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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE
LECTURES DELIVERED IN QUEEN'S
HALL, LONDON,
1911
BY
ANNIE BESANT
PRESIDENT OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY


AMERICAN


EDITION


THE RAJPUT PRESS.
CHICAGO.
1911










CONTENTS
IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES...............      1
THEm GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION............ 27
THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER..............53
SOCIAL PROBLEMS: SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLTJUTION........................................... 77
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS: DOGMATISM, OR MYSTICISM? 103
ENGLAND   AND  INDIA......................... 125
THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION......... 155
INDEX........................................ 179










IMPENDING
PHYSICAL CHANGES










IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


W HEN I chose as the subject for my Sunday
lectures this year " IThe Immediate Future,"
I felt that some of the subjects were rather
far removed from ordinary thought. While such'
questions as the Growth of a World-Religion, the
Coming of a World-Teacher, might without introduction be suffciently familiar to the Theosophist
to be placed before him directly, I felt on the other
hand that to the general public, who had not made
a study of Theosophical ideas, some kind of introduction was necessary in order to make the
more obscure subjects intelligible and rational.
And so I thought that in the opening lecture I
would try to give a common-sense and rational
foundation for the hopes that are spreading so
widely within and.without the Theosophical Society of to-day; that I would try to show you that
these hopes were based on a study of the past as
well as on observation of the events of the present;
and that our feeling that the world is standing on
the threshold of mighty changes is justified by
knowledge and is not the mere dream of the
enthusiast.
In pointing you to the impending physical
changes, I want to show you that similar changes
have also happened in the past before the other







2~THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


changes which I have classed together as the
Growth of a World-Religion, the Coming of a
World-Teacher. For just as you may look upon
the plan of an architect stretched out before
you on a table, may know that -part of the building is already completed, that part is still building, that another part is not yet raised above the
surface, but that the whole is one building, traced
out on a single plan, so you may look at the great,plan whose field of evolution is our world. On
that world a great drama is played, divided into
differept acts. In every act the setting is different, but the plot is carefully carried on. And so
in the world's story, past,I present, and future are all
part of the same plan, all ifilling up some of the
great outline, and the present becomes more intelligible and the future more hopeful if we see
how it is growing out of a past, if we understand how it is linked with events that have gone
before. And so, looking at what is being done
to-day amid all the confusion of the building, we
may see how, as a matter of fact, the plan is being followed, and may forecast the future because
we have caught a glimpse of the whole.
Now I only know of two books in which an outline is given of the whole story of evolution from
the beginning to its ending on our globe. One in
a series of ancient books, repeating very much the
same story that has come down from the far past,
in India, whose name, Purana, simply means old.
There you may read the story of the world with
no distinction made, save that of succession, be




IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


3


tween past and future. Similarly, in H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine you may also find an
outline of the world's story from beginning to end
consecutively traced. Both those come from the
same source, from the reports of great seers who
have studied the occult records, where there is
neither past nor future, but all is looked upon as
present. Because they are the work of great seers
reading the same records they tell us the same
story, though in the one case in ancient and in the
other in modern words.    The Secret Doctrine
is less obscure, less difficult to follow, than the
Pauranic writings, but both give the same outline;
and it is to that outline that for a moment I would
direct your attention now.
I am conscious that in running over for a few
moments that record of the past I may be seeming to give you a somewhat dry and uninteresting
history; but if it seem to be dry, if to you it appear uninteresting, it is the fault of the speaker
and not of the subject. For what can be more
profoundly interesting to human-kind than to see
outstretched before it some record of its immemorial
past; what more inspiring than to realise that you
and I and all the nations of the world, made up
of countless I's and You's, have been treading an
appointed path, have been working out a definite
destiny, have been passing   from  strength to
strength, from knowledge to knowledge; that, as
we have climbed in the past, so shall we climb
higher in the future; that, as we have evolved in
the millennia behind us, so a mightier evolution





4


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


stretches in the millennia in front of us? Oh, if I
could convey to you one tithe of the interest and
the inspiration that I have found in the study of
those records, then, though names, races, dates,
may be dry in themselves, they would form an entrancing story of the past stretching onward into
the dim regions of the future.
And now for the rough outline. The occult
records tell us that the story of our globe has as a
drama seven acts; seven great continents form the
stage on which the drama is played.       Seven
great races, each on its own continent, are the
actors who play    in the drama    and  as the
actors on the stage pass on from act to act so
the nations of the world in new forms pass on
from act to act in the world-drama. We are not
newcomers in our world, we have lived here
many times before, and the story of the past is
the story of our childhood; now we are reaching
our maturity, to go onward to the highest point
that on this earth we shall reach. I need not
trouble with the first of those two continents, nor
the races that dwelt upon them, for they were
scarcely human; rather embryos of humanity
were they than men as we know men. But there
are four great continents that I would ask you to
glance at for a moment-two of the past that
have largely vanished, one of the present that is
threatening to change, one of the future that is
beginning to emerge.   The names are all given
in the Puranas, but the Sanscrit would interest
you but little; in fact, the only interest lies in the





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


5


fact that they are given in a list; just as you
might give a list of the countries of Europe, so in
that ancient book are the names of the continents
given one after another, without caring whether
they be of the past or the future. They are there
recognised as part of the world-story, and each
has its own name. Three of them you will recognise, the two of the past and the one of the present
under names more familiar in the West. The
first is Lemuria, which stretched where now the
Pacific rolls. Australia forms the southern part
of that mighty continent, New Zealand also related
to it; Easter Island was a mountain top submerged
beneath the ocean; then Madagascar was also a part
of that great land, and so up northwards where
the mighty Pacific Ocean stretches, there in faroff days lay the continent of Lemuria, which the
great German Haeckel speaks of as the cradle of
the human race; and rightly so. For, as I said,
the two preceding continents had but the embryos of humanity upon them, and man, fullformed, as we know man, took birth on that third
continent of Lemuria. It has passed away; it was
destroyed by volcanic outbreaks, by fire, by tremendous explosions, as the sea rushed into gulfs
rent by the subterranean fires. And so Lemuria
was torn in pieces, vanished, having played its part;
and the mighty waves rolled over it, leaving only
here and there a remnant, and a tradition in the
older story of mankind.
And then the growth of humanity passed on
from that third race that occupied Lemuria, of





6


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


whom the pure negroes are the remnants in the
world to-day, to another great stage of growth on
another continent that has also disappeared, the
continent that stretched from Europe to America,
the mighty continent of Atlantis. That Atlantis
existed is now practically being accepted on all
sides. Some of you may have noticed lately how
archaeological research on the western coast of
Africa has been unburying the ruins of mighty
cities which their discoverer points to as evidence
of the high place attained by the Atlantean civilisation. Atlantis, after having sent its children
over the whole world of to-day, living many of
them in North America among the North American Indians, colonised Egypt and founded one of
the mighty Egyptian Empires, then spread over the
North of Asia as the Turanians, the Mongolsa tremendous stretch of a race that still forms
the majority of mankind on earth. But its great
civilisation perished, not by fire, but whelmed
under the waters of the ocean, leaving myths and
legends behind in many a country-the Flood of
Noah, the Flood of Deucalion, and many another
story spread over practically the whole world.
Atlantis, by several mighty catastrophes split into
pieces, whelmed  under floods, also  perished,
though so many of the Race of its blood survived.
And then another great continent, slowly rising,
was prepared for the habitation of the next great
Race, the fifth. Europe, swampy for ages after it
rose above the level of the sea, began to be prepared for the inhabitants that should dwell upon





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


7


its surface. The great country of Hindustan, rising also south of the Himalayas, was for long one
mass of swamp, uninhabitable by man, until, before the Aryans entered it, some of the outlying
nations of the Atlantean   people had   poured
through the Himalayan gorges, and made a mighty
civilisation where now India stretches and her Aryan
peoples are found. And the fifth Race, the Aryan,
was taken away nearly 80,000 years B. 0.-for
in the lifetime of races you must count by millennia,
not by centuries-some gathered out before one
of the great catastrophes, led out by their leader, the
Manu, stopping for a short while in Arabia, then
northwards to the north of Asia, and settling
where now the Gobi Desert spreads, where at that
time there was a great inland sea, and the land
was fertile, fitted for the dwelling and the support of a huge population; that was the cradleland of our Race, that the home of the mighty
people who gradually stretched their power and
their numbers over the lands that had risen for
their habitation out of the seas.
Before I deal further with them let me turn to
the next point, with regard to the continents, so
that I may link the coming continent with those
that have perished, with the continent of Asia and
Europe, which is the heritage of the great fifth
Race. Here, because I would not have you think
that I am only telling you Theosophical dreams,
let me turn to the eminently respectable body, the
British  Association  for the  Advancement of
Science, and learn from the geological section, as





8


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


it met in the last annual meeting, how this question of continents, new as well as old, is being
studied by the scientific mind to-day. I find that
Association discussing the formation of a new
continent in the Pacific Ocean. Now if you turn
to the Secret Doctrine you will find that H. P.
Blavatsky declared (she published her book in
1888, when science had not yet dreamed of what
now it recognises) that the new continent would
arise where Lemuria disappeared, that as Lemuria
vanished under the waves of the Pacific Ocean so
would the new continent rise above those waves
for the home of the new race. We find in the dissussion that occurred that that continent is already beginning to rise. The rapid emergence
of the Bogoslof Islands, near Alaska, has caused
some alarm among geologists, for they think that
if the new continent should emerge at the same
rate as these islands have arisen, a tidal wave
would be created which would practically engulf
the world. That is the point which was discussed last autumn, and details were given as to
the area of the new continent. It is to stretch
from the Philippine Islands, Japan, and the Aleutian Islands to the islands of south-eastern Asia,
the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo, being about
some 4,000 miles long, so far as the formative
forces are concerned. Then our scientists went on
to explain that there is under the Pacific an area
called the Fiery Ring of the Pacific, that it is an
area of earthquake activity, so active that during
the last twenty months no fewer than 1,071 earth




IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES.  9




quakes have been observed, earthquakes so powerful, bringing about such sudden changes, that the
officers and crew of the United States steamship
"Albatross" watched a great outburst which
formed an island round the volcanic peak that
was thrown up, and the peak climbed upward till
it reached a height of 1,000 feet above sea-level.
Obviously, if you have great earthquakes under
the ocean, there is a danger of tidal waves; as we
saw not so very long ago, when a vast tidal wave
swept down upon the coast of Japan and spread
ruin for many a mile. And if, say the scientists,
this continent arises over so vastt an area at a rate
so rapid, so perilous, then will not a wave be generated which shall sweep away the whole of humanity and engulf the world in a flood to which
the Flood of Noah was but as nothing?
But it is not thus that these mighty changes come.
Destruction, yes, that is true, but limited, not
world-destruction. When Atlantis was perishing by
catastrophe after catastrophe large numbers of
people perished, certainly, vast waves swept over
the adjoining lands; when its last island, Posei-_
donis, sank, a great tidal wave swept over the Mediterranean Sea, spreading ruin along all its coasts,
emptying by the accompanying disturbance the
Sahara Sea, so that the desert stretches now where
once that ocean rolled. Such great catastrophes
in the past most certainly may be followed by
great catastrophes in the future; but they are not
all together; they are spread, with intervals of
thousands, tens of thousands of years. These





10


10     THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


great seismic changes, while locally destructive,
shall never destroy the human race, and while that
continent is rising, gradually, now and then an
outburst, and then a; rest of thousands of years,
the race that is to inhabit it will be slowly preparing on the adjacent continent of America.
Looking, then, at that as one of the great impending physical changes, you can see it is only on
a line with the past story of our globe. Other
continents have sunk, other continents have risen;
why, then, should men's hearts be troubled when
the old story is told once again on earth?7 Convulsions and catastrophes, they are one of the
means of human progress; unless they took place
from time to time the world would not be able to
support her children, for the soil of earth grows
exhausted with the multitude of the people who
are fed from it; and from time to time the old
soil is wisely whelmed beneath the waters of a new
ocean in order that it may become virgin againmay arise for the building of a new civilisation,
for the home of a new people. Oh! nature is only
the garment in which God enshrouds Himself; her
catastrophes are only means for the working out
of mightier ends; and why should you be troubled,
you who are immortal spirits? For continents
may break up, continents may emerge, -but the
human race is immortal in its origin and in its
growth, and there is nothing to be afraid of, even
if the foundations of the earth be moved.
Looking at that calmly, quietly, knowing it has
happened in the past, and will happen again in the





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


11


future, let us glance at the Races to which I alluded
who are connected with the continent; I am only
concerned now with our own fifth Race. But
I want you for a moment to follow me, thinking
of it as in Central Asia, as the cradle-land, sending out its subdivisions to subdue and inherit the
world. Two of these have well-nigh passed away.
The second sub-race, as we call it, an off-shoot of
the mother Race, went out to Arabia, to Egypt,
to Africa, built great empires, but now has passed
away, and only remnants of it are left in the
Arabs and some of the tribes allied to the Arabian
peoples. We may let it go; its story is over.
Then came the third sub-race, the Iranian, which
made the great Persian Empire-not the later
Empire of Cyrus and Darius, but the old Empire
that lasted for 28,000 years in the Persian and
Mesopotamian lands; that also has practically
vanished.  Only a remnant, 80,000 Parsees in
India, represent that once splendid people, that
once mighty sub-race that made so great an empire.
But two sub-divisions of the Race remain as
well as the mother-stock:-the fourth and the
fifth. They left Central Asia some 20,000 years
ago, the fourth settling in Georgia, Armenia,
and Kurdistan, and on the southern slopes of
the Caucasus, spreading down into Asia Minor
and there giving rise to many nations known
in history.  The most ancient Greeks of all,
really Greek in stock, usually called Pelasgians,
who, according to the priests who spoke to





12


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


Plato, checked the great wave of Atlantean invasion when it rolled toward Egypt, and threatened the ancient land of Greece, they were the
first European families that grew out of this great
sub-race, and they only entered Europe some 10,000
years before the time of Christ. The fifth, leaving Central Asia about the same time, went along a
more northerly course to the shores of the Caspian
Sea, settling themselves on the southern slopes of
the Caucasus, and remaining there for long, long
ages, for some 11,500 years. The fourth sub-race
spread through Europe along the southernmost
part; it gave us the mighty power of Greece, with
its splendid art, with its wonderful literature; it
made the Republic and the Empire of Rome; it
spread onward into Spain, Spain that well-nigh
grasped a world-empire when she sent her children
across the Atlantic, conquered Mexico and Peru,
and might have made a world-empire, had it not
been for the national sins of the Inquisition, of the
expulsion of the Jews, the expulsion of the Moors,
and the cruelties that undermined her Empire.
For there is a justice which weighs the deeds of
nations as well as of men, and no nation may go
against righteousness and against mercy, and hope
to keep its place among the leading nations of the
world.
And then that same great fourth sub-race went
upwards through France, populated the British
Isles, and settled down for many a long, long year,
building up the civilisations in the lands it had
conquered. Meanwhile, its successor, the fifth sub




IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


18


rate, coming into Europe about 1500 years later,
settled first in Poland, and then, as the swamps
of Central Europe gradually dried up and made
Europe habitable, it sent out a great Slavonic
Sfamily; then the Letts, Lithuanians, Prussians; then
the great Germanic peoples, and, lastly, the Goths
and the Scandinavians. Of different types, those two
Ssub-races; just as you see in the Root-Race type the
difference between yourselves and, say, the Mongolian, the Turanian, the racial type, so you can 'see
the difference between the Celt and the Teuton in the
gradual form of face, of head, of colouring. You see
in the Celt the round head, dark hair, dark eyes, the
somewhat slight and shorter form; you see in the
Teutoh the longer head, fair hair, blue or lightcoloured eyes, large, strong stature. Then, mixing the one with the other, of course the type is
largely lost, but if you look at them in the pure
type, say, the Italian and the Scandinavian, you
see at once the difference between these two great
sub-races that have made Europe their home.
And now, if we follow these sub-races further, we
find that they gradually spread over the world; especially is that true of the last offshoot, the fifth,
or Teutonic, sub-race. You find it there with the
Goths and Scandinavians that belong to it, making nations, kingdoms, in Northern Europe; but it
has not stopped in Northern Europe, it has spread
over the known world. You see it leaping across
to America, and making there that mighty republic of the West, and the northern Canadian Dominion becoming mightier year by year; and just
as it leapt arorss the Atlantic, so also it leapt





14


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


southward, colonised Australia, New Zealand, took
partly South Africa, there mingling with the Dutch
blood where the great Federation is being built up
to-day. And it was not satisfied with spreading
over many a colony and making the English tongue
practically the language that more than any other
to-day can carry you over the civilised world; we
find that it also spread in Asia, and there arises a
question of immense interest that I will turn to
in a moment.
But before turning to that, for that has to do
with the great Empire of the fifth Race, let me remind you that a fifth Race is not final-a sixth and
seventh have to come, and just as the Teutonic
represents the fifth sub-division of the great Aryan
stock, there must still be two more sub-divisions
to grow, to develop, to evolve. Once more H. P.
Blatvatsky tells us in the Secret Doctrine that
on the American continent will gradually develop
the sixth sub-division of this mighty Race, that it
is there, nearer the home of the Root-Race that is
to be born, that this sub-race of our own Race will
grow up and differentiate itself as the earlier subraces have done. That is happening in America
to-day. Once again, I do not ask you to take Theosophical ideas, but evidence that comes from the
scientific world outside. Now Europe has poured
her people, immigration on immigration, into the
great crucible of the United States. America has
welcomed them, has allowed them to settle; for long
has it been building up a nation. But what a
change! The first settlers that came from Eng.





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


15


land that settled in what they called, in their love
for the old country, New England, those were a
type very different from the type growing in America to-day. It was affected by climate, by conditions, and was shaped largely into the NorthAmerican Indian type-the rather lantern jaws,
the long face, the prominent cheek-bone, the rather
straight hair, the type that you know, if I may use
a not very courteous word, as the Yankee. That
is a type of the North-American Indian sort, resembling the previous possessors of the land.
The new type is nothing of the kind; the new
type is really new, and the leading ethnologist of
America, in making a report to the American Government on his investigations, gave this as the
result: That a new race is growing up in America,
marked, distinguishable, and clear. He gave the
measurement of the head, the type of the features;
he pointed out the square jaw, the well-cut face;
a type intellectual, strong-willed, and becoming
more and more numerous in the United States.
Why, you can see it yourself if you keep your
eyes open and happen to visit America, for the
type is becoming marked in every restaurant that
you go into; you can pick them out as a new type,
a fine type, full of intellect and power, and promising much for the future of the world. It is the
sixth sub-race, the sixth sub-division of the great
Aryan people. It has the promise of the future
within it; it is the type that will give birth to the
next root-race in humanity, that will inhabit the
continent that is beginning to emerge in the Pacific.





16


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


So that you have there, from outside sources
entirely, evidence of the new continent, evidence
of the new Race, physical changes round you and
before you that pass by you unnoticed, because
you do not realise the significance which underlies
them. There is really the advantage the Theosophist has over most of you. He has studied the
subject in the history of the past; he has acquainted himself with the records where that history is told; he has looked at the great plan, seen
its outline, and when some little bit is tossed up,
as you might see a fragment of a child's puzzle
thrown up and wonder what the fragment meant detached from the rest-if you have seen the picture,
ah, then you know where the fragment will fit in
when the other fragments have been found. And so,
in the study of the great picture we recognise the
fragments as they appear, and know the place they
will occupy in the finished picture, because the
plan indicates their meaning, and in the great
mosaic each fragment has its place.
And so we see a growing sub-race, a growing continent; but what is to come before that race grows
into power, before that continent is fit, thousands
upon thousands of years hence, for human habitation? Other changes are going on right before
our eyes. What is their significance? Your feeling-the older amongst you will, I know, agree
with  me in this-is changing    towards your
colonies, and their feeling is changing towards
you. I spoke of the great change which had occurred by the spreading of the fifth sub-race; but





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


17


when I was a young girl, brought up as I was in
a Whig family, I used to hear remarks about the
colonies very different from the remarks I hear
to-day. They were spoken of grudgingly, with
the hope that they would break away and make
kingdoms, republics, as they pleased, of their own.
They were not looked on as parts of a mighty empire; they were not considered as daughters of the
motherland, who in other parts of the world should
keep links close and loving with the land whence
they had gone out. And in the colonies themselves
was much of the same idea-independence, separation, each in its own country, its own nation, its own
people. But how different now! Now the Mother
Country is loved in every colony, now the Mother
Country sends out her love to all her many children far across the seas. Now they come and gather
together in great Imperial conferences.  What
would have been thought of an Imperial conference in the days, say, when any of you of my own
generation were children? An Imperial Council
is being spoken of, not a mere conference now and
again, but a permanent council, in which every
part of the Empire shall be represented, not once
and again coming for a few weeks, but permanently,
regularly, one Empire, and one Imperial Council
to deal with all with which that Empire is concerned. Oh, if that feeling had been in England
and in her colonies more than a century ago our
American brethren would not have made tea in
the harbour at Boston, and begun the American
revolution. Those colonies would still be part of





18


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


the Empire, still bound in love to the motherland,
and that great blunder of trying to tyrannise and
making need for resistance would never again be
permitted within this Empire, for that lesson has
been learned once for all, and it will never need to
be learned again. But there is a lesson that is
needed to be learned. I spoke of the mother race,
I spoke of the cradle-land, and that land was
emptied through some 8,000 years as immigration
after immigration crossed the Himalayas, and
took the great Aryan Root-Race into India. Beginning 18,000 B. C., those incursions finished perhaps
some 10,000 B. C., and since then the Aryan has
gone and multiplied and increased, until that mighty
land of India is peopled by children of that Race.
Many have tried to conquer, to rule, India. The
Greeks came; they were rolled back, leaving many
a precious trace behind them. For the conquest of
one country by another is not, as many people think,
an evil thing. It mingles the peoples, it gives the
knowledge of one to the other. The Greeks, who
conquered and then were chased out of India, left
behind them many a trace on Indian art which
made it more beautiful, more gracious than it was
before. And then the Moghals came and made their
mighty empire, coming from Turkestan and other
parts of Asia. In a great flood they rolled down
into India and made a mighty empire whose centre was Delhi, and lived among the Indian people.
But India has conquered them more than they have
conquered India, for they are no longer foreigners; they are at home in the house of India, the





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


19


mother, and those children of the conquerors of
the past are proud to-day to call themselves Indians, for they have grown into the land, and they
will never leave again the land that has become so
much their own.
And then from Europe many another nation
came. The Dutch came and made colonies-how
much of them now remains? The Portuguese, the
Spaniards-they have fragments of Indian land
to-day. The French came, but where are the French
colonies now? Chandernagore and Pondicherrythat is all that France can claim of Indian soil.
And then England came, the youngest child of
the mother-race, and grew and increased in power,
spread over the Indian land, conquered with the
help of Indians the Indian people. Ah, you should
never forget that! You could not have conquered
India by your own power; you only conquered her
because many of her children desired your coming
and joined their swords with yours. I have seen
in an English paper: "We conquered India by
the sword, and we hold her by the sword." You
never conquered her with the English sword, but
only by alliance with large numbers of the Indian
people, and you cannot hold her save by her consent. The late Viceroy, Lord Minto, spoke a true
word when he said, "If India did not want us to
stay here, we could not remain three weeks," and
that is true. A few thousand English people, many
millions of Indians. Oh, never forget, when you
blame the English rule in India, that it could not
be if against India's will. Here and there, yes,





20


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


you may find a few, but very few, who would break
the link, and if it is broken it will be England's
fault.
Now you cannot leave out India in the world-empire that you are building; and that is where your
colonies are making a terrible, a frightful mistake.
There is no land in all the world in which the
Indian cannot travel freely save in English colonies
and under the English flag. Do you realise what
that means? A Japanese can go into British
Columbia if he has fifty dollars in his pocket, but
if one of the citizens of this great empire, an Indian, goes there, 200 dollars he must produce ba
fore he is allowed to come in. Any other Oriental
may travel freely in Canada; the Indian, no. Hn
must come direct from India, otherwise he is not
allowed in, and if some of his friends have settled
in the United States he cannot visit them and go
back into Canada. Oh, there is another side of
self-government in the colonies; it is undermining
the Empire in India, for India resents being treated
as an outcast under the flag that she is asked to be
proud of and to shed her blood to defend. You
might have lost South Africa had it not been for
the Indians who died there, and who nursed your
wounded on the battlefield. But now for many a
year the Indians have been struggling for decent
treatment, and they are treated shamefully under
the self-government of South Africa. Ah, you must
remember this, and recall that you cannot have an
empire, imperial, world-governing, without India
as an integral part thereof. You have made this





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


21


necessary Young India is working for a united
India because you have taught her the ways of
liberty and given her a single tongue. Oh, do not
think only of a few mad boys who, pressed on into
crime by their elders, who remained safe here in
Europe, sacrificed themselves, thinking they were
patriots when they were only criminals-saddest
of all disillusioning for the young and the deceived.
Oh, do not think of that; they are but a handful;
but think of the millions of Indians who love and
honour England, who support her rule, who defend
her flag.
There are two men living here to-day who have
done more to touch the heart of India and knit her
to England than any other two living men. One is
the Prince of Wales who went through India, who
said at Guildhall in a famous speech that India
must be ruled by sympathy, and who is now George
V., King of England, Emperor of India, whom may
God preserve; and the other, the Viceroy who has
left her shores, Lord Minto, who in the midst of
danger stood firm and calm, who trusted Indians
in the day when assassination was prevalent in the
capital, and kept an Indian guard round Government House when others would have put Scotchmen there, and sent away the Indians from guarding him. For how shall India trust us, he said, if
we do not trust India? And he said those words
and acted on them at a moment when his life and
his wife's life were in peril, for he held that love
and trust are mightier weapons than fear and suspicion. You do not always know your greatest men,





22


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


and the debt that the Empire owes to him will be a
difficult debt to pay.
And now a great change is to occur for the first
time in the history of the world, a monarch of the
West is to be crowned in the East. He who a few
days hence will sit upon the ancient stone to be
crowned and anointed king in Westminster,-he
with a statesman's insight, with an Imperial thought,
is going over to the Indian capital of Hindu and
Mussulman alike, that again the crown may be set
upon his head, and that in India he may be crowned
as Emperor of India. Never before has that been
seen in history, never before has such an honour
been paid to a part of the Empire; and when thus
England and India are linked together by the most
powerful of all ties, the tie of imagination and emotion, can you not see in that the promise of a mighty
Empire in which East and West shall be joined
together, and each shall help the other with the
special powers that it has? And since this change
of policy a change is coming over India. The Indian Civil Service, on the whole a splendid service,
though many an error may be laid to its charge,
is trying honestly, bravely, thoroughly, to accommodate itself to the new position, and to show
sympathy rather than to stand apart from the
Indian people. Viceroy, Governors, and others,
one after another, have called for courtesy, for
gentleness, for mutual respect, and that Service is
loyally to meet the changed conditions, and to do
what its rulers have demanded. And so there is
hope; if only the colonies do not destroy it.





IMPENDING PHYSICAL CHANGES


23


But among these impending changes on the surface of our globe it is necessary that men should
understand how empires are builded and how
nations grow. This mighty world-Empire of the
fifth Root-Race will have England and India for its
centre, and the great outlying countries of America
and Germany for a mighty buttress on either side.
America is drawing nearer to us, nearer day by
day. Oh, will not Germany also link herself by
bonds of peace with this country? And when
Britain, America, Germany, India, the    great
colonies, are all linked together in one pact of
peace, who shall dare to break that peace proclaimed on earth, who shall dare to speak of war
when such a power speaks for peace?
Looking around on all the changes, trying to
grasp their meaning, and seeing them, not as isolated facts, but part of a divine plan, you may
realise that under the idea of the growth of a
World-Religion, preparing for the coming of a
World-Teacher, the nations are drawing nearer together, the land is being builded for the future,
for the Race that shall inhabit it, and while that
slow building is going on, the mighty Empire of
the fifth Root-Race is arising. Oh, if you would
have it so, learn that it means responsibility, that
it means duty, that it means righteousness. If
you would be part of an empire that will last, you
must grow into a liberty which is self-controlled
and learn that only in service to fhe race is perfect
freedom.










THE GROWTH
OF A WORLD RELIGION










THE GROWTH OF A WORLD RELIGION
RIENDS: not very long ago I was speaking
in Manchester on the same subject with which
I am to deal to-night, and the quegtion was
raised by a very interesting letter that was sent to
the editor of The Christian Commonwealth, whether
the truer view of a World-Religion was the view that
I had put, a synthesis of all the world-faiths, or
whether it would be by the triumph of a single religion-Christianity. Of course, when the writer
spoke of Christianity, he used the word in the widest, the most liberal sense; but he said that he
thought that one religion following another in the
world's history made an advance on those that had
preceded it in religious evolution, and that, therefore, it seemed likely that Christianity, as the latest
of the great religions, should be the crown of the
whole, and thus the World-Religion. Strictly speaking, of course, Christianity is not the latest of the
world's religions, for the great prophet of Arabia,
Mohammed, is later, reckoning by dates, than is the
Christ.
I am going to try to show you this evening why it
is that, looking to the World-Religion, I think we can
see something of its outline, something of the way in
which it will present itself to the intellect and the
heart of man; but, so far as all the religions of





28


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


the world are concerned, I believe that the men of
every religion will see in the World-Religion the soul
of their own faith; that it will not be a question
between this faith and the other, this prophet and
the other, but that in every faith the noblest, the
most liberal spirits, those who have most of the
divine consciousness, and therefore most love for
their fellow-men-that such in every faith will
recognise in the world-religion all that is noblest
and dearest in their own, and that each will feel
that it is their own faith carried to the highest,
and will recognise in it the glory and splendour of
their own.
And now I am going to try to trace, so far as I
can, something of what, studying the past and looking at the tendencies of the present, we may gradually see unfolding around us as the religion of the
world. Naturally, I do not pretend that my imperfect sketch can be all-inclusive, nor have within
it all the wonder and the beauty that the worldfaith will take on the lips of the World-Teacher.
Not for me to hope to describe what His divine
consciousness will reveal; only as the humblest of
disciples I will try to sketch for you something of
the broad outline which He will sketch with a firmness of touch that only the World-Teacher shall
possess, with a wealth of detail and of power to
reach the hearts of men that can only come from
Him who spake as never man had spoken nor can
speak save from that pair of lips.
And in order to deal with our subject fairly
clearly, let me put first of all the departments into





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION2


29


which a religion naturally must fall if it is to meet
the many-sided necessities of men. First of all,
evidently, it must be Religion (I will define my
terms as I deal with them separately); then it must
be a Philosophy; then it must bring with it Art; it
must also be a Science; and, lastly, it must be a
Morality. Those are the great departments, it
seems to me, under which all human needs may be
included. Those cover human life, and under' one
or other of those names all human thought must fall.
I have put in the forefront, as is fitting, the word
Religion. What is Religion, whether you look at
religions in the plural or the essence of religion0?
Religions in the plural mean God's answer, through
men in whom divinity shines out more than in their
fellows-His answer to the search of man after Himself. Man is ever searching for the source whence
lie has come, searching for the life which is upwelling within him, immortal, nay, eternal and
divine; and every religion is the answer from the
Universal Spirit to the seeking Spirits of men that
came forth from Him. Just as water, flowing downwards, rises again to its source and will ever rise
to the height of the source, save as obstacles come
in the way, so man's Spirit, being divine, rises ever
to the height of divinity which he seeks to realise,
and the strongest proof that man is fundamentally
divine is his immemorial search after the God
whence he comes. That is the true meaning of the
word religion; not rites and ceremonies-man has
made them and can make them again; nor churchesman has built them, and were they all in ruins he





30


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


could build them again; not even sacred books-for
those also are written by human hands inspired by
the God within the prophet, and were they all swept
out of the world the power that wrote them could
write them once again. But the essence of religion
is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That
and nothing less than that is religion. Everything
else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the
needs of men. The essence of religion is the knowledge of God, and when God is known all else can
be builded by man. And the World-Religion will in
its very essence be a way of finding out the knowledge and will proclaim as the foundation of its
teaching the Immanence of God.
What is the Immanence of God? It is that in
everything that lives, in a universe where all is
living, there the Universal Life that is God is present, supporting and maintaining. It is written in
the Bhagavad-Gita: "There is nothing moving nor
unmoving that can exist bereft of me." And there
is nothing in the whole of the mighty universe,
imaging in its great immensity all that infinity of
which it is an image, however imperfect; nothing
in all the systems of worlds, in suns unnumbered,
in space that knows no ending, in lives that know
no numbering; nothing from the very lowest grain
of dust to the very Logos of a system, that can exist
bereft of the life which is the root, the support of all.
If you would bring this great truth closer-for the
infinity of space is awe-inspiring, but does not warm
the human heart-then think of all that most you
love, all that most you admire, all that most you





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION


31


prize; the look of love in the eyes of husband or wife,
the smile of the child, the steadfastness of the friend,
the grandeur of external nature, the rolling of ocean
and the stillness of the starlit sky; everything that
is most beautiful, everything that is most splendid,
everything that warms your heart and cheers your
life; all that is God individualised in the living
object, and all that is beautiful and exquisite, is but
the reflection of His smile and of His strength. That
is what is meant by the Immanence of God, and
that will be the foundation-stone of the religion of
the future, the World-Religion that is coming.
Every religion teaches it, but it has hardly the influence on life it ought to have.
And after that great teaching will come the
next; that there is one Teacher of the worlds, one
Teacher of angels and of men, one mighty Instructor who reveals God to man and man to God.
And that is the mighty Being whom in Christendom they call the Christ, Whom in the East
they call Him Whose essence is Wisdom, the Lord
of Compassion, the Lord of Love. Oh, there are
many prophets great and dear to the human heart;
there are many teachers, many helpers of the world;
but above them all, as our sun throws the stars into
invisibility, shines the Master of Masters, the
Founder of every faith, the Inspirer of every
prophet, the World-Teacher.
You think of religions other than your own, and
you hear other names. You do not remember that
in different languages one object is called by many
names. Why, if you name a man, a metal, a stone





32


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


in different tongues, if you had not the object before you, you might deem that each was speaking
of a different thing. And so, when the Hindoo
speaks of the World-Teacher and the Buddhist
speaks of the Lord of Compassion, then you do not
realise that they are speaking of Him Who is your
Christ, and none other. The names are different
but that Superhuman is the same. He loves all
faiths, blesses them all alike, sends His Messengers
to every one of them and is the heart and life of
each. Oh, is it not a greater thing, you who are for
the most part Christian, that the Lord Whom you
worship is worshiped in Eastern lands as well as
here? And what matters the name when the Being
is the same? What matters the word that our child
lips may utter when all words ascend to Him who is
but One? For when the Indian worships Shri
Krishna, unknowingly he is worshipping One in
whom the Christ was incarnate; when the Buddhist
raises up his heart to the coming Buddha, unknowingly he is worshiping the Christ. Is it not better,
fairer, more beautiful, that all the streams of homage centre in one mighty individual, and that the
Divine Man of every faith is one and the same, although His children know it not and do not realise
the unity of the whole? And yet, when Christ came
in the form you know, He spake words clear and
definite enough: "Other sheep I have, which are
not of this fold; them also must I bring, and they
shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and
one shepherd." And when He spake these words,
ere Christianity as a separate faith was born,





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION


83


whom could He have spoken of save of those who
followed the other great religions of the world?
And mark the words, "Other sheep I have," not
"I shall have."
And so, in the world-faith, as there is recognised
the Immanence of God, so will there be recognised
the one World-Teacher. And then will follow the
recognition of the great company of those who look
to Him as Master, those whom we speak of as
Masters, as Apostles, as the Prophets to many nations and many peoples; they are His disciples,
they are His messengers, they carry His word
abroad among many people, and they also are recognised in all the great faiths. The Theosophist is
only treading there in the footsteps of the faiths of
the world.
And the other great point in the World-Religion
after the three I have mentioned will be the Path of
Holiness that leads to conscious realisation of
divinity, that leads to union with the Supreme.
The great faiths speak of that in the West and in
the East alike. And here again the difference of
the name clouds and veils the identity of the teaching. Surely all of you must know that in the Christian Church there is a path, which they divide into
three stages, that leads to what is called, in the
Roman Catholic books, the Divinisation of man,
union with God. It is divided into three-the path
of purification, the path of illumination, the path
of union. Those are the three divisions that the
Christian teaches. First, purification, which must
come before all else; then illumination, when the





34


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


divine light begins to flash on the darkness of the
soul, until from flashes it becomes a steady light in
which everything is seen; and then the third part,
the realisation of God, the conscious union of the
God within with the God without. The Hindoo and
the Buddhist teach the same path. Their path of
probation is the path of purification of the Christian; the path of holiness marked by the five great
portals of initiation, that is the path of illumination; and also the path of union, they use the same
name, Yoga, which means union. Oh, there is no
great religion in the world that is left outside the
greatest, the most spiritual teachings. And in the
religion of the future that Path will be made
clearer, will be again proclaimed and seen to exist
by all. And as in the old days, men will tread it;
as in the past, men will enter it; and, though it be
true that straight is the gate and narrow is the
way that leads to that union with the Supreme,
still in modern days as in the elder days there are
men ready and willing to tread it, and they, through
the study of the Mysteries, know the wonders of
divine and human life, and realise as men realised
of old that the union of man and God is possible.
Those points, it seems to me, are the points most
salient in the World-Religion. They are the points
which the religious consciousness has clearly and
definitely marked out for ages upon ages. I know
that sometimes people challenge the testimony of
the religious consciousness. Buy why? The surest
thing you have is your consciousness. That you
exist is to you the one fact beyond all possibility





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION


35


of challenge, made firmer by no argument and
unshakable by any argument. And in that consciousness which is your life, that which has responded to divinity, which has sought and found
divinity, is a part which cannot be taken out
of it. It is the most universal testimony of the
human   consciousness; in  all times and  ages
and countries the religious consciousness has arisen
and claimed the knowledge which is to-day the
bread of life. When it is not admitted, when ignorance dwarfs it and binds it and blinds it, then it
asserts itself as superstition, the most fatal enemy
of man. Man will believe whether people tell him
he should believe or not, and superstition, by its
very degradation, shows how the religious consciousness strives to find an object, and will rather
have a superstition than nothing. "Oh, but," you
say, "it drives people into different directions; here
one person believes this and the other that." Aye,
but it is not the names, but the fact; it is not the
labels, but the result on life. You may call God by
what name you will; you may worship Christ under
what title you please; you may talk as you like in
your language about your faith; but if it makes
you lead a noble life, if it turns you from evil to
good and from selfishness to service, if belief in God
under any name makes men heroic, then the consciousness is divine, and the names are matters of
indifference when the result is the same.
But the religion of the future must have a philosophy. What is a philosophy? It is an answer
satisfactory to the reason to all the great prob




36


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


loems of life. That is what is meant by philosophy.
It must satisfy the reason, and it must show the
unity underlying the endless diversity of the facts
that science observes. To see the One under endless forms, to realise the unity amid infinite diversity, and so to satisfy the reason, that is the function of philosophy. Broadly speaking, all schools
of philosophy divide themselves into two, materialistic and idealistic. One sees in matter the source
and root of all; the other sees in life the maker and
the master of matter; and under one or other of those
two flags the philosophies evolved by the reason of
the race group themselves inevitably. Now there
is no doubt that in the World-Religion the philosophy must be idealistic, for it must recognise Spirit
as the basis of all, the immanent life of God as the
foundation of all. Its answer to the great problems, roughly, we may run over What is the constitution of the universe?  The universe is the
manifestation of the divine thought; the thought
of God embodies itself in the thought-forms
that we call worlds. Bruno said once, "The act
of the divine thinking is the substance of the
universe," and I doubt if any philosophy can
go beyond that phrase. The substance that underlies all manifestation, that which shows itself
with dual aspect as life and matter, spirit and
matter, that substance which   underlies every
thing and is the final unity-that is the divine
thought. If that thought were checked, all would
vanish. It is the substance, the reality, that underlies the changing worlds. And when that thought





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION


37


is grasped, that the divine substance is the basis of
all, then we realise that from that substance emanates, as it were, the dual force, spirit and matter;
spirit the source of life, the source of all intelligence, individualising itself in the life of the object
and one in every form; matter, taking countless
forms, innumerable shapes, the vast diversity of
the worlds that fill space, but one in essence. Forms
pass and take one shape after another, change and
make an endless panorama of bodies; but matter is
ever there, changeless in itself, the one material of
which all forms are but shapes and kinds; matter
one and life one, life individualised and matter
shaped into form-that is the worlds as seen by philosophy; they are the outcome of thinking, manifesting as the substance I spoke of, and all changes in
forms, all diversities of life, are reducible to the one
life and the one matter; for, as I said, philosophy
seeks unity in everything, and only when diversity
is reduced to unity is the reason satisfied, is the intellect at rest.
What is Evil? Philosophy must answer that.
Evil is only imperfection, that which     is not
complete, but is becoming, but has not yet found
its end. And if for a moment you will think along
a line that requires close attention, you will realise
that imperfection is necessary in a universe. For
what is a universe? Diversity of forms. But every
form not being the whole it must of necessity be imperfect; less than the whole, it cannot be identical
with the whole, and being less than the whole and,
therefore imperfect by itself, it shows imperfection





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


or evil and only the totality of a universe can mirror
the image of God. Evil is not a positive thing; it is
the absence of perfection, the state which is ever
growing towards perfection. Evil is only absence
of light, but the light is ever becoming. And so it
ceases to be a trouble, to weigh upon the heart. And
even in the form of evil that we call sin in man,
we shall see in a moment that there also there is no
reason for discouragement, that that also is on the
way to good. But so far as the problem is concerned, without taking humanity for the moment
into consideration, it need not trouble you for a
moment; for the very condition of manifestation is
diversity, and the inevitable result of diversity is
imperfection in the isolated objects. But let us come
to man, for the answer will not be complete until
we have dealt with him. How does philosophy regard man in the deepest, fullest, greatest sense?
It sees in man first the image of God, and therefore
a triplicity; first, imagining the substance, the highpurest reason, the Self, as we sometimes say, in
man. And then it sees what is often called the
human soul, aspiring to the divine above it, dragged down by the brute below it, the dual principle
in man, on which the growth and evolution of man
depend; one hand    stretched  upward  towards
heaven, the other still clinging to earth. Bruno
compared it to the moon that always has one side
turned to the sun and the other turned to darkness.
And you could not have a more vivid image of the
soul in man. This is the reflection of the universal life; it is the individualised life incarnate





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION


39


in a form. And thirdly, the body, representing the
matter of the universe. Spirit, soul, body, that is
at once the simplest and most philosophic view of
man. There are other subdivisions, but they are all
classed into this great triplicity. And so you have
the divine in man, which shows itself by thought;
you have the soul in man, which is the individualised life; you have the body in which that soul is
unfolding. And when you ask: What is Sin? you
have to answer: It is when the man is doing
that which he knows to be the worser when a higher
is before him. That is sin. It has its root in ignorance, the only original sin in man. He grows out
of ignorance into knowledge. Drunkenness, murder, theft; they are not sins in the savage who
knows no better; they are sins in the civilised man
because he knows better, and allows the soul to be
drawn downwards by the body, instead of rising
upwards to the spirit. And that is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower,
ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge,
sin is not present. St. Paul said quite truly, "Sin
is the transgression of the law." When the higher
law is known, then to transgress it is to sin. But
even then it is not hopeless, for as the law changes
not, as the law is inviolable, the law we disregard
strikes us and suffering is the outcome of the attempt to transgress; and in that suffering lies the
lesson, and in that lesson lies the remedy; for in a
universe of law you must learn to harmonise yourselves with law, otherwise pain, misery, suffering
are around you, and, weary of the suffering, you





40


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


turn at last to the right. That is why we need not
break our hearts over sin; we are growing out of
it, passing beyond it, and every struggle-even
that which ends in failure-is one step on the ladder
by which the soul is climbing to the spirit.
And what is the creative force in the universe? I
have already said that the creative power in God and
in man is thought. God's thought makes universes;
your thought makes yourself; the one creative force,
the one thing by which you shape, mold, build, your
character. Thought everywhere is the creative
agent, and the road for the evolution of the soul.
The soul grows by reincarnation in bodies provided by nature, more complex, more powerful, as
the soul unfolds greater and greater faculties. And
so the soul climbs upward into the light eternal.
And there is no fear for any child of man, for inevitably he climbs towards God.
And Art? I have said that a World-Religion must
have art, and I often think that in the modern
world men and women fail to realise the greatness
of the influence of art on human life. Beauty is
no dead thing. It is the manifestation of God in
nature. There is not one object in nature untouched by man that is not beautiful, for God's
manifestation is beauty. It shines through all His
works, and not only in those that may give pleasure
to man. If you take the diatom and look at it
through the microscope you find that invisible shell,
invisible to human eye without artificial aid, traced
in the most exquisite mathematical pattern, every
line accurate, every angle perfect. The divine





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD-RELIGION  4


41


sculptor has carved it into beauty, although no eye
sees it save the eye of God. In every natural work
there is beauty-it is the condition of manifestation; and even when man makes ugliness, nature
soon re-clothes his ugliness in beauty. And the
artist? The artist is the priest of the beautiful,
whose eyes see more of God than ours do. He is
able under the form of nature to see the beauty
that that form is veiling, and the duty of the artist
is to show to our blinded eyes that which without
his genius we cannot see; but anything less than
that is a profanation of art not worthy of the
name. Colour is more to the artist than to you and
to me; form is more to the artist than it is to us;
melody is more to the artist than to our untrained
ears. And every form of beauty hidden in nature
it is for the artist to bring out and place bef ore
the eyes of men; he has to see the ideal in every
form, the perfect under every imperfection, and his
splendid mission is to show the perfect beauty to
the blinded eyes of men, so that, seeing it, they
may remodel themselves after it, and their lives
may be beautiful as is nature which is the life of
God. That is what art means. Greece understood
it, but scarce a nation save Greece has known the
divinity of art; but Greece knew that art is not a
luxury as it practically is to-day. Art is wanted
for the masses -of the people far more than for you
whose lives are fair on the outside. The slum in a
great town is not only a degradation to the people
who live in it, but its hideousness lowers the vritality of the nation. All suffer because of its





42


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


hideousness amongst us. When you see the face
of the slum woman, lined and drawn and haggard,
and often vicious, all womanhood is degraded by the
misery of her. When you see a man rolling drunken
out of a public-house in the East End of London,
sodden, brutalised, disgusting, from the vice that is
destroying him, all manhood is the lower for the
horror that he embodies. And no man can be perfect while one man is brutal. And art is a way of
purifying, of refining, of raising. You talk about
the beauty of the Greek people. Why were they
beautiful? Because they put beauty in their streets,
because they had it everywhere for the people to
look upon, because their women who were to become
mothers were surrounded by the beautiful on every
side, and the unborn child took lines of beauty because beauty was the breath of life to Greece. And
that we have to learn. When you have a statue
too ugly to put in a gallery, you put it in the
streets; when you have a picture you hang it always in a gallery, but the people who want it most
do not go to galleries. I know things are getting
better. I know that down in the East End of
London efforts are being made to bring more art
within the reach of the people; but is it yet understood enough that to show beauty, to make beauty
a common thing in life, is to refine, to make more
delicate, more gracious, the common life of man?
Good music, good painting, good sculpture, these
are among the educators of the race, and every
object should have its own beauty. The common
household objects should be beautiful. There is










44


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


plastic to the will. The science of the future will
observe the facts, the forces and the laws of nature
in all the worlds in which man's evolution is going
on. It will study the laws of nature, not only physical, but moral and mental, so that evil-doing and
evil-thinking will be realised as against the law of
progress. And science must do it by observation,
by observing the result of evil thought and evil act,
and so establishing in those worlds as well as in the
physical that law of action and reaction that in the
East is called Karma. If you feel wrongly, you will
think wrongly, you will act wrongly. If you desire
wrongly, then thought and action will go along the
same line.
What you think you become inevitably. That
is the law. And when science studies the three
worlds of human evolution, it will be able to place
that on a definite scientific basis. We reap in one
world what we have sown, not always in the same
world, but in one world or another that which is
sown we reap, and from that law none may escape. It will be the duty of the science of the
future to do what only a few can do to-day:-to observe the laws of human evolution, to see how that
law works out in thought and character. And just
as it examines the laws of nature in the three
worlds, so it must examine the forces of nature in
those worlds, and thus establish, on the basis of observation, that thought is the creative power. That
is done now, I know, by those who are trained in
the science that is called occultism, but the ordinary science of the future will extend its ken to





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD RELIGION


45


those subtler regions of our life, and then, observing the forces of nature, it will speak with authority on their scope and their results. It will not
only examine the laws of nature and the forces of
nature in all the worlds in which we are living,
but the facts of nature as well in all those worlds.
The intermediate world beyond what we call death,
the world beyond the intermediate world that is
known as heaven-those will be as much subject
to observation as the world of the physical body.
And the science of the World-Religion will give
observation of laws, of forces, of facts, as the
basis for the teaching of morality, bringing morality into the realm of law instead of it being the
sort of chance subject that it is to-day.
And then that science will train men in studying as science trains men to-day in the way that
they should use their apparatus and their instruments; only the science of the future will train the
student in developing the powers that lie hidden
within himself, and not only in shaping iron and
glass into instruments to supplement the senses.
The finer bodies of men, the keener, subtler senses,
those will be developed in man by that science which
is the material side of Yoga. Man's power to know
will thus be increased. The bodies in which emotion and thought work will thus more swiftly be
evolved, and just as surely as science, by studying animal and vegetable nature, has taught man
how to evolve in a few years what nature, unaided,
would take centuries to   accomplish, so shall
that science of Yoga teach man to evolve his own





46


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


bodies to fuller usefulness by an application of the
laws of the subtler nature, by the quickening of
the evolution along the lines on which all cannot
work to-day.
And when this World-Religion has thus taught
the essence of Religion, satisfied the reason with a
true Philosophy, raised Art to its rightful place in
life, and given a Science for the establishment of
the basis of the whole, then it will finally crown
its work by a noble Morality, applying the truths it
possesses to the elevation of human life. It will
teach man to live a noble life and tell him why it
is desirable. Remember what I said to you of the
soul-one hand stretching upward to the spirit, one
clinging to the body, with all that the body means.
Man will be taught to lead the heroic life, when
he realises in himself the possibilities that lie before him and in the power of thought the instrument whereby his ideal may be realised. He will begin to understand that since the life eternal is inhabiting the body, all that is base, mean, animal,
is below the height of his responsibility and his
duty; he will begin to understand that the man
who knows that Life is One and that life embodied
in himself can only live the life that is noble; for
very shame's sake he cannot live the life of the animal whence his body is derived.
You must realise your own divinity; realise what
man really is, an evolving son of God. You do not
want threats, curses, anathemas. It is said that
pleasure is easy and that good is difficult. That
depends in what part of yourself you are living.





THE GROWTH OF A WORLD RELIGION


47


Where is the centre of your consciousness? If it
is in the body, yes, then animal pleasures are attractive; but if you live ever in the mind the animal
pleasures shrink down into insignificance. Beside
a splendid picture, beside a noble melody, beside
a beautiful book, what are eating and drinking and
the pleasures of sense? Man needs no threats, he
only needs understanding. He needs no cursed,
he only needs illumination. Give him a chance
of the better, and he will spring forward to it and
embrace it and love it, for the highest pleasures
are the most delicious, as the air of the mountain
tops is pleasanter than the atmosphere of a slum.
And out of that growing nobility of the individual, out of the same basis, the Oneness of Life,
will grow the realised Brotherhood of Man. I have
come back at the end to that with which I began.
I spoke first of the Immanence of God. With that
there must be Brotherhood of Man; for as a circle
returns upon itself and, starting from one point
and going round, you come back to the same point
again, so the World-Religion, starting with the Immanence of God, His presence in every object, must
fulfil itself in Universal Brotherhood, the recognition of the Unity of Life. And it means all that
that word implies. Oh, if it were your brother,
your sister, dying of starvation, rotting with disease,
crushed under ignorance, hopelessly impoverished,
would you sit easily, comfortably, happily, in you
better homes, in your pleasanter surroundings?
Would not your own happiness become intolerable while brother or sister was writhing in pain or





48


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


anguish? And that is what brotherhood means; it
means holding everything for all and using all you
have that others also may share and rise to where
you are to-day   It means sharing all willingly,
not by compulsion of law, but by the more imperious compulsion of the spirit within, which
knows the unity of all. And brotherhood realised
means the lifting of the human race; it means the
real becoming of man into God. And as you know
the beauty of your own lives, that which you have
around you to make life fair and pure, oh, when
you realise that all are brethren, then you will be
impatient of your enjoyments until you are working for the good of all. That is the lesson, that is
the last that comes, that nothing is so great for
embodied divinity as service given freely to all who
are in need. If you are learned, share your learning; if you are pure, share your purity There are
women amongst you pure and clean and good, there
are women ip the streets who lack every virtue you
possess. Oh your purity would be brighter if
you shared it with the impure and tried to raise
your sisters to that which is the blessing of your
own lives.
And as the World-Religion comes with all the
force that He will give it Who is the World-Teacher,
these truths that stammeringly I utter to your
hearts will become full of the most inspiring power.
He will make living that which I can only describe;
He will make attractive that which I can only put
to you in poor human words; for He will speak td
your spirit where I can only speak to mind and















THE COMING
OF A WORLD-TEACHER










THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER
F RIENDS: I will ask you to throw your thoughts
back f or a moment to the first lecture of this
series. I shall have to -refer to it more definitely
in a moment, for deliberately in that lecture I tried
to lay the foundation on which the superstructure
of to-night might appear to you more natural
and more convincing; for an isolated fact, separated from all those to which it is related, may
seem strange, bizarre, incredible. Just as a fragment of a child's puzzle, lifted from the table, unrelated to any surroundings, shows curious outline, unintelligible form, but dropped into its proper
place in the puzzle completes the whole, which is
seen to be natural and significant, so the great happenings in the history of the world, looked at divorced from all else, seem unintelligible, impossible; but when they come in a regular sequence,
when they are recognized as part of a perfect whole,
then that which was strange becomes natural;
that which was incredible becomes believable; and
we realise that, however strange it may have appeared, torn away from its place in history, there
is nothing in it incredible or even strange when we
see it in its rightful place.
But before I turn to the right place of the great
World-Teacher in history let me for a moment





54


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


raise you above the outer story of events that men
call history, and ask you to turn your eyes to Those
who guide the events in history, who shape human
evolution, who administer the laws of nature. There
is beyond and behind all physical happenings a
mighty hierarchy of graded order, in the hands of
which lies the government, the direction of the
world-that mighty hierarchy, the true rulers of
men, of whom all earthly kings and teachers are
but the shadows or the symbols; that great hierarchy which has guided our race and shaped its
destinies from the birth of our humanity down to
the present day, and which will guide in the millennia of the future as it has guided in the millennia of the past. That mighty hierarchy has two
chief departments concerned with the growth and
the evolution of man-one the department that
guides the outer evolution, that shapes the forms
of races, that raises and casts down civilisations, to
which kings and the nations of the world are as
pawns in the mighty game of life; the other the
department of teaching which gives religion after
religion to the world as the world has need of it,
which, holding in its hands the vast circle of the
Truth, gives out portions of that Truth from time
to time in forms to be understood by the people,
that which gives to the world its spiritual teachers, the founders of all its faiths, and guides all its
spiritual and moral unfolding. And in those two
great departments visible throughout human history by their working you have in each of them a
head who uses the forces of the whole, directs their
energies to foreseen ends.





THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER5


55


At the head of the ruling department-so far
as appearance in the world is concerned-stands the
mighty Being from whom our very name of man is
drawn. He is the Manu, The Man, the type of
each race as it gradually is builded, the perfect man
of every race, who gradually develops in the race
the qualities embodied in Himself. And as the name
man means the thinker, the reasoner, the intelligent one, so this name of the typical man, the Manu,
stands for the ruler, the lawgiver of the race. And
side by side with Him, His brother in the great -work
of evolution, stands the World-Teacher, called by
that name in some of the ancient books of earth,
known as the One who embodies in Himself the wisdom which is the truth that feeds the human race.
And those two, the Ruler and the World-Teacher,
stand at the head of the two departments of which
I have spoken, stand as types of the hierarchy as a
whole in its ruling and its teaching power. And
in the scriptures of the faiths from time to time
this comes out, although unless you know the underlying truth, the fact as it occurs in history may
not strike you with its full significance. And yet,
to those of you who have been brought up from
childhood on the Christian Bible, the Jewish Bible,
this fact ought to come out as natural and customary, for you see there at the head of the young
Jewish nation the two types of which I am speak..
ing, in the well-known familiar names of Moses the
Lawgiver and Aaron the High Priest of the Jewish
people, for in all these scriptures you have represented over and over again the same great facts





56


THIE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


of human evolution. And under those two names
the same facts come out of the Lawgiver and the
Teacher, the Head of the State and the Head of
the Religion. And that which is sometimes called
the Great White Lodge, that mighty body of the
guides and teachers of mankind, that is the root of
all the great thought which from time to time comes
out to the helping of the world. Its messengers
are ever moving among men, bringing to them
the truth of which the age has need. And you
may trace in the long line of the great geniuses
in literature, in art, in science, the messengers of
that one great hierarchy which, hidden out of
sight, guides the destinies of men.
In the old days, long, long ago, ere our own
proud fifth Teutonic sub-race had taken into its
hands the sceptre and the leadership of the world,
among the earlier peoples and in the earlier days,
the messengers were honoured, the teachers were
welcomed and revered. Only with the growth of
the concrete mind in man, and of that self-assertive individuality which is priceless for the evolution of man, although in many of its manifestations repugnant and distressing, only since that
particular part of human nature took the predominant place and stood at the head of evolution,
only since then have the messengers been slighted
instead of reverenced, been despised instead of
welcomed. And hence the danger to-day, that the
story of the Messenger, of the mighty Teacher
rather, Who came to the childhood of the fifth subrace, the Teutonic, may be repeated again in our





THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER


57


own days when that sub-race has reached its maturity; for the story of the messengers since
Christ came to earth has been a story of persecution, of torture, of murder, of uttermost rejection.
And sometimes one wonders, looking over the recent past, whether the world be ready for the
coming of a World-Teacher once again or whether
the measure meted out to the smaller teachers may
perchance again be meted out when the Greatest
stands on earth, visible once more.
But ere we challenge that question, let us consider that the World-Teacher is the one who is
the founder and the central figure of each great
faith in turn, for each sub-race, as you know, has
its own religion, given to it in its earlier days,
moulding and shaping its expression as it grows
to youth and to maturity. So, looking at the worldfaiths in relation to the world sub-races, we find
a great succession of mighty teachers who in very
truth are all one and the same Teacher appearing
upon earth again and again for the helping and
the teaching of the people. For while the Ruler
gradually evolves the people and shapes sub-race
after sub-race, the World-Teacher, standing beside him, comes out to sub-race after sub-race and
gives each a religion appropriate to its needs,
carefully designed for its own special and peculiar
evolution.
And ever the World-Teacher is connected with
what are called the Mysteries; that is the Secret
Teaching, the esoteric side of the religion which is
given to those strong enough to receive it, old





58


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


enough to understand it, the backbone of every
exoteric religion, that which Origen called Gnosticism, the Knowledge without which a religion
tends gradually to decay and to pass away. The
World-Teacher when He comes, ever gives to the
religion its Mysteries, in and by which the truth
shall be kept alive. Ready you are to recognise
that in the past history of faiths older than your
own, but many of you do not realise that the
World-Teacher, when He came to you, re-established for Christianity the Mysteries that the elder
faiths also had enjoyed, and that, in the writings of
the early Church, those Mysteries are spoken of;
that, as seen in the teachings of the early bishops
and martyrs of the Church, it was in the Mysteries
that they gained their knowledge. But these mysteries pass away when pupils are lacking, though
the teaching belonged in the elder days to the Christian church quite as much as to any of the elder
faiths of the world.
And in those Mysteries the teaching of the
World-Teacher was ever one and the same. You
may recognise them when glimpses of the teaching come out in the philosophy or the religion of
the time. It is ever the proclamation of the universal Self, and of the particular or specialised
Self which is the individualised fragment of the
whole. The existence of those is the fundamental
fact that man needs to know for his progress--the
identity of nature between the two, and the need
for man to realise that identity and to know himself as one with the universal life-that supreme





THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER  5


59


teaching, by symbol, by allegory to the outer world
and plainly expressed to the inner, is the very central truth which all the Mysteries were established
to teach, to impart to their Initiates.
If we look at the different sub-races and trace
it thus, using the knowledge that may be gained
of those inner things, we may see how each time
the World-Teacher used a symbol a little different, but ever enwrapping the same fundamental
truth. We may look over the sub-races that have
preceded our own and see how in each of those the
teaching was given which left traces on the outer
scripture, on the exoteric teaching of the faith,
for in the stock of our race, the first great Aryan
people, there they had as the World-Teacher the
great One known under the name of Vyasa, and He
taught the one truth by the figure and the symbol
of the Sun. The Hindu to-day will tell you of the
Person, of the Spirit, in the Sun, and the most
sacred formula, the most powerful mantra of
Hinduism is still a cry to that supreme Sun, and the
prayer that it may irradiate the hearts of men.
The Sun in the heavens-yes, the visible symbol of
the Godhead; the Sun in the heart of man, the Self
individualised in him; that both were identical, and
that man must find the Reality within himself ere
he can know it as a certain truth outside him. It
was in that form that the teaching was given to
the mother of our sub-race and still exists in the
Indian land to-day.
Then, when He came to the second sub-race, and
taught in Egypt under a different name, the name





60


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


of Thoth whom the Greeks called Hermes, there He
took the light as symbol, and first spoke those words
familiar to you in the Egyptian fourth gospel that
you find in your New Testament to-day, for He
then proclaimed "the Light that lighteth every
man that cometh into the world," the Light in the
heart of man as well as the light in the universe
outside. And the King of Egypt was taught to
"Look for the Light, because only the King who sees
God in his subjects' heart can be verily a King,
and evoke the divine side of the nature of his
people. And you find that just as the King was
taught to look for the Light, so the people were
taught to "Follow the Light." And the doctrine of
the Light within and the Light universal was the
very centre of the Egyptian or Hermetic Mysteries.
Then He came to the third sub-race, to the
Iranians, and He came then under the name of
Zarathustra, better known as Zoroaster; and there
the Fire was the symbol by which the same great
truth was taught, Fire in the heart of man, Fire in
the temple for the worshippers, fire in the sky that
gave light to the world. And in those early days,
when the priests were really Magi, and knew the
great arts that control the elements of nature, then
the uplifted hand of the priest of the Fire, like that
of Zarathustra, the Son of the Fire, lifted up to
heaven, drew down the Fire from the clouds and
flung it upon the altar and made that burst in flame.
And so great was the impression that the teaching made that the modern Parsee, who still keeps
the memory and the tradition of the older wor




THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER


61


ship, when he lights the fire in his temple, the
sacred fire that is kept alight year after year, he
cannot light it in a new temple until after having
gathered the fires of earth-the fire of the household hearth, the fire of the blacksmith's forge, the
many fires which men make for labour; he cannot
finally light the sacred fire till the lightning which
he can no longer call from heaven bursts out in
the thunderstorm in the atmosphere. And from a
stricken tree, lighted by the lightning, he takes the
fire which must burn on the fire-altar of his
temple.
Then a fourth time He came to the fourth subrace, the Greeks, now as Orpheus, but He no longer
spoke in Light but in Music; and by the Mysteries
of Sound He taught the unfolding of the Spirit in
man. And to the Greek He spake in Music, and the
Orphic Mysteries were those in which the same
knowledge was given. And the greatness of Greece
was reached, and so by the Sun, by Light, by Fire,
and by Music the World-Teacher spoke to the subraces that have gone before.
Then that Mighty One returned to earth but
once more, to become the Lord Buddha, and to
found the religion that still out-numbers any other
faith on earth. And then He passed away, never
again to take a mortal form, and handed on the duty
of the world-teaching to His Brother, who had come
side by side with Him through many ages, to Him
Who is the World-Teacher of to-day, the great
Lord Maitreya whom Christendom calls the Christ.
And between these two, identical in thought, iden




62


62     THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


tical in teaching, there was yet a difference of temperament that coloured all they taught, for He who
became the Buddha is known as the Lord of Wisdom, and He who was the Christ is known as the
Lord of Love-one teaching the law, calling on
men for right understanding, for right thinkin2,g;
the other seeing in love the fulifilling of the law,
and seeing in love the very face of God. Lord of
Wisdom!I Lord of Love! It is the Lord of Love
who is the World-Teacher of to-day.
First He showed Himself to His ancient people,
the founder of that cult in India which still holds
within it the vast majority of the Indian people.
The philosophers may worship the Mighty God;
the stern intellectual thinker may speak of the
One All-Prevading Self, but the form under which
God is worshipped in the myriad homes of India,
the form to which is poured out a devotion and a
passionate love that no religion on earth can possibly exceed-it is the form of Shri Krishna-not the
statesman, the warrior, not the one whom you
think of when you read the great story of the
Miahabharata, but the Shri Krishna who was the
Lover of men, the Child and the Youth who is to
every Hindu heart to-day exactly what the Hebrew prophet spoke of when he said: "Thy Maker
is thy Husband." Lover and beloved! Such is the
Divine form that holds the heart of India captive
in chains to-day, and while they call Him Krishna
you call Him Christ; for He is the one Lord of Love
that is worshipped by them both.
Then He came to our fifth sub-race, the great





THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER


63


teacher to give a new religion and to shape the
spiritual growth of the Teutonic peoples. He came,
and for three brief years of perfect life He carried
on His ministry among the Jewish people, but it was
pathetically said,' He came to His own and His own
received Him not," and though it was said He spake
as never man had spoken, only for three years could
they tolerate the Lord of Love amongst them.
And after they had slain Him, the records of His
Church declared that only some poor hundred and
twenty gathered together as disciples. A strange
record for the coming of a World-Teacher; but
history has vindicated the power of the teaching,
for if His own generation rejected Him, hundreds
of generations since have done Him homage, and
over Christendom to-day His name is taking on a
mightier and ever mightier power, for men are beginning to realise that Christianity is not a church,
is not a book, is not an organisation, but is the
recognition of a living Christ, and the development of the Christ-life in man.
Now that I have led you up to that point, subrace after sub-race, with the World-Teacher coming to each in turn and giving to each a religion,
and when I remind you that in our own days, by
the testimony of the ethnologists, a new type of
sub-race is now beginning to arise, what is the inevitable corollary, what the next thing in succession, that you and I should look for? If, during
five sub-races, ever the Teacher has appeared to
teach and help, shall the one that is now being
born be alone left without a teacher? Shall the





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64     THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


World-Teacher refuse to come as He has come in
every similar case before? That is the argument
from the rational standpoint; I would ask you
to consider if it seems so strange and so impossible that in our own days as aforetime, some
mighty teacher should come into the world to
uplift and to help. We are so apt, with all our
pride of intellect, and of nationality, to deem ourselves too small to be blessed with the presence of
a World-Teacher, and yet, if He has come five times
before, under exactly similar conditions of a new
type appearing on the earth, why should this one
be left out of the series and that which has been
done five times before fail to our own generation?
That is one thought you may well consider when
you are making up your minds whether, in speaking of the World-Teacher coming, I am dreaming
and fancying or am speaking words of truth and
soberness like those who bore witness to his coming
when last His Feet pressed the surface of our earth.
There is another argument, not historical, but
yet strongly appealing, it seems to me, which you
may consider when you are thinking over the likelihood of such an event; and it is that in the study
of history, wherever you see the signs of a great
idea spreading over the mind of the people, a tendency which is going to accomplish itself in human
history, that then, when the time is ripe, the idea
ever becomes incarnate in a person. And the person makes visible on earth that which has gradually been growing into the hope and longing of the
people. In smaller cases you recognise it is so.





THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER


65


Men thought and dreamed of a United Italy, and
that idea took form in Mazzini the prophet and
Garibaldi the warrior. And so in the case of Germany. Much talk of a German Fatherland, poets
singing of it, men who wrote books speaking and
pleading for it; but it was only when the idea became widespread, when the hearts of the nation
were turning towards it that it became incarnate
in Bismarck the statesman, in Moltke the general.
And so it is ever true that where an idea is born
in the hearts of the people and spreads far and wide
among them some great man is born in whom that
idea takes shape, who carries it to realisation. And
when you see, as I pointed out to you a fortnight
ago, a growing tendency towards union among religions and among peoples; when you find men
speaking of universal peace; when you find them
discussing the possibility of federation-then you
may know that the world movement towards union
must needs take incarnation in those who shall accomplish it. And who shall make the union of
religions actual save the World-Teacher who has
given religions to the world? In this sense it is
true what the prophet says that "coming events
cast their shadows before," for the events occur in
the spiritual world, and the expectation of those
events is the shadow in the minds of men which
gradually forecasts the realisation here.  And
so, when we hear on all sides the cry that a great
religious teacher is needed, when we find from pulpit after pulpit there rings out the longing for a
great teacher who shall draw men's hearts to




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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


gether and make the brotherhood of religions an
actuality in the world, then we begin to understand
that we are face to face with one of those world
movements that embody themselves in world-lead..
ers, and that the longing for a universal worldreligion will become incarnate in the person of a
World-Teacher Who will make that religion manifest on earth.
And as, by thinking along these and other lines,
we see in the world around us, in the changing
events of the great panorama that is ever moving
before our eyes; as we realise by our reason that
we are just touching on one of these great crises
in human history; as intuition, which is the
voice of the far-seeing spirit, confirms the conclusion at which the reason has haltingly arrived, ah,
then shall arise in our hearts a question, When He
comes, will the world receive Him? When He
comes, how shall we know Him? How shall we
avoid repeating the sad tragedy of His last appearance upon earth? Shall history here repeat itself
and the story of Judea, Jerusalem, and even
Calvary once more be played, a mighty tragedy
on the stage of the theatre of the world.
If, instead of across the glamour of the centuries and the wonderful radiance which the worship of millions has shed on the figure of the
Christ, if instead of that which draws your worship now you were looking at Jerusalem of 2,000
years ago, how different then would seem the story
of that life, how different the judgment you would
pass on that new prophet that had arisen among





THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER


67


the Jews I Can you not by your imagination to
some extent recall the inevitable features of the
time? Can you not picture to yourself the young,
unknown man rising amid a proud, a haughty people and giving them a message other than the
message they expected? Can you not realise the
type of onlooker who criticised the new preacher,
who questioned His sanity, His morality? Some
said He was a good man; "Nay," said others,
"He deceiveth the people"; and others called out,
"He hath a devil and is mad; why hear ye Him?"
Oh, try to live for a little time in those early centuries; try to realise the feeling of the people, the
fickle populace who for a moment heard Him gladly
and then caught up stones to cast at Him, the
people swayed by every breath of change, now
loving and now hating, now shouting "Hosanna"
and then "Crucify." Try to think what you would
have felt had you been one of that Jewish people
then-a stranger, a man not learned in the teaching of the Pharisees, no rabbi or recognised teacher
of the people, perhaps stirring up the people, perhaps causing discontent and even rebellion, a
heretic in religion, perchance a danger to the State.
And then you will understand the satisfied calm
that fell on Jerusalem when the people knew Him
dead, and they felt a source of danger had been
cleared away, a possible cause of evil had been cut
down at the root. How shall a man know the
Teacher? Only by the teaching that he gives.
The value of the teaching of the Christ showed itself in history; it did not show itself to the





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


people who heard the words fall from His lips.
And it is not surprising, for the higher the
teacher the more difficult is it to grasp the value
of the teaching that he gives. The acceptable
teacher is the man who says a thing a little
better than we can say it, but says what we want
said, not the man who is above us and who speaks
the things of heaven in the dull ears of earth. Oh,
would you and I recognise such a teacher if he
came in the London of to-day instead of the Jerusalem of two thousand years ago?
In order that that question may be answered
more or less by some suggestion let me bring it
down from two thousand years ago to the London
of our time and see how far the prejudice of the
day would be against the coming of such a teacher,
how far the thought of to-day would be willing to
bow before the words that He might speak.
Take one thing, very common, very simple, very
widespread-your prejudice against races whose
colour is other than your own. Suppose the Christ
took the body of a coloured man, would you be
willing to recognise him as the Supreme Teacher?
Why, He could not go into many of your colonies;
He would be shut out of Australia, Canada, South
Africa. And that is no more strange than the
prejudices which prevented the Jews from recognising the Christ in one of their own people.
These are the practical questions you want to consider, for in the past the teachers have all been
Easterns, of the races that now you despise and
think to be lower than your own. How then if He





THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHER


69


takes an Eastern body, will you be willing to acclaim Him as your teacher?
The Christ was an Eastern. The men who worship Him shut out the Easterns who are nearer to
Him in blood than they are themselves, and no one
here seems to think very much of it; no one here
seems to consider that they may be building up a
wall of prejudice which shall prevent their eyes
from recognising Him when He comes. And so one
of the things from which you should clear your
minds, if your vision you would have clear, will be
every prejudice of race, every prejudice of colour,
all that pride that makes you think the white man
is the favorite of God and none other. Until that
is thrust out of the heart of every one of us, until
we extend hands not of patronage and condescension but of equal brotherhood to men of every race
and every colour, may it not be that when the
Christ is amongst us we shall reject Him because
He is not of our blood and kind?
The teacher, I said, is justified by the teaching.
How shall we be able to recognise the spirituality
of the teaching if it puts things in a different way
from the way to which we are accustomed; if it
presents some great spiritual truth from a new
aspect and a new light? First, by trying in our
own selves to develop the spiritual above the intellectual and the emotional, to unfold in ourselves
the spiritual life which will recognise its kin when
it sees spirituality in its highest and most wonderful form. For the measures of heaven are not the
measures of earth, and the divine scales differ very





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70     THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


much from our human balances. We admire very
often pride and high estate, splendour of intellect
or magic of emotion. But the spiritual man is
gentle, calm, meek and unresentful. How shall
you, ever ready to defend yourselves against unjust attack, ever ready to prove you are in the
right and the other in the wrong, ever eager to
take up the weapon to strike when you have been
struck, who think it unmanly to bear insult in
silence-how shall you appreciate the majesty of
the dignity which when accused remained silent
before His judges, and to every threat and accusation made He answered not a word?7 Why, if you
hear an accusation against anyone and that person remains silent and does not defend himself, you
say he is guilty, otherwise he would defend himself, bring a suit for libel or take some other
means of that kind. But that is not the way of
the spiritual life. Those are not the weapons of
the Great Ones of the race. "When He was reviled
He reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not; He committed Himself to him that judgeth
rightly." There is the spiritual secret, the law is
sure, the law is just, the law is good; you do not
need to avenge yourselves. If you have been
wronged the great law will right you, and none
can harm you unless you have made the weapon
for your striking, for only those who have wronged
receive' back the blow on themselves. And so, if you
would know the Christ when He comes, cultivate
the spirit of the Christ, to bear insult with forgiveness, to bear accusation in silence, to refrain





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71


from anger, not to return evil with evil, but with
good. And if in yourselves you can develop those
Christlike qualities, then shall your vision be clear
to recognise Him when He comes, for although in
you they are imperfect and in Him perfection, still
the nature will be the same and will know its own,
and recognize the greatness that otherwise would
blind the vision.
If you would know the Christ when He comes,
try to develop in yourself not only that gentleness
and patience, but all the qualities which go to the
making of the spiritual man-the love for all you
meet, whether attractive or unattractive, the patience which becomes more patient face to face
with ignorance and stupidity; the love which becomes more gentle when it finds shyness, when it
finds weakness in its way, the qualities that are
sometimes laughed at as womanly, but would that
every woman had them; the heart that feels and
understands when misery is before it, and that
keeps nothing back when it has aught to give.
If you would know Him when He comes, then
check the tendency to decry the great and to find
faults in what is noble. So many people looking
at the sun only sde the spots; and no man, they
say, is a hero to his valet de chambre. But why
not? Not because he is not heroic, but because the
heart of the valet de chambre cannot appreciate
heroism. We criticise; we find petty faults; we
lay stress on petty mistakes; and miss the soul of
goodness and of greatness, perchance, in those who
are around. Oh, cultivate reverence although it be





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


against the common feeling of the time. Be not
ashamed to admire. Be not ashamed to be reverent
to that which is greater, nobler than yourself, for
the power to admire means really the faculty to
achieve. That which you recognise to be noble,
by the very recognition you rise nearer to it and
become more like it. Reverence greatness wherever
you see it, in outer life, in inner life, in the genius
of the writer, the painter, the sculptor, in the holiness of the saint, in the compassion of the pitiful.
In everyone that you meet try to see the best and
not the worst. Meet everyone, be it the criminal,
as the potential saint; for by that love and respect
to that which only exists in germ, the seed will
burst and presently will grow into flower and into
fruit. God is in every man and if you do not see
Him it is your eyes that are blinded, and if you
would see the divine in its mighty perfection in a
Christ, then see the Christ in your poorest fellowman or fellow-woman, and verily then you shall
know Him when He comes.
When you are able to feel reverence, then do not
put a check on the love that flows out to that which
you see to be greater than yourself, but nourish
the feeling of devotion which is ready to love,
which is ready to give, which is able to give itself
utterly to that which it knows to be greater than
itself. Oh, they said of old that there were some
who, when they met the Christ, left all and followed Him. And if, when He stands amongst us in
our twentieth century, any of you would fain be
among those who on seeing Him leave all and fol




THE COMING OF A WORLD-TEACHE~R     7


73


low, then cultivate that feeling in your daily life
while still He is not present manifest amongst us.
So practise the virtues that will burst into flower
when you are in His presence. Try to realise what
He must be, the teacher of angels and men. Try to
catch some touch of His spirit of perfect love,
some gleam of His nature of perfect purity, some
understanding of a power which conquers everything because it wins everything to knowledge and
to answer.
If it be so amongst some of us, enough of us to
ifuence the public opinion of our time, then when
the Lord of Love comes again, it shall not be a
Cross that will meet Him; then when He stands
amongst us it shall not be hatred that shall be
poured out against Him; not three brief years
alone will He stay with us, but our love will not let
Him go, and love fetters even the Lord of Love,
and we who have tried to grow into H-is likeness, we
who have longed for the glory of His presence,
we with our eyes shall behold the King in His
beauty and know the Supreme Teacher when again,
ere very long, He treads the road of earth.










SOCIAL PROBLEMS: SELF =
SACRIFICE OR REVOLUTION?










SOCIAL PROBLEMS: SELF-SACRIFICE OR
REVOLUTION?
FRIENDS, some of you may think, in looking at
the title of my lecture for to-night, that it
forms rather a descent from the subjects that
we have been considering on previous occasions.
We turn from the study of a world-religion, from
the contemplation of a World-Teacher, to plunge
into the social problems of our time, and to ask
whether they shall be solved by self-sacrifice or
revolution. And yet, rightly looked at, the subject of human needs and human difficulties should
properly follow on the consideration of those loftier
topics with which so far we have been concerned;
for the rapture of the mystic in the beatific vision
does not really work out its due results unless he
brings some of the beauty and the harmony which
have delighted him amid the jangle and the noises
of our earthly life. That keen air of the mountains,
delicious as it is, should not incapacitate us, but
rather invigorate us for the meeting of human
troubles, for the healing of human woes. And when
the World-Teacher is amongst us to spread the
wisdom of His teachings and to shed abroad His
love, surely part of His work will be to lay the
foundation of that kingdom of righteousness which
His followers shall have the task of slowly building
upon earth. And so I do not think our subject to




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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


night should really be considered a descent, but as
the natural and rightful subject towards which we
should turn in order that we may try to understand
how we may help our brethren and in the very act
of helping may prepare the way for the coming
of the Lord.
Now, those of you who have read the newspapers
of the last fortnight and have looked at them with
intelligence awake and that bent on the larger
outlines of what you see there-even perchance if
you read carelessly-you must have been struck
with the three special subjects which occupied the
columns on the first page of the newspapers and
struck you by their juxtaposition side by side. One
of these would deal with the great pageants of the
last days, with all that accompanied the crowning
of the King and Queen. Next to that you will have
noticed day after day accounts of the strikes that
are going on amid the workmen of the North, the
struggles there between labour and capital, the
bitter strife which is rending and threatening industry. And then, after those two-the splendour
of the civilisation and the strife which mars the
splendour-you will have seen almost invariably,
I think, a column devoted to the latest triumphs
of aviation, the flights of men in the air, the races
over land and sea.
Now of those three subjects thus steadily reproduced side by side each has its significance, its
instruction for us to-night, for it gives us a vision
of the civilisation of our day, of forces at work
amongst us, of the tendency of the civilisation of





SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?


79


which we are a part, and I take the three as an
opening in order to see in these the conditions that
surround us, in order to look at the factors of our
problems, that we may be able to judge of the
solution which it may be possible to find.
I pause for a moment on the first of these that
has occupied so much of thought and attention
during the last days, the many pageants, processions,
spectacles, which have accompanied the crowning
of our rulers.
Looking at the crowds that took part in all of
those, trying to catch what was for them the attraction and the pleasure, what are the points that
come most clearly out of those dense, serried ranks
of men and women? Clearly part of it was enjoyment of seeing something bright and brilliant that
changed for a moment the dull and sluggish current of their daily life, the pleasure in the mere
sight, the beauty, the splendour; a change from the
dull London streets, from the grey, cheerless houses
of so many millions of the population, a pleasure
bright, although passing, in for a moment catching a glimpse of a life so far removed from their
own. And then, after that natural pleasure, you
could distinguish a certain pride amongst the people of the greatness of the panorama of Empire
that was unrolled before their eyes as the long
processions passed through street after street. You
could notice how the warmest welcome went out
towards the great constituents of that Empire, the
men who represent the colonies, those who represent the great Indian empire; there you had the





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


two groups that most typified for the crowd the
greatness of their country, the power and might of
the Empire that stretches round the world. And
then the third factor: a real, fairly strong, affection for the two royal figures round whom the
whole splendour was centering. No one who looked
at those crowds with the eye that sees beyond the
physical could but notice the great crimson clouds
that rolled out as the procession passed and enwrapped the royal pair, almost hiding them in the
depth and beauty of their colour. And those who
know aught of those colours that mark the emotions know that those crimson clouds mean a real
love, a real affection, for the crowned man and
woman who were driving through the streets. And
some, perchance, who might have seen the great
processions in which Queen Victoria took parther Diamond Jubilee, for instance-would have
noticed a difference in the greeting marked by the
difference in the colour whereof I speak, for round
that venerable lady who so long had held the sceptre
of the Empire there rolled out a feeling that was
almost more devotion than love-love raised to a
very high point, love that was full of devotion to
her person, of reverence for her as Queen, whereas
the other day there was less of the exquisite blue
that shows the devotion tinged with worship and
more of the natural human feeling of love and
sympathy to these, almost as yet untried, round
whom the nation's heart is swiftly beginning to
cling. And that part of the pageant was of the
profoundest interest, for this love is one of the great





SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?  8


81


conservative forces in the nation. I do not mean
Conservative in the political sense as party, but
conservative in the human sense of constructing,
maitaining and upbuilding; for the love and
loyalty of a nation to its chief is one of the
mighty forces which bind an empire together, and
in that love to the Crown raised above all party
struggle there is the promise of the endurance of
the empire, of the strength that will hold it firm,
no matter what the difficulties in front of it may be.
But now from one here and there, sometimes
spoken, perhaps only felt, questions have arisen as
regards the value of those pageants. Is it not a
great waste of money?~ is one reflection that one
has seen now and again in reckoning up the cost
in money which obviously was involved in the spectacle. Covent Garden Opera House filled with
roses may naturally in the minds of some gleam
doubtfully when it is placed side by side with hungry
men, women and children, living in the same city
where the splendid spectacle is seen. And yet that
human feeling, natural as it is, seems to me to have in
it something of error, something of short-sightedness, for the spending of the pounds spent upon the
spectacle would only for a moment lift the burden
of hunger from masses of miserable people, whereas
the emotion of love and loyalty that is evoked in the
heart of the nation is priceless beyond all reckoning.
And when you have a nation like our own, you can
see far worse ways in which money is wasted than
in showing a nation's joy over the crowning of its
king. You might have many a coronation for the





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


drink bill which is paid year by year, a drink bill
that means beaten wives and tortured children and
wrecked homes and ruined strength, and I don't
think it lies in the mouth of a nation that wastes
millions on strong drink to complain of the expenditure incurred during the last few days. And
when to that you add the millions spent on warthink how you build war-vessel after war-vessel to
outrace in the costly game other nations whom
you dread-when you reckon the light hearts with
which you waste your millions for the possible destruction of human life, then I rather challenge the
reality of complaint against the cost of those pageants.
But it is said they were too military-too
many soldiers, too much of uniform and glitter.
But that is your own fault. You have made the
common life so ugly that you can only find beauty
and splendour when you turn to your Court, your
Army, and your Navy. Even the Church itselfthough on an occasion like this it adds its quota
of splendour and of beauty-is still largely under
the influence of the Early Victorian and Mid-Victorian age, when everything that was ugly was
thought to be spiritual, and all that was beautiful
was regarded as tending towards the worship of
the devil. And so you must not blame, for if we
are to have beauty at all we can only have it where
beauty has been allowed to remain. Beauty, ceremonial order, those are now restricted to the Court,
to the Church, to the Army, and to the Navy. Common life has been made ugly, common dress has been





SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?


83


made hideous. How could you build a pageant out
of figures in top hat and morning coat and trousers?
There is no material for beauty in the common life.
You must have historical pageants in order to see
how gracious and how beautiful may be the common life of man. You must go back to the time of
Elizabeth, back to the time of the Charleses, and
then you see beauty and grace and colour in the
ordinary life of the common people as well as of
the middle classes; but in this civilisation of ours
we have thrown aside the beautiful and exhibited
the ugly, so that naturally when we want grace and
beauty we must go to the Services, which alone
have provided and kept it in our midst. And I know
in my own eyes the pleasure with which, after
seeing the great crowd-grey, dull, ugly in color and
in appearance-I saw the First Lord of the Admiralty come walking along with his gold-laced
coat and his cocked hat. It was quite a pleasure
to see a man in clothes that were not repulsive
and ugly. And if you want to change the military
aspect of your pageants, then learn to bring beauty
into the home and the common life, and do not
think it is practical to be ugly, and all that is of
beauty is simply dreamy and superfluous.
Turning from that, glance for a moment at my
second column, the column devoted to the record
of the lamentable strikes going on to-day. The
saddest part of those is to see how crime is accompanying them; acts of incendiarism, deliberate
firing of ships, five deliberate fires breaking out in
one single liner of a great steamship company.





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


Injury to those who are not even immediately concerned in this war between capital and labour is
becoming a more and more lamentable and common
incident in our days, and it is that partly which
points to the possibility of revolution, when only
hatred is felt and longing for revenge occupies the
human heart. You see it more in France than you
do over here, because still in France you have
some of the spirit which made the revolution of
the past, and you see a railway partly torn up because the railway employees are discontented, and
the danger to hundreds of innocent lives because
this may count for something in terrorising those
whom the strikers desire to vanquish in the struggle. I have heard it said that that is always the case
in war, the innocent must suffer as well as the
guilty, and this is war. But what does that mean?
It means there is so little strength in our civilisation that class is set against class in war all but
in name, and that when the strikers take advantage of the public need, when they strike at the
moment when they think most public inconvenience
will be caused, then you are face to face with a
social condition which only in name is removed
from civil war. The sense of responsibility, the
sense of public duty, of the place of each citizen
in the social order and of his duty to the State,
these are largely absent, are passing away from
the masses of our workers, passing away from those
also who are higher in the social scale. And when
the sense of duty to the nation falls into the background, where shall there be the shield from the
possibility of civil war or of revolution?





SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?


85


Pass to the third column. I only allude to it as
a mark of the progress of science, so marvellous in
her conquest over nature during the nineteenth century and the twentieth, the powers that science
has found herself able to harness, applying her
knowledge to the conquest of nature in order to
enrich and make easier the life of man. Look back
over the past and compare it with the present, and
that one point is the point that comes out most
strongly, and is really one of the factors which
make inevitable a mighty social change, for this
is the age of machinery, of power applied to every
form of human production and of human labour.
The introduction of applied science into industry
has revolutionised industry, has changed all its conditions, and has enormously multiplied the power
of production. Where once the handicraft flourished, now the rattle of the machine is heard; where
once the artisan laboured with his hands, now the
machine takes his place, and he is only wanted to
guide it, and even that guidance is diminishing
more and more as machines become more and more
perfect. And not only is industry being revolutionised, but all human communications are undergoing the same change, slower methods giving way
to more rapid methods, life to methods of machine. Looking at our London streets we can see
the revolution in progress, horses disappearing
everywhere and motors taking their place. On
the sea steam is likely to be displaced in its turn
by the power of electricity; similarly, in the very
air we find man is making his way. In the house




THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


86


hold the same thing is beginning to appear, carpets
swept by machinery, bread kneaded by machinery.
More and more the machine is taking the place of
human labor. Ask yourself what that ought to
mean, and then inquire what it does mean in solid
and actual fact. What it ought to mean is clear.
Increased production should mean increased comfort for the whole of the commonwealth; it should
mean longer education, so that boys and girls
might complete their education, no longer needed
where the machine has multiplied man's power to
produce; it should mean the cessation of child
labour, of boy and girl labour, and education should
be their work instead of production; it should mean
less struggle in every part of industry, increased
leisure to the worker, who can produce fifty times
as much in an hour of his labour as he could two
centuries ago; it should mean that the leisure which
is now the appanage of a class should be spread
over the whole of the people, with all the immense
benefits and pleasures which grow out of adequate
leisure. I do not mean idleness, for man takes joy
in work when the work is congenial and not over
laborious. In general, idleness is as wearisome as
unending labour. But leisure, the leisure that recruits the strength, that gives time for the cultivation of literature and the enjoyment of art!
Oh, surely that should have been a gift brought
in the hands of applied science to our people. And
the people at large should have been the happier
because science had learned to utilise the mighty
forces of nature. Machinery should gradually do





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all the unpleasant work of the community, should
hew the coal in the mine instead of men burrowing there like moles underground; machinery should
take the place of the pit ponies tortured continually in their miserable toil. Machinery that does
not feel, that has no senses through which it can
suffer, should bear the burden of all forms of
labour, toilsome, unpleasant, and degrading. That
is what machinery should do for a people; but
what has it done! It has piled up vast fortunes
for the few, and left the worker sadder in many
ways than he was before. It has poisoned our air,
poisoned our water, crowded our people together
in the miserable, gloomy streets of a Sheffield, of
a Bradford, of a Leeds, cramping their lives, undermining their health, diminishing their vitality.
While it has brought wealth to the few it has
brought diminution of life to the many. I am not
forgetting that it has made products cheaper and
commoner, but very often at the cost of their
value both in material and beauty. And it might
have been a blessing where it has so largely become
a curse.
Now why? Why should that be? From the lack
of the sense of responsibility and of public duty
that I alluded to just now in the case of the strikers who are willing to take criminal action and
injure the public good in their struggle with their
employers. Indifference, irresponsibility, are more
blameworthy in the educated and in the wealthy
than in the ignorant and in the poor. And that
lack of responsibility began above and has gone





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


down like a poison through all parts of the body
politic, for the sense of duty, public duty, is divorced from rank and power and wealth in this civilisation as it has never been before in any civilisation that we know in history. And there lies the
danger, there lies the menace of to-morrow, lest
the loss of the sense of public duty in the many
ranks of the community should make possible a
violent uprising with all the inevitable misery that
would follow in its wake. And it is because of that
that the sense of public duty must be revived, that
men must understand again that with wealth and
rank and power goes duty to the community, to
the country. And until that sense revives in England-and there are signs of its revival-there will
always be a danger between the class unfairly
rich and huge masses unfairly and most miserably
poor.
I used a phrase that some of you may be inclined
to challenge-that in the present civilisation the
sense of duty was more divorced from wealth and
rank than in any previous civilisation that you
may meet in history. Let me for a moment attempt to justify that by referring to two of the
great systems which still may be studied, for they
are sufficiently recent to bring them within what is
called the historic period. Take the civilisation
of India as it existed some four or five thousand
years ago, not to go further back into the past.
It has fallen into ruins now, but still the value of
its central ideas remains. It was called, and is
called still, the system of castes. Now, what was





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Sthat in its inception and its working for many a
thousand years? Highest in the community was
a great class of men, poor in all the world's wealth,
but distinguished by their learning-the class of
Brahmanas. They, by hereditary duty, were bound
to study, deeply, profoundly, during all the years
of boyhood and of youth, and then it became their
duty in manhood to be the teachers of the people,
without reward, without payment, bound to give
to any boy that came to them the learning that he
asked for, the education that he craved. Poor,
supported mainly out of the charity of the people,
but honoured by the people as none other caste
was honoured; clothed in but a couple of cotton
cloths, kings would' rise from their thrones and
bow at the feet of the Brahmana; honor was given
to him instead of wealth, and duty was expected
from him, duty to the people.
Then you came to the ruling class, second, not
first, in the land, for learning was the test of
greatness, and not either power or wealth. The
ruling class, strong and splendid; the king, those
who administered the laws, the soldiers who defended the nation, the police who preserved internal order; those were the members of the second
great caste in the State. And then the organisers
of industry, the bankers, the merchants, whose
duty was the gathering of wealth, but the gather'
ing, not the hoarding, the gathering in order that
it might be used. And that was the caste on which
fell the real burden of the nation. Great wealth
accumulated in order to be spent in the helping





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


and the succouring of the people, building temples
for the nation's worship, supporting the Brahmanas
for the nation's teaching, building rest-houses by
the side of the road for the passing traveller, digging wells where water could be given to all, planting trees that the roads might be shaded from the
sun, building and supporting hospitals alike for
men and animals; those were the great duties of
charity imposed by the law and public opinion on
the merchant caste.
Then below them the great caste of the artificers,
the artisans, the agricultural labourers, to be regarded, it is said in the Law, as the younger children in the household. whose duty was service, whose
reward was comfort and protection. That system is
now in ruins. Why? Because the highest forgot
their duty. That is for the most part the answer
which comes to the question as to why a nation fell.
Those who ought to have been poor and learned
grasped at the wealth of the world and used their
power to enrich themselves instead of to serve;
made their caste a narrow trades union, as it were,
from which all others were excluded, whereas in
the earlier days a man might enter it if he showed
the qualities which justified the entry. And so,
step by step, the civilisation descended until from
those great days in which it is written in their history that there was not a man who did not know
how to read and write you come down to the
present condition of ignorance and degradation.
And yet, even in its ruins, even with all its faults,
even after a millennium of conquest, the Indian





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populace, the labourers, the hand workers, are a
much happier population than the same class of
people here. Their faces are brighter; their lives
are gladder; they have beauty in their homes,
beauty in their clothes and their surroundings;
they are refined and gentle; they behave as you
only find people of gentle birth behave herewith a courtesy and gentleness belonging here only
to the highly trained, but there to the masses of
the people. You meet them after their work is over,
smiling, singing, bright and gay, and, except in the
times when the famine sweeps over the land, they
are a happy, a contented and a sober population.
So admirable even in its ruins is that great social
system of India.
Pass from that to the feudal system of Europe.
There you had a feudal nobility who paid in service for the rank and power that they held. All
the older families of nobles held their land on
military tenure; to defend the people was their
duty, and in exchange for that they held the land;
no taxes for army, no taxes for navy, no taxes for
fortifications along the nation's borders; the whole
of that fell upon the highly placed, whose service
in return for privilege was to risk their lives and
limbs. They called it Merrie England in those
days; you would not call it- Merrie England now.
Oh, you say, there were many abuses. Yes,
there were, but the masses of the people were
happier than they are in the present day, their
lives brighter, gayer, more joyful than they are in
our twentieth-century civilisation, divisions be




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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


tween classes less marked, communion between
classes very much freer, because it was a system,
not an anarchy, as is the so-called civilisation of
our own days. And there you come to a point of
vast importance. An order, even if it be not a perfect order, is better for men than disorder and
absence of organisation. In the one he grows, in
the other he decays. And there lies the danger of
our modern life. Because of those facts of the
past I used the phrase that never before in history had we seen rank and wealth so divorced
from public duty as they are to-day. And there
lies the evil that demands a remedy; there lies the
possibility which still is open in our English land.
For look for a moment how things are going now.
The endeavour is being made, ill or well conceived,
according to your party views, to take from one class
and to give to another; but taking by force, even if
it be the force of a majority, can never make a settled social peace.
Oh, you say, but let us get rid of the House of
Lords, and then we shall be better off. And you
forget, in the appealing to popular passion, that
only part of your House of Lords sits there because they are sons of their fathers; and that you
have gathered in that House representatives of
literature, of art, of science, given the outer title
because of the inner nobility. You forget that the
men who made your Empire are there, and that
when a man stands out above his fellows it is to
that House the Crown sends him, to add his knowledge and his experience to the treasury of the





SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?  9


93


council of the nation. Do as you will, for yours
is the power, but remember that counting heads
without weighing them is not always the way to
the building of a mighty empire. Ad, after all,
what can you doI What is -one of the great reforms that has made one of your statesmen apparently almost a hero in EnglandI-old-age pensions. No, I do not deny that it is better to have
that than to have the condition that preceded the
granting, but, after all, if you clear your mid of
the prejudice which imagines that the masses of
the people must always be poor, are a few shillings a week to keep a man out of the workhouse
a fair return from a nation for the strength of his
youth, the industry of his manhood, the drudgery
through which his life has been passed year after
year in struggle and in toil? Is that England's
only recognition to her workers, to give them a few
shillings out of the vast wealth they have produced? Oh, not in that way, by small reforms
wrung out of the exigencies of party strife, will
you build up the nation that should be a model of
civilisation in the world. Not by struggles in Parliament, but by a development of conscience among
the people must come the great changes that are
necessary to make this empire what it should be,
what perchance it yet shall be, among the nations
of the world.
But you may say: If you would not have it by a
mere attack on privilege, but a tax here and a tax
there, how do you propose to make the changes
that all admit are needed? By the self-sacrifice of





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


those who have, and not by the revolution and the
uprising of those who have not. Revolution can
destroy; it cannot build. The ignorant can rise
up; they cannot construct. Not by the starving
and the miserable can a social order be established
wherein all shall live in peace and happiness,
wherein all shall share leisure and the beauty and
grace of life. And if I would plead for that self-sacrifice to-day it is because to me there are certain
priceless things that exist in this nation that a revolution would destroy and bring to naught: the accumulated results and the habits of centuries, the
dignity, the grace, the sense of beauty that make life
human and not a mere struggle between contending
savages. Those things which now belong only to
a class should be spread over the whole of the nation. Not to pull down those who are higher, but
to lift up those who are lower, that should be our
aim. It is so easy to destroy, so difficult to make
again. And the France of to-day should mark for
you the losses which grow out of the violence of
a revolution made by reforms too long delayed.
Now, what might be done if the highly placed,
the wealthy, and the powerful in social life made up
their minds that their position demands from them
self-sacrifice, and not mere idle luxury and selfindulgence? In the first place the stronger brains
amongst them should in the leisure of their guarded
lives think out some reasonable plan of social order
which might take the place of the disorder of the
present, an order based on reason and on facts,
an order to which they could bring their knowl




SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?


95


edge of the world and their experience of practical life. For what is wanted to-day is that a new
social order should be thought out, not fought out;
made by thinking, and not made by struggle either
in Parliament or in the streets, for the politician
lives from hand to mouth. What else can he do
while party government is the rule in our country?
He must get the better of his opponent; he must
deny to-day in Opposition what to-morrow in Government he will affirm. It is the play backwards
and forwards of parties that we see, while we need
a scheme for the building of a nation. Strong brains,
then, in the classes that have leisure-there lies their
first great task.
And when you turn then to the holders of
fortunes, huge, vast, accumulated out of the labour
of millions, what is their duty in the struggle of
our times? You see the beginning of that in the
great organisations that have been built up in
America. And some of you will remember that
two years ago, speaking of the coming changes, I
pointed to the likelihood that that very extreme of
competition embodied in what is called the trusts
would bring about its own remedy, and result ultimately in a fairer and happier state of things.
And what is happening now in America? The head
of the largest of these Trusts, the great Steel and
Iron Corporation, is advising the Government of
America to appoint a Department of Industry, and
to vest in a Minister of Industry the ownership of
the vast organisation that he now controls, making it a State Department, and no longer a mo




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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


nopoly of a few men gathering enormous fortunes,
for he argues that a nation cannot always go on
by the wasteful way of competition now that the
Trust has shown how much more economically it
is possible to organise industry. And he suggests
that the nation should do it instead of the company;
that it should be a national organisation, and not
a monopoly inimical to the State. And so the first
great step is being taken to change the tyranny of
individuals into a national organisation which
shall regulate the industry for the benefit of all,
and put an end to strikes by co-operation and economical organisation. There is one step along the
right lines to which men of great fortune should address themselves.
Then comes the question of education. The
duty of those who have taken wealth from the
nation at large is to give it back in the form of
education for the masses of the people who have
made those fortunes possible; that also is beginning in America, vast endowments giving back to
the people that which has been drawn from their
labour. And here in England, only the day before
yesterday, I saw how four wealthy people had just
given an endowment of two hundred thousand
pounds to build up the college at Reading to the
status of a university. Oh, if that spirit spreads,
if men use wealth for educating instead of in idle
luxury, then the beginning of true self-sacrifice it
seen, and shall prevent revolution; for men give instead of having things taken from them, and hold
out their hands full of gifts instead of waiting till
their riches shall be torn from them by law.





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Another thing that great fortunes can do in the
hands of great manufacturers is what one or two
have done already-to make conditions better for the
workers than they are for the most part to-daybuild everywhere garden cities where the workers
may live away in the country and may recruit the
energies which they have exhausted in the labour
of the day; where games may be ready for them,
where fields may stretch around them, where the
theatre can give them drama, where the hall can
give them lecture or concert. There again is a line
along which great fortunes may be sacrificed to the
common good, to reap a vaster fortune in love and
gratitude, and in the greater stability of the nation to which they belong.
And just as we see that great brains at leisure
may work out intelligently the problems, that
great fortunes,accumulated may be spent along
the lines that the thinkers have devised, so does it
come as a personal duty to every young man and
woman in the leisured class to find some useful
work to which they shall turn their hands and
justify their existence by being the unpaid workers of the nation. I am not ignoring the fact that
many are doing it already; I am not forgetting
that the social conscience is growing among the
classes to which I refer, but I do declare here that
no one-no man or woman, strong, healthy, with
hours of leisure on their hands-but should give
some of those hours to unpaid work among the less
fortunate individuals, and share among them the
refinement and the culture which become a can




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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


cer unless given to the people, and injure rather
than uphold. Oh, there is not one amongst them
that could not add something of greater happiness
to the crowded masses of our poor. They might
open free theatres where noble drama could be
played; they might have free concert halls where
good music should be given-I do not mean such
scientific music as the untrained people at first
could not understand, but music that should
gradually lift them a little higher until their taste
was more ennobled, until their faculties were
more evolved. And in doing that you would help
them after death as well as before, for you would
be drawing out the life of the higher emotions,
all that which makes them men. And they should
mingle with them more freely in sport as well as
in learning. It is easy in the country; there the
way is very open. It is harder in the town, but
not harder than loving hearts and good brains
could work to make a way. And if they would
share with the masses of the people-I am not
thinking of money, I am thinking of comradeship
and friendship and helpfulness and the sharing of
refinement and of culture-if they would do that,
all danger of revolution would pass away, for none
would be willing to rise against those whose hearts
were knit by love and service to the helping of
the masses of the people.
It means a change of values, a change of ideals.
It means the realisation that life is only precious
as it is spent in service and in making happier
the world in which we have been born. Money





SELF-SACRIFICE, OR REVOLUTION?  9


99


perishes in the using, but knowledge and love multiply, as you give them away and share them with
your fellow-men; if you have knowledge and give
it you are none the poorer, you know better because
you have tried to teach. Ad so all great intellectual and artistic pleasures and powers become the
more fruitful the more they are given away. Give
with both hands and your hands will ever be full,
for no hands can ever be empty of these gifts
which are poured out more abundantly the more
freely they are scattered among men. But what
is sacrifice? In reality, it is not pain, but joy. It
is not really self-denial, but it is self-expression.
You only think of sacrifices, as I said, because you
look at it from the standpoint of the body. Look
at it from the standpoint of the eternal spirit and
you will know that its joy and delight is in pouring itself out, and that it would be in self-repression that suffering would be found.
You realise yourself as you give yourself. You
realise your own divinity as you pour out your life
on others. But it is not sacrifice, it is delight.
And just as the intellectual enjoyment of a splendid poem or the emotional delight of some marvellous symphony is a hundred times keener, more
satisfying, and more delicious than the food with
which you support the body, so is the joy of the
spirit that pours itself out more delightful and
more joyous than the joy of intellect and emotion.
As those transcend the body, so does the joy of
the spirit in turn transcend them, and only when
you have learned the joy of giving, when you have





100         THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE
found your own life grow mightier because you
have emptied yourself into the life of others, only
then will you know that the uttermost service is
the most perfect freedom, and that in giving one's
life to others one finds the life eternal which is the
very self in man.





RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS:
DOGMATISM, OR MYSTICISM?










RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS: DOGMATISM, OR
MYSTICISM?
F RIENDS: We have now come to the last of the
present course of lectures, and just as on last
Sunday I tried to draw up into two words the
choice that lies before society with regard to the
social difficulties, so to-night I have tried to sum
up, again in two words, the- problems which lie before the religious world imperatively demanding
solution; upon the answer given to those problems
seems to depend the future of religion amongst us.
It is not that with regard to the performance of
religion any anxiety need be felt, for religion-the
search after God and the answer to the searching
-that is everlasting as humanity, and it can never
cease to be while man is living upon earth. But
sometimes there comes over parts of the world at
least that which has been truly called the eclipse of
faith. Sometimes a cloud appears and veils for
the moment the light of the great sun of truth; and
although the sun be ever shining, no matter how the
clouds may gather over us, to us dwellers upon
earth the sun can be shrouded by the clouds. Such
times have been and may come again, and though
religion will not perish, much of human anguish,
of human misery, may come between the man and
the knowledge of the life he seeks. Ad it seems
from many signs as though our world during the





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


last few years had been facing such a crisis, that
it had had presented to it a choice, a terrible
choice. There was doubt enshrouding religious
truth, questioning of the true meaning and scope
of life; during these years of quickly growing
science, of questionings on the part of religious
people, during these years it seemed for a timeI am thinking of some thirty or forty years agoas though the intellectual must needs pass into
scepticism, as though the emotional would have no
refuge save superstition. Unbelief on the one
side, superstition on the other, menaced the religion of man, and threatened it with at least temporary eclipse. And if to-day the horizon is
brighter than before, if to-day we see tendencies
in the religious world which promise a fuller faith,
a deeper knowledge, yet we cannot hide from ourselves that that great problem for parts of Christendom has by no means yet been answered, although it may press for solution. Looking at the
great Roman Catholic Church, the mightiest organisation of Christianity that Christendom knows
or has known, we see that in that Church dogma,
almost in its crudest form, is being vehemently
pressed upon the masses of its adherents. We
have seen coming from the throne of the Pope
declarations so hopelessly at variance with modern
thought, so  widely  condemnatory   of modern
progress, that sometimes it almost seems as though
the danger of Rome threatened to outweigh the
value of its priceless discipline, of the Occultism
widely spread throughout it. And even to-day that





DOGMATISM, OR MYSTICISM?


105


mighty Church is faced with the choice as to
whether it will grant a wider liberty, or whether it
will press upon the people fetters of dogma too
heavy for the modern mind to bear.
Outside Rome the prospect is brighter, for gradually a deeper, more spiritual view is spreading
through the Churches, is showing itself not only
in those that are called technically Churches, but
also in the great Nonconformist communities. We
see a more spiritual way of looking at Christian
doctrine; we see a growth of mystic interpretation,
a recognition that a spiritual truth cannot ever be
confined within the limits of an intellectual statement. And I am told, althoug I do not know that
by my own experience, that in the great Greek
Church also there is a change of spirit, a revival
of its ancient mysticism, a lifting up of hearts towards the heights to which only the mystic can
climb. So that all over Christendom, save with the
one danger I have mentioned, it does seem as
though it were true that the light is rising on the
horizon, and that there iý a hope, well-nigh a certainty, that the deeper, more mystical view of
Christianity will prevail above the more crudely
dogmatic. And in order to clear our way, let me
define what I mean by dogma and mysticism.
By dogma I mean a statement, elaborated by the
reason, embodying a truth, or that which is believed
to be a truth, and imposing it by authority from
outside. I think, if you bring that definition and
apply it to the dogmas that you find in the Churches,
you will find that it is inclusive and accurate. The





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


dogma is necessarily intellectual, not spiritual; is
necessarily a statement elaborated by the reason
embodying some truth, imposed by authority, whatever that authority may be. It may be the authority of an ancient Church or of some sacred scripture, or of a man regarded as supreme; but in any
case it is an authority outside the man from whom
belief is demanded. And it comes to him with the
claim of that authority for his submission; he must
bow to it, accept it as the truth.
Mysticism, on the other hand, is the inner recognition of a spiritual truth, which the man accepts
because he sees it to be true, knows it to be true
by the testimony of the Divine within him. He
does not seek an outer authority; he recognises only
the authority of the Inner God. He does not demand that reason shall be able to Argue to it; he
sees it in the light of the Spirit that transcends the
reasoning of the mind; and the only authority to
which he bows, the only authority on which he accepts the truth, is the authority of the God within
him, whose eyes are opened so that he can see. He
needs no outer argument, he needs no outer assent.
Crowds may deny the truth he knows, but he feels
his feet are founded upon a rock; the truth is within
him enlightening the reason; and though heaven
and earth and hell were to proclaim the contrary,
he would hold to the truth he knows, and cling to it
despite every power that might strive to wrench it
from his grasp.
We have then a clear distinction-an outer authority, an inner authority. The one presents the





DOGMATISM, OR MYSTICISM?


107


dogma, the other is the light by which the mystic
sees the truth. Those distinctions then will govern
us in our thought to-night. And glancing at the
past, the growth of religions, we can see that they
pass through different stages. First, when the
Teacher, the Founder of the faith, speaks and declares the truth, it is accepted then by many who
hear Him, accepted from Him by a spiritual answer aroused by His spiritual power. Such a
Teacher truly teaches with authority; but it is the
authority of Spirit appealing to Spirit, and not as
do the scribes and the doctors of the law. It is the
recognition by the Spirit within of the Spirit in the
Teacher, assenting without reasoning and without
argument.  And wherever a mighty spiritual
Teacher is made manifest on earth, and speaks with
the power of the Spirit, there the awakened Spirits
answer ia glad acceptation of the teaching, not regarding it as an outer authority, because the inner
assent approves that which the Teacher affirms.
And so you find, when you read the teachings of
the Lord Buddha, the teachings of the Lord Christ,
that He speaks with such force and such illumnination that the Spirit answers from within us and
recognises the truth of the words.
And then, when He has passed away from earth,
when the great spiritual truths that flowed from
His lips are taken up by smaller men, by less spiritualised minds, then we come to the age of intellect,
the age of dogma, where the truths are crystallised
into a form of words, and those are presented to the
world cut and dried-a system, rather than an in




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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


spiring life. Later on, when the age of faith has
passed, during which the words were accepted as
dogmas, then you come to a stirring of the intellect, the challenge of the mind. The mind has
grown since the days when the dogmas were formulated, and the mind-stronger, wider, deeper-demands something more than that which the dogma
presents and contains. In such a time we are
standing now; such a breath has breathed over
Christendom; and according to the way in which
we solve our problem will be the immediate result
on the great religion of the West.
Suppose, then, that for a moment, seeing these
stages through which we have passed and in which
we stand; suppose before we go forward to a consideration of the mystical stage which follows on
the dogmatic and the doubting; suppose we glance
for a moment at dogma, and try to estimate its
place in religious teaching, in the religious life.
It has a place, and that is in our own time sometimes too much forgotten. Dogma has a value; it
is necessary at a certain stage of evolution of the
human mind and thought. Just as in the statement of every science you find inevitably certain
dogmas, which contain truths that have been ascertained, so in the facts of the religious life, in
the great verities which cannot change, you inevitably have a period when they must be taught
in the form of dogma, otherwise they cannot be
grasped at all. The use of the dogma in religious
knowledge is just the same as that of the statement
of the expert in any science to the pupil who is





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learning that science at his hands. There are experts in religion as well as experts in science, and
they have their place as teachers. The mischief
of it only arises, as it might arise with the teacher
of science, when, after the pupil has learned, he is
forbidden to investigate further, or to verify for
himself by new experiment that which his teacher
has declared. Dogma as a way of learning truth,
as the early step on the ladder of knowledge-there
dogma is in its right place. But when from being. help it becomes a limitation; when from being a
support it becomes a hindrance to further advance;
when the teacher demands that the pupil shall
never rise into the stage of knowledge but always
remain in that of submission and belief, then religious progress is cramped, then religious growth
is hindered, and the dogma that helped has to be
shattered into pieces, because it has become an
obstacle to further advance on the road to truth.
But that is so with science. The scientific man
-gives you his formula, tells you the experiments
you are to make; but what would you think of him
if he said to you: "You must never experiment
for yourself in order to find out whether the formula I have given you is true or false." There
lies the danger, and it only arises when the teacher
of dogma is beginning to feel in himself the doubt
which he desires should not arise in the pupil's
mind. The dogmatist tries to force dogma on
others when he himself has doubt as to whether it
is a full statement of the truth or not. And if you
look into the mind even of the persecutor, you will





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find his persecution arises from doubt, and not
from faith. He would fain silence, because he
fears lest it should show some aspect of the truth
that he has overlooked. And often a doubt unrecognised, a doubt that he does not know as doubt,
iz gnawing at the root of his faith when he forbids
enquiry and shrinks from experiment. Hence the
importance of realising the place of dogma, and to
know it is a crutch to help us and not a barrier to
prevent further advance. Then it will play its
part in religious evolution, and will be useful and
not dangerous to the growth of man.
But dogma must always be inadequate, tor
dogma compared to the mystic's knowledge is as
the feeling of the hands compared to the sight of
the eye. Dogma feels round a truth, expresses the
part of it which it is able to gain by feeling, handles
it, and tries to realise the form, tries to understand the shape. But just as the man who tests
an object by feeling, and then opens his eyes to see
it, grasps the difference between touch and sight,
so is it with the dogmatist and the mystic. The
dogma gives but one aspect of a truth; the dogmatist can only see the truth from a particular
view-point, and cannot express its full roundness,
its perfection of depth and height. And so those
who stay for the time in the dogma must ever remember that it is only one view of the many-sided
truth; for spiritual truth can never be wholly
grasped by the reason, and the things of the Spirit
transcend the powers of the intellect.
But if we are to grow, if we are to reach the





DOGMATISM, OR MYSTICISM?


ill


stature of the spiritual man, then we must transcend the dogma, and rise into the spiritual atmosphere and open the spiritual eye.
Let us now turn to a few of the great dogmas
of Christianity, and see how they gain-they do
not lose-when they are seen by the eye of the
mystic, when they are contemplated in the light of
the Spirit. For it is worth while to take a few of
these, and show how different they are in dogma
and in mysticism, albeit it is true that there is ever
a reality under the dogma, and the mystic sees the
truth through the veil that oftentimes covers it.
He gives you more, he does not really take away;
he does not rob you of your priceless treasure, he
only shows you new points of beauty that up to
that point you had missed. It is as though you
had a jewel in a casket and, looking upon it, were
fascinated by the beauty of the one facet you see;
but the mystic takes the jewel and lifts it high into
the sunlight so that all the facets send back the
light, and it shines with a brilliance and a beauty
and a splendour that it never had before. Oh, do
not fear when we lift the jewel from the casket,
as though the casket were necessary for the safety
of the gem. In the sunlight it will gleam more
splendidly than in the obscurity of the casket, and
you will lose nothing, you will gain a thousandfold,
when you see your jewel in the sunlight and know
it in the fulness of its beauty.
Let us see if that be not true. Let me take first
of all, because it is the one rightly nearest to the
heart, let me take the great question of the nature





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of the Christ, of His relation to the believer, of
His place in the heart.
Now, on the nature of the Christ there has been
many a dogmatic statement. You find it more or
less defined in the great Christian creeds written
by mystics, repeated by dogmatists; they are taken
as dogmas instead of as efforts to syllable out a
truth too mighty for human words perfectly to explain. And yet in the grandeur of their language,
in the stateliness of their expression, if you dwell
upon them, brood over them, you will find depths
of truth which may almost dazzle you sometimes
by its splendour. For when you hear them repeated over and over again, when perchance you
repeat them without any depth of thought behind
them in your minds, you see only the dogma and
not the truth behind it, and may even shrink from
that you misunderstand because the light of the
Spirit is wanting. You have there the Christ who
is spoken of as Very God of Very God, the OnlyBegotten of the Father. How does the mystic see
that truth? What to him is the Christ when thus
dogmatically defined? He sees in Him the very
image of divinity, truly the very Son of God, in
whom the Spirit is ever begotten of the Eternal
Father, the Spirit that ever descends to become incarnate in matter, to suffer, to rise again triumphant, carrying with Him the manhood into God.
He sees in that statement of the splendour of the
Christ not an isolated figure, but humanity seen as
one, humanity in all the splendour of its unity,
humanity in all the divinity of its birthright, per




DOGMATISM, OR MYSTICISM?


113


feet God and perfect man, the human race the GodBegotten, to ascend to the God whence it is derived. He does not deny Christ-the mystic never
denies; he affirms Christ in the whole of humanity
of whom the Christ is the symbol and the promise.
Because in Him humanity rose up triumphant,
therefore all men shall rise in Him, and know the
reality of the divinity embodied in the flesh.
Just as He is very God, so are His brethren who
do not yet realise their own divinity. And in the
proclamation of that mighty manhood all humanity
rises triumphant and knows itself as verily divine.
"First-born among many brethren"-that is the
name that was given to Him; but there would be no
brotherhood were He divided from us by the vast
gulf that, according to this view, separates God
and man. Because God is in Him, He is also in us;
because God became man in Him, He is also becoming man in us. And so we fall back on those great
words of the Christ, when in His life on earth He
was accused of blasphemy: "Is it not written in
your law, I said, Ye are Gods? If he called them
Gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the
scripture cannot be broken; say ye of Him whom
the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world,
Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son
of God?"    He is not less divine because His
brethren are also divine. People say we drag Him
downwards; nay, we life humanity up to Him. It
is not a pulling down but a splendid rising, an ascension into heaven for the whole race of men.
And the mystic sees in the life of Christ on earth





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not only the history of a perfect life, though that
it is, but also the history of humanity. Born in
weakness, raised in power; passing through all the
stages of the great Initiations; born under the Star
that shone above the manger; baptized into the
divine life whcn the Spirit of God descends upon
Him; transfigured in the mountain when the realisation of divinity is touched; agonising in the garden; crucified on the cross in the anguish which
precedes the triumph of every Spirit knowing its
own divinity; and then in the triumphant rising, in
the glorious ascension, the man become the divine
Man, fully conscious of his own divinity-the wondrous story of the Christ is repeated in the life of
every man growing to divinity; in the words of
St. Paul the Christ is born in him, and in him
grows to the full stature of the measure of the fulness of the Christ.
Sometimes one feels that the thing is so marvelous and so magnificent that we dare not think it true
of ourselves with all our weaknesses, our faults, and
our limitations. And yet, for what did He, that great
Son of God, take on Him our humanity, save to
show that man can rise to Deity? And nothing less
than the accomplishment of His words will satisfy
the yearnings within us; some day, some time, it
shall be true of you and of me: "Be ye, therefore,
perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect."
Turn from that and take another dogma. Take
this time the relation of the Christ to the human
soul, embodied in the doctrine of the Atonement,
with all the many phases through which, histori




DOGMATISM, OR MYSTICISM?


115


cally, that Christian doctrine has passed. I have
no time to dwell upon them phase by phase, although they well deserve your careful study, your
thought, for each stage has its lesson and its meaning. Take it in the broadest sense in which the
Christ as Saviour approaches the human being, and,
to use the phrases of an older generation, pays
the debt of the man to God, and clothe the sinner
in the garment of His righteousness. Now, that
doctrine was taught to many of you, men and
women of about my own age, in a crude, sometimes
called a legal, form. It is not so long ago, it is
within our own lifetime, that we heard of a contract between God and man, of a substitution of
the Christ for the sinner, of vicarious atonement,
of imputed righteousness. And many of us can
remember how we began to question, and how the
revolt that arose within us against that form of
the dogma was not merely the revolt of the intelligence, but also the revolt of the conscience and the
heart. We felt to the depths of our being that we
did not want an imputed righteousness. We wanted
to be righteous ourselves, and not merely accounted
righteous before God. We felt that what we were
offered was not that for which our souls were
craving, that we cried out for bread and the
Church gave us a stone. And yet there is something in that doctrine which has won the human
heart, attracted the human affection, inspired men
and women to the most splendid self-sacrifice, and
by the strange paradox that you often find in religion, despite the error of the presentation, the
inner truth has fed the life of man. And what is
the inner truth? That the Christ is able to help





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us, not by substitution of outer persons but by
identity of nature; that He is able to share with
us; that the Christ who saves is not a Christ outside pacifying the wrath of an angry God, but a
Christ within, who transmutes the nature intp
divinity, and works out the life of Christ within
the limits of the believer's heart. We learn that
when one rises so high in the spiritual life as the
Christ has risen, that then, like the sun in heaven,
He can pour down His light, His life, His love, into
the vessels of human lives that are open to Him
on earth; that just as barriers here separate one
spot from another, as those divide the sunlight in
your garden from the sunlightcn mine, but to the
sun there are no barriers, to the sun there are no
walls of division, all the surface of the earth is his,
as his light pours down upon it, life giving-so do
the light and the life of the Christ fall down from
above our petty human'limitations, knowing nothing of division, but realising His unity with ourselves; so does that life pour into us, and become
our own as we appropriate it. And as the sunshine gives life to earth, so does that Sun of life
give life to our Spirits.
And then we realise that it is by sharing His
nature with us that the Christ helps us to rise to
Him. By pouring His strength into our weakness,
His wisdom into our ignorance, by that He lifts us
towards Himself. And it is the glory of the Christnature, in whomsoever that nature may develop,
that it ignores the differences and realises the
unity, and that the lowest of sinners becomes illumined by the life of a Christ, and transformed into
the divine image by the life and love that pour out





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from that triumphant Son of God. And therefore
the apostles speak of being "'in Him," and speak
of His helping and His saving. But not till you
begin to live the life of the Christ can you know
the glory of that salvation; for the human spirit
will never be satisfied until he realises his own
divinity and knows himself one with God.
And so with many another Christian dogma.
You have difficulties over the dogma of the Trinity,
what it means, the phrase that you meet, three Persons and one God. And yet, if you looked into
your own nature, you would find the difficulty
solved when it passed from the dogma to the fact
of human experience; for look at your own consciousness, the image of the divine, realise your
own nature, which is part of the nature of God.
You find in yourself the power to will, the power
to know, the power to act. And your Trinity is the
Father who is Will, the Son who is the wisdom, the
spirit who is the creative Activity. And as ever in
nature the spirit embodies himself, so the three aspects become three persons, although but one divine
consciousness showing out in a triple way. And
by understanding yourself you begin to understand
the Godhead; you shake off the shackles of thearithmetical statement, and rise to the reality of
the life that you see as the model on which your own
is formed; and you know that where people see a
difficulty there, it is because they have not yet
sounded the depths of their own nature. For just
as the water reflects the planet that shines down
upon it, so does the consciousness in man reflect
the mighty consciousness which is God. Thus
gradually you come to realise that what you need





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is a spiritual vision, the open eye of the spirit, that
which is kin to Deity Himself.
But you may say: How shall the spirit be unfolded; how shall we be able to become the mystic;
how shall we cast aside the fetters of dogma and
rise into the liberty of the realised sonship? There
is but the one way-the narrow, ancient path.
Strait is that gate, narrow is that way; for you
can only pass that gate when you have thrown
aside all that the world counts of value, and you
can only tread that path in truth when the knowledge of God has become to you the one thing of
worth in life.
Let us see how that path stretches itself out; let
us see how we may approach the gateway that is so
strait. What are the methods-the preparatory,
and then the actual? The preparatory is the purification of the life, of the heart, of the whole nature.
In an ancient Upanishat it is written of the man
who would see the Self: "First, let him cease from
evil ways." Without that all else is useless; without that all else is futile; unchangeable the law
that only the pure in heart shall see. And as long
as one evil way is followed, you cannot tread that
path which leads to life. But not only must you
cease from evil ways; you must also actively pursue the good. "Cease to do evel, learn to do well,"
is in the scripture familiar to all of you; the same
thought that I have just quoted from the Upanishat, for after the evil ways are cast aside the active
treading of the path begins. Purification, then, is
the first step, strenuous, persevering, determined.
And then what you all know, by name at leastmeditation. There is no other way. For what is





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it that you are going to try to do? You are going
to try to raise your consciousness into regions
higher than that in which it dwells and works in
your daily life; you are going to lift your individuality, your sense of "I," above the mind with
which you reason, above the mind with which you
go out into all your business on earth and your
pleasures of life. That consciousness you know
and call it "I," but you have to rise beyond it, to
transcend it, to know that it is not you. And how
shall you reach that higher consciousness and realise it as yourself, while your minds are full of all
the business and the pleasures of earth, in which
the higher consciousness has no place and no concern? And so the next step is clear; you must
learn to control the mind. That whirl of emotion
in which many of you live-you cannot live in that
and in the calm spaces of the Eternal where the
spirit abides who is yourself. Your mind that is
full of change, that is full of passing moods, ever
flying from one thing to another, taking up one
thing and throwing aside another day by day, night
by night--what has that in common with the serenity of the spirit whose eye is fixed on God, who
knows the real from the unreal, the eternal from
the fleeting? Why if you want to learn a science,
you give some hours a day to it; and yet you would
learn the science of the spirit in the fragments of
time that you can spare! Not thus is the kingdom
of heaven conquered, the kingdom of heaven that
is within you. Surely that may claim as much attention as you would give if you were trying to conquer mathematics, if you were trying to become
skilful in chemistry I And yet, for some mysterious





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reason you, who know you must give time and
thought to conquer things of earth, imagine the
heavenly things can be had for the mere asking, the
whim of a passing moment! Quiet emotions, mind
that is still-those are the conditions of the dawning of the higher consciousness. Again it is written in the Upanishat: "In the tranquility of the
senses, in the quiet of the mind, he shall behold the
glory of the Self." That is the next task, to empty
the emotions; there, in that quiet and that silence,
comes the dawning of a new light, the whisper of
a hitherto unheard voice; the first notes of the
spirit steal gently over the quietude of the senses
and the stillness of the mind; you hear, and scarce
know you are hearing; you see, and scarce know
whether it be sight or fancy that is beginning to
gleam  upon your mind.   And slowly, quietly,
steadily, day by day and week by week the music
sounds more clearly, the vision becomes more
radiant and more real, until in some great day of
awakening, suddenly the mighty consciousness that
is your Self shines out, and in its light all things
are seen and known. Then no doubt is possible;
no questions then can arise. As the glory of the
crimson sun that leaps over the horizon and floods
the earth with light, so is the glory of the spiritual
sun when first it rises over the mind and heart of
man.
And then you know what meditation means, and
the reality of the path which has led you to that
goal; and then meditation becomes a means that you
can use for further travel along the path. You
may, if you will, take the path of knowledge, and
by that great illumination you may know what you





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desire to know. Or you may take the path of devotion, and in the rapture of the mystic's love may
rise to union with Deity Himself. If by the path
of knowledge you would climb, then illumination of
the problems else obscure-that is your guerdon
and your prize;- you know truth at sight; you
recognize truth from falsehood, without possibility
of blunder, not by reasoning but by insight, not by
argument but by intuition. As surely as the
musician knows a discord from a harmony, so do
you learn to know a falsehood from the truth; for
your innermost Self is truth and not lie; your innermost Self is divine, is the truth on which the unverse is built; and in the presence of that truth a
lie is seen as a lie; you do not argue, you merely
behold.
And if you tread the path of devotion, then you
learn that the Godhead is not only truth but bliss;
for, rising on the wings of love and service, you
enter into the very being of that life which is Love
eternal and infinite. The rapture of the mystic is
as real a thing as the insight of the mystic; the one
satisfies the intellect, the other fills the heart.
Tread either path as your temperament bids you,
for the end of all is the same. That which is Truth
is no other than that which is Love. Truth and
Love-these are both expressions of the divine
life, and perfect knowledge changes to perfect love,
and perfect love irradiates as perfect knowledge.
There are differences here, but the end of all is one.
We separate knowledge and love; really, they are
only two sides of a single life. And for each of
you that vision is possible; for each of you that attainment is within reach; but on the old terms, the





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old conditions. The heart full of earth has no room
for the birth of the Child Christ; the hands that
cling to earth cannot be raised to heaven. And so,
whatever your life may be, full of interest, of duty,
of occupation-if you would be a mystic your
treasure must not be where your duty may bind
your activities; for it is not the outer form, but the
inner life which is necessary for the true mystic.
You may be highly placed or lowly, it matters not;
you may be wealthy or poor; you may be king or
peasant; but your heart must be fixed on the one
truth: your life must be pure as the mountain air;
and then, whatever your circumstances, the spirit
who is you can rise above them, and you will find
that in realising your own divinity you realise as
you never have done before your Brotherhood with
everything that lives.





ENGLAND AND INDIA










ENGLAND AND INDIA*


It has been m lot for almost eighteen years to
spend the greater part of my time in India, and
perhaps it is because of that long dwelling in an
eastern land, and of a very keen and lively sympathy with eastern thought and eastern ways-it
is probably because of that that the executive of
your Society asked me to speak on this occasion on
England and India. May I preface what I have to
say by venturing to suggest that a good deal-I was
going to say nonsense, but perhaps that is hardly
polite-a good deal of want of sense is shown in
the talk that we so often hear as to the profound
difference between the eastern and the western
mind, the impossibility of the Indian understanding
the Englishman and the equal impossibility of the
Englishman understanding the Indian? It is perfectly true that the attitude of the Indian to life
and thought differs very largely from the attitude
of the Englishman; but that, I think, is more a question of long custom, environment, and conditions
of life than of any fundamental difference of intelligence, of thought. It is sometimes said that the
East is subtle, while the West is scientific. It is
quite true that the average, even uneducated, Indian has a greater aptitude for abstract thought,
for spiritual response, than the average dweller in
the West; but, on the other hand, it is well that the
*Delivered to the Fabian Society at Memorial Hall, London.





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West should understand-for I think that the error
lies at the root of a great deal of the misconception
between England and India-that, given similar
conditions in the East, the Indian responds to those
in very much the same way as the Englishman
would do, and that the lack of understanding of
that Indian response to western influence lies very
much at the root of much of the misunderstanding
and of the unrest to-day. Difference of attitude
towards life-yes, that certainly exists; fondness
for metaphysical and abstract thinkig-that, certainly, you continuallly find: but, on the other hand,
that attitude is capable of very rapid modification,
when the Indian mind comes into touch with western thought and western ways. Ad it is very
largely that response in India, apparently unexpected, which has given rise to much of the trouble,
much of the discomfort, on either side, that we have
met during the last few years, much of what is called
unrest in India, much of unnecessary anxiety as to
the outcome of that unrest in England.,Ad I want,
if I can, to-night to try to put to you some of the
results of long experience of life in India, living
also under conditions of close friendship, of close
intimacy, with a very considerable number of the
Indian educated class. In order that I may make
clear what I mean by saying that the attitude
towards life is different when you compare the
Englishman and the Indian, but that fundamentally
there is not the difference that so many people talk
about so largely-in order that I may not be misunderstood in that, let me preface what I have to
say by a few words on the conditions of Indian life
before the influence of England had spread far and





ENGLAND AND INDIA


127


wide, and especially before English education had
made any way in the country.
The caste system in India, primarily intelligent
and useful in orderly social progress, has become
split up, as most of you know, during the latter centuries into innumerable sub-divisions which are
neither justified by nature nor useful in their working. The original division into four great castes
you find in one form or another in every civilised
country: the class of the thinkers, the teachers, the
leaders of religious thought; the class of the lawmakers, of the rulers, of the preservers of ordinary
civil order; the class of the organisers of industry,
the merchants, those who direct agriculture, the
bankers, and so on; and then the great mass that
over here would be called the proletariat, the tillers of the soil, the artisans, the workers at the
various arts and crafts; you have there a system
of natural divisions which is only mischevous when
it becomes too rigid, when it loses the flexibility of
the elder days, and when the passage of a man
from one into the other is barred not by natural
but by artificial conditions. As gradually the rule
passed away from Indian chieftains belonging to
the Hindu faith, and the Mussulmans conquered
large portions of the Indian land, you found side
by side with that difference of religion comparatively little of social or civil disability; the Mussulman rulers quite wisely tried to propitiate the vast
majority of their subjects of the Hindu faith; and
even down to the present day the division between
the Mussulman and the Hindu does not exist in





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Indian States, as it exists under the British Government. If you go to the great territories of the
Nizam in the Deccan you find there from time to
time a Hindu prime minister, masses of Hindus,
the majority of the subjects of that Mussulman
rule, but socially, civilly, you do not find any very
broad dividing lines. The same is the case when
you deal with the Mussulman under a Hindu ruling
Chief. It is the interest of the Chief to be friendly
with the whole of his subjects, and if you go to
Kashmir, where the majority of the people are
Mussulman and not Hindu, but where the Maharja
is a Hindu, you will find that there Mussulmans and
Hindus mingle in the friendliest fashion, and that
there is practically no line which divides them
which gives rise to evil feeling or to bitter trouble.
It is not the same in British India. It is there and
there alone in India that you find growing deeper
and wider this religious gulf which is splitting the
nation into two, and that gulf is growing deeper and
wider year after year; so that men to-day who will
tell you that their fathers were closely intimate
with Mussulman families, that they took food of
certain kinds together, and had much social intercourse-they will tell you that they cannot do as
their fathers did, and that the social and the civil
cleavage is becoming more and more distinct as
years go on. Now, when you remember how long
the Mussulmans had been in India, when you remember that they number a fourth of the total
population, you will at once see that if an Indian
nation is to grow up, Mussulman and Hindu must





ENGLAND AND INDIA12


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both learn to be Indians, and to feel that the common Indian nationhood is greater than the religious
separation, the religious division. Hence it is most
unfortunate-so far as I myself judge in the matter, and I believe that the great bulk of educated
opinion in India goes with me-it is most unfortunate that the late scheme of reform, useful and farreaching and pregnant with self-government in
India in the future-it is most unfortunate that
that was marred by the introduction of Mussulman
electorates. I was going to say Mussulman and
Hindu electorates, but the latter have no privileges
and elections like those given in India to-day, with
the beginnings of self-government, a religious cleavage, which is as though you went back for a century in England, and divided off your Roman
Catholics and your Protestants into two opposite
camps, hostile in all political matters.
Now, the political life of India can never grow
strong and healthy until an Indian thinks of himself as an Indian, rather than as either a Mussulman or a Hindu; their interests are really the same,
although superficially for a moment they may seem
to be divided. This most unhappy marring of a
great act of justice, full of great possibilities for
the future, one may hope will gradually disappear,
and that the same evil road will not be further
trodden by the English rulers.
Remembering that-the difference between these
two communities at present-let us turn to some
things that come out strongly, of very considerable
importance in the future work; and I will put those





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


for a moment before taking up again the gradual
change of Indian life which has landed us to some
extent in the present difficulties. The fact that the
Mussulman in India has exercised rule to a very
large extent, that he came as an invader and remained as a conqueror, has given to the Mussulman population one great advantage, as regards all
the movements which are taking place in India today, and will take place more markedly in the
future. The Mussulman has what you may call a
political instinct, which the Hindu has not. You
can see it coming out very strongly in the present
discussion as to the founding of universities in
India. The very moment the Mussulman University was proposed, the population, the Mussulman
population, practically massed itself as to details,
without discussing questions before they were ripe
for discussion; they took up the cry of the Mussulman University as one man might take it up. But
when you turn on the other hand to the Hindus,
you find divided counsels: one man wants one kind
and one another, all desiring to carry their own
particular fancy, even though it might wreck the
scheme as a whole, and long before the subject is
fully before the community you find the camp divided into a number of different classes; no man
willing to sink his own idiosyncrasies in order that
the whole of them by a rational compromise may
carry that at which they aim. And in considering
the political future of India that is a very important point. The Hindus tend to divide up into small
parties gathering round a particular man; there is





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no co-operation, no tendency to combination. The
lack of political power for so many centuries seems
more and more rigid, and no passing from one
caste to another was possible, you found classes
practically to have eradicated that political instinct,
strong in Hindus in the past, and showing itself
from time to time in individual Hindus to-day
Now, before coming back to the point which I
shall want to carry further, let me glance at the
condition which has made the Hindu mind what it
is. I spoke of those four great divisions naturally
existing practically everywhere; bnt as those grew
growing up claiming privileges, and entirely forgetting the duties on which those privileges had
originally rested. You find a class of learned men,
profoundly learned and scholarly, the Pandie class,
versed in their own classical language of Samskrit,
and knowing practically nothing outside that save
their own   vernacular, untouched  by  western
thought, uninfluenced by western spirit, becoming
more and more a class entirely apart from the life
and the movement in the country; the class that
by its knowledge ought to be among the leaders of
thought, but which by ignorance of modern conditions is entirely cut off from all influence over
the thought-currents of the time; and yet a class
which by tradition, by custom, has an enormous,
almost omnipotent power over the mass of the
population; and, while it practically can do nothing with the educated class, it has always that vast
mass of the population whom it can sway as it will,
and whom it is ever inclined to sway against every




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thing along the lines of modern thought, unknowing as it is of any life or thought outside its own
ranks.
Then you have the peculiarity of Indian life that
the learned class has always been poor. Money
and learning have not gone together in the East.
The glory of the learned man lay in his learning,
not in his possessions, and so you have a class hereditarily apt to learn and claiming by long tradition
the right to learn, but a class that, coming face to
face with unusual conditions, finds it impossible to
meet those conditions, or to gain under English
rule the education to which it considers it has this
hereditary right.
Now, not only is this class, the ablest, the most
brilliant, the most apt to learn, largely shut out
from education because of the expense which has
come hand-in-hand with English education, but also,
most unfortunately, they have a prejudice against
almost every form of employment which is not
either a learned profession like the law or medicine,
or government service. Accustomed for ages past
to live by teaching, not being paid for teaching but
being supported and teaching freely every student
who came to them to learn; supported by the householders of the population, especially by the legislating and even more by the merchant class; considering that it was not theirs to earn, no duty of
theirs to support themselves; learning was their
one wealth, and that they gave freely to whoever
desired to ask it. The system of education has
been that a boy could go to a Pandit, not only have





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from him teaching, but clothes, food, shelter, everything that he wanted during the time of education.
A-nd so strongly is that feeling still existing in
India, that from time to time at our own Central
Hindu College-where our conditions are modern,
where many of the professors are paid, and where
the whole arrangements are largely influenced inevitably by the English spirit-every now and then
a boy will come-sometimes have walked even hundreds of miles-because he has heard that schooling is to be had there; and you have a lad coming
to you asking to be taught, and if your school is
full, if you can't afford to take any more free scholars, if you have no more room in your boardinghouse where you can let him live, giving him board
and lodging, you may explain the whole truth to
him over and over again, and when you have
finished your elaborate statement of impossibility,
he will only turn to you, as he has often done to
me, and say. "But, mother, I want to learn!"
There you have the old view of teaching in India.
Every young person who wants to learn has the
right to learn, and he is not supposed to pay for
the learning.
Now, when English education came to a nation
that has grown up for ages with these ideas, which
fed freely the whole of its teaching class, which expected that teaching class in return to give free
education, board, lodging, shelter, to everybody
who came and asked for it, you will very readily
understand that, with such a tradition, English
methods and English education were at first unin




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telligible, and then to a very, very large extent
caused widespread discontent. The difficulty there
has been that education has become more and more
costly as time has gone on; school fees, college fees,
have been raised time after time. The class that
most wants education finds itself largely shut out
because it cannot afford to pay the fees demanded
in the school and in the college; and so you have
a class which naturally grows discontented, desiring the learning it cannot gain, and unable to turn
to any means of livelihood in consequence of the
old tradition and the old custom. Those who went
into the English education found before them only
certain lines of employment: Government service
-that was regarded as honourable, however poorly
it was paid; the law-that, by a perversion of the
old thought, was also taken up by numbers of the
teaching class; and so gradually you have had
overcrowded the professions of the law and of
medicine and Government service. Then by an
economic law which should be familiar to you here,
the payment in all those avenues of employment
sank lower and lower, and more and more outside
were unable even to gain admittance by selling the
education that they had obtained at high cost.
You have there one of the causes of a very widespread discontent. The education on the whole was
not well planned, well as it was meant. In the first
place, it transplanted English education rather
than took certain principles of education, and
adapted them to the planting in a different land;
educating men along lines which made only these





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special professions open to them, they gradually
overcrowded those and yet left a discontented
crowd outside.
Now, there is one phase that is very often used
over here, a very offensive one. They talk about
Babus, and by that apparently is meant a clerk.
It used to mean a prince, and that phrase-which
is used by Englishmen who do not in the least
know its meaning, and who repeat it one after another always in the sense of contempt-is applied
to huge classes of Indian gentlemen, every one of
whom feels insulted and annoyed when he hears
himself called by a name like that. Indian names
of honour have become names of contempt in the
English mouth; and then that is widely re-echoed,
foolishly repeated, until the natural and rightful
sensitiveness of the educated man finds itself continually suffering very very often from the unintentional insult on the part of the Englishman.
You hear the phrases like "Babu English." Now,
if the English of the educated Indian is bad, it is
the fault of the teachers to begin with, not the
fault of the student, who has only learned what his
teacher has taught him. You scoff because sometimes the style is inflated, when you insist on
teaching your students Addison and the writers of
the time of Queen Anne, and discourage their reading the popular works of the day or the ordinary
newspaper, which would give them the more conversational style. To mock at them for using the
English you yourselves have taught them is not a
wise thing to do with a proud and high-spirited





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people. And may I say that, on the other side,
while the Indian does not talk so loudly as the
Englishman, his contempt for the Englishman's
Hindustani, and Bengali, and Tamil, and Telegu,
and all the rest of the vernaculars, is quite as active
as any contempt that the Englishman may feel for
the Indian's English? The most ridiculous mistakes are constantly made, the most absurd phrases
are continually used, and though the Indian, being
polite and courteous in his ways, will not laugh out
in the face of the Englishman who murders his
language, still at home I have heard many a laugh
and many a joke made about the murder of their
mother tongues in the mouth of highly placed
officials in the English service. As a matter of fact,
the educated Indian as a rule-not the half-educated Indian gentleman-talks a very much purer
and better English than the average Englishman
talks. He does not talk slang; he does not pick up
all the fashionable clippings which happen to be
the mode at the moment; he talks a pure, classical,
uninflated English; and if you have ever been fortunate enough to hear an Indian orator eloquent
in your mother tongue, which is not his, then you
will understand something of the ability at which
ignorant writers so often scoff; for you will hear
your tongue talked with a purity and a beauty that
might very well, if transplanted into the English
Parliament, make its debates rather less dreary to
listen to than they are at the present time.
Now, it is true that there is a very large amount
of discontent in India, but it is very largely a





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righteous and hopeful discontent, and how has it
arisen? English people have gone there, and they
have practically said to the Indian people: "See
what a fine people we are! see how prosperous we
are l see how wealthy we are! see how we are very
much grander than you! Why don't you take
example by us?" You have taught them history,
including the cutting off of the head of Charles I.
You have held up your Constitution to them, with
all the cant phrases about taxation without representation being robbery, and the rest of it; you
have trained the boys in the most palstic time of
their life in the idea that English liberty, English
constitutionalism, English ways, and English government are the model for the whole civilised
world. Well, you have taught them that now for a
very large number of years, and they have quite
naturally turned round and said to you: "Very
well, if it is so good for you, why should it not be
also good for us? If these things have made you
so magnificent a people, may not we have a few
crumbs of the same bread, so that we also in return may grow more magnifiecnt than we are?"
They have simply echoed what their teachers have
taught them, and when they came and asked for
representation, for a small share in the government of their own country, when they asked that
the executive posts should be thrown open to them
as well as the judicial, when they asked that they
should be allowed to take some effective interest in
public affairs, and that their voices should be heard,
then the Englishman suddenly jumps up and says:





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"Revolt, rebellion, anarchy," and all the words
that frighten the people at home; and it is not
known how exaggerated they are when they have
sounded over ocean and land to strike the English
ear. Now, there is nobody more moderate really
in his demands than the ordinary Indian Nationalist. There are some extremists, granted; but the
great mistake that was made overe there for a long
time was to mass together as one party those who
were literally anarchists and those who only demanded some small measure of constitutional reform. It was not until Lord Minto came, until he
refused to be frightened by the bomb-throwing into
putting off the small measure of justice which was
granted, it was not until he made it possible for
the nationalist party to separate itself from the
anarchical-it was not until then that it was seen
how small was the real party of revolt. But the
original discontent is one which ought to be understood over here and sympathised with, for it is the
desire of a great and intellectual people to realise
their own nationality and to feel that they are not
strangers on their own soil. Remember that in
India it is you who have made an Indian nation
possible. There was no nation in India before
England went there-only a number of warring
States, one at the top to-day and another at the
top to-morrow; there was no Indian nation, there
was no common language, there was no common
people. But now, gradually and slowly, the sense
of Indian nationality is rising, and you cannot stop
it; the English language has become a common





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tongue in India, so that men in the north in the
Panjab, who could not talk with men in the south
in Mysore, because the vernaculars are utterly
different, meet to-day in congresses and in conferences, and the English tongue is the common
language in which they all understand each other.
And that fact of a common tongue is doing much
towards building a common nationality, for only
when men can freely exchange their thoughts is it
possible that they shall build themselves into a
united nation.
And then, in addition to that, the very fact that
you imposed peace upon a number of warring
States made the arising of the feeling of nationality
gradually certain. When people are very busy
fighting against the other, they think of their
enmities, not of common objects. Among the many
rulers of India there was none, save perhaps the
great Akbar, who realised the possibility of a united
India, and tried to lay the foundations of it. Such
an India might have been builded if his successors
had been as great as he was himself, but the feeling
of provincialism in India is very strong. We have
found it in our own Central Hindu College, where
boys come from every Indian province. For a very
considerable time there was much antagonism between the Bengali boys, the Up-Country boys, and
the Panjabi boys, and the rest. For years we have
laboured to make the boys feel that they are Indians rather than dwellers in a particular province;
and gradually the feeling of nationality is growing,
gradually the antagonisms are dying away, and,





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while I will not say they have absolutely disappeared, they are fast disappearing, so that we are
getting Indian, not Panjabi, or Up-Country, or
Bengali, or Madrasi, as the feeling at the heart of
the students.
Then there came, as another cause of the unrest,
the cause that lies at the root of most of the bitterness in it, the evil element-the way in which the
Englishman constantly treats the Indian. You
know that when the Indians come over here to
England they are astonished to find what decent
people the English are. When they once come
amongst you and see you in your own ways, your
own homes, your own country, they realise that
what they have known as Englishman is something
very different from what we know as the Englishman in England. The Indians are a stately and
courteous people. One Indian would not contradict another rudely; he would only make a suggestion that perhaps it might be looked at from
a different point of view. The younger man will
never speak roughly to the elder; he will be silent
if he disagrees with what the elder has said. The
whole type of the nation is aristocratic right
through, not democratic. And when sometimes
you send over to India, as the results of your competitive examinations, young men who have never
given a single order in their lives, even to a servant, so as to learn the common courtesies of
language that we use in English homes; when a
young man like that-rough in his manners, and
rude in his speech-is put over a large number of





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Indian gentlemen, stately, courteous, accustomed to
respect, there is a very lively source of discontent
that arises in outraged feeling and injured dignity.
Now this, of course, is not true of all. There are
many civil servants there who are sympathetic,
kindly, well-mannered, English gentlemen; but one
man who is a ruffian undoes the work of a thousand
men who are courteous and gentle in their ways.
And then there is another thing that makes a
difference.  An Englishman will speak to an
Englishman quickly and promptly; if he speaks to
an Indian like that, the Indian thinks he is bullying
him-misunderstanding there on the Indian's side.
One of you in a hurry will speak quite roughly to
another perhaps, as the Indian judges roughness;
speak like that to an Indian, and he will think you
intend to insult him, and you are doing it because
you are pround of yourself. I am not a particularly rough speaker myself, but I can assure you
that in India I have very, very often softened my
voice more than I should do in talking with English
people, spoken more slowly, more gently, with
more circumlocution, in order to do away with the
instinctive feeling of the Indian that the English
person who speaks to him wants to rule and to
dominate.
And there is a worse than that-there is roughness, not only of speech but of blow. You have no
idea over here how much of personal violence there
is in India from English people to Indians. The
other day a leading American professor, coming
to see me, spoke of the horror he felt at the things





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that he liad seen during fifteen minutes in Calcutta
as he was standing at a hotel window looking down
simply into the street. A policeman several times
hit a boy with a cane, because the boy was in a
block he could not get through. Two -men were
beaten for blocking the way. A passenger pulled
a cabman off his box and kicked him. What passed
before, one cannot tell: the cabman may have been
rude; but no Englishman would do that to an
English cabman if the English cabman were rude;
but he will do it to an Indian, and there lies the
difficulty. Thdian servants are often struck, Indians in inferior positions are often kicked. The
other day in Madras there was a case where an
Englishman on a bicycle ran over and knocked down
an old man for getting in his way. You do not hear
much of those things over here. I met not long
ago an Indian gentleman, a wealthy landowner,
who, had not made any salutation-why should he,
as lie did not know the Englishman? The Englishman got off his horse and thrashedhi with a riding-whip. These are the things that may explain
to you something of the violent feeling that you
occasionally hear about. What else can you expect?
I am a peace-loving person in my elder days, but
I have very often said in India that part of the
training in every Indian school ought to be to train
the boys physically so that they shall know how
to defend themselves if they are insulted or injured,
because no law can change this; there is no pub1~a
opinion over there strong enough to change it; the
only way it will stop is when the Indian learns to





ENGLAND AND INDIA14


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strike back when he is struck, and for the ordinary
citizen that is quite good morality-not for the
saint; but your ordinary citizen cannot be a saint,
is not at the stage of evolution where sainthood is
possible; and it is necessary in India that the
Indian should show that he will not submit to the
outrages to which he is very constantly exposed. It
is worse in the south than in the north, because
southern people are very much more gentle. A
Panjabi would not be struck in that way, because
it is known he would strike back.
When you hear all this talk about unrest and
violence, you want to know, before you judge, what
are the conditions under which these people live.
No hearts are easier to win than the Indian heart;
gratitude is given for services that do not deserve
it. Any official in India who behaves with decent
humanity is loved and honoured by all the people
amongst whom he lives. That there are many such
officials makes possible the English rule in India.
There is no real difficulty in India except the
difficulty there that we make for ourselves; and if
England should ever lose India-and that they may
be together for centuries is my hope, for I do not
believe that the one can do without the other in
the days to come-if England should ever lose
India, it will be England's own fault, because she
does not know how to win the Indian heart.
Take Lord Minto. You do not appreciate thaf
man over here at his real value. He did more to
undo the evil results of Lord Curzon 's viceroyalty
than one would have imagined possible to be done





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


in the brief space of his rule. Genial, sympathetic, kindly to all who came, not making distinction in manners between his way to an Englishman
and his way to an Indian. And there are some men
like that in India, high in position, though none so
truly great as he; it is with the lower officials that
the real difficulties arise, and not as a rule with the
higher; and if you could devise some way over here
of putting your younger men through a school of
manners before they go out to India, you would
do very much to get rid of the hatred that is often
aroused by lack of thought and lack of courtesy.
For as a rule they are just, they are fair, except
where their own countrymen are concerned. And
in the higher courts even that would be an unfair
exception. In the lower magistrates' court the
complaint of an Indian against an Englishman is
got rid of, as a rule; in the higher courts that is
not so. The judges of the High Courts are absolutely fair even where race is concerned, and it is
the English justice that is the buttress of rule in
India.
One difficulty that has to be faced there is the winning of the people themselves to take part in the
work which is not the highest kind along governing lines. The municipalities, for instance, are
very unsatisfactory. There is there the right of
popular election.  The municipal councils are
elected. The Collector, who is an Englishman, is
the chairman of the Municipal Board, and you have
the difficulty that over and over again the Indian
will say ditto to the Englishman, not because he





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agrees with him, but because he does not like to
oppose him. Oh, you say, then he is cowardly! It
is a hard word to use under the conditions. In a
sense, yes; but to be brave under the present conditions means to be a hero. For if you oppose the
man immediately over you, all sorts of difficulties
come into you daily life, in your comfort, in your
ordinary goings-out and comings-in. To have a
black mark against you in the books of an official
is a very, very serious thing in India. It means
very often false witness among the police; it means
very often cases trumped up which ruin the man.
It is very easy to call a man a coward, but you want
to know the conditions amid which the man lives
before you have a right to judge him from that
standpoint; and while, speaking to Indians, I constantly say: "You must learn to state your own
opinion, to hold your ground; why should twenty
men give way to onedP" when I am speaking over
here to the English and not to the Indians, I say
that it is the English duty to see that frank speech
does not mean social and commercial ruin, and that
until danger of that is cleared away you must not
blame the silence of the Indian where it is his duty
to speak.
But there is another difficulty on the Indians'
side. It is that they have not the habit of freedom.
They have not been trained up as you have been
for centuries and centuries, growing a little more
free perhaps with the passing of every century;
they are suddenly plunged into it, and they do not
yet distinguish and understand that if a man is to





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


be a citizen he must be willing to go through
drudgery and to do the public work which means
self-sacrifice, which means time and labour and
thought given to subjects that do not in any way
bring gain to himself. We want to persuade our
Indian young men to take up the drudgery of municipal life, to understand municipal questions, and
so train themselves for the higher paths of political life. They want to leap suddenly into fullfledged citizenship, and they have not yet learned
its duties, although they are clamouring for its
rights. But the wiser, the more thoughtful, the
more educated-they are ready and eager to learn
the ways and the methods of benefiting their
country. You have over there a number of men of
splendid intelligence, of wide sympathies, of statesmanlike ability, and if only England would take
them into her councils and treat them as friends
and equals, not as inferiors, you would find their
discontent very rapidly disappear; for they know
that they still need England, that they are better
with her than apart from her.
Apart form that, the great economical question
is of enormous importance in India. Very slowly
and very gradually the children of the higher
classes are understanding that there is nothing degrading in going into manufacturing and industrial life. Slowly and gradually they are realising
that it is not necessary to be a lawyer or a doctor;
that a man may be a manufacturer, that a man
may labour with his hands, without losing cultivation, without falling in social regard. There has





ENGLAND AND INDIA14


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been a great prejudice against using one 's hands
in India. It has been thought only to belong to the
lower class of population. That is beginning to
di~e out, and if it be possible-as it is becoming
possible-slowly and gradually to turn the bright
brains of India along economic lines, so that they
may understand, not your political economy as applied to England, but true principles of production and distribution suitable for India-if that
can spread, and the movement for manufacture
within their own borders could be divorced from
politics and made purely economic, as it ought to
be, it would do more in bringing about Indian prosperity perhaps than any other single thing. The
opposition to " Svadeshi "-which only means one 's
own country, which means manufacturing what they
can manufacture on their own soil-grows out of its
use as a political weapon by unscrupulous anarchists. The commercial improvement of India is
warmly desired by English officials in India, and it
is frankly admitted that in this there is very much
to make India discontented. India grows cotton,
exports it over to England, gets it back as cloth.
If she were fairly treated economically, if she were
not sacrificed to Manchester and Lancashire as she
is sacrificed to-day, from the standpoint of manufacture, there again you would strike at one of the
roots of Indian discontent which grows out of
Indian poverty. Education, political freedom, economic freedom-these are the things which are
wanted in India to-day. England can give them,
and only England can give them at present, and by





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


that win Indian hearts for many a century to come.
One point that it would be well to remember,
though perhaps you will be inclined to laugh at
me for that, is that in India personal attraction
plays a very, very great part in the life and the
thought of the people. Once before, speaking in
England many, many years ago, I ventured to say
that the present plan of appointing a Viceroy,
changing him in five years, taking anyone whom
a political party wants to reward, and sending him
over to India, was not one of our ways that appealed to Indian loyalty. The Indian normally is
loyal to a person, and that has been unhappily forgotten over here; a constantly changing Viceroy to
him is very largely a chief clerk, who is just part
of the government machine, and comes and goes
each five years. If you bent over one of our Royal
Family, you would find that that would do a great
deal in drawing Indian hearts toward yourself.
You do riot realise the power of kingship in India,
and the love of the personal ruler. India is not yet
sufficiently Anglicised, although a few of her children may be, to have lost her old belief in the
divine right of kings; and if, instead of doctrinaires,
you were statesmen, you would utilise that, you
would send over a prince who would draw around
him the Indian pTinces, and would make the people
feel that they had a government in which their own
ancient rulers were taking a part. Those princes
will not bow to a Viceroy save outwardly; in their
hearts they resent the putting over them, who
count generations back for thousands of years, of





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some Englishman of whom perhaps they never
heard before. One of the things that gave most
offence at the Delhi Durbar was that the Duke of
Connaught had to play second fiddle to Lord Curzon. From the English standpoint it was quite
right; Lord Curzon was the representative of the
Imperial Crown. From the Indian standpoint, it was
all wrong; for the royal blood flowed in the Duke
of Connaught 's veins, and Lord Curzon was only a
nobleman. And so some of the proudest Indian
chiefs were taken very ill when the time came for
the Delhi Durbar; one whom I know of, who was
dragged there practically by force, had a bad fever
on the day when lie ought to have gone to do homage
to Lord Curzon. Men who look back beyond historical records to an unbroken line of kingship
have a feeling which makes it impossible f or them
to bow to some official of the English government,
who comes to them to-day and goes away a few
years afterwards. You lack imagination and you
lack sympathy as a nation. You think that what
suits you suits anybody else. It is not so. You
think that what you like other people like; and that
is not true either. if you would feel India, then
you could easily rule India; but you have not yet
to any very great extent succeeded in doing it.
There again Lord Minto did well. He asked advice
of Indian princes; he took their counnsel on questions affecting themselves and their people; he made
them feel that their voice had weight in the government. And their power is greater than you
know. A statesman should utilise all the peculiari




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150    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


ties, if you will, of the people, remembering at the
same time that they are changing very rapidly;
but that if you do not try to Anglicise too much,
if you give what you have to give, but do not impose your manners and your customs, which are not
always admirable, then you can make a stronger
England and a stronger India, for India has very
much to teach as well as very much to learn.
Our chairman spoke of the soul of India, and
through that you might easily reach her people.
To ignore religion in India is a blunder. There is
a small party of non-religious educated men there,
but they are a grain of sand among the countless
millions of the Indian people. To penetrate the
whole of India with religious sympathy would do
much towards drawing India nearer to yourselves.
Not to Christianise-you will never do it; the dream
of the missionary of making India Christian is a
dream from which men are slowly awakening; but
the great points of contact between the religions
might be emphasized, and might be made part of the
education of college and of school. I know that
over here there is much feeling in favour of secular
education-because you have never had it and
know not its results. New Zealand has it, and her
youth is a problem she has to solve-racing, gambling, lack of all control and subordination. if
democracy is to live, it must be built out of citizens
who know how to control themselves, and till men
have learned that lesson they are not fit to be free.
It is a lesson England has to learn as well as the
English colonies. They are great and strong, but
their youth is their least satisfactory part.





ENGLAND AND INDIA


151


Australia has given a vote to every man or boy
of twenty-one, to every woman of twenty-one, as
far as the Federal Parliament is concerned; but
they care more about football on the one side and
bonnets on the other than they care about the
problems of economics and politics, on which good
government must depend. Until youth has learned
responsibility, youth is not fit to rule. In India the
idea of the training of youth before it takes power
is beginning to disappear, and it will only come back
by way of religion and of scientific morality.
India has much to give you along religious lines.
She can give you a scientific religion, which as yet
you have hardly dreamed of. Religion over here is
often blind belief or emotional ecstasy. Religion
in India is intellectual and scientific. Indian psychology is part of Indian religion. India understands the mind and the spirit, and knows how they
can be unfolded and trained. Because East and
West in that are different; because the West is
concrete in her science, with a science restricted
to the physical world, and India is scientific in her
religion and carries her science into the realms
of psychology-not much yet into the realm   of
physics-because of that England and India be
two halves of a single whole; each might give to
each what the other lacks. India can make religion
here a power to which intellect shall bow; England
can teach India the science which will give material prosperity, material welfare.  Either of
those divorced from the other is like a man who
has lost one hand. A one-armed people will never





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152    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


rise to the greatness of the destiny which I believe
to lie before England and India united, friendly
and sympathetic. You need India as much as
India needs you;, you can learn from India as much
as India can learn from you. But the first thing
to realise is that you are not conquerors and conquered, but citizens of a common Empire, belonging to one imperial people. And when England
recognises that in India, and India feels that she is
friend and not only subject, then you will have a
bulwark in the Indian people, while without that
it will ever be a danger. In the time of your peril
India will be your dearest friend, if you will give
her sympathy; if you will let her grow 'into liberty,
will not listen to her reasoning, and cast scorn upon
her longing to be free, then 'in the hour of your
danger she will be your greatest enemy; and the
nation that, rightly treated, would have been the bulwark of your future, will become a mine full of
gunpowder under the foundations of your Empire.
And the choice is yours far more than India's.
For in your hands is the power, and therefore the
responsibility,





THE EMERGENCE
OF A WORLD- RELIGION










THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD RELIGION*
ITHOUGHT of speaking to you, first, of the
great difference between the world of thought
to-day and the world of thought as it existed in
previous ages with regard to religion; then to ask
the question whether the next step forward is to
be of the nature of a synthesis, a building together, or whether there will be an effacement of
differences rather than unity amid diversity, and
then to see if we can find any clue to a plan which
the world unconsciously has been following both
in its religions and in its civilisations, a plan that
man does not make but unconsciously carries out,
as a great temple may rise under the work of
the builder, the painter, the sculptor. Just as
we know that behind that rising temple, with its
multitudes of workmen, there stands the architect who planned it and marked out the various
departments of the work that he gave over to be
finished one by one, so behind the great crowd of
human workers, behind the nations in their rising
and their falling, the nations that are building the
great temple of a divine humanity, there stands
the great Architect of the universe whose plan is
being carried out by the multiplicity of workers.
*Deliveredj at the Spring Assembly of the League of Liberal
Christianity in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester,





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156    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


Now, are tliere signs to-day of a possible coming
together of the many religions of the world? In
the chaos of controversy and in the battle-shocks
of warring creeds can we distinguish the possibility of a unity which shall make the whole of
the war into peace, and build the fragments into
one splendid whole?
Let us glance backward into the far-off past,
down to about 2,000 years ago. Religions were
national wherever you found them over the surface of the globe. The Indian then had the Hindu
faith; the Persian, the Zoroastrian; the Greek, the
Roman, the Egyptian, and many still older nations of the world, each had its faith; each nation's
religion was a national religion; and while you
found religions living fairly peacefully side by
side, where a man left his national religion he
was regarded more as a traitor to the State than
as a heretic to the faith, and that you may see
over and over again in lookig over the past. You
do not find any attempt in the elder world on the
part of one nation to convert the people of another faith within their borders. The many religions of the world stood side by side, worked
side by side, and the nation and the faith were
practically indistinguishable. It is not without
interest (I am digressing for a moment from the
historical retrospect) that the theory of the
Church of England to-day is the same as
that ancient thought. The Church of England in
theory is a national church; everyone who is born
into the English people is in theory born into that





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION     157
national church, and the State and nation are
thought of as conterminous. I say, in theory,
because you know how different the practice is in
this country, but in the older days theory and
practice went together, and only now and again,
as, say, among the Hebrews, a few proselytes were
made from some of the surrounding nations.
Speaking generally, then, faiths were national,
and you find that the polity, the whole social arrangement of the nation, was practically built up
by the religion which was really its foundation.
Take India, because it is the oldest of the living
religions and goes far back into the darkness of
a past that none can pierce. You find there that
the Hindu polity is the polity of the Indian people. It was the way among the Hindus that, provided the authority of a sacred scripture, the four
Vedas, was admitted, provided the social order
was obeyed, then the intellect was left absolutely
free. Within that great circle of Hindu faith
you might have a dozen different cycles of thought,
but, provided that all paid their reverence to the
Vedas, although afterwards they might go along
their own road, provided they kept to the social
polity and did not go outside its order, in every
religious matter intellect was left utterly and
completely free, and within the great pale of
Hindu faith every philosophy was allowed to
flourish, every school of thought was recognised
as within the faith.
You find when you look to other faiths the
same thing to some extent is true. If you come





158


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


down to the time when Imperial Rome sent her
eagles over the then civilized world, you find that
those eagles spread their wings over a multiplicity of faiths, and when persecution began
against the Christian faith it was less as a new
religion that Rome raised her sword against the
Christian than against those who would not bow
down to the Emperor and pay him divine honours
as head of the State; rather as a traitor to the
Imperial rule than as a heretic did Rome strike at
the Christian. It was the uniqueness claimed for
Christianity-it was the refusal to recognize the
Emperor among the gods-that in Rome made
persecution rise against the Christian regarded as
a danger to the Imperial rule.
And so with regard to the other nations of the
past the same was true. But now if you look at
those religions for a moment, not as belonging to
their nations, but rather as what each religion is
in itself, what do you see gradually emerging from
that mass of opinions, from that vast number of
faiths? You see certain doctrines emerging which
are common to them all. The unveiling of the
records of the past by antiquarians and archaeologists, the study of ancient faiths and the literature that they have left behind them, has made in
our modern days a consensus of educated opinion
that there are great doctrines common to all the
great religions coming up time after time in the
story of the past and suggesting a common origin
for them all. It is not, however, on that that I
want to dwell at the moment, but rather on an




THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION  15


159


otlier fact which has not been as widely recognised
-that while it is true that every religion contains
a small number of universal teachings, every religion also is dominated by a spirit peculiar to
itself. As you look over the world 's religions this
comes out strongly, and it is one of the signs of
the plan whereof I spoke. For every religion has
its own note, its own special characteristic, and the
whole of them do not sound out a monotone, they
sound out a splendid chord when all the whole are
heard together. Take the religion of India, and
take not from me but from a Christian missionary
who lived, I think, some forty years in India. and
knew well the religion of the country and the
hearts of the people-Dr Miller, the well-known
Presbyterian, who founded the Christian College
of Madras. After his retirement, writing some
three years ago to the college that he founded and
built up, to the Hindus who for so many years
had been his pupils, he used one remarkable
phrase. "Remember,"~ he said, "what the Hindu
religion has given to the world; it has given the
i mmanence of God and the solidarity of man."
Those two are really sides of one great truth.
Admit the universal life living in all around us,
and the brotherhood of man is only the earthward side of the great spiritual reality, the two
must ever go together; and that, Dr. Miller said,
is the great note of the Hindu faith.
Pass on to the religion of Zoroaster, and ask
what is its special contribution to the thought of
the world, and you will find there rings out the





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160    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


note of purity. Good thought, good deed, good
word, that is the triple statement that every Parsee
makes every day as part of his daily devotion.
Purity of mind, purity of heart, purity of action;
that is their special contribution, and purity that
goes through every part of life. You must not
pollute the earth, the water, the fire; thus the elements, as it were, are to be kept pure, otherwise
man's physical life inevitably becomes polluted,
and one knows how much in our modern life 's
welter that note is needed now. For no Zoroastrian would pollute a stream. If Zoroastrians
were living here the streams that go through Manchester would flow as pure and as bright as when
this was only a village. That was the great note
of the Zoroastrian faith, that man must live a
pure life amid pure surroundings.
Coming westward from Persia, what was the
note that Egypt sounded in her religious life? It
was that of science, study of man -and the world
around him, and of finding in the higher worlds
the realities of which down here we have the
shadows. And so did Egypt follow science that
your very name of chemistry is taken from the
land of Chem, the land of science of the past, so
deeply did she mark her name on her favourite
subject of investigation.
Passing from Egypt across to Greece, though
but a little space divides them physically, how vast
the difference that divides them intellectually, for
where Egypt spoke of science Greece spoke of
beauty, and worked the beautiful into the lives





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION


161


of her people as no nation has done before or
since. This was a lesson to her whole population.
The beauty of Greece was not a beauty of closed
galleries, of pictures and statues veiled by walls.
The beauty of Greece spoke in architecture, in
statues open to the masses of the people, and she
understood, as England does not yet understand,
that beauty ought not to be a luxury of the few
but the common bread of life for all mankind.
As Greece spoke of beauty, Rome spoke of law,
the greatness of the State, the might of the people
as embodied in its government and representatives. Rome thought little of the individual; she
thought of the nation; the State was the Roman
ideal, and the citizen was law-abiding because,
save where law is omnipotent, no true freedom for
a nation may exist.
Then when you spring back from Rome and
Greece, the parents of modern civilisation, there
rises up in India another religion, the great religion of the Lord Buddha, and the note of that
was knowledge; right thought was the keynote of
his teaching. Then coming westwards again you
find the Hebrew, the note of whose religion is
righteousness, righteous law. He loveth righteousness, and in the bosom of that the later religion
of the Christ was born. What is the special note
that Christianity gave to the world? First, the
value of the individual, which the older nations of
the world had not recognised to the same extent.
They built their civilisations on the family The
family was the unit, not the individual. Christi




162


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


anity struck the keynote of individualism, and it
was in order that that might be fully and thoroughly
developed that some of the earlier doctrines for
a time were submerged in Christendom. The
great doctrine of re-incarnation, taught in the
primitive church and reappearing in our own days,
dropped for a thousand years out of Christian
thinking-wisely and well, as all things are when
you see them in the right proportion and the right
perspective-for it was necessary to build up the
individual, and the idea of one life gave to the individual an activity that he would not have if he
thought many lives stretched before him and behind him, and the need of exertion built up that
idea of individuality necessary for further progress. Oh, you look round and you see the evils of
individualism; look a little further, and you will
see also the good. You cannot build a house without bricks, and you cannot build an international
community until your individuals are developed
and have grown strong and mighty.
But there was another note in Christianity not
thought of so much at first, but now beginning to
make itself clearly heard. For while the idea of
one life and of an everlasting heaven and of an
everlasting hell stimulated well-nigh to madness
the value of the individual soul, there was something else than the doctrine: there was the example
of the founder, and that sounded the note of selfsacrifice, and that will in time become the dominant
note of Christian nations. For if it be true, as it
is true, that Christendom has made the individual





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION


163


more than he ever was before, it is also true that
with strength comes the duty of self-sacrifice, and
the magical example of the Christ gradually trained
the noblest spirits into a desire to emulate the
sacrifice they saw. And so in Christendom to-day,
imperfect as it is, you find more of altruism than
you do in any other nation of the world. I speak
what I know, for I have travelled in many lands,
and often have I told my Indian friends, "Your
want of public spirit, your want of patriotism, your
apathy in the face of wrong-in those things Christendom is ahead of you, and not behind." While
in many points of spiritual living India is greater
than England, in the sense of public duty, the duty
of the man to oppose evil, to protect the helpless
and to sacrifice for the miserable, in that England
is beginning to grow, and to show that strength
means duty and not oppression.
And so, looking over these religions of the world
so hastily, what is the outcome? That everyone
had its own note of music, and each one is different; that though each incarnates one life, one love,
the mode of expression differs, and the difference
is a gain, not a loss. There is not one of these
that you can afford to lose, not one of these dominant keynotes of the many faiths that you can
leave out of your coming world religion. You
must take from India her doctrines of the immanence of God and the solidarity of man; from
Persia, her teaching of purity; from Egypt, science,
which is part of religion, and not against it; from
Greece, beauty; from Rome, law; from the Hebrew,





164


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


righteousness; from   Christianity, self-sacrifice.
Which of these jewels of the faiths can you do
without when your world religion emerges? The
truth is that all the differences due to differences
of mind, differences of temperament, tell one great
truth-that spiritual truth cannot be transmitted
by the intellect in its perfection. Only the spirit in
man can realise spiritual truth.   The intellect
grasps phenomena, and reasons upon them to
principles; the spirit intuits the spirit and knows
itself at one with all; and all your religions, the
religions of the world, are the intellectual presentments of the one great spiritual truth. The intellect is like the prism which splits up the white
sunlight into its constituent parts; all of them are
in the white light, although not visible there till
it has passed through the prism, and all the beauty
of the world comes from the differences, all the
colours of the world are born of the whiteness of
the sun. The difference is not in the sun; it is in
the difference of the constitution of the various
things on earth that have colour and that make the
beauty of the world. The blue sea, the green
meadow, the colours of the flowers, all the exquisite shades which ravish your eyes with their
delight; all take their colours from the one white
light, taking some for nourishment, and throwing
out the rest for beauty; and so the world is glad
in colours, although the one light is white. So is
it with the spiritual sun. There is one Sun of
Truth that shines through every religion that has
guided and consoled humanity, but each has taken





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION


165


the part that it needed, and thrown the rest out,
like the rainbow which makes the sky beautiful
because every drop reflects at a different angle
and not all at the same. And so the religions of
the world are all wanted, for each reflects the
light along a different line of the many-coloured
glory; the world religion shall be taken from the
diversity of world faiths, synthesising them all
into one.
That is the first point I want to leave clear and
distinct. Unity and uniformity are not the same.
The life is one, but the splendour of the world depends upon the diversity of forms. Why, what is
evolution?-the protoplasm becoming plant and
tree, animal and man; and the greater the difference the greater the amount of the divine light that
shines through all. That life is so full, so rich,
that it cannot body itself out in a single form, and
only the totality of the universe can mirror the
divine image. In multiplicity, then, not in uniformity, lie the richness and the beauty of religion, as of all else there is in the world; and the
world religion will not, I believe, wipe out the
differences between faith, but blend them all into
one. There is not very much power, perhaps, in
the scale of notes that you play on a piano one
after another as you run up the keys, but if the
notes are well chosen and blended together with
the magic of a Beethoven or a Wagner, then the
musical chord swells out, the grander, the more
moving, the more the notes that the magic of the
master has blended into a single chord. When





166


166    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


the world religion emerges it will not be this religion or that, one religion or another; it will be
one great chord of harmony, swelling up from
humanity together, in which every note is perfect,
but on their union into a chord depends the splendour and the force of the whole.
Let us next consider what are the conditions
that would make the emergence of the world faith
possible. Clearly it was not possible 200 years
ago. All the different religions were, as it were,
each shut in within its own little ring-fence,
knowing nothing of the other religions of the
world. How much did Christendom know of the
great Eastern faiths of 200 years ago? Many
things have contributed to make the change. First
of all, the progress of science in making means of
communication easier and swifter. When it took
you months to travel half round the world, a man
went and settled in a new country, made his home
there, lived and died there. But when communication is easy, when you can run across to India
from London to Bombay in less than fourteen
days, as I did only a few weeks ago; when you see
the means of communication becoming swifter
and swifter, it is inevitable that the men of different faiths come into contact with each other, and
learn each other 's thoughts and ways.
When I was a little child they used to issue
missionary maps in which the nations of the
world were painted according to the colour of their
faith. A bright yellow, symbolical of light, was
painted over the countries that were Christian,





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION


167


and black, symbolical of darkness, over the whole
of the rest of the world. They called the blackness heathendom and the bright spots Christendom, and it was a little depressing to the childish mind to see how much larger heathendom was
than Christendom. Then Christians thought their
faith unique-the one revelation. But not so long
ago an Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in
Exeter Hall to a number of assembled missionaries who were going out to India, told them to remember that they were going to a country that
had its own scriptures, its own philosophy, its
own faith, and that they must not forget that all
scriptures were God-inspired, although he naturally thought his own the most inspired of all. But
when an archbishop can speak like that, when in
the very act of sending out missionaries he bids
them to remember, as St. Paul said many years
ago, that God in many ways and divers manners
spake in time past by the prophets, when people
begin to recognise that prophets are of no one
nation, but of all, when people begin to understand that scriptures belong to every religion,
and not to one alone, when they realise that in the
divine kingdom there are no aliens and no outcasts, but that in that great household all are in
their father's house-ah, when that begins to
dawn on men, and it is dawning on the flower of
humanity to-day in every nation, then the conditions become possible for a world-faith as they
have never been possible before; and one understands that perchance the feeling may spread





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


which is voiced in one of the ancient scriptures
of the Indian people, where in the presence of Sri
Krishna the supreme God is speaking, and when
he declares, "mankind comes to me along many
roads, and on every road that a man approaches
me, on that road do I welcome him; for all roads
are mine."   That is a great truth. God is the
centre, the religions are all on the circumference,
and as all the radii lead to the centre so all religions lead to God at last. What is needed is not
that we should convert each other, but that each
of us should deepen and spiritualise his own religion, and find out its value for himself. And as
that spirit spreads, as men more and more realise
that all have something to learn and all have something to teach, as that idea spreads over the civilised world, surely the emergence of a world religion becomes possible.
But more than that is in our favour today. I
alluded just now to antiquarian and archaeological
research, to the labours of scholars, to the study,
oriental and occidental, everywhere proceeding.
Out of all that research and all that scholarly investigation the truth has emerged that I mentioned-that there are certain great doctrines believed everywhere at all times by all peoples which
we find in all the religions of the world. That is
the true catholicism-the doctrines believed always, the doctrines believed everywhere, the doctrines believed by all.  And why the true catholicism?  Because it is the testimony of the religious consciousness to the communion of man
with God.





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION


169


Now in the last century, as you know, at the time
when science seemed to be building up an impregnable materialism, Professor Huxley   and
many of those who thought with him took the name
Agnostic to describe their intellectual position.
The name was quite significant. Translated, of
course it sounds absurd-without knowledgeseeing it was taken by scientific men, men who
certainly were not ignorant, but everyone knows
what is meant: "Agnostic," "without the gnosis,"
and the gnosis was not knowledge in general, but
knowledge of a particular kind. Professor Huxley said that man had two means of knowledgethe senses whereby he observed external phenomena, and the reason by which he considered
those phenomena and drew conclusions from them.
Those, he said, were man's two means of knowledge, and the only ones that he could see man
possessed of-senses to observe, reason to understand. But the gnosis-all that is not known by
the senses-it is not reached by the intellect, it is
the knowledge of the spirit by the spirit, and that
was said to be unknowable.
Now look any one of you at yourself, or at human history as a whole. Clearly you have a
body and senses, emotions and a mind; have you
nothing more? On the answer to that the future
of religion must depend. For every scripture is
at one in this idea, that neither can the senses see
nor the reason understand the spirit which is life
universal and eternal. Do you not find anything
within you beyond senses and intellect? Has there





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170    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


been no moment in your life when you felt that
there was something more than that? History
shows us that what is called the religious instinct
is the most widely spread and the most persistent
of all the testimonies of human consciousness.
That is one point that you must consider when you
are thinking of the agnostic position. All you
know depends on the testimony of consciousness.
That is the deepest, the surest, withi you. Your
senses may deceive you; they tell you the sun rises
and sets when it does nothing of the kind. Your
reason also sometimes misleads you, for it has not
data enough on which to work, and the conclusions of the reason must depend on the perfection
of the data on which the conclusions are founded.
But both from great intellects and small, from
nations of every type and kind, the testimony of
the religious consciousness has arisen and arises
still to-day. Are you going to trust consciousness
in everything else and refuse its evidence here?
Can you ignore that universal testfimo'ny from the
oldest ages down to the present?1 It is from that,
that testimony universal, immemorial, that religion
springs. For religion is the answer to the search of
man for God; that is the real meaning. And what
is interesting is this, that when you go beyond the
senses and the reason you go beyond difference; for
the testimony of all the mystics to religious experience is the same. The Indian Yogi, the Roman
Catholic saint, the Protestant devotee, all have the
same experiences and speak with the same tongue.
They differ in ceremonies, beliefs, outward things,





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION  17


171


but in the region of the spirit they speak one
language, and not the babel of the crowds that
you hear down below. If you are inclined to throw
that aside you have another difficulty that arises
before you: that the men whom humanity most
reverences, the men that humanity looks up to
most, are the men whose religious consciousness
has spoken the most clearly and the most decisively. Conquerors come and go, kings rule and
perish, statesmen appear and disappear, but the
geniuses of religion endure from generation to
generation, from age to age, holding the homage
and the veneration of humanity. What conqueror
of ancient or of modern times, what mighty king,
what genius of a statesman, dare you put beside
the Buddha and the Christ as types of the supreme
humanity? Their crown is immortal, it does not
fade; Their empire is continual, it does not pass
away. Millions upon millions in every generation
do homage to the greatness of those Two. I do not
ask whether They were more than man, but I say
that among all the men that humanity has produced whose names are remembered there are
none that approach those mighty Two in the reverence and the love of countless myriads of men.
There, again, is a testimony to greatness of the
religious ki nd.
And now for the first time it has become possible for us, looking over the world, to see that all
the great Teachers were animated by a single spirit,
and the great truths, as I said, were one and the
same. But then comes another question: If this





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THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


be so, how will you get rid of all the differences
where they raise controversy? By trying to raise
men from the intellectual ground to the spiritual
consciousness where all men are at one. That is
the answer. The world religion cannot be dogmatic; it must be what is sometimes called mystic.
What do the two words mean? I am not one of
those who in the study of religious history are inclined to throw contempt and scorn on dogma. I
believe it is necessary at a stage of religious evolution as at a stage of education. A dogma is only
the statement of a truth, or what is believed to
be a truth, imposed upon a person from outside.
He is taught it by authority; it may be the authority of a book, a man, or a Church, it does not
matter; it comes to the man from outside and demands belief. Now that is true in science when
you are learning it. When you go to the laboratory, to the school, to learn science you are bound
to learn by dogmatic statements. The expert in
science says such and such is the truth, and if
your boy won't accept it for the time he will never
make much progress in his scientific research. If
he wants to be an entire freethinker in the laboratory, he is likely, rather, to go to pieces. If he
says: "Oh, I cannot take anything on authority.
I am not willing to take it on the testimony of
someone else that if I combine nitrogen and chlorine there will be an explosion"-well, if he tries
he will find it out for himself, but he will have to
record his experiment in other worlds than this.
You must have dogmas, you cannot help it for a





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION


173


time, but that which the student learns through
dogma he finds out later by his own experiment,
and then only does it become to him knowledge. That
which you are told is not knowledge; you may repeat it, but you do not know it; and the very object
of all education is to train the student from the
dogmatic stage to the stage where he knows by
his own reason and his own intelligence; so also
with religion. In the childhood of the soul, in the
boyhood of the soul, dogma is necessary for the
training of the soul, and the objection to it that
is heard on every side is largely the objection of
ignorance, not realising what it means nor its
place in the long evolution of human consciousness. But there is a stage where dogma must
give way to knowledge. The belief of the mystic,
the knowledge of the mystic, is not the acceptance of a truth imposed upon him by authority from without, but the recognition of a
truth that arises within him, and compels his own
obedience. That is what the mystic is. The man
who sees truth. For your need is knowledge.
What is the condition of knowledge? That you can
modify part of yourself to answer to that which
comes to you from outside. You see only because
you have ether in your own body, and the ether
on the retina of the eye can be thrown into vibration by the waves of light, waves of ether, and you
see because you can reproduce. The same is true
of all your senses. You only know of the outer
world that which you can answer to from within
yourself.  Your hearing, your smelling, your





174


174    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


tasting, your seeing, your feeling, are all- modifications of your body, which has learnt in that part
to receive, to answer to the vibrations that come
to you from outside. There are millions of vibrations that beat up against you, and you know
them not, because you cannot reproduce them; to
carry on the analogy-for all the world is really
one-the man who has developed within himself the spiritual nature can answer to the spiritual vibrations of the universe, because he can reproduce them within himself. That is the condition of knowledge when the God within you answers to the God without you-then and then
only have you reached the gnosis, and then only
can you know that God exists. You cannot demonstrate him by the reason; you can only make a
probability. You cannot see him by the senses.
"Not in the eye resides his form," an Indian
scripture declares; but the spirit in you which is
part of himself, a spark from the eternal fire, a
seed from the eternal tree-that knows the source
whence it comes; and when the spirit opens up,
then only God is known. If you seek Him within
rather than without, if you sound the depths of
your own nature instead of looking only at the outside nature where least of Him is seen, ah, then,
when once you have found Him within, you will see
Him everywhere outside, and then none can shake
your belief, for it i's knowledge and no longer
hearsay.
There is the testimony of the mystic, there is
the place of the world religion. It will impose no





THE EMERGENCE OF A WORLD-RELIGION     175
dogmas from without, it will evoke answer from
within, it will seek to develop the spiritual nature,
and will know that truth is believed the moment it is
seen. Oh, the great blunder of religious people
has been that they have used swords to recommend their truth. Why, truth wants nothing but
its own appearance before the spirit of man. If
you are shut up in a dark room into which the
sunlight does not penetrate, although it is bathing the house outside, should I say to you, "You
shall be cursed because you deny the sun"? Or
should I say, "My brother, come outside the house
and see where the sun is shining"'? That is the
nature of truth; you only want to know it, and you
must believe it, and you must know it for yourself. When the world religion has emerged, then
every man shall find in himself the power to know,
and therefore the spiritual consciousness.
Never try, then, to impose from without a belief from which another man shrinks. The moment he has risen to the place where it is visible
that moment it will shine out before his eyes. We
cannot do much in this for others; we can tell them
what we have experienced, what we know, but man
must know for himself, for only then is the knowledge sure. When you have reached that you will
know that every stage has its own place, has its
own beauty; you will not complain because the
child-souls still find picture and symbol the way
in which they best can realise the divine; you will
understand that every teaching has its place, every
religion has its work, but that a religion to be





176


176    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


world-wide must be greater than man, otherwise
some will escape it; and it must be all-inclusive.
My last word to you, friends, is that if you desire the coming of such a world religion which shall
lay the basis of a civilisation of brotherhood and
bring about universal peace, then you must begin
within yourselves- rather than without. As we
deepen our own spiritual nature, as we find out
one truth after another for ourselves, as we realise
that we are Gods in the making, growing into the
perfection of the divine image-oh, as we recognise that, we are laying the bases of the world religion, and that which can never come by argument, by controversy, by intellectual reasoning,
will come when the heart of love withi us has
awakened the spiritual nature. For love is deeper
than intellect. Love is greater than intelligence,
and the love nature and the divine nature- are so
closely blended that the man who loves his brother
will not be long ere he loves God.















INDEX










INDEX


A
Aaron, 55.
Africa, 6, 11, 14, 20, 68.
Agnostic, 170.
Akbar, 139.
Alaska, 8.
Albatross, 9.
Aleutian Islands, 8.
America, 6, 10, 14, 15, 95, 96.
Anarchy, 92.
Arabia, 7, 11.
Archaeological research, 6.
Architect, 155.
Armenia, 11.
Art, 40.
Artificers, 90.
Aryan, 7
Aryan Root-Race, 18.
Asia, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 18.
Atlantic Ocean, 12, 13.
Atlantis, 6, 9.
Atonement, doctrine of, 114.
Australia, 5, 14, 68.
Aviation, 78.
B
Babus, 135.
Bhagavad Gita, 30.
Beauty, value of, 82; - in
common life, 83, 91; new
points *of -, 111; - of
Greece, 160.
Belief, to impose, 175.
Blavatsky, H. P., 3, 8, 14.
Bogoslof Islands, 8.
Borneo, 8.
Boston, 17.
Brahmanas, 89.
British  Association  for the
Advancement of Science, 7
British Columbia, 20.


British Islands, 12.
Brotherhood,  of  Man,   47;
universal -, 47, 122; -
bringing peace, 176.
Bruno, Giordano, 36.
Buddha, 32, 61, 62, 105, 161,
171.
C
Calvary, 66.
Canada, 20, 68.
Castes, 88.
Catholic books, 33; - Church
104.
Catholicism, 168.
Caspian Sea, 12.
Causasus, 11, 12.
Celt, 13.
Chandernagore, 19.
Charity, 90.
Christ, 32 nature of -, 117;
-life, 117; substitution of
-, 115; -- within, 115; identity of- nature with man,
115.
Christian Commonwealth, The,
27
Christendom, 104, 105, 108.
Christianity, 104, 105, 158,
162, 164.
Church, 82; other -, 105; doctrine of--, 115.
Citizen, 146.
Civilization, present and previous, 88; twentieth  century--, 92.
Civil service, Indian, 22.
College, 96; Central Hindu -,
188.
Commonwealth, 86.
Communication, 165.





182


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


Communities, 105.
Consciousness, higher, 120.
Constitution, 137
Continent, New, 8, 9, 10.
Continents, form great, 4.,ontroversy, raised by difference of religion, 171.
Corporation, 95.
Council, Imperial, 17.
Country, duty to, 88.
Cross, crucified on, 114.
Culture, 97, 98.
Cyrus, 11.
D
Darius, 11.
Degradation, 90.
Deity, man can rise to, 114,
118, 121.
Delhi, 18.
Delhi Durbar, 149.
Deucalion, Flood of, 6.
Devotion, 80.
Difference, between East and
West, 125; how eliminated,
172.
Difficulties, 103.
Discontent, reason for, 136 -137
Divinity, image of, 112; - embodied, 113; realization of
- 114; - of human, 117;
ealizing your own -, 112.
Doctrine, Christian, 105, 115;
--common to all faiths, 168.
Dogma, 104, 106; age of -,
108; value   of  -, 108;
teacher of -, 109; place of
-, 109-110; Christian -
117; fetters of -, 118; - in
science, 172.
Dogmatist, 110, 112.


Doubt, 120; persecution arising from -, 110.
Drama, 98.
Duke of Connaught, 149.
Dutch, 19.
Duty, public, 84; heredity,
89; - of service, 90; - of
wealthy, 96.
E
Earth, 103.
Earthquakes, 9-10.
Easter Island, 5.
Education, 86, 96; Indian-,
132.
Egypt, 6, 11, 12, 160; king
of -, 60.
Electricity, 85.
Emotions, 98-99; control of-,
120.
Empire, 78, 80, 92.
Endowments, 96.
Energies, 97
England, 19, 22; Church of -,
156; sense of duty in -, 87 -88, 140; - and India united,
152.
English language in India,
135-136.
Ether, 173.
Europe, 5-6, 12-14, 19, 91.
Evil, 37, 38.
Evolution, defined 165; drama
of -, 2; story of -, 2; religious -, 110.
F
Father, in heaven, 114; -,
who is Will, 117.
Famine, 91.
Faith, 103, 110.
Forces of nature, 86.





INDEX18


183


Fortunes, sacrifice of, 97.
France, 12, 19, 84, 94.
French, 19.
Freedom, service is, 100.
Friendship, 98.
Garibaldi, 65.
George V, 21.
Germ~any, 23.
Gifts, 99.
Gobi Desert, 7
God, 35 117; nature of -, 117;
knowledge of -, 118; authority of -, 106; Very -,
112; Son of -, 113-114; Ye
are Gods, 113; inmmanence
Goths, 13.
God-head, 117.
of -, 159; - within, 174;
Government House, 21.
Government, 95.
Gnosis, 169, 173.
Greece, 12, 41, 160, 161.
Greeks, 11, 18.
Guildhall, 21.
H
Haeckel, 5.
Heart, revolt of, 155.
Hebrews, 161.
Hermes, 60.
Hierarchy, 154.
Hindu, 59.
Hindus, polity of, 157; mind
of -1 131; relations to
Mussulman, 127-129; political instinct of -, 131.
Hindustan, 7.
Huxley, Prof., 169.
mnalaya, 7
Ideals, 98.


Ignorance, 90.
Illumination, 120-121.
Immanence, of God, 30.
India, 7, 18; - in the worldempire, 20; young -, 21;
civilization of -, 88, 90-91;
political life in -, 129;
polity of-, 157; - greater
than England, 163; education in -, 133; conditions
of -, 127; language of -,
138; violence in -, 141;
freedom in -, 145; economics in - 146-147; social
system in - 91; soul of -
150. #
Indian, North American, 6, 15;
life of -, 13 1.
Individualism, in Christianity,
161-162.
Industry, 85, 86, 96.
Initiation, stages of, 114.
Inquisition, 12.
Instinct, religious, 170.
Intellect, 99, 164, 169.
Intuition, 121.
Iranians, 60.
Italians, 13.
Japan, 8, 9.
Japanese, 20.
Jerusalem, 66-68.
Jews, 12, 67-68.
Judea, 6, 11p 66.
Joy, 99-100.
Jubilee, Diamond, 80.
Justice, 129.


K


Karma, 44.
Kashmnir, 128.





184


184    THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


Kingdom, of righteousness, 77
Kings, 89.
Knowledge, 99; - of Buddha,
161; means of -, 169; conditions of -, 172-173, 175.
Kurdistan, 11.
L
Labor, 86.
Laborers, 90, 91.
Law, 90; - in Rome, 161.
Leisure, 97.
Life, 98-99, 107-108; divine -
114; pure -, 122.
Light, 60, 103; life giving -
116; new -, 120; white -
164.
Lithuanians, 13.
Lodge, Great White, 56.
London, 42, 68, 85.
Lord Maitreya, 61.
Lord Minto, 19, 21, 138, 143,
149.
Lord Curzon, 149.
Lords, House of, 92.
Love, of sovereign, 80-81; 98 -99, 121, 176.
M
Machinery, age of, 85; use of,
85-86.
Madagascar, 5.
Magi, 60.
Mahabharata, 62.
Manchester, 27.
Manu, 7, 55.
Manufacturers, 97
Maps, missionary, 166.
Masses, 88; gentleness of -
91; happiness of -, 91;
poverty of -, 92; education
of -, 96; sharing with -,


98.
Medicine, 134.
Meditation, 118, 120.
Mediterranean Sea, 9.
Merchants, 90.
Mexico, 12.
Miller, Dr., 159.
Mind, challenge of, 108; stillness of -, 120.
Missionaries, 167
Moghals, 6.
Mohammed, 27
Money, value of, 98-99; use of
2, 81.
Mongols, 6.
Moors, 12.
Morality, Indian, 142, 145.
Moses, 55.
Music, 98.
Mussulman rulers, 127; - and
Hindus, 128; - in India,
128, 130; University of -
130.
Mysteries, Hermetic, 60.
Mysteries, the., 57-58, 60.
Mysticism, chapter on, 100-121.
Mystic, rapture of, 77, 105; -
sees truth, 107; knowledge
of -, 110; creeds of -, 112;
affirmations of -, 113; testimony of -P 170, 172.
N
Nationalist, Indian, 138.
Negroes, 6.
New Zealand, 5, 14.
Noah, Flood of,. 6, 9.
Occultism, 104.
Order, 92.
Organization, 96.
Orpheus, 61.





INDEX18


185


P
Pacific Ocean, 5, 8, 15.
Pageants, 79-80; use of -,81.
Pain, 99.
Pandit, 131.
Parliament, 93, 95.
Parsee, 60, 160.
Path, 34, 118, 120;- of
knowledge and devotion, 121.
Peace, 92, 176.
Pelasgians, 11.
Peninsula, Malay, 8.
People, of India, 90-91; masses
of -, 91; education of -
96; English -, 141.
Persian Empire, 11.
Personality, Indian love of,
148.
Peru, 12.
Philosophy, 36.
Plato, 12.
Pleasures, 99.
Poland, 13.
Pondicherry, 9.
Pope, 104.
Portuguese, 19.
Poseidonis, 9.
Powers, 99.
Power, spiritual - 107;- of
the spirit, 107; - to will,
to -act, to know, 117
Problems, of our time, 77; religious -, 103.
Progress, 105; religious -
109.
Prophets, 167
Prussians, 13.
Purana, 2-4.
Purity, 118, 160.
Purity, 118, 160.


Q
Queen Victoria, 80.
R
Race, new, 15-16, 63.
Races, first two, 4-5; third,
5-6; fourth, 6, 61; fifth, 7,
11, 14, 23, 56, 62; sub -, 11 -14; new type of -,15.
Reason, 169.
Records, occult 4;- of the
past, 3.
Reincarnation, 162.
Religion, scientific, 151; world
-, 27, 29, 32, 39, 172, 174;
contents of -, 29; - defined,
29.
Religions, keynote of, 159, 163;
conditions necessary for -,
166; - not dogmatic, 172.
Representation, taxation without, 137
Research, result of, 168.
Responsibility, 87
Revolution, 94.
Righteousness, kingdom of,
77, 115; - of Hebrews, 161.
Rome, 12.
Ruler, world, 1-3, 23, 27-28,
31, 33, 36, 45-46, 48.
Sahara Sea, 9.
Sacrifice, 93-94, 96, 99, 115,
162.
Sanscrit, 4, 131.
Salvation, 17
Scepticism, 104.
Schools, 43.
Science, of England, 151; -
of Egypt, 160;- of the
future, 44.





186


THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE


Scripture, God inspired, 167
Secret Doctrine, 3, 8, 14.
Seers, 3.
Self, denial of, 99; expression
of -, 99; glory of -, 120.
Senses, 169, 174.
Service, feudal, 91; value of
-, 98.
Shri Krishna, 32, 62, 168.
Social order, 84-85.
Spain, 12.
Spaniards, 19.
Speech, style of, 135-136.
Spirit, human, 99, 111, 116,
first notes of--, 120; light
of -, 164; -   of God, 114;
knowledge of -, 170-171, 174 -175.
Spirits, 107
State, duty of, 84.
St. Paul, 39, 114, 167
Strikers, 78, 83-84.
Suffering, 98-99.
Sun, 103; spiritual -, 120.
Superstition, 104.
Svadeshi, 147
Symbol, 175.
Symphony, 99.
System, 91.
T
Teacher, authority   of, 106;
spirit in -, 106; spiritual
-, 171; animated by single
spirit, 171; World-Teacher,
1-2, 23, 28, 33. 48, 55, 57, 60,
65, 76.
reutons, 13, 14.
Theater, 97, 98.
Thoth, 60.
Thought,   leaders  of,  131;


modern -, 104; currents of
-, 131.
Trinity, 117
Truth, spiritual, 105; authority
of -, 106; ways of learning -, 109; - and dogma,
109; one aspect of--, 110;
-   imposed  by  authority,
172; - of mystic, 173; seeing nature of -, 173-174;
-know at sight, 121.
Truths, spiritual, 107
Trusts, 95.
Turanians, 6
Turkestan, 8.
Tyranny, 96.
U
United States, 14-15.
Universal Brotherhood, 47 -V
Viceroy, 19, 21.
Victoria, Queen, 80.
Volcanoes, 5, 8-9.
Vyasa, 5, 9.
W
Wales, Prince of, 21.
Wealth, 89-90, 95.
Westminister, 22.
World drama, 4.
World-Ruler, 1-3, 23, 27, 28, 31,
33, 36, 45-46, 48.


y


Yoga, 45.


z
Zoroaster, 60, 159.
Zarathustra, 60.