society, and until that is
realised all schemes must fail, for they are founded on sand, and not
on rock. You who have studied and understand, to some small extent at
least, the powers which are working in the world of the present, you
ought to be able to help to eliminate the evil and to strengthen the
good. And the Theosophical Society, among these movements of the day,
must hold up firmly a true ideal. It is the function of the prophet,
of the spiritual teacher, to hold up the ideal, and point ever towards
it, so that individuals may have it ever before their eyes and choose
the roads which lead in the right direction.

And again, the principles that I have put to you may explain to you
why this Theosophical Society, so weak, is yet so strong--weak in its
numbers, weak in the qualifications of its members, not numbering
amongst its adherents the most learned and the most mighty of the
earth, made up of very mediocre, average people, not the great leaders
of the civilisation of the day; but in them all, else would they not
be members of the Theosophical Society, is the dawning aspiration
after a nobler condition, and some willingness to sacrifice themselves
in order that the coming of that condition may be quickened upon
earth. That is the justification of our Society now. We are like the
nutrient material that surrounds the germ, and the germ grows out of
the love, and the aspiration, and the spirit of self-sacrifice, which
are found in our movement, however little developed to-day. And the
fact that we recognise it as duty, as ideal, is the promise for the
future. We are what our past has made us; we shall be what our present
is creating; and if within your heart and mine the longing for the
nobler state is found, that marks our place in the future, and our
right to be among the earlier members of the sub-race that is now
preparing to be born. For our thoughts now are what we shall be in our
next life; our aspirations now mark our capacities then. You know how
the intermediate life is spent, between the death that will close your
present lives and the birth that will open the portal of your next
lives. You know that in the heavenly places you will be weaving into
faculty, into capacity, every thought and every aspiration towards the
higher life which in these days of your weakness you are generating,
and are trying to cherish and cultivate. It is not you as you are who
will make the future, but you as you shall be,