arried on under a changeless law, Karma, in which every cause created by desire and thought and action brings about certain effects, in their turn again becoming causes; so that in this great scheme of changeless law the human consciousness evolves from step to step, beginning its climbing as the lowest mineral, and never ending it till it reaches the all-embracing force of the consciousness we call Divine.
In all religions these doctrines are found. There is nothing new. Whether in the East, to the Hindu or the Buddhist; whether in the West, to the Christian, or, midway between the two, to the child of Islam, we bring nothing that is new to the great religions of the world. Sometimes one part of the teaching has slipped out of sight. Then is it the task of Theosophy to restore what has been forgotten. But more than that. Many of these truths are hidden in such great jungles of literature that the impatient modern mind can scarce find them in the elder teaching. Take that doctrine of re-incarnation. It is not taught in Hindu scriptures in the way you teach a scientific doctrine in one of the text books of your universities, but by hints here, allusions there, suggestions in another place, everywhere scattered over the vast surface of that great literature. But it makes no impression thus taught on the modern mind. Come nearer home, to the literature of Greece and take the teachings of Plato. It is well known that he teaches there the same doctrine; but when Jowett deals with Plato, does he deal with the doctrine of Re-incarnation as a doctrine that the modern mind would for a moment look upon as worthy to be considered? On the contrary, he throws it aside with others as the strange superstitions which clouded a mighty [Page 9] mind. Re-incarnation passed unheeded by the modern world of thought, though always embedded in familiar literature, but during the last thirty years, since Theosophy has been teaching it up and down the world, how changed is its position! It is now being discussed as a rational hypothesis, as a possible key to the problems of life and evolution. We find a modern philosopher like Professor McTaggart taking this doctrine among the doctrines of immortality and declaring, as Hume had declared before him, that it is the only doctrine that offers a reasonable view of immortality; and I find that at the next Church Congress, in Weymouth, Archdeacon Colley is going to lecture on Re-incarnation. So that it is finding its way pretty definitely within the English Church itself.
Now I do not claim that, as though Theosophy had invented the doctrine; but I do say it has made it real and actual to the modern world, as a theory to be studied instead of a superstition to be derided; and what it has done in that case it is doing for many another long-forgotten truth, every one of which is in the Wisdom of the Ancients. And that is another part of the work of Theosophy in the world — to bring the old jewels again into sight, and clear away from them the dust of ages.
Let us pass from that and see its next step: the declaration of practical methods whereby man may evolve himself and unfold his consciousness. Now in all the religions one way has been taught; and I would not say anything against that way, for many saintly feet have trodden it, and reached the goal they sought. It is the way of prayer. Prayer is a mightier force in the world than modern thinkers are inclined to admit, although the ever-increasing recognition of the energy of thought by Psychology lends a new support to the old religious doctrine of prayer. But to that method we add another. Prayer is the method for the devotional temperament; but for the more purely intellectual nature, for the man who demands to know and not only to feel, there is [Page 10] another road, the road of intense concentration of the mind, of deep, profound, and strenuous meditation, which, by intensifying the force of consciousness, enables it to transcend the garment of the senses and to know itself to exist in higher worlds than this. Those who do not care to pray may thi