he one first
chosen being a dramatisation of Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia,"
which ran for three weeks in the summer of 1918.

The English Headquarters of the Society are now at 23 Bedford Square,
London.

CONCLUSION

"Tell us then, Mary, what hast thou seen upon thy way?"

"I have seen the shroud and the vestments and the angelic witnesses,
and I have seen the glory of the Resurrected."

Saints and prophets of all lands and all ages bear an unconscious
resemblance one to another. The craving for truth, the unquenchable
desire to escape from reality, leads them into realms of mystery and
dream, where simple peasants and labourers, religious men and
agnostics, philosophers and mystics, all meet together. Their
unsuspicious minds are easily dazzled by the least ray of light, and
deceived by the most unlikely promises, and it is not surprising that
they are often imposed upon and led to accept false ways of salvation.

Many of the mystics show a desire to revert to the Esoteric
Christianity dear to Saint John, the disciple whom Jesus loved; or to
that of Mani, whose doctrine--unjustly distorted by his detractors--was
concerned with direct initiation and final mergence in the Divinity.
But it is not easy to progress against the stream of the centuries, and
with the Catharists of Hungary, the Albigenses of Provence, and the
Templars massacred in the name of St. Augustine--that ancient Manichean
who became the worst enemy of his fellow-believers--Esoteric
Christianity seemed to have died out. Nevertheless the desire for it
has never been destroyed, and continues to inspire the teachings of all
those who revolt against dogmas that tend to restrict the soul's
activities instead of widening them.

Logically, all viable religious evolution is a departure from the
Christianity which has moulded our present-day thought and morality and
is the centre of all our hopes. But every new revival has to reckon
with it. Madame Blavatsky, for instance, made Gautama Buddha--the
king's son who became a beggar by reason of his immense compassion for
mankind--the central pivot of her esotericism, which was Buddhist
rather than Christian in essence; but Annie Besant, the spiritual
leader of modern Theosophy, has returned to Christianity and
acknowledges the divinity of the Son of Man. This symbolic example
should reassure Christian believers, showing how even those who depart
from Christianity contribute, in spite of th