The inroads of other forms of thought, the slackening of the grasp of the believer on the realities of the unseen worlds, have diminished religious authority, and the power of those unseen realities has weakened as time has gone on.

So if we take the case of Hinduism or Christianity we find them giving back before the inroads of a more materialistic philosophy, before the inroads of a self-assertive science.

We find among cultured and thoughtful people in the East and West there has been a great slackening of hold on the teachings of religion, and that the power exercised over the lives of believers has become much less real than in earlier days.

That is inevitable, the result of the efflux of time, and the need for the recurrence of spiritual impulses lies in that fact, which is ever repeating itself.

Just in the same way in which we read in the _Bhagavad-Gita_ that by the efflux of time this yoga disappears, and then some teacher comes in order to restore vividness to the life, so it is over and over again in the case of every great spiritual movement.
Now when we apply these manifest principles and facts to the latest spiritual movement, that which gave birth to the Theosophical Society, we find that we are running through, in a very short time, the same series of facts as characterised the religions of the past.