Sundays that lie before us I hope to work out that second side of the subject, to show you how these things are passing away, and how it has been declared in the higher world, and the cry is echoing in the lower: “Behold, I make all things new!” Lecture III The New Doors Opening In Religion, Science, and Art Friends: On the preceding evenings on which I have addressed you we have had our attention turned backwards to the past, or we were glancing at the present. We are now to turn our eyes to the future, and, starting from the basis of the present and of certain facts which are already showing themselves amongst us, to consider what new doors are opening in Religion, in Science, and in Art; what new avenues of knowledge are beginning to show themselves stretching to far-off horizons—horizons, in fact, which are not really the limit of those avenues, but only the limit to which we can at present pierce. I am chiefly concerned to endeavour to show you that this promise of the opening of new doors is a great reality; that the sounds are around us; that, as it were, the doors are already a little open, and we have the right to think that as man evolves a little further those doors will open wider and wider, so that the race may pass through them to a wiser and a happier future. In order to make this intelligible and clear, I shall have to ask you for a few moments to consider with me a certain view of man’s nature and constitution, a view which was practically universal among the ancient religions of the world, which is indicated, although not fully carried out perhaps in detail, in the more modern faith of Christendom, which is revived amongst us, and is being taught all over the world by means of the Theosophical Society; not a new view, but a very old one, clothed only in new garments in deference to the advancing mind of man. Now this view I must put roughly, but without that statement the method of the opening of the new doors would remain unintelligible. It is briefly this: That every human being is fundamentally a spiritual intelligence, appropriating to himself portions of matter in the various types of worlds in which he lives; that that spiritual intelligence commences the great world-cycle as a germ or seed of divinity; and just as if, where you had an ordinary seed, a grain of corn, that grain would not grow and develop the powers within it unless it were planted in the soil, the soil whose juices nourish it, unless it were rained upon, and unless the sun shone upon it, so is it with the divine germ, the human Spirit. It is planted in the soil of human experience, whose juices shall gradually enable it to unfold its divine possibilities. It is watered with the rain of human tears, the tears of sorrow and of pain; it is vivified, strengthened, enabled to grow by the sunshine of human joy and human delight; and out of the contact of experience, out of the rain of sorrow and the sunshine of joy,