nutrient material must be absorbed by the growing germ, and
changed into the exquisite tissues of the plant that is to be. And so,
if you take the growing germ, animal or human, how unlike is that
budding creature from the animal or the man that shall be! How lacking
in beauty in many of the methods of its growth, of its nutrition, of
its gradual shaping! And by what marvellous alchemy of inspiring life
does the living germ gather into itself all the nutrient matter that
surrounds it, and shapes it into organ after organ, until the perfect
creature is ready to be born into the world. And as in these cases, so
with the growth of a sub-race, of which the germ is planted now. How
much has to be done before it is ready for the birth-hour, that yet is
at a measurable distance from the moment that the germ is planted in
the womb of time. Try to realise the analogy by means of the image
that I have suggested, and it will not then seem so unlikely to you,
that which is true, that in our own times again many messengers have
come out from the Manu of the future, in order that those messengers
may strike certain keynotes, which mark the chief characteristic of
the child that is to be. That note is well known at the present time:
we call it Brotherhood.

Now notice at the present time how many such messengers are found
scattered throughout the world, and how the varied organisations of
men of every kind are tending in that direction, and are more and more
recognising that as the keynote of their progress and their evolution.
There are, so far as I know, only two great organisations at the
present time that have deliberately taken Universal Brotherhood as
their motto, their cry, in the world: the one is Masonry, the other is
the Theosophical Society. Those are the only two which proclaim
Universal Brotherhood. For although many religions declare
Brotherhood, they do not make it universal; it is a Brotherhood within
the limits of their own creed, and a man to become a brother must come
within the limits of the religion. See how clearly that is declared in
the great and universal baptismal ceremony which marks the entrance of
the child into the Christian Church. In that sacrament he is "_made_ a
child of God." He was not a child of God before, from the Church
standpoint. He was born under the wrath of God, in the kingdom of
Satan. In the ceremony of baptism he is made a child of God, an heir
of the kingdom of heaven; and that is the