Probably one of the most elusive yet prevalent innate ideas possessed by all human beings is that unfathomable, unknowable and ever unreachable idea we call faith.

Faith can express itself in three ways: mentally, according to the ideas that we hold; psychically, according to the emotions we feel and express; and physically, according to the actions that we perform.

Faith is either expanded or dwarfed by the early training we receive from our parents, teachers and friends, because one expression of faith is the truth and confidence we place on others.

Faith finds its fullest expansion when our trust or confidence is placed on and reciprocated by one who has developed the Wisdom of Compassion, which arises from a search after Truth, through the service of others. Fortunate indeed are we when we contact the teachings of such a one, for then our faith is elevated from a purely emotional basis to an ideative impersonal one.

From belief to knowledge is a gradual growth quickened by the disciple's faith, trust and confidence in the Teacher, and therefore in his willingness to check, test and verify his own observations and experiences in the light of the Teachings studied and applied. Such testings and verifications take place in the mind, feelings and physical nature of the sincere student, slowly freeing his or her faith from dependence on fixed moulds of thought, feeling or action, and gradually directing it towards the objectives of Truth and Service.

From dependence to independence is a step on the Path to Self-enlightenment, and this is the Path of Transformation from blind faith to reasoned faith based upon knowledge of the true. (See The Key to Theosophy, Indian ed., pp. 215-220). The further step from independence to interdependence takes the disciple through the "Hall of Learning," called in The Voice of the Silence "the psychical world of super-sensuous perception," where the passions and desires clothe themselves in their most alluring forms; but each such form has a serpent coiled underneath. This is a testing period for the disciple, one in which his faith is fully tried. What will stand him in good stead is his steadfastness and implicit trust and confidence in the Teacher whom yet he does not see, but whose Teachings he is taught to use independently, yet with an increasing sense of that type of dependence which has at its basis the idea of Universal Brotherhood, and which grows into Interdependence.

From the Hall of Learning we come to the Hall of Wisdom; from the Teachings, to the Teachers. Where are the Teachers to be found? This is the question that all sincere seekers after Truth ask at some time or other. The answer is available for those who want it, provided they are intuitive enough to accept the advice given to them by Mr. Judge in his article "Yours Till Death and After, H.P.B.," and by Mr. Crosbie in "A Friend of Old Time and of the Future." The following extracts from these two articles need to be pondered over:

[From "Yours Till Death and After, H.P.B.,"] Such has been the manner in which our beloved teacher and friend always concluded her letters to me. And now, though we are all of us committing to paper some account of that departed friend and teacher, I feel ever near and ever potent the magic of that resistless power, as of a mighty rushing river, which those who wholly trusted her always came to understand. Fortunate indeed is that Karma which, for all the years since I first met her, in 1875, has kept me faithful to the friend who, masquerading under the outer mortal garment known as H. P. Blavatsky, was ever faithful to me, ever kind, ever the teacher and the guide. (Vernal Blooms, p. 3)

[From "A Friend of Old Time and of the Future"] As such does William Q. Judge appear to me, as doubtless he does to many others in this and other lands.

The first Theosophical treatise that I read was his Epitome of Theosophy; my first meeting with him changed the whole current of my life. I trusted him then, as I trust him now and all those whom he trusted; to me it seems that "trust" is the bond that binds, that makes the strength of the Movement, of it is of the heart. And this trust he called forth was not allowed to remain a blind trust, for as time went on, as the energy, steadfastness and devotion of the student became more marked, the "real W.Q.J." was more and more revealed, until the power that radiated through him became in each an ever present help in the work. As such it remains today, a living centre in each heart that trusted him, a focus for the rays of the coming "great messenger." (Vernal Blooms, p. 1)

The divine conscience acts in all struggles for betterment, but clouded more or less in each by reason of education and habit of thought; hence it varies in brightness. It is not possible to make a hard-and-fast fixed rule for finding out what is the animating motive. If we are trying to get into a better state, it is for us to decide if that be simply and wholly selfish. All actions are surrounded by desire as the rust is round the polished metal or the smoke round the fire, but we must try. So if we fix for ourselves the rule that we will try to do the very best we can for others, we will generally be led right. If we rely on the higher self and aspire to be guided by it, we will be led to the right even if the road goes through pain, for sorrow and pain are necessary for purification of the soul. But if we wish to run away from an environment because we do not like it and without trying to live in it while not of it, we are not altering ourselves by simply altering the circumstances, and may not always thereby gain anything.

—W. Q. Judge