Annie Besant

Superhuman Men in History and Religion Annie Besant

We are to deal here with the special manifestations of two Superhuman Men in History and Religion, with the life, the power, of two Supreme Teachers of the world. Tonight the general theory is to be the subject of discourse; we are to trace through age after age the re-appearance of this World-Teacher for the helping of man, for the founding of great religions. Then, in another discourse, we are to study the subject from its more mystical side, to consider the relation of the human Spirit to the divine, and to try to see the conditions of the unfolding of the Christ in man. Those of you who are familiar with Christian teaching will remember how the great Initiate, S. Paul, pointed out that it was the intention of the Christian religion to bring about the birth of the Christ within the individual believer, and that the Christ-Child, thus born in the human Spirit, was to grow and to develop until the full stature of the Christ was reached in man. Until that becomes objectively true, as it is ever true implicitly, in the human being, Christ cannot become the first-born among many brethren, surrounded by, those who have reproduced in themselves His own likeness, so that the great family of the Sons of God shall be realised as the rationale of the evolution of the Sons of Man.