A phrase she once used, that I have quoted to you before, is the complaint that "they have turned our Masters into cold far-off stars, instead of living men," and on the fact that They are living men she continually insisted; for it is by virtue of that living manhood that They are able to play the part that They play in the evolution of the race.
Others have other work to do as regards humanity, as regards the destinies of the nations, and so on, but these particular people are still in close touch with the humanity to which They belong, and They deliberately refuse to go on away from it, remaining with it until humanity, at least with regard to very, very large numbers of its members, has reached the position in which They stand to-day, as the promise of what humanity shall be, the first-fruits of humanity as it is.

They are specially concerned with the direct teaching, training, and helping of man, in the quickening of his evolution; and the reason the body is retained is in order that this close personal touch may be kept, primarily with Their disciples, and then through Their disciples with comparatively large numbers of people.

And it is a marked and significant fact, that just in proportion as a religion has lost touch with this aspect of the Divine Life which we call the Life of the Master, so has it tended to become more formal, less highly vitalised, less spiritual, with less of the mystic element in it, and more of the literal; so that it becomes necessary in the efflux of time that every now and again a Master should come forth from the Great White Lodge, and testify again upon earth to the reality of the tie between the Elder Brothers of the race and the younger brothers who are living constantly in the physical world.
Now one distinguishing mark of a Master, His chief function, we may say, is to perform the greatest act of sacrifice which is known in the Occult Hierarchy, save the act of the One who is called The Great Sacrifice, the Silent Watcher, whose sacrificial act is still greater than the sacrificial acts performed by Those who are spoken of as Masters.

This particular act of sacrifice, occurring from time to time at the beginning of a new epoch in religion and civilisation, is performed by one of the Body, who volunteers to start a further spiritual impulse in the world, and to bear the karma of the impulse that He generates.

That may not appear to you at first glance, unless you have gone into the subject carefully, to be such a transcendent act of sacrifice as it really is.