the heart of man, Fire in the temple for the worshippers, Fire in the sky that gave light to the world. And in those early days, when the priests were really Magi, and knew the great arts that control the elements of nature, then the uplifted hand of the priest of the Fire - like that of Zarathustra, the Son of the Fire - lifted up to heaven, drew down the Fire from the clouds and flung it upon the altar and made that burst into flame. And so great was the impression that the teaching made, that the modern Parsi  who still keeps the memory and the tradition of the older worship, when he lights the fire in his temple, the sacred fire that is kept alight year after year, cannot light it in a new temple until after having gathered the fires of earth - the [59] fire of the household hearth, the fire of the  blacksmith’s forge, the many fires which men make for labour - he cannot finally light the  sacred fire till the lightning which he can no longer call from heaven bursts out in the  thunderstorm in the atmosphere, and from a stricken tree, lighted by the lightning, he takes  the fire which must burn on the fire-altar of his temple.

Then a fourth time He came to the fourth sub-race, the Greeks, now as Orpheus; but He no longer spoke in Light but in Music, and by the mysteries of Sound he taught the unfolding of the Spirit in man. And to the Greek He spake in Music, and the Orphic Mysteries were those in which the same knowledge was given, and the greatness of Greece was reached. And so by the Sun, by Light, by Fire, and by Music the World-Teacher spoke to the sub-­races that have gone before.

Then that Mighty One returned to earth but once more, to become the Lord Buddha, and to found the religion that still outnumbers any other faith on earth. And then He passed away, never again to take a mortal form, and handed on the duty of the world-teaching to His Brother, who had come side by side with Him through many ages, to Him who is the World-Teacher of to­day, the great Lord Maitreya, whom Christen­dom calls the Christ. And between these two, identical in thought, identical in teaching, there was yet a difference of temperament that [60] coloured all they taught; for He who became the Buddha is known as the Lord of Wisdom, and He who was the Christ is known as the Lord of Love - one teaching the law, calling on men for right understanding, for right thinking; the other seeing in love the fulfilling of the law, and seeing in love the very face of God. Lord of Wisdom! Lord of Love! It is the Lord of Love who is the World-Teacher of today.

First He showed Himself to His ancient people, the Founder of that cult in India which still holds within it the vast majority of the Indian people. The philosophers may worship the Mighty God; the stern intellectual thinker may speak of the One All-Pervading Self; but the Form under which God is worshipped in the myriad homes of India, the Form to  which is poured out a devotion and a passionate love that no religion on earth can possibly  exceed - it is the Form of Shri Krshna; not the statesman, the warrior, not the one whom you think of when you read the great story of the Mahabharata, but the Shri Krshna who was the Lover of men, the Child and the Youth who is to every Hindu heart today exactly what the Hebrew prophet spoke of when he said: “Thy Maker is thy Husband”. Lover and beloved! Such is the divine Form that holds the heart of India captive in chains today, and while they call Him Krshna you call Him Christ; but He is the one Lord of Love that is worshipped by you both. [61]

Then He came to our fifth sub-race, the great Teacher to give a new religion and to shape the spiritual growth of the Teutonic peoples. He came, and for three brief years of perfect life He carried on His ministry among the Jewish people; but it was pathet­ically said: “He came to His own and His own received Him not”; and though it was said that He spake as never man had spoken, only for three years could they tolerate the Lord of Love amongst them. And after they had slain Him, the records of His Church declare that only some poor hundred and twenty gathered together as disciples. A strange record for the coming of a World-­Teacher; but history has vindicated the power of the teaching, for if His own generation rejected Him, hundreds of generations since have done Him homage, and over Christendom today H is Name is taking on a mightier and ever mightier power, for men are beginning to realise that Christianity is not a church, is not a book, is not an organisation, but is the recognition of a living Christ, and the develop­ment of the Christ-life in man.

Now that I have led you up to that point, sub-race after sub-race, with the World-Teacher coming to each in turn and giving to each a religion, and when I remind you that in our own days, by the testimony of the ethnologists, a new type of sub-race is now beginning to arise, what is the inevitable corollary, what [62] the next thing in succession that you and I should look for? If, during five sub-races, ever the Teacher has appeared to teach and help, shall the one that is now being born be alone left without a Teacher? Shall the World-Teacher refuse to come, as He has come in every similar case before? That is the argument from the rational standpoint that I would ask you to consider, if it seems so strange and so impossible that in our own days, as aforetime, some mighty Teacher should come into the world to uplift and to help. We are so apt, with all our pride of intellect and of nationality, to deem ourselves too small to be blessed with the presence of a World-Teacher; and yet, if He has come five times before, under the exactly similar condition of a new type appearing on the earth, why should this one be left out of the series, and that which has been done five times before fail to our own generation? That is one thought you may well consider when you are making up your minds whether, in speaking of the World­-Teacher coming, I am dreaming and fancying, or am speaking words of truth and soberness, like those who bore witness to His coming when last His Feet pressed the surface of our earth.

There is another argument, not historical, but yet strongly appealing, it seems to me, which you may consider when you are thinking over the likelihood of such an event; and it

[63] is that in the study of history, wherever you see the signs of a great idea spreading over the mind of the people, a tendency which is going to accomplish itself in human history, that then, when the time is ripe, the idea ever becomes incarnate in a person, and the person makes visible on earth that which has gradually been growing into the hope and longing of the people. In smaller cases you recognise it is so. Men thought and dreamed of a United Italy, and that idea took form in Mazzini the prophet and Garibaldi the warrior. And so in the case of Germany. Much talk of a German Fatherland, poets singing of it, men who wrote books speaking and pleading for it; but it was only when the idea became wide­spread, when the hearts of the nation were turning towards it, that it became incarnate in Bismarck the statesman, in Moltke the general. And so it is ever true that where an idea is burn in the hearts of the people and spreads far and wide among them, some great man is born in whom that idea takes shape, who carries it to realisation. And when you see, as I pointed out to you a fortnight ago, a growing tendency towards union among re­ligions and among peoples; when you find men speaking of universal peace; when you find them discussing the possibility of federation - ­then you may know that the world-movement towards union must needs take incarnation in those who shall accomplish it. And who shall [64] make the union of religions actual save the World-Teacher who has given religions to the world? In this sense it is true what the pro­verb says, that “coming events cast their shadows before”; for the events occur in the spiritual world, and the expectation of those events is the shadow in the minds of men which gradually forecasts the realisation here. And so, when w e hear on all sides the cry that a great religious teacher is needed; when we find  from pulpit after pulpit there rings out the  longing for a great teacher who shall draw men’s hearts together and make the brotherhood  of religions an actuality in the world; then we begin to understand that we are face to face with one of those world-movements that embody themselves in world-leaders, and that  the longing for a universal World-Religion will become incarnate in the person of a World-Teacher, who will make that religion manifest on earth.

And as, by thinking along these and other lines, we see in the world around us, in the  changing events of the great panorama that is ever moving before our eyes; as we realise by  our reason that we are just touching on one of these great crises in human history; as intuition, which is the voice of the far-seeing Spirit, confirms the conclusion at which the reason has haltingly arrived; ah, then shall arise in our hearts a question: When He comes, will the world receive Him? When He comes how [65] shall we know Him? How shall we avoid repeating the sad tragedy of His last appear­ance upon earth? Shall history here repeat itself, and the story of Judea, Jerusalem, and even Calvary once more be played, a mighty tragedy on the stage of the theatre of the world?

If, instead of across the glamour of the cen­turies and the wonderful radiance which the worship of millions has shed on the figure of the Christ, if instead of that which draws your worship now, you were looking at Jerusalem of 2000 years ago, how different then would seem the story of that life, how different the judgment you would pass on that new Prophet that had arisen among the Jews! Can you not by your imagination to some extent recall the inevitable features of the time? Can you not picture to yourself the young, unknown man rising amid a proud, a haughty people, and giving them a message other than the message they expected? Can you not realise the type of onlooker who criticised the new Preacher, who questioned His sanity, His morality? Some said: “He is a good man”; “Nay,” said others, “He deceiveth the people”; and others called out: “He hath a devil and is mad; why hear ye Him?” Oh, try to live for a little time in those early centuries; try to realise the feeling of the people, the fickle populace who for a moment heard Him gladly and then caught up stones to cast at Him; the people swayed by [66] every breath of change, now loving and now hating, now shouting “Hosanna!” and then “Crucify!” Try to think what you would have felt had you been one of that Jewish people then - a stranger, a man not learned in the teaching of the Pharisees, no Rabbi or recognised teacher of the people; perhaps stirring up the people, perhaps causing discontent and even rebellion, a heretic in religion, perchance a danger to the State. And then you will understand the satis­fied calm that fell on Jerusalem when the people knew Him dead, and they felt a source of danger had been cleared away, a possible cause of evil had been cut down at the root. For how shall a man know the Teacher? Only by the teaching that He gives. The value of the teaching of the Christ showed itself in history; it did not show itself to the people who heard the words fall from His lips. And it is not surprising; for the higher the Teacher the more difficult is it to grasp the value of the teaching that He gives. The acceptable teacher is the man who says a thing a little better than we can say it, but says what we want said; not the man who is high above us and who speaks the things of heaven in the dull ears of earth. Oh, would you and I recognise such a teacher, if He came in the London of today instead of in the Jerusalem of 2000 years ago?

In order that that question may be answered more or less by some suggestion, let me bring it down from 2000 years ago to the London [67] of our time, and see how far the prejudice of the day would be against the coming of such a Teacher, how far the thought of today would be willing to bow before the words that He might speak.

Take one thing, very common, very simple, very widespread - your prejudice against races whose colour is other than your own. Suppose the Christ took the body of a coloured man, would you be willing to recognise Him as the Supreme Teacher? Why! He could not go into many of your colonies; He would be shut out of Australia, Canada, South Africa. And that prejudice is no more strange than the prejudices which prevented the Jews from recognising the Christ in one of their own people. This is one of the practical questions you want to consider; for in the past the Teachers have all been Easterns, of the races that now you despise and think to be lower than your own. How then if He takes an eastern body? will you be willing to acclaim Him as your Teacher? The Christ was an Eastern. But the men who  worship Him shut out the Easterns who are nearer to Him in blood than they are themselves,  and no one here seems to think very much of it; no one here seems to consider that they may be building up a wall of prejudice which shall prevent their eyes from recognising Him when He comes. And so one of the things from which you should clear your minds, if your vision you would have clear, will be every [68] pre­judice of race, every prejudice of colour, all that  pride that makes you think the white man is the favourite of God and none other. Until that is thrust out of the heart of every one of us, until we extend hands not of patronage and  condescension but of equal brotherhood to men of every race and every colour, may it not be  that when the Christ is amongst us we shall reject Him because He is not of our blood and  kind?

The Teacher, I said, is justified by the teach­ing. How shall we be able to recognise the spirituality of the teaching, if it puts things in a different way from the way to which we are accustomed: if it presents some great spiritual truth from a new aspect and in a new light?  First, by trying in our own selves to develop the spiritual above the intellectual and the  emotional, to unfold in ourselves the spiritual life which will recognise its kin when it sees  spirituality in its highest and most wonderful form. For the measures of heaven are not the measures of earth, and the divine scales differ very much from our human balances. We admire very often pride and high estate, splendour of intellect or magic of emotion. But the spiritual man is gentle, calm, meek, and un-resentful. How shall you, ever ready to defend yourselves against unjust attack, ever ready to prove you are in the right and the other in the wrong, ever eager to take up the weapon to strike when you have been struck, [69] who think it unmanly to bear insult in silence - how shall you appreciate the majesty of the dignity which when accused remained silent before His judges, and to every threat and accusation made He answered not a word? Why! if you hear an accusation against anyone and that person remains silent and does not defend himself, you say he is guilty, otherwise he would defend himself, bring a suit for libel, or take some other means of that kind. But that is not the way of the spiritual life. Those are not the weapons of the great Ones of the race. “When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” There is the spiritual secret; the law is sure, the law is just, the law is good; you do not need to avenge yourselves. If you have been wronged the great law will right you; and none can harm you unless you have made the weapon for your striking; for only those who have wronged receive back the blow on themselves. And so, if you would know the Christ when He comes, cultivate the spirit of the Christ - to bear insult with forgiveness, to bear accusation in silence, to refrain from anger, not to return evil with evil but with good. And if in yourselves you can develop those Christ-like qualities, then shall your vision be clear to recognise Him when He comes; for although in you they are imperfect and in Him perfection, still the nature will be the same and [70] will know its own, and recognise the greatness that otherwise would blind the vision.

If you would know the Christ when He comes, try to develop in yourself not only that gentle­ness and patience, but all the qualities which go to the making of the spiritual man - the love for all you meet, whether attractive or unattractive; the patience which becomes more patient face to face with ignorance and stupidity; the love which becomes more gentle when it finds shy­ness, when it finds weakness in its way; the qualities that are sometimes laughed at as womanly - but would that every woman had them; the heart that feels and understands  when misery is before it, and that keeps nothing back when it has aught to give.

If you would know Him when He comes, then check the tendency to decry the great, and to find faults in what is noble. So many people, looking at the sun, only see the spots; and no man, they say, is a hero to his valet de chambre. But why not? Not because he is not heroic, but because the heart of the valet de chambre cannot appreciate heroism. We criticise; we find petty faults; we lay stress on petty mistakes; and we miss the soul of good­ness and of greatness, perchance, in those who are around. Oh, cultivate reverence, although it be against the common feeling of the time. Be not ashamed to admire. Be not ashamed to be reverent to that which is greater, nobler than yourself, for the power to admire means [71] really the faculty to achieve. That which you recognise to be noble, by the very recognition you rise nearer to it and become liker to it. Reverence greatness wherever you see it, in outer life, in inner life, in the genius of the writer, the painter, the sculptor, in the holiness of the saint, in the compassion of the pitiful. In every one that you meet try to see the best and not the worst. Meet every one, be it even the criminal, as the potential saint; for by that love and respect to that which only exists in germ, the seed will burst, and presently will grow into flower and into fruit.

God is in every man, and if you do not see Him it is your eyes that are blinded; and if you would see the divine in its mighty per­fection in a Christ, then see the Christ in your poorest fellow-man or fellow-woman, and verily then you shall know Him when He comes.

When you are able to feel reverence, then do not put a check on the love that flows out to that which you see to be greater than your­self; but nourish the feeling of devotion which is ready to love, which is ready to give, which is able to give itself utterly to that which it knows to be greater than itself. Oh, they said of old that there were some who, when they met the Christ, left all and followed Him. And if, when He stands amongst us in our twentieth century, any of you would fain be among those who on seeing Him leave all and follow, then cultivate that feeling in your daily life while [72] still He is not present manifest amongst us. Thus practise the virtues that will burst into flower when you are in His presence. Try to realise what He must be, the Teacher of angels and men. Try to catch some touch of His spirit of perfect love, some gleam of His nature of perfect purity, some understanding of a power which conquers everything because it wins everything to knowledge and to answer.

If it be so amongst some of us, enough of us to influence the public opinion of our time, then when the Lord of Love comes again, it shall not be a Cross that will meet Him; then when He stands amongst us, it shall not be hatred that shall be poured out against Him; not three brief years alone will He stay with us, but our love will not let Him go, for love fetters even the Lord of Love. Then we who have tried to grow into H is likeness, we who have longed for the glory of His presence, we with our eyes shall behold the King in His beauty, and know the Supreme Teacher when again, ere very long, He treads the roads of earth. [73]

 

IV

 

SOCIAL PROBLEMS: SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?

 

 

FRIENDS: Some of you may think, in looking at the title of my lecture for tonight, that it forms rather a descent from the subjects that we have been considering on previous occasions. We turn from the study of a World-Religion, from the contemplation of a World-Teacher, to plunge into the social problems of our time, and to ask whether they shall be solved by self­-sacrifice or revolution. And yet, rightly looked at, the subject of human needs and human difficulties should properly follow on the con­sideration of those loftier topics with which, so far, we have been concerned; for the rapture of the Mystic in the Beatific Vision does not really work out its due results unless he brings some of the beauty and the harmony which have delighted him into the jangle and the noises of our earthly life. That keen air of the mountains, delicious as it is, should not in­capacitate us, but rather invigorate us for the [74] meeting of human troubles, for the healing of human woes. And when the World-Teacher is amongst us to spread the wisdom of His teachings and to shed abroad His love, surely part of H is work will be to lay the foundation of that Kingdom of Righteousness, which His followers shall have the task of slowly building upon earth