Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

The World grows weary: when shall He be born
Who age by age hath saved Her perishing!
Ever She climbeth: ever THAT within

Her heaving bosom yearneth unto THAT
Without, Self unto Self, Deep answering Deep;
And ever as the wheeling Days go by,

Like Sisyphus She plungeth down, down, down
Exanimate into the black Abyss,

Whence with return to tortured sense, her cry
Ascends to the far spaces of the Heavens
And He Himself comes forth, the Lord of All-
Aja, Achyuta, Eka, Akshara-

Unborn, Immortal, Sole, Unperishing !

Not as the Lord of Worlds in blinding blaze
Of Love Consummate cometh He, but lo!
Tenderly wrappeth Him in human flesh,
And, entering the strait chamber of the womb -
Hail! O pure womb He chooseth-lieth hid,
Even as we, long months of growing wonder,
Resteth at length, even as we, close-drawn
By arms of utter love, on Maya's breast-
Man, Very Man, that man unshent may look,
And, looking, learn and live. Yea, in his smile,
Lit with the inextinguishable flame
Of Love Divine, Earth's misery melts and runs
Like ice in joyous Springtide; and She sighs
The soft sigh of one waked from evil dream,
And smiles a slow smile back to Him; and soon,
Tenderness breeding tenderness, Her heart
Glows suddenly within Her, and She falls
In happy flood of weeping at His feet.
Then, lifted by His gracious hand, Her eye
Filled with new light, and on Her lip a song,
She turns Her to the sky y-pointed peaks,
And climbs-and climbs!

O Thou Compassionate,

O Thou who troddest the whole bitter way,

And, overcoming, wert enthroned with THAT Whence Thou and all have come! O hear us now As from the Depths we cry to Thee! O come,

To save Thy world! O, lay Thy splendours by:
The Robe of woven Flame from out the Sea,
The shoreless Sea of Fire that sinks and swells
Stirred by the ebbing, flowing of the Breath!
How can we reach Thee so enpanoplied

In shafts of living Light-how know Thee Kind?
Come, O Compassionate Lord, to us who fear
Thy awful Beauty, veiled in the form

Our little human lives have made so dear

Man among men. Tread these our common ways,
Smile on us, speak with us, yea, sit at meat
At these our tables in dear friendliness
Till all the wonder of that love and grace
Constrain us, and in passion of wild joy
We fling us, O Beloved, at Thy feet.

Ho! ye who watch the heavens evermore
From all Earth's Sacred Mounts--is there no sign
Of His appearing? Breaks there yet no Star
In gorgeous spilth of light against the blue?
Nay-none. Yet soon, O very soon shall Earth
Gaze on that glory, and the whisper run

Swift thro' the startled lands. "Thus," men shall say,
แ Thus have we heard it was of old, and thus,
Cry all the prophets, ever will it be

"When the Lord visiteth His peoples: lo!
"Let us search out His birthplace, and adore!
And some will search and find, and Nations all

Shall know that that towards which their age-long life
All blindly strove hath come at unawares :
But will burst sudden into glorious bloom,
And O the fragrance-O the loveliness!

The world grows weary: Come, Maitreya, come
Surely her cry hath risen to Thine ear,
Pierced thro' the shrouding splendours to the still
Small flame where all Thou ever wert burns on

In deathless miracle; and as of old

The brooding love of Thee will conquer Thee,

And Thou wilt come, and as beneath her wings

A hen her chickens gathereth, so Thou,

O Christ, wilt gather in Thine own.

Come ... Come!

MARSYAS,

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

Our Section has just had the great privilege of a visit from Mrs. Besant. It is fourteen years since she came to New Zealand last, and great changes have taken place with regard to the feeling towards Theosophy in the meantime. After a stormy passage from Sydney Mrs. Besant, accompanied by Mrs. John (wife of the General Secretary of Australia), Miss Christie and Miss Browning (Joint Organising Secretaries of the New Zealand Section) arrived in Auckland on July 26th, and the two first ladies became the guests of the Assistant General Secretary and of the Treasurer of the Section. In addition to members' and E.S. meetings, two lectures were given and a public conversation meeting held. On July 30th Mrs. Besant started for Wellington; the sea-trip from Onehunga to New Plymouth was smooth, but then there was a long journey of twelve hours before reaching our capital city. In Wellington two lectures were delivered in addition to a public conversation and members' meetings, and the same was the programme in Christchurch which was reached on August 4th. Dunedin was the last of the branches to be visited, and Mrs. Besant gave three lectures and one public conversation meeting during her stay of four days. I need hardly say how deeply grateful our members are to our President for coming among us. Our only regrets were that her visit was so short that several meetings had to be crowded into one day in every place, and that she visited us during our winter. This made her stay less comfortable than we should have liked. I understand Mrs. Besant has not felt winter weather since 1893, and she must have felt the cold severely, especially on draughty platforms. The general public supported the meetings well and there will be a surplus to be divided with India. We should have wished it larger, but in proportion to the length of time allotted to New Zealand, the expenses for travelling were very heavy. We are hoping for increasing membership as the result of he toun, but in any case much good has been done by spreading our

teachings in such a masterly way before large audiences. The press has been sympathetic as a whole, and has given good reports and interviews. Country members came from long distances to the four centres but it was impossible to visit the whole of our fifteen branches. On August 10th Mrs. Besant and Mrs. John left the Dominion for Hobart, carrying with them our heartfelt good wishes for a pleasant voyage and if possible a return in the not too-distant future. Mrs. Besant laid her finger on several weak points in our new country. She endeavored to stir members up to realise the effects of a scheme of education which is purely secular, to teach the importance of young voters being instructed and led to feel their responsibility to the country. Few of the clergy of any denomination take advantage of the clause in our Education Act, which permits them to give religious teaching before or after school-hours, and only in one or two towns is this important branch of education attended to-and then generally by non-skilled teachers. The second difficulty is also a great one, as every girl and boy is given a vote on reaching the age of twenty-one. I hope soon we may establish a League of Service to band together members to grapple with these and other problems. Another difficulty we have to contend against is that our clergy and ministers are directly dependent on their congregations, and if they preach advanced theology, the older and more conservative portion of their followers object and cut off supplies. The result is that our churches are not keeping pace with modern thought, and church membership is not recruited from the ranks of the young thinking men and women. One Presbyterian Minister, Mr. Gibson Smith, has just published a book dealing with the Atonement, and giving very much the views of the New Theology. I understand he is to be summoned before his Presbytery; next month I may be able to tell you the result of his trial.

FRANCE.

K, B.

During the closing of our sectional headquarters there has been little to record of special interest to our fellow members, except the appearance of a beautiful book by Dr. Steiner, entitled The Mystery of Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity, translatedjby M. Schuré, whose preface to this work is particularly fine. This is the first of Dr. Steiner's books to be translated into French. During the holidays some few of our members have done some useful work in the provinces in the direction of meetings and lectures, but we have no special

organisation for this purpose like our fellow members in Holland. It is gratifying to notice the increasing tendency towards a rapprochement between Spiritualists and Theosophists; hitherto the former have ignored our theories, taking up a position of irreconcilability while throwing the onus for this attitude upon us.

It may be that in earlier days, before the formation of the French Section, some of our more prominent members exhibited a somewhat sectarian and contemptuous spirit, but this was only temporary and the most conciliatory attitude was shortly adopted by Theosophists, some of whom have even taken as subject for public lectures, and treated in the most sympathetic manner, questions regarding Spiritualism and its phenomena, while relegating these to their rightful place.

This winter, as I have already remarked, a spiritualistic conference was held by invitation at our headquarters. May not this be regarded as an evidence of a more sympathetic attitude between ourselves and the Spiritualists, who appear to have a real desire to draw nearer to us, and the sympathy they have shewn we most gladly reciprocat e

Among other proofs of this friendly feeling was an invitation given to our General Secretary to attend a materialising séance, given by the medium Miller, and together with various representatives of different movements who were present, our Secretary was requested to exercise such rigid scrutiny over the arrangements as would satisfy him that no kind of imposition was possible.

It must however be admitted that in later séances, where the same control has not been exercised, the medium Miller has been detected in the very act of deception. The fact that the Spiritualists themselves have had the honesty to make this known to us, and to the other representatives of various movements who were present, is very much to their credit.

A.

GREAT BRITAIN.

There is little activity to record for the month of August - the great holiday month of the whole year. Only the Conference of the Northern Federation, held on the 15th and 16th, broke the silence of the month. This took place at Harrogate under the presidency of Miss Edith Ward. The discussion was on Telepathy, its probable or possible, use and abuse; some of the Lodges appear to have been experimenting in this direction, but no results at all comparable with those achieved under the auspices of the Psychical Research Society have, as yet, to be recorded. On the Sunday evening there was a

« ÎnapoiContinuă »