vol. xxx, no. 4 april 1926 universal brotherhood - a fact in nature

THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH
end of the world can hardly be supposed to mean anything more than
the end of the present order of things in the world, which is to be brought
about or at least heralded by the coming of a 'Messiah,' an event which
has been predicted in all ages and in almost all countries.
The Messianic idea is in no way irrational or unphilosophical;
indeed it would be hard to imagine the introduction of a new social
or political system in any other manner than by the active agency of
a superior being; though his advent might well be accompanied by no
great psychopyrotechnical display.
The existence of superior beings capable of guiding the evolution
of the human race is not unreasonable in itself: though there is no reason
to invent unusual conditions of birth for a Messiah, nor to expect that
his advent will be heralded in any miraculous way: on the contrary,
experience should teach us that superior men too often are not recog-
nised till they have left the world. They do their work most generally
in the face of bitter opposition; they are personally slandered and at-
tacked during life, and after death their reputation is blackened: but their
work is done, and the course of human evolution has been influenced.
In the religious Orient the legend still persists of the periodical
appearance among men of a divine ruler or King of the world, who is at
once recognised and acknowledged as the 'Messiah.' But he can do
no more than show himself and pass: for no spiritual ruler can exist
for long in the mephitic atmosphere of Kali-Yuga. His periodical ap-
pearances serve only to revive the people's faith and to confirm their
hopes of the eventual arrival of the Golden Age.
But in the Occident the white man as a race has lost his faith
in spiritual rulers of the world where man replaces god by a machine
man-made and man-directed. The Golden Age has ceased to be even so
much as a dream for him; and he can imagine no change in the rnaterial-
ism of his concepts of life on earth except at the cost of a total destruction
of the world he has so long defiled by his system of so-called civilization.
In view of the fact that everything in nature is in a state of cease-
less change, subject to growth and to disintegration, to birth, decay,
and death, rebirth and reproduction of its species; it should be easy to
accept the law of cycles which governs the periodical appearances and
disappearances of the universe and all that it contains. As the 'laws of
Nature' are simply the natural expression of the forces inherent in the ,
universe it would perhaps be more correct to speak of the law of cycles
explaining rather than governing the periodicity observable in natural
phenomena.
If this periodicity were more generally recognised the 'end of the