faith. The existence of abnormal phenomena is a matter of scientific evidence. Modern miracles' are not one whit less numerous than ancient ones, but it is only a certain section of the community who now claims them as miracles, or as a basis for dogma. A miracle is simply an unexplained phenomenon having a supposed religious significance. The Roman Catholic Church has still her miracles by which she holds sway over her devotees. The Protestant Church asserts the age of miracles to be past, yet still holds to the miraculous in Bible narrative as proof of doctrine. Spiritualists invest their phenomena with a supernatural authority, and very many give a servile and superstitious obedience to the ravings of any one claiming to communicate with the "spirits. Materialistic science falls into the opposite error, and in denying the supernatural denies also the superphysical. Those who deny the existence of a spiritual world, refuse to believe in certain abnormal phenomena, because those phenomena have ignorantly been labelled miraculous or supernatural, whereas they are only super-physical. We do not reach the spiritual world immediately we part company with the material plane of sense-perception; and science must sooner or later recognise the teachings of Theosophy with regard to the existence of various planes of matter and consciousness transcending the physical; of which the 7th or highest can alone be called the truly spiritual;

and the phenomena of which are utterly beyond our reach in our present stage of evolution. Most so called psychic phenomena belong only to the astral plane (See diagram, page 30).

But if we wish to know who are the true Initiates we must be able to recognise for ourselves the one message, the one truth which they all proclaim. It is no use asking for credentials; the message must be its own justification. Those who ask for credentials are just those who least understand what they demand. Orthodoxy is always demanding such credentials, and persecuting and rejecting the noblest and best teachers, because in the very nature of the case they cannot comply with the demand. Theosophy claims to come from those who know. But it does not ask acceptance of its teachings on that account, but for the inherent truth of the teachings themselves, which are found to harmonise with the facts of our own experience, and with the teachings of the best and wisest in all ages. We cannot be far wrong when we can lay claim to the best and furthest results that have been reached in any age or by any teacher, so far as these are known exoterically. But there is a deeper truth, an esoteric teaching which we also disclose. It is no use, however, to look for that, if we cannot discern the truth in all its numerous forms and symbols. Of what use is it to look for the precious metal, if we cannot recognise its signs in the ore and dross? Theosophy enables us to

cct the pure metal in the slag-heaps and rubof exoteric creeds and religions. For it is the of all things that come into this lower world materialised and debased, to take a physical outward form, which often totally obscures pare incarnating ray.

And in proportion as men worship the outward

, they miss the inner truth; nor can a physical Nenomenon ever be a demonstration of a spiritual th, save in so far as all phenomena are the tnesses of eternal verities. Theosophy finds its stification in all phenomena, not in any special

The message of Theosophy, therefore, both in s explanation of things present, and in the vista human attainment which it discloses, is clear And harmonious. But if we are to reach to the goal of our perfection we must comply, at every step, with the necessary conditions. These conditions are not arbitrary, but natural; they are not pains and penalties and pious mortifications imposed by a Church in the name of deity, but the natural conditions of our own inner nature in its relation to the outer. Why the upward road of our evolution should only be accomplished through pain and suffering is not yet clear; but that road is hard enough, without introducing arbitrary and unnatural difficulties. It is so hard indeed, so difficult even to discover, that men prefer the easier way of compliance with outward conditions, and deem

that it may be accomplished by religious observances. Here again the Church has ever been an unfaithful witness, lulling men into a fancied security through the observance of her ordinances. Yet still it is true that "narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it."

The conditions, we say, are natural, not artificial. And the natural law which operates is one which all religións recognise in theory, but fail to carry out in practice, because natural law has been separated from spiritual law, and religion invested with a supernatural quality. The natural law of our progress is simply our renunciation and disentanglement from the illusions of physical life and sensation. "The self of Matter and the SELF of Spirit can never meet. One of the twain must disappear there is no place for both ". (Voice of the Silence). How much this implies is not even guessed at by the great majority. The very nature of the illusion is misunderstood, otherwise men would not speak of passing beyond the veil at death. Renunciation of the world, of all that most hold dear, will not in itself bring spiritual knowledge or enlightenment; and if performed merely at the dictates of a religious authority or an emotional fervour, will often lead to deeper obscurity.

The spiritual life and knowledge which we must win is no mere quality of religious devotion. It is a real and true knowledge of the unseen world, of

that inner world on which the outer rests, and from which our own phenomenal lives, and all phenomena of nature springs. 'God' works in the stone as well as in the human heart, and the method by which we apprehend his work is that which we call the natural law of each. In neither the stone nor the human heart do we look for direct intervention of an arbitrary will. That which the heart can manifest forth of the divine nature by reason of its complex organism and subtle qualities, is infinitely more than the stone can reveal through its inertness and unawakened consciousness. And if the heart be near or far from 'God', it is so only in this sense, that it can respond more or less to the vibrations of a higher plane. The stone is dead and inert because it cannot so respond. But the heart may also be dead to the divine order of nature, in which case it acts only under the influence of physical and vital laws, nor can it when once dead respond to the higher vibrations, any more than the dead flower or the stone can open and unfold to the magnetic influence of the summer sunshine. The organism must be responsive, whether it be in stone or in plant, in animal life, or in the human heart and mind; nor can we presume to find throughout the whole range of the seen and the unseen aught but the appropriate operation of natural law, which indeed is the very nature and Being of 'God'; and which, could it be altered or changed by caprice, would shatter at a