not be found repeated with almost endless variations
thousands of years ago.

Reference has already been made to the conditions imposed upon the student
who aspires to know, and to become.

The obligations upon the teacher are no less stringent, for both are, from
first to last, working under both natural and spiritual law to which they
are bound to conform.

To be possessed of such knowledge the teacher must have abandoned worldly
ambition, the love of wealth, and the applause of men. All motives of
time-serving and self-seeking must assail him in vain. He becomes the
almoner of the treasure-house of Light and Knowledge. He must exemplify
what he teaches. If he can impart his knowledge, or assist an aspiring and
worthy brother, it must be in the way he has himself received it, "without
money and without price," or any "hope of reward or fee," and the brother
so receiving, in his own degree, must be ready to pass it on under
precisely the same terms and conditions.

The teacher, therefore, must be in a position to give or to withhold;
promulgate or conceal; teach or refuse to teach; governed solely by Truth
and Law, and the solemn obligation under which he has himself received
it.

The meaning of the saying, "strait is the gate and narrow is the way, and
few there be who find it," may thus be made apparent.

Fragments of this wisdom are found scattered through the ages, with here
and there one who has achieved it.

For two or three centuries the early Christian Church undertook to work on
these lines, and instituted three degrees, as abundantly shown in the
writings of many of the so-called "Christian, or Church Fathers."

Jesus said to his disciples, "I have many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now." And again, "The works that I do, ye shall do also,
and greater things than these shall ye do, because I go to the Father."
And again, "Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven, but to them who are without, it is not given."

Mysteries, indeed, to the ignorant monks who were already wrangling over
creed, and dogmas, and who, in 325 at the First Council at Nice, fought it
out surrounded by the soldiers of the Pagan Emperor, Constantine; and thus
settled the "orthodox _interpretation_," of what they were wholly
incompetent to understand. Their successors are still engaged in the same
wrangle of interpretation, so far as the "Infallible Pope," and dogma of
obedience, at Rom