You are not likely, on the physical plane, to fall into the blunder of thinking that because a man is a good chemist he has authority on moral problems: you will at once see the absurdity.

But many of you do not see that the same is true when you deal with good chemists or electricians belonging to the astral or mental planes.
They have no more authority _qua_ their knowledge of these planes than the chemist.

I often wish that in the Theosophical Society the old fable of the Jewish Rabbis was better remembered and applied.

Two Rabbis were arguing, and one of them, to support his side of the argument, made a wall fall down; whereupon the other Rabbi sensibly remarked: "Since when have walls had a voice in our discussions ?" That spirit is of enormous importance, and does not in any sense touch the fact that you find the great Founders of religions and the illuminated men who surrounded them were men who had power to produce phenomena of various kinds, to heal the sick, to make the lame to walk, and so on, and that phenomena always accompanied the great religious Teacher in the past.

These things did not give Him His religious authority: they were simply the outcome of His knowledge of natural laws; for a man who is thoroughly spiritual has matter subject to him on every plane in Nature.