ense of the truths in the world of
Spirit; and every religion, every creed, has its ceremonies as the
outward physical expression of some eternal spiritual truth. Theosophy
defends them, justifies them, by explaining them; and when they are
understood they cease to be superstitions that blind, and become
crutches that help the halting mind to climb to the spiritual life.

Let us pass from the world of religious thought, and pause for a
moment on the world of artistic thought. Now to Art, perhaps more than
in any other department of the human intelligence, the ideal is
necessary for life. All men have wondered from time to time why the
architecture--to take one case only--why the architecture of the past
is so much more wonderful, so much more beautiful, than the
architecture of the present. When you want to build some great
national building to-day you have to go back to Greece, or Rome, or
the Middle Ages for your model. Why is it that you have no new
architecture, expressive of your own time, as that was expressive of
the past? The severe order of Egypt found its expression in the mighty
temples of Karnak; the beauty and lucidity of Grecian thought bodied
itself out in the chaste and simple splendor of Grecian buildings; the
sternness of Roman law found its ideal expression in those wondrous
buildings whose ruins still survive in Rome; the faith of the Middle
Ages found its expression in the upward-springing arch of Gothic
architecture, and the exquisite tracery of the ornamented building.
But if you go into the Gothic cathedral, what do you find there? That
not alone in wondrous arch and splendid pillar, upspringing in its
delicate and slender strength from pavement to roof, not there only
did the art of the builder find its expression. Go round to any
out-of-the-way corner, or climb the roof of those great buildings, and
you will find in unnoticed places, in hidden corners, the love of the
artist bodying itself forth in delicate tracery, in stone that lives.
Men carved for love, not only for fame; men carved for beauty's sake,
not only for money; and they built perfectly because they had love and
faith, the two divine builders, and embodied both in deathless stone.
Before you can be more than copyists you must find your modern ideal,
and when you have found it you can build buildings that will defy
time. But you have not found it yet; the artist amongst us is too much
of a copyist, and too little of an inspirer and