Eternity; we are at one with the Secret Power which dwells there, and holds up and disposes all things, sweetly and strongly. This is the core of nature which, as Goethe says, must be looked for in a man's heart. This is the Everlasting Yea.

All

But of course the most universal instrument to touch the heart, and to a awaken in us the life of the spirit, is Religion. Cardinal Newman has t said with much happiness that there is no such thing as a false religion, whatever the amount of error which may be mixed up with any. religions have done something to lift man above the senses, to idealize! life. Is it possible to conceive of anything more distasteful to the thoughtful and cultivated than the blood-and-fire gospel which the Salvationists howl through the streets of our cities, making day hideous? Yet I, for my part, wish these noisy fanatics God-speed, although I should be glad if they could do their work more melodiously. They touch the hearts of thousands who else would live merely animal lives-nay, lives a below the level of the animals. They open for them the world of Spirit t and Deity, however coarse and grimy their keys. It seems to me that t the proper attitude to what we deem popular superstition is well indicated t by Mr. Herbert Spencer: "Through the great body of dogmas, traditions, and rites, a soul of truth is always visible, clearly or dimly as the case may be. Though from higher perceptions they hide the abstract verity within them, yet to lower perceptions they render this verity more appreciable than it would otherwise be. They serve to make real and influential over men that which would otherwise be unreal and uninfluential. Or we may call them the protective envelopes, without which the contained truth would die; modes of the manifestation of The Unknowable, and as having this for their warrant." Zeal against superstition! Good, if usually a trifle ridiculous. But super-s stition is not the worst of errors. Take care that while you root up the tares you do not root up the wheat also; that in trying to purify the popular belief you do not destroy it. There is in the Mesnevî Sheriff of Jelâlu-'d-Din, the illustrious Saint and Doctor of Islâm, a striking and pathetic story, in which this great lesson, so little apprehended by the sectaries, whether of Puritanism or of Physics, is powerfully inculcated "Moses," we read, "in his wanderings in the wilderness, came upon a shepherd, who was praying to God in the fervour of his soul, and saying 'Oh, my Master, my Lord, would that I knew where I might find Thee, and become Thy servant. Would that I might tie thy shoe-latchet, and comb Thy hair, and wash Thy robes, and kiss Thy beautiful feet, and sweep Thy chamber, and serve the milk of my goats to Thee for whom my heart crieth out.' And the anger of Moses was kindled, and he said to the shepherd, 'Thou blasphemest. The Most High has no body, and no need of clothing, nor of nourishment, nor of a chamber, nor of a domestic; thou art an infidel.' And the heart of the shepherd was darkened, for he could make to himself no image of one without bodily

form and corporal wants: and he gave himself up to despair, and ceased to serve God. And God spake unto Moses, and said, 'Why hast thou driven My servant away from Me? Every man has received from Me his mode of being, his way of speech. What is evil in thee, is good in another. What is poison to thee, is honey to him. Words are nothing to Me. I regard the heart. The compass serves only to direct the prayers of those who are without the Kêbeh. Within, no one knows the use of it.'" Such is the apologue of the great Sufi, and surely it is well worth pondering. We are too apt to undervalue that exceeding great multitude of people who are simply good and religious-minded, wholly undisturbed by the anxious questionings which shake the world. They are not intellectually considerable; mostly fools, perhaps. Yes. Yes. But diviner lips than Carlyle's have said, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones." "Babes and sucklings!" I grant it. But to them are revealed things hidden from the wise and prudent. In the house of the Father of spirits are many mansions. And let not him who dwells in the templa serena of elevated thought despise the fetish-worshippers before their shrines, the Peculiar people in their tabernacles, the Salvationists in their "barracks." Unconsciously, passively, they, it may well be, possess that higher synthesis after which we so passionately toil, where the problems which perplex us melt into floating clouds, as we stand for a moment above them in sunshine and serene air.

I have spoken to you of External Nature, of Art, of Philosophy, of Human Emotions, of Religion, as all instruments potent to touch the heart, to open the portals of the transcendental world. Now what is the issue of all this? The issue is the undoubted fact on which Mysticism is built: namely, that the spirit of man comes in contact with a higher spirit, whose manifestations carry with them their own proof and are moral in their nature, out of time and place, enlightening, purifying, and therefore, in a true sense, ascetic. And this is the universal mystic element in religion, in the true sense of the word. For what is that sense? Not a concatenation of formulas, or a tissue of speculations; not pulpit eloquence, hierarchical domination, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or any other idol of the den or the market-place; but the true tie between our spirit and the Father of our spirits-a trancendental mode of the soul, by which it soars into the Empyrean and is brought back to its eternal beginning. This Theism of the natural order, if you like so to call it, has ten thousand sacraments, infinite and ever new symbols, and each man may minister at its altar. This is what I mean by Mysticism; heart-religion John Wesley called it. In this heart-religion every great faith in the world has originated. By this heart-religion every great faith lives. When this heart-religion dies out of it, its work is done, and its days are numbered; it petrifies into mere formalism. And then it falls to pieces, and its place knows it no more Of course we have this treasure in earthen vessels. But the treasure is there. however

poor the shrine. Or, to change the metaphor: in all those higher faiths which perform so important a part in mystical philosophy and theology, there is a true light-the light of life. Earthborn clouds may arise and obscure or distort it. But it is there, that kindly light, guiding men on amid the encircling gloom.

So much may suffice, then, to vindicate the position with which I set out-that Mysticism is not nonsense, but good sense; nay, the best. And now the clock warns me that I have already trespassed sufficiently upon your patience. There are, however, just a very few practical words which I should like to say in conclusion about the abuse and the use of Mysticism. The abuse is obvious. Mysticism is an experience of the Infinite as real as that experience which we found upon the knowledge of the sensible and finite. It is subject to the same laws and conditions also, to the limitations of our nature; and therefore may issue in utter madness or gross sensuality, precisely as an exclusive study of material phenomena may issue in degradation of the intellect. I need not enlarge upon what is so clear in itself, and is so sadly illustrated by many pages of history. My present object is to dwell upon it in its normal and healthy aspect as "human nature's daily food." My view of Mysticism, then, as I have at length brought out, is that it is an opening of the eyes of the soul,-a deliverance from that worst captivity when the mind darkened by sense becomes "the dungeon of itself." Whatever be the instrument of our emancipation, the effect is to let "us pent-up creatures through, into Eternity-our due." I may observe, in passing, that one naturally uses the words of the poets in speaking of this subject, and with reason, for truth has two languages-the language of poetry and the language of prose; but the language of poetry is the most august, and the better fitted for the expression of the higher verities. But to return. I take the office of Mysticism to be this: to conduct us from the phenomenal to the noumenal-from that which seems, to that which is. Now! what is that which is but truth, justice, love, freedom, all different aspects of one thing; nay, I venture to say of One Person-the Absolute and Eternal, who is the Supreme Reason? This is the office, then, of Mysticism, to enable us to discern that Reason which is at the heart of things and which is in our hearts, to realize that we are one with tha: Transcendent Ideal, which is the Supremely Real; not bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh, but-far closer union-reason of His reason and spirit of His Spirit. This is the light of life; and in that light should we walk-as children of the light. The supremacy of that Divine gift within us, speaking to our heart, through our conscience this is the conclusion of the whole matter. It is the conclusion of Philosophy, which finds reason the highest principle in the universe. It is the conclusion of Poetry, which finds the world the expression of reason. It is the conclusion of Jurisprudence, which finds in reason the regulating principle of social life. Now not all of us are called to be philosophers, or

poets, or lawgivers; but we are all men endowed with "this capability and Godlike reason." Let it not "fust in us unused." Est Deus in nobis.. We all have that Divine gift. Marcus Aurelius calls it the daimon-the deity within us. Let me end with the admirable lesson of that imperial sage who has shown us that "even in a palace life may be well led." "Live with the gods. And he does live with the gods who constantly shows to them that his own soul is satisfied with that which is assigned to him, and that he does all that the daimon wishes which Zeus has assigned to every man for his guardian and guidance-a portion of himself. And this daimon is every man's understanding and reason."

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THEOSOPHY.

BY ANNIE BESANT.

IN dealing with a great theme within narrow limits one has alway to make a choice of evils: one must either substantiate each point, buttress it up with arguments, and thus fail to give any roughly complete idea of the whole; or one must make an outline of the whole, leaving out the proofs which bring conviction of the truth of the teaching. As the main object of this paper is to place before the average man or woman an idea of Theosophy as a whole, I elect to take the inconvenience of the latter alternative, and use the expository instead of the controversial method. Those who are sufficiently interested in the subject to desire further knowledge can easily pass on into the investigation of evidences, evidences that are within the reach of all who have patience, power of thought, and courage.

We, who are Theosophists, allege that there exists a great body of doctrines, philosophical, scientific, and ethical, which forms the basis of, and includes all that is accurate in, the philosophies, sciences, and religions of the ancient and modern worlds. This body of doctrine is a philosophy and a science more than a religion in the ordinary sense of the word, for it does not impose dogmas as necessary to be believed under any kind of supernatural penalties, as do the various Churches of the world. It is indeed a religion, if religion be the binding of life by a sublime ideal; but it puts forward its teachings as capable of demonstration, not on authority which it is blasphemy to challenge or deny.

That some great body of doctrine did exist in antiquity, and was transmitted from generation to generation, is patent to any investigator. It was this which was taught in the Mysteries, of which Dr. Warburton wrote: "The wisest and best men in the Pagan world are unanimous in this, that the Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest means." To speak of the Initiates is to speak of the greatest men of old in their ranks we find Plato and Pythagoras, Euclid and Democritus, Thales and Solon, Apollonius and Iamblichus. In the Mysteries unveiled they learned their wisdom, and gave out to the world such fragments of it as their oath allowed. But those fragments have fed the world for centuries, and even yet the learned of the modern West sit a the feet of these elder sons of wisdom. Among the teachers of the early Christian Church some of these men were found; they held Christianity in its esoteric meaning, and used exoteric dogmas merely as veils to cove the hidden truth. "Unto you it is given," said Jesus, "to know the

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