ing to the strict measure of
the law. Pure, holy, without defilement, clean from sin, living without
transgression--such were some of the descriptive phrases used of
them.[190] Intelligent also must they be, of well-developed and
well-trained minds.[191] The evolution carried on in the world life
after life, developing and mastering the powers of the mind, the
emotions, and the moral sense, learning through exoteric religions,
practising the discharge of duties, seeking to help and lift others--all
this belongs to the ordinary life of an evolving man. When all this is
done, the man has become "a good man," the Chrestos of the Greeks, and
this he must be ere he can become the Christos, the Anointed. Having
accomplished the exoteric good life, he becomes a candidate for the
esoteric life, and enters on the preparation for Initiation, which
consists in the fulfilment of certain conditions.

These conditions mark out the attributes he is to acquire, and while he
is labouring to create these, he is sometimes said to be treading the
Probationary Path, the Path which leads up to the "Strait Gate," beyond
which is the "Narrow Way," or the "Path of Holiness," the "Way of the
Cross." He is not expected to develop these attributes perfectly, but he
must have made some progress in all of them, ere the Christ can be born
in him. He must prepare a pure home for that Divine Child who is to
develop within him.

The first of these attributes--they are all mental and moral--is
_Discrimination_; this means that the aspirant must begin to separate in
his mind the Eternal from the Temporary, the Real from the Unreal, the
True from the False, the Heavenly from the Earthly. "The things which
are seen are temporal," says the Apostle; "but the things which are not
seen are eternal."[192] Men are constantly living under the glamour of
the seen, and are blinded by it to the unseen. The aspirant must learn
to discriminate between them, so that what is unreal to the world may
become real to him, and that which is real to the world may to him
become unreal, for thus only is it possible to "walk by faith, not by
sight."[193] And thus also must a man become one of those of whom the
Apostle says that they "are of full age, even those who by reason of use
have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."[194] Next,
this sense of unreality must breed in him _Disgust_ with the unreal and
the fleeting, the mere husks of life, unfit to satisfy hu