So that in speaking of that field of work, it
is not for me to say: "This plan, that method, the other means, that
is what you ought to follow"; but only that you are not carrying out
the First Object of the Society, unless you are engaging your activity
in some task which in your intelligence and conscience is working for
the benefit of your fellow-men. That is a point I want to put to your
Lodges; for when I see questions discussed as to giving new life to
Lodges, vivifying Lodges, and so on, I know well that the only cause
for the need of such discussion is because men allow the life to
stagnate within the Lodge, instead of sending it forth a living stream
to fertilise the place in which the Lodge is built. There would be no
lack of life were it not that you keep it bottled up for your own
advantage, for your own needs. The source of life is inexhaustible,
and it only ceases to flow where there is stagnation, because it is
not allowed to run out to the people who have need of it, but is kept
within the narrow limits of a Lodge. If you worked as well as talked,
if you labored as well as discussed, if you served as well as praised
service, there would be no time and no need to discuss how the Lodges
of the Theosophical Society shall be vivified.

Your Lodge should be your place of inspiration, the place where you
learn how you are to serve, the place where you find the bread of
life. But the bread of life is meant to feed the hungry, and not to
surfeit those already filled, to feed the hungry crowds around you
starving for knowledge, that life may be made intelligible and thus
tolerable to them; and it is yours to feed the flock of the Great
Shepherd, and to help those who, without this Wisdom, are helpless.
And all need it; not the poor alone, nor the rich alone, but every
child of man. For the one thing that presses upon all alike, the
bitterness of life, is the sense of wrong, the want of intelligibility
in life, and therefore a feeling of the lack of justice upon earth;
that is the sting which pierces every heart; whether the heart belong
to the rich or the poor, it matters not. When you understand life,
life becomes bearable; and never till you understand it will it cease
to be a burden grievous to be borne; but when you understand it,
everything changes. When you realise its meaning, its value, you can
put up with the difficulties. And our work with regard to those around
us is to bring that knowledge, and by tha