THE PERFECTING OF MAN/PART 6

 

WHY WE BELIEVE IN THE

 

COMING OF A WORLD TEACHER

 

 

 

 

 

THOSE of you who notice the general statements that we now find scattered about in newspapers, in reports from various countries, in sermons delivered both in the Churches of the Establish­ment in the south, and by Nonconformist ministers also, may have noticed that there have been recurring references to certain teach­ings as to the coming of a World Teacher which have been heard from Theosophical platforms, and written about in Theosophical magazines. At first when this was spoken about some years ago, it received but little  attention; but, gradually, more and more notice has been taken of it, until now it cannot be  said to be confined at all to Theosophical utterances, but a widespread expectation is seen that some great Teacher is likely soon to appear in our world. A few leading men in the Churches have proclaimed their belief in such a coming. From one land after another we find the idea coming back to our own, and it seems that those of us who are in some way responsible for bringing the subject before the public have a duty to lay before their fellows some of the reasons which have made them believe in this coming of a Teacher of the world. And I want if I can tonight, to put before you certain lines of thought which suggest that such a belief is rational, to put before you some of the grounds which have led myself and others to think such a coming likely, and in doing this to leave you to judge of the validity of the arguments, of the rationality of the whole conception. At least I will put before you our grounds, and it is for you to judge whether these grounds be solid under our feet or not. Let me remind you at the outset that during the last century, within certain small sections of the Christian community, a good deal was said about what was then called the second coming of the Christ. The idea was fairly familiar about the middle of the last century, though it met more with ridicule than with a wide acceptance. It was put forward along certain traditional lines, and was quite out of accord with the orderly progress of the world. It was supposed that this coming would bring our world to an end. It was thought that the Christ had come once in order to redeem, would  return a second time in order to judge; and a considerable number of people - although, indeed, but a minority - considered that the time was coming when the prophecy would find fulfilment. The whole sect of the Irvingites, for instance, held in a very definite way to the idea of the second coming of the Christ. Various bodies scattered through the Churches, affirmed their belief in such a return, and you find still among the Christian communities a very con­siderable number of people, who hold that idea of the return of the Christ to bring our world completely to an end.

 

Now, it was pointed out when these state­ments were made, that if you took the verses that were quoted in the New Testament, and if you looked at them in their original Greek, you did not find there the conception of the end of our world, but rather of the closing of an age or period. The thought that the world had different ages through which it passed had long been familiar in the East, among the Hindus and the Buddhists. It came into the West, and was found among the Greeks and the Romans, and this idea of the winding up of an age, of the closing of a world period, found its way, as has often been pointed out by scholars, into the New Testa­ment, and was connected in these teachings with the return of the Christ.

 

As the translation became widely spread, and comparatively few concerned themselves about the original statement in the Greek, this idea of the destruction of the world became, as you know, very widely spread in Christen­dom, but in bur own days it found but small acceptance, being, as I said, too much out of accord with the normal line of thinking to  make ordinary men of the world, however thoughtful they might be, willing to accept this  notion of a sudden conclusion to be put to all the activities of the world in which they were  living. And so things remained, until a new view of the relation of great Teachers to the world gradually began to spread among thought­ful people. The conception of World Teachers, as brought forward by the Theosophical Society, developed to a very great extent, although it included, the ordinary Christian view of Christ as a great Teacher and Founder of religion.

 

The Theosophical conception, as widely put forward among thoughtful people, asks them to consider the coming of World Teachers as normal, not as abnormal; as under a certain definite law, and not as a breach of continuity; as part of the Divine plan working out in human evolution, by which these Teachers form a long succession, appearing at quite definite intervals, and accompanied by certain definite signs or conditions in the civilisation of the world to which they come. Theosophists, looking back over the world’s religions, pointed out that each religion had such a great Teacher as its Founder; that no matter where you searched in the past, you found some magnifi­cent figure at the commencement of a new era alike of religion and civilisation; that you could trace a definite order; that you could recognise a quite intelligible sequence of world  religions, rising one after another and appearing in the world when the previous civilisation and religion was beginning to show signs of failing in its power, and of no longer being able thoroughly to cope with the conditions surround­ing it. That thus, looking back over the long history of the world, it was possible to see cycles, recurring cycles, each of which began with the coming of a World Teacher, that coming being followed by a step forward in the evolution of mankind, by the dawning of a new civilisation, embodying some definite principle and helping it to evolve along a quite definite line; that looking thus at the world’s history, one perceived not only that each religion marked a step forward in civilisation, but, also, that it brought out some particular feature valuable to mankind, on which less stress had been laid in the religion that preceded it. And so, gradually there grew up a concep­tion of religion and civilisation which one may outline briefly in the following way: that man­kind had to learn many lessons and to develop many different kinds of qualities; that these lessons and qualities came forward in special religions which are adapted to emphasise particular teachings; that the teachings then  were embodied in civilisations; and so humanity, learning the lessons, developing the qualities imparted by the civilisations, gradually shows an advance, with ever enriched qualities, and so, one by one, learns the necessary lessons taught by World Teachers and incorporated in religions. And as you look into the world’s history and study it, that view comes out more and more clearly.

 

Let me just very hastily touch the points of new civilisations and religions, which will give you illustrations of the conception I have just described.

 

We need not go further back for our purpose than to the beginning of the great Aryan race, from which we all are offshoots. You will find there in its earliest stock, in that stock that developed the great Hindu faith, you find in that Hinduism with its great teacher and ruler, you find certain points coming out definitely and clearly which are the Hindu contribution, as it were, to the great universal religion. You find the idea of the immanence of God; growing out of that the idea of duty; then out of that idea of duty and obligation, there is the recognition of the unity of man. So plainly do these teachings come out and dominate Hinduism, that you find that great missionary, Dr. Millar, one of your own countrymen here, saying, as the result of his many years’ work, and study, and activity in India, that Hinduism has given to the world two great doctrines, the immanence of God and the solidarity of man.

 

Pass away from Hinduism, and take the next of the great Teachers and His work. It belongs to what we call the second great migration from the Aryan fatherland. It affects the civilisation of Egypt. The name of Thoth ­- and Hermes, turning the Egyptian name into Greek - is the name of the World Teacher that is there recognised. And His teaching is that of science, which built up the Egyptian religion on profound investigation of Nature and the mastery of natural powers; so that you find the contribution of Egypt to the world’s evolution is in the value of science and knowledge of the physical world.

 

Pass on to the third great migration, that which built up Persia, and you find your world prophet Zoroaster, building up a civilisation of which the keynote is purity. “Purity of thought; purity of word; purity of act” - that is the sentence which every Zoroastrian repeats every morning when he rises, and that searching after purity is the mark of the Zoroastrian faith.

 

Come westwards from Persia into Greece, and you find the great Teacher appearing as Orpheus there. Beauty is the note of the Greek religion and the Greek civilisation, and it was the worship, the following of beauty, which made Greece so mighty in the older civilisations of our world.

 

Come from Greece to Rome, and quite another idea comes out there. There you have the thought of Law - the duty of the citizen to the community. When you take the religion of the Lord Buddha, spread so far and wide in the East, you have the idea of right knowledge, of wisdom, of man learning how to live and seeking in all things to understand.

 

When you come to Christianity, to that Faith on which has been built the civilisation of Christendom, two notes are struck there - the one naturally following upon the other. The first is the value of the individual. You notice in Christianity, as you have never noticed before in the earlier history of religions, that it lays stress on the enormous value of the individual and seeks to build up the idea of individuality; and then, you find in addition to that idea, not so much by precept as by exquisite example, that when power has been gained that power is to be used for service; that when greatness has been attained then the greatest is to be as he that doth serve. And so the notion of self-sacrifice arises, the great contribu­tion of Christianity to the history of religion - ­that the man realising himself, knowing himself as an individual, is then to consecrate himself to service, and the measure of his power is to be the measure of his duty.

 

And so looking on those great Teachers and the religions They gave, you find a quite definite chord sounding out from the whole, and every note has its own place, every note its own value; and that view of a succession of World Teachers, instead of the notion of a Teacher having come once for all, only to return as Judge, that wider view of a great sequence of Teachers, and religions, and civilisations, has largely now moulded the thoughts of men, and they begin to realise that what has been, again may be; that as there have been many Teachers in the past, each with His own work and a civilisation dependent upon it, therefore there is nothing irrational in the idea that another may be added to that long succession of World Teachers; that another great Teacher may arise who shall do for the world of our time, what these other Teachers did for the world of Their own day - strike a new note in the great chord of humanity, bring a new inspiration in order that a step forward may once again be taken, give the thought on which shall grow up another civilisation; One who, the lessons of competition having been learned and having made the individual strong, shall teach the lesson of brotherly co-operation and the common good of all as the object each man shall seek; who shall lay down in some form that idea, which is beginning to show itself here and there amongst us, that there ought to be a minimum of well-being which the organisation of society is intended to secure to every one of its children; and that any society that fails to do that is failing in the main object for which it exists: a new departure warranted, first, possibly by the new social conscience which is beginning to develop in our days, and by the coming of a great Teacher who shall embody, in precept and example, that new conception of man, and make it possible for us, following His precepts, to build up a civilisation greater, nobler, more brotherly than the world as yet has ever seen.

 

And surely there is nothing in that which revolts the common sense of men. It follows the historical line. It only suggests the re­currence of that which has happened over and over again in the past of our Globe; and once we realise that it is not intrinsically incredible, once we catch the notion that from time to time some great Son of the universal Father comes out to give the younger children a lesson to help in their education, then we naturally turn our thoughts to the next point. Granted that the Teachers come out from time to time, granted that the succession that you suggest is to be traced through history, what is there in the present condition of things that makes you think that we are reaching the ending of one cycle, and the beginning of another? What is there in the condition of the world which in any way justifies you in believing that we have reached the point where another of the long line of Teachers is likely to come forth into the world? That is the next question which seems to demand an answer.

 

Let me try to put to you the many reasons which render it probable that the world is now standing in one of its transition periods, which mark the passage from one civilisation to another, which demands a new departure ­- because the old seems to have reached the limit of its usefulness, and because along various lines of human activities we see a condition of things is arising which makes it impossible to go further along that line and therefore imperatively demands departure along a new.

 

One thing that has been noticed in the past with regard to these great changes, is that the surface of our Globe undergoes certain changes in the distribution of land and water, and that these changes coincide with the growth of a new type of human being, from which various sub-types subsequently branch out. May I just interject here the Theosophical idea of human evolution: that we have great race after great race evolving in our world; that each great race has various branches that we call sub-races; and that from the sub-race which bears a certain number in sequence, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on, from the sub-race which bears that sequential number is chosen out the next root-race of the same number that is to appear. That is, that if you are dealing with the third root-race, the fourth root-race will be the next that will grow and develop out of the fourth branch of the preced­ing third race. Our own fifth root-race was developed out of the fifth sub-race of the fourth root-race. Our next root-race, by analogy, will be developed out of the sixth sub-race of our present Aryan, or fifth. Just bear that for a moment in mind, because then you will realise the force of what I want to put to you as regards certain physical things. These great root-races have each a Continent of its own. You may have read, if you have studied the great German naturalist Haeckel at all, that the human race is said to have begun on a Continent named Lemuria, which is now sunk below the Pacific, so that there is water where there was land. The disappearance of that Continent was accompanied by the rising of another, Atlantis, and the great fourth race grew and flourished on that Atlantean Con­tinent, and spread from it over the whole of the then world. Our own fifth root-race has for its habitation the land which you now see in the Continents of our Globe; the Pacific covering where Lemuria was, the Atlantic covering where once Atlantis flourished.

 

Now in Hindu books you get the succession - there are certain books called Puranas which give the succession - of the seven Continents on which, it is there said, the seven great races of men either have lived, or will live. They give those that we have already inhabited -that have disappeared; those that now exist; but they tell us of two more, one which is gradually to arise, the dwelling-place of the sixth root-­race; another which is to arise for the dwell­ing-place of the seventh.

 

There are signs going on in the world in our own time of the rising of a new Continent in the Pacific Ocean. That is not a Theosophical statement but a geological one. And even if you will look at your picture papers, you will have noticed during the last few years pictures from time to time appearing of a new island - one new island after another. These islands which have appeared during the last two or three years are coming up out of what is called the Fiery Ring of the Pacific. That is a great area of earthquake and volcanic activity, and these islands are flung up by volcanic action. They are naturally at present barren, rocky, desolate, flung up in the ocean and remaining there as land. That is going on now, from time to time a new island arising; and geologists tell us that as that goes on a new Continent will arise where now the Pacific Ocean is spreading. They have been asked whether there is danger to the present earth in this arising, and some think that if it comes up very quickly it will be dangerous to all life already on our Globe. From the Theosophical point there is no danger. The thing has happened before and will happen again; and it is so slow and gradual that although there may be local catastrophes and local cataclysms, there is no real danger of world-wide devastation.

 

Now the beginning of the rising of such a Continent, which takes hundreds of thousands of years in the building, is the first indication of another of these great departures of humanity - another root-race to be born to inhabit that Continent when it is ready for habitation. But as soon as we see signs of such a Continent arising, our minds turn naturally to the question Well, but what about our fifth race? We have only as yet had five branches of that, and there must be another branch from it before you have the very material out of which the new root-­race can gradually develop; so that the mind of the student looks over the earth as it is today, looks to see if there is any sign of a new branch of the great fifth root-race; asks whether anywhere there is a new sub-race which is distinguishable from that amid which it is taking its birth?

 

The answer to that comes from America. The American Bureau of Ethnology has lately received several reports from American ethno­logists, and we have there pointed out, definitely and clearly, that a new type of man, different from any now existing, is slowly rendering itself manifest in the United States of America. ­The measurements of the head and the face are given; the type of the features described - a new sub-race as we call it, a sub-division, as different from the Teuton as the Teuton is different from the Kelt. You can tell at once the difference between the man of pure Latin descent, the Italian and Spaniard, for instance, and the man of the German race - different in build, in colour, as well as in mental equipment. You recognise the difference between the definite type of the Teuton and the definite type of the Kelt; and you know that they are as unlike from the standpoint of emotion and mentality as they are unlike in their physical forms. Another such type is now growing up among our American cousins, so clearly differentiated that anyone who goes over to America at  intervals of some years will be struck with the increase of this new type, visible to the ordinary observation of anyone who visits the country; so distinct that you recognise it at once as different from the types you know - keenly in­tellectual, strong-willed, to judge from the cutting of the jaw, but a type entirely distinct, different from the others that we know: so that we who are students of the past, and who from the past are able to some extent, by analogy, to forecast the future, we say that these marks of the new type are showing themselves quite definitely on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, that the material out of which the great race of the future ages will be evolved is already in the making in America; that that sub-race will increase and multiply; that the type will become more and more dominant, and that, when it has reached, after centuries of evolution, a thoroughly distinctive type and civilisation, then there will be the beginning of the other larger growth, of a type to go on for tens of thousands of years before it will be definitely established.

 

Looking just at these purely physical things, and trying to understand them as signs of the line along which mankind will be evolved, we remember that whenever a new sub-race has appeared a new great Teacher has come to start it on its way. There we find one of the strongest reasons for looking to the coming of the great Teacher within a comparatively short time: that there is in the making a new type, and that always in the past that has been accompanied by the manifestation of a World Teacher. Is it likely, we say, that what has  happened over and over again - is it likely that, when looking back over our own great race,  we see how the Teacher has come with each of these offshoots that we can trace in the past,  that, as we see the beginning of a new vista when another type is developing, then the  sequence of Teachers will be broken, and that one type for the first time will be left unguided,  with none to shape its spiritual aspirations, with none to lay the foundation of the civilisation  that it will be its destiny to build? And we put that on one side as one of the proofs - a very important proof when you realise that it is dealing with physical things that every one of you can judge about for yourselves.

 

And we look to see if there are other reasons why we should expect a World Teacher; and the next thing we notice is that now, as in the time when the Christ came to the earth, you  are face to face with a great civilisation which has become strong, luxurious, and dominant,  but which is carried on side by side with an enormous amount of misery and of wretched­ness; which, while on one side it is undoubtedly magnificent, is on the other side as undoubtedly miserable, downtrodden, and depressed. How is our civilisation to progress further along the lines on which it is going today? Take the social conditions as you see them around you now. Look on the terrible unrest in every country in the civilised world. You cannot take up a newspaper without seeing in one column after another references to labour troubles­ – “The Labour Unrest”, “The Strike in Germany”, the strike they fear in America, then the strike that is threatened in some other part of the world, to say nothing of the terrible condition over here, where industry is paralysed, where millions are being driven to the very verge of starvation in the frightful labour war that is desolating our land today. And re­member that we had a similar attempt last year, and that after all the trouble then with the railwaymen the supposed arrangement has not even gone on satisfactorily for a single twelve­month. These recurring troubles, these fright­ful wars, for they are nothing less than wars, they cannot continue without rending into pieces the body politic. It is impossible to have those convulsions in the labour market without driving thoughtful men to consider the question of new departures, of re-organisation, of a change in a system which is palpably breaking down before our eyes. And there is a strange indication, that comes from that American country where our new sub-race is arising, of a possibility of an organisation of industry, which, though at the moment it be on distinctly anti-social lines, has yet in it the possibility of growing into an organisation that would serve society. I mean that flowering of the competitive system into trusts, in which you destroy a large amount of competition, in which one great trade is organised - granted for the benefit of those, a few, who have the control of it - but showing the method in which it might be organised for the benefit of all, and not only of a few; and where we see this system - this wretched deadlock, as I called it some two or three years ago - when we find that industry is going along a road where further progress along the same line is impracticable, then we realise that we are beginning to feel the need of a new organisation, of a new type of civilisation, and that exactly fits in with the coming of a new sub-race, and demands by all the testimony of the past the coming of a World Teacher.

 

And it is not only in the labour world that we feel that this deadlock is seen. Along many other lines of human thought and human activity there is the same feeling that we have worn out our old methods and need a new departure in order that progress may be continued. You see it in the world of Art where the old ideals are fading away, and efforts in every direction are being made to body out new forms of art, new conceptions of the beautiful for the grow­ing longings of man. You see it not only in the world of industry and art but in the world of science - the same demand for a new departure because the old methods are beginning to be outworn, and along these lines no further progress seems possible. Endings in every direction! But, where there are endings there are also beginnings. For the human race has not yet reached its triumph. Humanity has not completed its mighty evolution. If some things are fading, it is because others are budding. If some things are passing away, it is because new things are coming on. And that great saying you find in the Christian Scriptures, “Behold, I create a new Heaven and a new Earth”, that is what rings out from the dying things of our time; for life is ever­lasting although forms perish and decay. When we have seen that so often in the past, we recognise the same signs in the present, we see that our great civilisation - and it is great - is none the less showing signs of having done its work. And that we add to our reasons for looking for a great Teacher; because in the past these signs have heralded His coming, therefore, in the present, we regard them as again but heralding that advent.

 

And another reason which is stronger than, perhaps, at first sight you may think, is the ever-growing expectation and the feeling of the world that it has need of a Teacher. That took place before the coming of the Christ - ­a wide-spread expectation. You see traces of it in prophecies among many nations, not only in those of the Hebrew people. You find the looking for one spread through the Roman Empire before the Christ appeared - of course among the Jewish people in their hope of a Messiah who should conquer, and reign over them. And there is a reason why a wide­spread expectation should come into the world before some great event appears; for thought always precedes action, and thoughts in the higher worlds are reflected down here as expectations. The thoughts of the great Spiritual Beings who guide our world, who shape the fates of nations, who work out the Divine plan of evolution, and turn the great forces of the earth along channels which are deliberately made in order that they may flow in them and so bring about new conditions in our earth, the thoughts of these mighty Beings turn to the changing times full of the know­ledge that a great Teacher is coming, for They are engaged in the preparation for that coming in the superphysical world. The whole of  these great thought forms, as we call them, are flung down into the atmosphere of our earth, and create in the minds of men a wide-spread expectation, which is then but a promise of swift realisation. That proverb “Coming events cast their shadows before”, really bodies a truth; for events exist in the world of mind before they exist in the world of matter. Thoughts come before activities, and a thought, the shadow of the event, is a prophecy of the coming event. And so wherever you find a very wide-spread expectation you may be sure that there is a reality in the higher world of which that expectation is the shadow. That wide-spread expectation which now is spreading among the great religions of the world, in all the great religious organisations of the world, is literally a prophecy of the event which is to crown these expectations with realisation, the thought-heralds of the coming Teacher prepar­ing His way before Him.

 

But it is not only the world’s expectation; it is the world’s need. That view, perchance, will appeal only to those who believe that the world is guided, helped, protected by higher powers than humanity, by mightier Beings than ourselves; who look on the world as the huge field of evolution in which Spirits are unfolding, and which exists for the very purpose of their unfoldment; who realise that the world has a mighty Architect who plans out the progress of humanity, and that that plan is worked out stage by stage by His agents, His subordinates, who build slowly along the lines of the plan that He has designed and conceived. Then all those, when they see the terrible need of the world of today, feel that they need some Master to voice and to bring down the help of which the world feels the sore necessity. And those social problems to which I alluded mark out the need of our world. We need a leader, one greater than ourselves, who, seeing these mighty problems that to us are insoluble, will point us to the road along which we may walk to their solution, one who will apply to the tangle of earthly life these fundamental truths of morality which are unchanging and eternal, but which have never yet been thoroughly applied to human society, or to the organising of men on the principles there laid down. The great Teachers have all spoken with one voice. They have told us: “Love one another”. They have told us that hate ceases not by hatred at any time, that hatred ceases but by love; but although that was taught by the Lord Buddha twenty-five centuries ago, although the Christ in His exquisite Sermon on the Mount pressed that same eternal teaching in words familiar to you all, where do we find one nation that puts these principles into practice, where is a single organisation which is built according to that moral law? There is the great need, then, of our time. We know the principles; but we know not how to apply them. We realise that love should be the foundation of our Social Union; but we know it is not, that rivalry, and com­petition, and struggle are the principles on  which our Society is builded up; and we need someone who will speak to us with an authority which appeals at once to our hearts and our brains, and lead us along that better road of Brotherhood which has been taught for ages but never practised, which is realised as a duty in the family, but not realised as equally a duty in the State. We need a new inspiration which will make us willing to work along these lines, and inspire us with the faith which will enable us to overcome the difficulties in our road, and venture to apply these principles to the guidance of nations as well as of individuals.

 

I grant that there are many individuals in every nation now who are trying to mould their lives by these eternal precepts; but there is not one nation that appears to put them into practice, that does not, while pretending to believe them, give them the lie by every arrangement that they make for defence of themselves and attack of their brother nations, which does not, in every class division, negate the principles that they acknowledge with their lips. And so we need a great Teacher, not so much to give us new truth, as to give us the inspiration which will enable us to make the old truths the practical guide of our lives; and when He comes to teach and to inspire, we shall not expect that He will do it all for us, and so deprive us of the value of the training and the learning, but rather that He shall point the way, and lead us in the way, so that we may gradually learn to solve our problems for ourselves in the light that shall come forth from Him. For humanity has grown since last He was here. Humanity has developed since last a World Teacher trod our earth. The minds of men have grown. The mental average of man is higher than it has been before. A social conscience is growing; a social conscience is beginning to develop; and we no longer look for a great One who shall come as a conqueror to lift us into power, but for a Teacher who shall guide us into truth, and who shall enable us to make our actions commensurate with our aspirations.

 

There has come to our world a dream of social life which has dazzled the eyes of many, has warmed the hearts of all. You can see spreading over our country among the highly educated and the wealthy, a new sense of responsibility, a new desire of service, a discontent with the luxury which they have, but others do not share, a longing to sacrifice themselves in order that others may profit by the sacrifice. Among our young men and our young women that spirit is showing itself more and more, as the boys and the girls grow up into young manhood and young womanhood. It is not the old amongst us, now fossilised into indifference, who will build the Kingdom of the coming Christ, and make a new civilisation based on love and on brotherhood. His appeal will be to the young, whose hearts are warm, whose brains are keen, who feel the longing to labour, to love, and to sacrifice, thousands of young men and young women, growing up today, who are longing to give themselves to human service and only asking: “What can we do in order that the world may be the better for our living?” And in that feeling so widely spread, in that passionate enthusiasm which is moving the present generation of the younger amongst us, in that I see the growing body of disciples who will surround the Christ when He comes to teach, and will be led by Him to the realisation of a nobler social order. That is the true preparation for His coming; that is the real sign that He will soon be among us. Those who are willing to work, those who are willing to toil, those who are willing to sacrifice, they shall be the peaceful army that He shall lead to the conquest of the great ideal Society, which they shall build under His direction and make practicable under His inspiration; and they, perhaps more than any other proof, are the sign of the new departure, are the welcome and the heralds of the coming Teacher.

 

And if, friends, looking over the line of thought that I have traversed hastily tonight,  if glancing back to the history of the past, you are able to see there something of the promise  of the future; if you realise something of the changing world around you, the physical earth  showing signs of alteration; if you see the beginnings of the new type, of the new sub-­race; if you understand something of the problems around us and the hopelessness of trying to solve them along lines previously used; if you realise the growing expectation, the looking for the coming of One to lead and to guide, and then you realise that while He is preparing for His coming, His children are preparing to welcome Him and are getting ready to march under His banner and to carry out His will; then I think that to you, as well as to some of us, there will rise up the hope, nay, the certainty, that we are on the eve of mighty changes to be carried out under a World Teacher, who shall come to our help, who shall act as our Guide; and as that  thought grows strong in your hearts, life will grow full of hope, full of joyful expectation.  You will realise that the world is not left alone, that the troubles of the present are but the birth-pangs out of which a new civilisation shall be born; and that just as in the coming of a longed-for son the pain is forgotten in the joy of the welcome, so, the troubles of our time,  menacing and terrible as they are, are but that hour that precedes the dawning, are but the  sufferings that precede the birth; and that we also shall ere very, very long realise that change  is upon us, that the Teacher is with us, that hope has changed into realisation, and that the  longing for the coming has altered into the delight of the come.

 

 

 

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