to explain the effect of great literature; but without doubt it
molds the race. Now the ethic of the Old Testament, its moral
import, is very mixed. There is much that is true and beautiful;
much that is treacherous and savage. So that its moral and
ethical effects have been very mixed too. But its style, a
subtler thing than ethics, has nourished conceptions of a large
and seeping sort, to play through what ethical ideas they might
find. The more spiritual is any influence--that is, the less
visible and easy to trace--the more potent it is; so style in
literature may be counted one of the most potent forces of all.
Through it, great creative minds mold the destinies of nations.
Let Theosophy have expression as noble as that of the Bible--as
it will--and of that very impulse it will bite deep into the
subconsciousness of the race, and be the nourishment of grand
public action, immense conceptions, greater than any that have
come of Bible reading, because pure and true. Our work is to
purify the channels through which the Soul shall speak; the
Teachers have devoted themselves to establishing the beginnings
of this Movement in right thought and right life. But the great
literary impulse will come, when we have learned and earned the
right to use it.

Now, what the Bible became to the English, Homer became to the
Greeks--and more also. They heard his grand manner, and were
billed by it with echoes from the Supermundane. _Anax andron
Agamemnon_--what Greek could hear a man so spoken of, and dream
he compounded of common clay? Never mind what this king of men
did or failed to do; do but breathe his name and titles, and you
have affirmed immortality and the splendor of the Human Soul!
The _human_ Soul?