that point that
H.P.B. laid so much stress in speaking of those Beings with whom she
had come into physical contact, whom she knew in their physical
bodies; and one thing, as you know, which she protested against in
relation to this type of Being was the putting Them too far away from
human love and sympathy, making Them belong to a class of beings to
whom at present They do not belong, and hence making a gulf between
Them and humanity which ought not to be made, because the making of it
destroys Their value to the people who make it. A phrase she once
used, that I have quoted to you before, is the complaint that "they
have turned our Masters into cold far-off stars, instead of living
men," and on the fact that They are living men she continually
insisted; for it is by virtue of that living manhood that They are
able to play the part that They play in the evolution of the race.
Others have other work to do as regards humanity, as regards the
destinies of the nations, and so on, but these particular people are
still in close touch with the humanity to which They belong, and They
deliberately refuse to go on away from it, remaining with it until
humanity, at least with regard to very, very large numbers of its
members, has reached the position in which They stand to-day, as the
promise of what humanity shall be, the first-fruits of humanity as it
is. They are specially concerned with the direct teaching, training,
and helping of man, in the quickening of his evolution; and the reason
the body is retained is in order that this close personal touch may
be kept, primarily with Their disciples, and then through Their
disciples with comparatively large numbers of people. And it is a
marked and significant fact, that just in proportion as a religion has
lost touch with this aspect of the Divine Life which we call the Life
of the Master, so has it tended to become more formal, less highly
vitalised, less spiritual, with less of the mystic element in it, and
more of the literal; so that it becomes necessary in the efflux of
time that every now and again a Master should come forth from the
Great White Lodge, and testify again upon earth to the reality of the
tie between the Elder Brothers of the race and the younger brothers
who are living constantly in the physical world.

Now one distinguishing mark of a Master, His chief function, we may
say, is to perform the greatest act of sacrifice which is known in the
Occult Hierarchy, s