had
never had time to teach it; from any writings whatsoever each
student can only gain the nexus of what he is to learn from life;
for teaching does not mean giving dissertations, arguments,
proofs; enunciating principles, and explaining them, or the
like. It means, so far as one dare try to express it, bringing
such experiences to bear on the lives of those who are to be
taught, as shall awaken their own inner perceptions to truth. So
this Man's doctrine _was never transmitted._ His disciples, good
and earnest men, as we may imagine, had not the weapons spiritual
wherewith to wage effective warfare for the Light. Supposing
H.P. Blavatsky had died in 1879....?

The next step was, the inevitable materialization of the whole
movement. It followed the course all such movements must follow,
that are without spiritual leadership at the head, spiritual
wisdom at the core. It reacted against the exclusiveness of
Judaism,--and at the same time inherited it. Feelings of that
sort lie far deeper than the articles of belief; a change of
creed will not remove them; it needs special, defined, and
herculean efforts to remove them. You might, for example, react
from a bigoted creed to one whose sole proclaimed article was
universal toleration, and become a fierce bigot in that,--for the
creed, not the idea; because creeds always obscure ideas: when a
creed is formulated, it means that ideas are shelved. So now
Chrisitianity inherited the Chosen People dogma, but transferred
it from a racial-ecclesiastical to a wholly ecclesiastical basis;
and, since every Teacher comes upon a cyclic impusle outward,
took on a missionary spirit. The Chosen People now were the
members of the church, who might belong to any race. Within that
churchly pale you were saved; you were a special protege of the
Maker of Sirius and Canopus and the far limits of the galaxy;
who had--for a dogma had to be invented to explain the untimely
disastrous death of the Teacher,--incarnated and been crucified
in Judea. Outside that pale you were damned,--from Caesar on his
throne to the smallest newsboy yelling false news in the Forum.
While such a spirit had been confined to the Jews, it had been
comparatively harmless; now it was spreading broadcast through
the Roman world, an entirely new thing, and the darkest and most
ominous yet.

Whom, then, shall we blame? These sectarians?--No: to understand
is to forgo the imagined right apportioning blame.