There is another point I wish to make clear. I have said that other religions are said to have started in the same way, other teachers to have claimed authority on the same ground. This may or may not be true. The theory of Buddhism is so essentially anti-miraculous that the miracles attributed to the Buddha seem almost certainly outside additions, as they are in direct variance with his known acts and beliefs. And the words and acts of Christ in His life seem all so at variance with the miracles attributed to Him that they, too, may be later additions or contemporary exaggerations. This has already been obvious to some, and had not the absolute inspiration of the Sacred Books been insisted on, thus stifling criticism, it would have been obvious to more. All this is immaterial. True or false, all religions have an embroidery, more or less deep, of miracle, and on these miracles their claim to truth was in the early days more or less pressed. If Madame Blavatsky performed miracles with teacups it was because she saw that there was an attraction to many people in miracle that nothing else could supply. Miracle to many is the proof of truth. Had Madame Blavatsky performed no miracles, had there been no teacups, were there now no Mahatmas, who would have stopped to listen to her compote of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and truly western mysticism which she called Theosophy? How can miracle be the proof of supernatural knowledge? Suppose there arose to-morrow in England a man who could make one loaf into five, what should those of us who are without the instinct for miracle say? Merely that he knew some way of increasing bread which we did not know. The inference would end there. We should not suppose that he therefore knew anything more about the next world than we do. Where is the connection, we would ask? The telephone or the Roentgen rays would have been a miracle a hundred years ago. Two thousand years ago a phonograph would have been supposed to hold a devil, and the proprietor would have been a prophet, no doubt. But we do not now go to Edison or Maxim for our religions. Still, Madame Blavatsky started with miracles, and was wise in her generation. Still, all religions retain more or less of the miraculous, because there are many to whom this appeals before everything, because they are sure that miracle is the proof of truth. Again, Theosophy claims to be Esoteric Buddhism. The country _par excellence_ of practical Buddhism is Burma. Yet the Burmans generally laugh at Theosophy. How is this? The answer lies, I think, like the answer to all these questions of religion, in the varying instincts of the people. It is an idea with us in the West that the East is the land of enchantment, of mystery, of the unknown, of miracle and all that is akin to it. We are never tired of talking of the mysterious East; it seems to us one vast wonderland full of things we cannot understand, full of marvels of the unknowable, the very home of superstition; while