very
side? What a privilege to know that those generations in the future,
rejoicing in the light, will feel some touch of thanks and gratitude
to those who brought it when the days were dark, to those whose faith
in the Self was so strong that they could believe when all other
things were against it, to those whose surety of the divine knowledge
was so mighty that they could proclaim its possibility to an agnostic
world. That is the only reason why you should come into the vanguard,
that the only reason why you should join the ranks of the pioneers.
Hard work and little reward, hard words and little praise, but the
knowledge that you work for the future, and that with the co-operation
of Deity the final result is sure.

Part II

The Place of Phenomena in the Theosophical Society

Spiritual and Temporal Authority

The Relation of Masters to the Theosophical Society

The Future of the Theosophical Society

_Four Lectures delivered to the Blavatsky Lodge, London, on 13th and
27th June, 4th and 11th July 1907._

The Place of Phenomena in the Theosophical Society

I have taken for these four lectures, confined to members of the
Theosophical Society, four subjects of great interest to ourselves,
and in dealing with them I propose to ask you to look at them from a
wide standpoint rather than a narrow one, and to consider the
Theosophical Movement and the Theosophical Society, not as an isolated
movement or Society, not as a separate thing, but rather as one of a
series of spiritual impulses, like to its predecessors in its nature,
interested in the same questions, and subject to the same conditions
as those that preceded it in time.

We find, looking back over the history of the past, that great
spiritual impulses occur from time to time, and each of these in the
past has founded a new religion, or stamped some marked change in a
religion already existing. The spiritual impulse that brought to birth
the Theosophical Society is to be thought of as of the same nature as
those which founded one religion in the world after another. And if we
regard it in this way we can sometimes, looking at the whole
succession of such movements, recognise certain definite principles
working in all of them, and then apply those principles to the
movement of our own time. And this seems to me to be a wiser and saner
way of regarding the Theosophical Society than looking upon it as
unique and isolated. Certainly it is