They bear it in Their heart, They bear it on Their shoulders, They offer daily sacrifice that this spiritual effort may succeed in the helping and the uplifting of the world. And They, so great, speak to us, so small; and none will surely refuse to listen who catches one glimpse of the possibility of Their speech; none will reject Their pleading, who can hear one whisper of that Voice; and the one thing that one hopes for, that one longs for, with regard to oneself and to all who are members of the Society, is that amongst us there may be some ears found to hear the voice of the Masters, and some hearts mirroring enough of their compassion to at least sacrifice themselves for the helping of the world. [Footnote 1: This was spoken some weeks before the issue of Mr. Sinnett's extraordinary manifesto, denying "the things most surely believed among us."] The Future of the Theosophical Society There are two futures of the Theosophical Society to which we may address our attention: the immediate future, and a future further off. And I am going to begin with the future further off, because it is only by recognising the nature of that future that we can properly devise the means whereby we may bring it about. For in all human affairs it is necessary to choose an end to which effort should be directed, and the nature of the end will govern the nature of the means. One of the great faults, I think, of our modern life is to live in what is called a hand-to-mouth way, to snatch at any momentary advantage, to try to bring about something which serves as an improvement for the moment without trying to understand, without caring to consider, whether in very many cases the temporary improvement may not bring with it a more fatal mischief than that which it is intended to remedy. And at least in the Theosophical Society, where we try to study tendencies, and to understand something of the forces which are working around us in life, we ought to avoid this popular blunder of the time, we ought to try to see the goal towards which we are moving, and to choose our immediate methods with reference to that goal. Of course, when I speak of a goal and an end, I am using the terms in a relative, not in an absolute sense--the goal, the end which is within a measurable distance, and so may be taken as a point towards which the roads on which we travel should tend. Let us, then, look first on that goal, and see its nature and the kind of methods which will help to realise it upon earth.