fice which They
are making year after year for us, unworthy of Their compassion. And
yet nothing less than that is the movement which lives by Their life;
nothing less than that is the relation of the Masters to the
Theosophical Society. They bear it in Their heart, They bear it on
Their shoulders, They offer daily sacrifice that this spiritual effort
may succeed in the helping and the uplifting of the world. And They,
so great, speak to us, so small; and none will surely refuse to listen
who catches one glimpse of the possibility of Their speech; none will
reject Their pleading, who can hear one whisper of that Voice; and the
one thing that one hopes for, that one longs for, with regard to
oneself and to all who are members of the Society, is that amongst us
there may be some ears found to hear the voice of the Masters, and
some hearts mirroring enough of their compassion to at least sacrifice
themselves for the helping of the world.

[Footnote 1: This was spoken some weeks before the issue of Mr.
Sinnett's extraordinary manifesto, denying "the things most surely
believed among us."]

The Future of the Theosophical Society

There are two futures of the Theosophical Society to which we may
address our attention: the immediate future, and a future further off.
And I am going to begin with the future further off, because it is
only by recognising the nature of that future that we can properly
devise the means whereby we may bring it about. For in all human
affairs it is necessary to choose an end to which effort should be
directed, and the nature of the end will govern the nature of the
means. One of the great faults, I think, of our modern life is to live
in what is called a hand-to-mouth way, to snatch at any momentary
advantage, to try to bring about something which serves as an
improvement for the moment without trying to understand, without
caring to consider, whether in very many cases the temporary
improvement may not bring with it a more fatal mischief than that
which it is intended to remedy. And at least in the Theosophical
Society, where we try to study tendencies, and to understand something
of the forces which are working around us in life, we ought to avoid
this popular blunder of the time, we ought to try to see the goal
towards which we are moving, and to choose our immediate methods with
reference to that goal. Of course, when I speak of a goal and an end,
I am using the terms in a relative, n