istic seances. So that when he came in touch with
H.P.B. he was no credulous, unobservant person, overborne by a number
of wonderful happenings, but a thoroughly equipped and cold-blooded
and well-trained observer of the super-physical, and he naturally
brought his powers of observation to bear on these wonderful
happenings. He has left on record the full stories of these earlier
days. You may find similar stories, not to the same extent indeed, in
Mr. Sinnett's book, _The Occult World_. There we find similar
instances, similar marvels worked by H.P.B. in order to arouse his
attention, and to prove to him the existence of certain laws; which
otherwise would have remained, so to speak, in the air. So there were
also there a large number of unusual happenings--letters in
pillow-cases, letters on branches of trees, and so on. You would all
do well to re-read the _Old Diary Leaves_ or _The Occult World_. Each
one of you should deliberately ask himself: "Why do I believe these
things to be true?" Because it seems to me that most members of the
Theosophical Society are rather slipping into the position of the
modern Christian, that in order that a miracle may be true it must be
old, and if it happens nowadays it must immediately be discredited.
That is not rational. But it is a perfectly rational position to take
up with all phenomena to say: "I shall not accept one of them unless
thoroughly satisfied with the evidence on which it rests"; that is a
perfectly reasonable attitude; but what seems to me a little less
reasonable is to swallow wholesale the phenomena of the early days,
and to look very much askance at anything that happens now; to glance
back proudly to the past, and to regard anything which might happen
now as wrong, as undesirable. Because if that is the right position,
then it ought to be applied all round; it ought to be applied to the
early phenomena of the Society as much as to anything that may occur
now; and the same rigid demand for evidence should be made as is made
at the present time. But, on the other hand, if the evidence be as
full and as satisfactory now as that which supported the earlier
phenomena, then it does not seem quite reasonable to accept the
earlier and deny the later.

Let us for a moment see how far the Society has been going along the
same line as that along which the other religions have gone--the
gradual disappearance of phenomena and the substitution for them of
teaching appealing