break the vessel into pieces, lest again it should put the hands of the clock back, instead of forward, as was done in France. So for this time it was to be a spiritual movement, and the work was to be spiritual, intellectual, and ethical. Those were to be its special marks, this its special work; and when the two great Teachers who were identified with the movement--her own Master and His closest co-worker in the Great White Lodge, the two who over and over again in centuries gone by had stood side by side as fellow-workers in the civilisations of the past--when They volunteered for this great emprise, doubt, as I said, arose among Their peers. The lesson of the eighteenth century was not forgotten; the question inevitably arose: "Is the West ready for a movement of this sort again? Can it be carried on in such an environment without doing, perhaps, more harm than the good which it is capable of accomplishing?" And so, much discussion arose--strange as that may sound to some, in connection with a body of workers so sublime--and most were against it, and declared the time was not ripe; but these two offered to take the risk and bear the burden, offered to bear the karma of the effort, and to throw their lives into the shaping, guiding, and uplifting. And as the question of time is always one of the most complicated and difficult questions for Those who have to deal with the great law of cycles and the evolution of man, it was felt that it was possible that the effort might succeed, even although the time was not quite ripe, the clock had not quite struck the hour. And so permission was given, and the two assumed the responsibility. How the earlier stages were made is familiar to you all; how they chose that noble worker Their disciple, known to us as H.P.B., and prepared her for the work she had to do; how in due course They sent her to America to search there for a comrade who would supply what was lacking in herself--the power of organisation, the power of speaking to men and gathering them around him, and shaping them into a movement in the outer world. And you all know the story of how they met; you all know how they joined hands together. One of them has put the whole thing on record, for the instruction of the younger members of the Society now and in centuries to come. The movement began, as you know, closely watched over, constantly protected by those two who had taken this burden of responsibility upon Themselves. And you may read in many of H.P.B.'s letters, how continual in those days was the touch, how constant the directions; and it went on thus year after year--for the first seven years at least of the Society's life, and a little more; you may read in the issue of the _Theosophist_ (June) a letter from one of these same Teachers, showing how close was the interest taken, how close the scrutiny which was kept up in all the details of the Society's work. In publishing that letter I thought it only right