What Theosophy Is (Chapter I, page 3)

One of the most striking advantages of Theosophy is that the light which it
brings to us at once solves many of our problems, clears away many
difficulties, accounts for the apparent injustices of life, and in all
directions brings order out of seeming chaos. Thus, while some of its
teaching is based upon the observation of forces whose direct working is
somewhat beyond the ken of the ordinary man of the world, if the latter
will accept it as a hypothesis he will very soon come to see that it must
be a correct one, because it, and it alone, furnishes a coherent and
reasonable explanation of the drama of life which is being played before
him.

The existence of Perfected Men, and the possibility of coming into touch
with Them and being taught by Them, are prominent among the great new
truths which Theosophy brings to the western world. Another of them is the
stupendous fact that the world is not drifting blindly into anarchy, but
that its progress is under the control of a perfectly organized Hierarchy,
so that final failure even for the tiniest of its units is of all
impossibilities the most impossible. A glimpse of the working of that
Hierarchy inevitably engenders the desire to co-operate with it, to serve
under it, in however humble a capacity, and some time in the far-distant
future to be worthy to join the outer fringes of its ranks.

This brings us to that aspect of Theosophy which we have called religious.
Those who come to know and to understand these things are dissatisfied with
the slow æons of evolution; they yearn to become more immediately useful,
and so they demand and obtain knowledge of the shorter but steeper Path.
There is no possibility of escaping the amount of work that has to be done.
It is like carrying a load up a mountain; whether one carries it straight
up a steep path or more gradually by a road of gentle slope, precisely the
same number of foot-pounds must be exerted. Therefore to do the same work
in a small fraction of the time means determined effort. It can be done,
however, for it has been done; and those who have done it agree that it far
more than repays the trouble. The limitations of the various vehicles are
thereby gradually transcended, and the liberated man becomes an intelligent
co-worker in the mighty plan for the evolution of all beings.

A Textbook of Theosophy by C.W. Leadbeater (1912).