enlighten, encourage and elevate those weaker and less favoured than he;
all were trampled out of sight in the insane rush for adeptship. The
call for phenomena, phenomena, phenomena, resounded in every quarter,
and the Founders were impeded in their real work and teased
importunately to intercede with the Mahatmas, against whom the real
grievance lay, though their poor agents had to take all the buffets. At
last, the word came from the higher authorities that a few of the most
urgent candidates should be taken at their word. The result of the
experiment would perhaps show better than any amount of preaching what
Chelaship meant, and what are the consequences of selfishness and
temerity. Each candidate was warned that be must wait for year in any
event, before his fitness could be established, and that he must pass
through a series of tests that would bring out all there was in him,
whether bad or good. They were nearly all married men, and hence were
designated "Lay Chelas"--a term new in English, but having long had its
equivalent in Asiatic tongues. A Lay Chela is but a man of the world
who affirms his desire to become wise in spiritual things. Virtually,
every member of the Theosophical Society who subscribes to the second of
our three "Declared Objects" is such; for though not of the number of
true Chelas, he has yet the possibility of becoming one, for he has
stepped across the boundary-line which separated him from the Mahatmas,
and has brought himself, as it were, under their notice. In joining the
Society and binding himself to help along its work, he has pledged
himself to act in some degree in concert with those Mahatmas, at whose
behest the Society was organized, and under whose conditional protection
it remains. The joining is then, the introduction; all the rest depends
entirely upon the member himself, and he need never expect the most
distant approach to the "favour" of one of our Mahatmas or any other
Mahatmas in the world--should the latter consent to become known--that
has not been fully earned by personal merit. The Mahatmas are the