way into a far-off heaven to sit at the right hand of
God, whence He shall come again to judge. He lives in the body, and
also lives in the midst of the Church, which is His true mystical
body; and so long as that Church exists, so long as that Church is
found on earth, so long its Master shall live within it, and shall
dwell in a human body. He is not gone away, He has not ascended
anywhere in the literal sense, but is permeating the whole of His
Communion, and living upon earth until the last Christian has passed
away to liberation, or is born into some other faith. That is the
inner meaning. He lives and may be reached. And if the teachings of
the Theosophical Society have any value for the Christian Church, it
is because they are bringing back to live in Christian hearts this
living truth of the bodily ever-presence of the Christ amongst them.
Theosophists who are Christians, and remain within the limits of the
Christian Church, have gained a vivid view of this real humanity of
Jesus. They learn that He may be reached as truly now as when He
walked near the sea of Galilee, or taught in the streets of Jerusalem,
that they may know Him with as real a sense of His presence, may
learn from Him as truly as any apostle or disciple in the past, that
it is a living and real presence--not only, as the Roman Catholic
Church says, in the Sacrament of the altar, but in the experience of
the Christian heart. And it has never been left without a witness.
Look all through the history of the Christian Church, and see how one
after another has come into living touch with the Master Jesus. Every
great saint has proclaimed his own experience as regards his contact
with his Lord. And only in comparatively modern days, and in parts
only of the Christian Church, has that great and vivifying truth been
lost sight of. The Greek Church has never lost it; the Roman Catholic
Church has never lost it. The testimony of the saints in those ancient
communions bears witness to the continuing connection between the
Christian and the Christ. You find it in some of the extreme
Protestant communities also, where they bear a living testimony to the
reality of the personal communion. Not through books and churches
only, but within the living heart of man, visible sometimes even to
physical eyes, shining out in the vision of the saint, speaking in the
rapture of the prophet--it has never quite passed away from
Christianity. It is coming back more strongly