The first will naturally cover all active working for humanity, all service which one can offer to another; and it will be well, in the days that lie before us, if we realise that there is no scheme for human helping, no possible effort for human uplifting, which is outside the field of work of the First Object of our Society. Every Lodge of the Society should make it one of its activities to serve humanity in the place where the Lodge is founded; and the value of the Lodge should be in the knowledge that is there gathered with the object of spreading it. For Theosophy should be your touch-stone as to the value of every scheme, as to the tendency of every proposition. In all the countless schemes around us in these active times, some work only for the moment; others, based on sound principle, are preparing the world for a better and happier future. By your Theosophical knowledge you can judge the value of every such scheme, and throw yourselves into those alone which work on lines beneficial to the future, which are laying the foundations of a civilisation greater than our own. For among the many schemes and many methods there are ways in which each man inspired by the Spirit of Brotherhood may find work that satisfies his reason and is justified by his conscience. And there is no one particular method, no one special road, along which the Society, as Society, can go. It lays down the principle of Brotherhood as an active working spirit in the life of every member, and then it leaves the member free to use his own judgment and his own conscience as to which among the many methods recommends itself most to him as an individual. So that in speaking of that field of work, it is not for me to say: "This plan, that method, the other means, that is what you ought to follow"; but only that you are not carrying out the First Object of the Society, unless you are engaging your activity in some task which in your intelligence and conscience is working for the benefit of your fellow-men. That is a point I want to put to your Lodges; for when I see questions discussed as to giving new life to Lodges, vivifying Lodges, and so on, I know well that the only cause for the need of such discussion is because men allow the life to stagnate within the Lodge, instead of sending it forth a living stream to fertilise the place in which the Lodge is built. There would be no lack of life were it not that you keep it bottled up for your own advantage, for your own needs. The source of life is inexhaustible, and it only ceases to flow where there is stagnation, because it is not allowed to run out to the people who have need of it, but is kept within the narrow limits of a Lodge. If you worked as well as talked, if you labored as well as discussed, if you served as well as praised service, there would be no time and no need to discuss how the Lodges of the Theosophical Society shall be vivified.