ng; all else is transient; all else is but the toy of a moment.
Fame and power, wealth and science--all that is in this world below is
as nothing beside the grandeur of the Eternal Self in the universe and
in man, one in all His manifold manifestations, marvellous and beautiful
in every form that He puts forth. And this year, of all the
manifestations of the Supreme, we are going to dare to study the holiest
of the holiest, those manifestations of God in the world in which He
shows Himself as divine, coming to help the world that He has made,
shining forth in His essential nature, the form but a thin film which
scarce veils the Divinity from our eyes. How then shall we venture to
approach it, how shall we dare to study it, save with deepest reverence,
with profoundest humility; for if there needs for the study of His works
patience, reverence and humbleness of heart, what when we study Him
whose works but partially reveal Him, when we try to understand what is
meant by an Avatara, what is the meaning, what the purpose of such a
revelation?

Our President has truly said that in all the faiths of the world there
is belief in such manifestations, and that ancient maxim as to
truth--that which is as the hall mark on the silver showing that the
metal is pure--that ancient maxim is here valid, that whatever has been
believed everywhere, whatever has been believed at every time, and by
every one, that is true, that is reality. Religions quarrel over many
details; men dispute over many propositions; but where human heart and
human voice speak a single word, there you have the mark of truth, there
you have the sign of spiritual reality. But in dealing with the subject
one difficulty faces us, faces you as hearers, faces myself as speaker.
In every religion in modern times truth is shorn of her full
proportions; the intellect alone cannot grasp the many aspects of the
one truth. So we have school after school, philosophy after philosophy,
each one showing an aspect of truth, and ignoring, or even denying, the
other aspects which are equally true. Nor is this all; as the age in
which we are passes on from century to century, from millennium to
millennium, knowledge becomes dimmer, spiritual insight becomes rarer,
those who repeat far out-number those who know; and those who speak with
clear vision of the spiritual verity are lost amidst the crowds, who
only hold traditions whose origin they fail to understand. The priest
and the p