The beginning is here and now, when man shall achieve the Mastery of Self and really possess his own soul, and not hold it tremblingly as a _pawn_ of some pretentious potentate of the soul. The right of Light, Knowledge, and further progress by "_Being a Man_," and not a chattel, an asset, a pawn, or a slave. This is the coming _Avatar_, and the dawn is already here. Will the day darken, the Light be quenched? Who can tell? The redemption of Woman from the slavery of all the past is well under way, and it is indeed a glorious sign. No lesson in history is plainer nor more readily demonstrated than the fact that the degeneracy of a religion and the degradation of woman go hand in hand. Demonstrate to-day in any country on earth the status of woman as a whole, and no mistake need be made as to the prevailing religion. Woman's political disability is another matter entirely; for she is dominated by man only because, and only so far as, she is handicapped or degraded by the dominant religion. Take woman from the churches, Protestant or Romish, to-day, and no church could do business for a twelvemonth. For these reasons the immense and rapidly growing movements, Women's Clubs and the like, to-day, are of great significance, backed and illuminated as they are by all past history. In the new movement, the School of Natural Science, the door is as wide open to woman as to man. I might paraphrase the slogan of the Robber Barons of the middle ages. "_She_ may seize who hath the power, _She_ may hold who can." In the coming Illuminati woman will stand by the side of man in all opportunity, endeavor, or achievement. In the new age woman will be something few men have even yet dreamed of. We might call this new age "_the Woman's Avatar_," without doing violence to either religion, tradition, history, or science; while the sacred Hymns of the Vedas, with the angel of the household and the inspirer of the soul of man, the worship of Divinity, by both men and women, opened a new heaven on this old earth. And then--such children as will be born, without pain, not through chance, caprice, nor under protest, but even as they were in Greece, as an offering of Love on the altar of divine man-womanhood, with a song of joy to heaven. Prof. Fiske somewhere said, "The evolution of man by Natural Selection draws near its close, to be followed by that of Divine Selection." The Divinity _in_ man is _Christos_, the "son of the Father," the Divine and Eternal _Avatar_. Belief is rather a superficial process, the intellect ("mortal mind") mingled with the emotions, changing and evanescent. "Now you see it, and now you don't." It is mingled with hope that alternates with fear and doubt. Faith, when once analyzed and apprehended, is another thing entirely, though nearly every one, and most writers, confuse "belief" and "faith." "Faith is the soul's _intuitive conviction_ of that which both _Reason_ and _Conscience_ approve."