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Title: Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul

Author: Ammyeetis

Release date: May 8, 2006 [eBook #18355]

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIGHTS AND HERESIES PERTAINING TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL ***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

INSIGHTS AND HERESIES PERTAINING TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL

by

AMMYEETIS (Persian)

Second Edition 1916

Christopher Publishing House Boston Copyright 1913 by the Christopher Press Copyright 1916 by the Christopher Publishing House

DEDICATION.

To those heroic minds who can truly say: "My soul is my own," and bravely maintain it through everything—in spite of Church or State—I do offer with earnest congratulations and my loving greetings, these fragmentary thoughts of

AMMYEETIS.

Our revered Emerson loaned his Plato to a neighbor. Meeting him some time afterward he said to him: "How did you like Plato?" "Very much," the farmer answered, "very much indeed. I see he has a great many of my idees." And so, my readers—if there be such—there may be herein set forth some of your own familiar thoughts which you may not have found opportunity to express in such guise as appears in this small book.

CONTENTS.

  No New Thing
  Evolution
  Slowness of Evolution
  The Work of Nature
  A New Science
  World Making
  Imperfections Revealed
  World Origin
  Spirit Individualized through Matter
  World Signs
  World Growth
  Death a Benefactor
  World Progress
  The Origin of Evil
  Vibration
  Life
  Churches Money Makers
  Life in Nature
  Heaven
  Nature Spirits
  Experience
  Spiritualism
  Phenomena
  Mediumship
  The Migrations of our Race
  The Discipline of Life
  Homogeneity of the Race
  Of God
  Of Jesus
  The Gods
  Knowledge of Occult Law
  Evanescence of Mere Beliefs
  The Fount of Inspiration for All
  Man versus Death
  Fear of Death
  Test of Character
  Character Forming
  Man the Final Earth Product
  Superstitions
  Self-Justice
  Symbolism
  Love
  Ideals of Love
  The Needs of Woman
  Man versus Woman
  Natural Cruelty of the Undeveloped
  The Worst Sin
  Reincarnation
  Processes of Reincarnation
  Education of Children
  Egotism
  Responsiveness
  Hell
  The Commonplace
  Petroleum
  Law
  Communism
  Happiness
  Pain
  Foes in the Household
  The Inner Life
  Root of Evils
  Rest in Change
  Miserliness
  Special Providence
  Human Destiny
  Ethical Law
  Human Life
  Animal Likeness
  Natural Superstition
  Adaptiveness of Man
  Devil Worship
  Fanaticism
  Truth
  Christs
  Hero Worship
  Reason
  Sympathy
  New Religions
  The Growth Processes of the Human Soul
  Necessity for Phenomena
  Will
  Change of Atoms
  Our Limitations
  Final Race Experience
  Religious Performances
  Of Teachers
  Wise Use of Money
  Genius
  Thoughts Are Things
  Unfoldment
  Inventions
  Divine Healing
  Surplus
  Analysis of the Lord's Prayer
  Absurd Beliefs
  The Resurrection
  The Creator
  Retributive Justice
  The Soul
  Woman

Insights and Heresies

Pertaining to

The Evolution of The Soul

NO NEW THING.

There is no new revelation to be given to man; there is no need of it. Those who have labored most strenuously to evolve from their inner consciousness a new, a better religion, have found themselves bogged in the mire of their egotism which has landed them in a police court, or they have been confronted by exactly the same problems as those from which they have sought to escape. Few, indeed, have survived the test of time. There is an ancient promise that stands yet for man's use: "To him that hath (improved) shall more be given, and from him that hath not (improved) shall be taken away that which he already has." This was never meant to apply to material things—it could not—it was spoken in reference to the gift of understanding, and of using the occult, the psychic law. Many psychics have lost their spiritual gifts through failing to understand that endless progress is the law that forces souls along the way of life. No stopping by the way to gather shells upon the shore, no aimless looking back; but work with stout heart and resolute will. It all means work, overmastering habits of thought and action, lifting the soul from the grooves of heredity, and in all ways making aspiration attract the inspiration that sustains the soul.

EVOLUTION.

All subjects pertaining to our knowledge of the soul are too subtle to be weighed and proved by external intellect alone. Our lives are ruled by such a hotch-potch of inherited beliefs and tendencies, that it is almost impossible for us to use any discrimination concerning them; or to arraign ourselves before the tribunal of our own better judgment in such manner as to enable us to separate the false and effete ethical and religious influences, from the wise and true, which alone are abiding and permanent.

Thus we grope and stumble along through our earthly lives, burdened with ideas which were set in motion far back in a crude age, and which were so well adapted to their time that they still vibrate to the tendencies of our own day. This applies to every department of human experience, and were it not that we are, as a huge family, better than our cherished beliefs, higher in the scale of development than these would seem to indicate, we should still be under the dominion of the so-called "Dark Ages." The most important and the dearest phase of human experience must come, of course, through its religious beliefs, and as they are narrow and superstitious, on the one hand, or grand with faith and understanding of law, on the other, do we judge of the status of the individual, the community, and the race; and the advances made upon this line mark the progress of what we term civilization on this planet.

There is no time so trying, so full of agony to the soul, as is that hour when it first begins to doubt the absolute, unquestionable truth of the creeds it has hitherto blindly accepted, and in which it has fully believed. Creeds are the swaddling clothes of the soul, and must inevitably be outgrown and laid aside as the mind of man grows more and more capable of comprehending the truth which is to set it free from the trammels of mere blind belief.

It is so comfortable to have our spiritual faith ready made for us, our paths all mapped out, and our final destiny made plain and sure, provided only that we remain faithful in our adherence to them as they are set forth by our parents and spiritual guardians, that when the great, ever-surging, resistless tidal wave of progress first reaches the soul, it can only stand in dumb agony, like one upon the seashore watching its last hope go down beneath the waste of mighty waters. Torn from its anchorage of inherited beliefs, it is sure to be tempest-tossed, rent and torn, buffeted by conflicting tendencies, cast upon many a desert island of unfaith, and haunted by miserable doubts and black despair, ere it hears and heeds the pilot of truth, the only guide to the peaceful haven of eternal life. Happy, indeed, are they who tarry not upon the weary way; but who have within them that aspiration, that endless cry for light, which shall always, in God's providence, compel the needed response and guidance; for many honest, earnest men and women, lacking this attribute of the soul, fail all through life to reach this only true solution of the riddle of human existence. Kind and sincere friends say of them: "Oh! if they had only remained faithful to the religion of their fathers, they would have found happiness and peace." But the law of evolution brings each and every soul to the point where it must stand alone with God, there to discover and establish its relationship to the Divine, irrespective of all preconceived ideas and notions, superstitions, and ignorance. This is exactly what every soul must come to—the aggregation of powers and forces of body and soul resulting in the fully developed and rounded-out individuality of any given personality. These are the rare and unusual men and women, the fully flowered out, the richest fruitage of any and all races, and it is to these that we must look for that union of sympathy with and comprehension of the needs and requirements of all which is to usher in the reign of peace, and universal good will on earth.

Jesus of Nazareth went before us on the path, the only way cast up for earnest souls to walk in. There has never been given to the world any system of ethics superior to his. He recognized the homogeneity of the race—"Each for all, all for each," was the whole import of his teachings. In him was epitomized the experience of the race. Each and every soul must wear its crown of thorns, and bear its cross and suffer crucifixion, ere the soul astray from God, immersed in, and overwhelmed by matter, can be forced to relinquish its hold on, its love for the external, material things pertaining to this world. But it has to be, it certainly must be, the experience of every creature born of woman. Be sure, O soul! if none of these experiences have ever been realized by you, that you are but just now entering upon the inevitable rounds which must attend your connection with, and relationship to this earthly sphere of being. Such are as the insensate clod, having as yet neither spiritual sense, nor moral responsibility. Nature's processes are slow; but be sure that the goal is appointed, and that God will be there and will wait till we come.

When Jesus said: "The poor ye have always with you," he did not refer to dollars and cents only, but to that poverty of intellect, that barrenness of the moral nature which makes a human being a reproach and a terror to his kind. These we shall always have to deal with, to educate if we can, to constrain from overt acts of evil, and to protect ourselves from in all the works and ways of life.

So painful and slow is the process of character-forming that millions of souls pass on from this sphere of life to the spirit world so lacking in individuality that they have no more power for any expression of themselves upon that plane of being than they had when they were living here. Not as much, in fact, for the physical body and brain have always some possible function and use while they hold their relationship to the world of material life, which function and use are laid aside when they are put through the sifting process of physical death, and in all cases, unless the powers of the ego as exercised here are supplanted by a sufficient growth of the spiritual nature to sustain the ego in its new relationship, and give to it the impetus needed to start it forward upon lines of usefulness and growth, it naturally fails to waken to any sort of realization of itself and its possible career in its new life. This is specially true of those persons who have been psychologized by those teachings which relegate the souls of human beings to the cold clasp of the ground, until the expected day of judgment; or of those poor, overworked men and women to whom heaven seems only a place to sleep and rest in; or again, of still another class of minds that has brought itself to a belief in utter extinction after the close of this external life. These are the "shades," the "shells" we hear of, for there are times when the subtle inner sense of these sleeping ones is stirred to action by the wails of the loving, longing ones left on earth to mourn; and, as is the case with one in somnambulic sleep, the spirit walks and talks, in response to the demands of friends, through those persons who are gifted with the aura necessary for the medial agency. These excursions of the soul into the realm of matter, thus made by and through the offices of clairvoyants and seers, the repeated arousings of the ego from its contented sleep are finally highly educational, and result in resurrecting the forces of the enfranchised being, and setting them in motion on the lines of useful work for humanity. For this medial service which is thus being rendered to the spirit world by such gifted persons still living here in the body, multitudes are daily and hourly expressing their gratitude and appreciation.

We have somewhat abolished our old, long-established Hell, and now, to be consistent, we must also do away with our preconceived ideas of a Heaven of eternal rest; for why should the souls of men be wrapped in useless slumbers, until the strong overwhelming influence of the law of progress sweeps them up like dry leaves before a whirlwind, and rushes them along to the gates of a conscious life, through a new relationship upon the physical plane? The spirit does not weary, and when the exhausted body is laid aside, why not enlist the services of all to whom any appeal can be made? Thus shall we all be growing together, and Death shall be forced to cast aside its grim and dreadful seeming and show for the angel it is. Ah! how could we go on and on in the narrow limitations of this small beginning of a life, if Nature did not kindly call a halt somewhere on the road, while we, taking fresh courage, start out in our new career with our entire being adjusted to laws which are working in harmony with the divine will.

SLOWNESS OF EVOLUTION

There have been times in the lives of all soul-grown people when the inner consciousness has clearly perceived that some given experience may mean an important crisis in the expression of their individual character. But not frequently, in the ordinary lives of human beings, do they meet up with really great events, or personal experiences that create for them special overturnings of their ideas, or any change of personal habits. To the mind of youth, life seems a plainly simple, straight-forward way; but when overtaken by results of unconsidered actions, for which there has been no preparation, there dawns upon it the consciousness of appalling vistas, and visions of future possibilities that are overpowering.

As we journey forward on the path of existence, life becomes ever more and more complicated, and the need, the overwhelming demand for an understanding of the ever-varying problems presented to the mind for consideration, and the constantly urgent necessity for wise decisions must call into action all our highest powers of the intellect and reason, in order to secure to us the best results from the opportunities given us to acquire knowledge. Every one of our experiences are bits in the mosaic of our lives, and without them the picture would be incomplete.

But with all, we are forced to realize how unfinished and unsatisfactory are nearly all of our experiences of earthly existence. It is, indeed, "a thing of shreds and patches." But we are caught in the web of material existence from which there can be no lawful escape, save by unpremeditated physical death. We are thrust into the seething cauldron of formative life. The entire race of man, forced forward by the resistless power of the law of progress, is on the everlasting journey to the heights of perfected being. To us, enmeshed in the ties of interest and affection, the various heredities and the worldly Karmas which hold us fast, the slow, unnumbered processes of evolution on this, our home world, as recorded in history seem unendurably long. But time is naught—eternity is unending—and "ten thousand years are but as a day with God," the great Maker and Moulder of our immortal souls.

THE WORK OF NATURE.

The planet itself is stirred to its very centre. On one side, the earth opens its horrible maw and swallows up uncounted numbers of her children, or spews out her molten interior in vast lava tides, overwhelming and destroying all within their reach. At the opposite side, great floods of gas and rock oil, set free by the operation of the drill, shoot up in the air and fall back upon the soil in a luminous spray, as like to liquid gold as aught not filled with the beloved auriferous metal could be. The waters loosed from their fastnesses over-reach their accustomed bounds, and great tidal waves are encountered in unexpected latitudes. Nature is rounding up her great circle, and making conditions for a new era.

A NEW SCIENCE.

A science of Spiritual evolution could be erected, based upon the teachings and ethics of Jesus Christ, that would put souls consciously in their true rank and grade, and make them known just as people are recognized by the college curriculums from which they have graduated.

WORLD MAKING.

The "fire-mist" and the mephitic vapors were finally swept away; another era was preparing. Incorporate in the world substance of which the planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life. Its crude material was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and the awful corresponding animal life. Birds and beasts and reptiles, each one more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earth and the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horrible creatures. Into this unaccountable menagerie came also the foreshadowing of man—a huge hairy creature possessing size and power to do battle with his animal compeers for supremacy in the seething, upgrowing land.

This was only the differentiation of the animal-man from the animal per se—the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs. From such rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot the human soul. This, after vast ages, grew into a state and condition through which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finally started on its endless earthly career.

With the birth of the soul came what we call the religious instinct, and man began to worship natural objects; animals and reptiles, the sun and finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods. The "phallic worship," worship of the human organs of creative power, gave the males great prominence. The female, woman, the mere matrix was considered, from the first, of far less importance. No one stopped to think, what is one without the other in the great world processes.

Nature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possible representation of her power, buried here and there specimens of her handiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even now being restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientists have been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, and the habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings of life on this earth.

Among these, too, have also been found the bones of huge human-like beings whose decadent progeny are still alive in limited number.

The gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the earth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends forth his note of warning, beating his great hairy breast, and all living things flee before him. Fancy what the awful first man—his progenitor—must have been! Science has never yet been able to discover the probable length of time it required for this crude age to endure in order to lay the foundation of the world; for time was not, and existence was recorded only by ages and aeons. But seven times their infernal progeny were nearly all swept off the planet by awful cataclysms and the whole affair had to be begun over again.

IMPERFECTIONS REVEALED.

The soul digs deep into the age-long deposits of knowledge, the results of countless experiences, and brings up the Real.

This has to be, the most successful egotist, the most deluded hypocrite must inevitably meet up with himself some day and begin to know the truth versus make-believe.

All souls are so veiled in the flesh, and held by the crowding necessities of their lives, that it is only on rare, unexpected occasions that the individual soul can throw down the barriers and show of what it is capable.

WORLD ORIGIN.

To be able to understand, even to our limited degree, something of our origin, and the purpose of our existence is most comforting and sustaining. In the beginning, the Creator sent to this planet a given number of beings intended for the exemplification of the law of evolution and soul growth. In the everlasting rounds of human life, no new souls are being created and sent here to work out their salvation through their experiences incident to the life of this young planet, earth. What appears to our limited perception to be the beginning of new lives is so only in relation to their present embodiment. All new souls now being born here are but returning from some other phase of existence. The whole human race is one family. Bound to the wheel of life, every individual soul must pass through all of the varied experiences that are set for its evolution. What they are not today, they have been, or must become. But not all people march over just the same highway to reach the soul's status. Details of experience do not count. It is the lesson learned, and practically applied that forwards the unfoldment of the individual in a comprehension and understanding of God's eternal truth. Only results in all things, temporal and spiritual, attest the unfoldment and growth of each and every soul.

It is only when man has evolved to the point of being more than a man, "a little lower than the angels," that the higher spheres of activity are necessary for his further progress. To expect to develop in the worlds of finer substance than that of earth before he has learned all that earthly experiences can teach him, is like "placing a child in the higher classes of a school before he has mastered the lessons of the lower."

SPIRIT INDIVIDUALIZED THROUGH MATTER.

As spirit per se has no entity, and only evolves individuality through its relationship with matter; and has no other conscious expression; the so long-talked-of "Fall of man" was not a fall downward, but it was a process upward, necessary to his being, to his existence as man.

WORLD SIGNS.

Our planet, true to her everlasting record, has put forth her potent reorganizing power to celebrate the ushering in of the new era.

Not less marvelous are the signs and indications of great changes taking place upon the visible planes of the lives of men. Hand in hand march the visible and the imponderable forces of this earthly life. Ignorance and vapid superstitions can no longer block the doorway of the living Christ.

God wills to know, and be known of his own, and to hold his love a free gift to all races of men.

The trump of recollection and of recognition has sounded. The dead have already risen, all along the lines, and no power can hale them back to their dreams.

Onward, ever upward points the finger of progress. Long hoarded wisdom and knowledge of the forces of nature are pouring into the minds of seers, and of wizards of science; and these long separated and divorced streams are evoluting to the unison of material and occult sciences, which is destined to bring in the reign of peace and prosperity to all the peoples of the earth, and to bring to light the relics of past ages, cunningly hidden away in the vast womb of nature that they might be preserved and brought forth to our knowledge in these later days. By the undeniable record yielded up from buried cities and storied crypts, and in the skeletons of mummies of both animals and men of those most ancient times, she is showing us where she began the present cycle, now closing in about the race, with great clattering of forces and profound portents in earth and sky.

The equilibrium of the universe is maintained by the transition of its forces. Atlantis, matured and ripened, sinks beneath the sea, and her accumulated wealth of wisdom and knowledge is transferred to other continents to arise at the appointed time to enrich and bless the land of their adoption; and all art and science is but shining today in the reflected, reawakened light of past ages.

In view of the revelations being made on all sides, we may well reiterate Solomon's wise saying: "There is nothing new under the sun." There can be nothing absolutely new. There is only endless iteration and readjustment of powers and forces to fit the need of the day and generation.

Nature buffets her children bitterly and wipes out her surplus of human life as she destroys the overproduction of beast and bird, of insect and reptilian life. She inspires the minds of men with an overmastering desire for possessions. She hides her wealth in inaccessible places and sets her jealous, invisible forces to guard and determinedly hold all possible avenues of approach to them. But this world was given to man to conquer and own and make much of; and the glitter of a speck of useful metal in a stray boulder in the lonely cañon; or the chance outcropping of rock which to the practised eye denotes the nearness of the deposit of oil—these, or any of the thousand and one signs, she hangs out along the path in which man is destined to march on his way to absolute sovereignty, set his forces of intellect and will in motion, and he will never rest from his labors until he stands upon the pinnacles of the gods, the crowned monarch of all nature's forces on this planet.

All phenomena are negative, and are only the external garniture of the world of man, the spirit, the child of the Eternal, of the father and mother Creators of him. Thus man is, by absolute inheritance, the king, and the ruler over all nature. But not without effort can he enter and possess and maintain his power over his own. Ice and frosts, and searing sun, and lonely wilds, and trackless wastes, and countless waters, and evil beasts, and horrible reptiles—all, all he must encounter and set at naught in his trackless journey. Carefully must he force the wilderness to bloom, and by his wise efforts "make glad the waste places" of the earth. Wherever the foot of man has been set, there is it "hallowed ground." Whatever may have been his intent or whatever his fate, in his wake shall surely follow the manifest purpose of that ever-ruling Power which led him. Everywhere along the way, Nature trails her loose ends, well baited, with which to catch the unwary, and the whitening bones of the lonely emigrant family lost on the plains, and the snowy hair of the dead mountaineer bleaching on high summits or woven in the nests of birds, or the bodies of dead mariners, or the lonely corpse of the treacherously slain, pulsing with the tide on foreign shores, or the miners in their pits, forced by the deadly "damps" from all visible connection with human life, or the child of a superior race held captive by savages, or the beautiful white girl sold into the harem of a barbarous sultan, or any or all other of such expressions of destiny in the isolated lives of men are but pioneering the way of the race to complete homogeneousness and unquestioned ownership of the whole wide earth.

WORLD GROWTH.

All of nature's processes are slow and always evolutionary. The controlling laws are subtle and secret and can never be comprehended or understood save as they work out in visible results. There is every indication that it has required an illimitable series of ages to evolve even the physical form of man in the unnumbered races of the human family from the first semi-human life to man as we see him now—clever and strong of brain and will, daring and equal to great emergencies, and in inventive, creative and executive gifts a very god of power and might. The laws of evolution refer primarily to the individual planet, Earth, and include all that it contains—in a word, all things in any way related to it. Mineral deposits and crumbling rocks nourish the vegetable world; the vegetable world provides sustenance to the animal kingdom, and it, in turn, with all the others combined, sustains all human life; but its real root, its permanent existence, is in the planet itself. Each and all of these diverse manifestations of law coordinated, constitute the mysterious modes and methods of the evolution of life from the lower to the higher status of being, and it works on, and ever on eternally, till human life finds its completion and satisfaction in the fulfillment of the law which merges the advanced and prepared soul in the Universal Spirit and crowns its final evolution with its at-one-ment with its Creator.

Nature does not duplicate her handiwork, but cunningly sets her sign on every leaf and branch to insure individuality. She throws protecting arms around all her growing life of fruit and vegetable in order that each shall reproduce of its own kind, and thus keep intact the orderly succession, and that there shall be no lack of nourishment for the children of men.

She gives without stint to all the peoples of the earth her world-stuff to be worked over into human flesh, and animal fibre. But no tiniest grain of her possessions has ever, or will ever escape from her hand, and the daily debris from all earth-made bodies is her constant toll. When the forms are set free from the life principle which has pervaded them in their earthly career, the circle is rounded, and when the grave-rite, dust to native dust we here restore to our great mother is uttered, she is the gainer; for the operation of thus passing the material of which the planet is made through the highest created forms of life, brings it into a certain relationship to spirit, and thus the evolution, the spiritualization of the world-stuff of the planet itself is going forward.

DEATH A BENEFACTOR.

Death is a benefactor to the human race. How could we bear the burden of existence if Nature did not somewhere on the march "call a halt" while the angels of dissolution tenderly unloose our burdens of pain and sorrow, and disappointment, and stultifying regrets, and remorses for past ill doings and shortcomings?

WORLD PROGRESS.

It is known only to the lesser gods, who keep the celestial "accounts," how many times the swaggering, bully-ragging, brawling, piratical, and murderous human family has swept around this globe. Here and there relics of their status, their growth in the external, material conditions of life are being exhumed, wrung from the faithful clasp of Mother Earth, to excite the wonder of the day and time. Many of the attributes of these lost races, their arts and their religions, have come to light; but whence they came, and how they perished, is an unsolved mystery. From the processes of disintegration—earthquakes, and widespread volcanic action—now going on, we can readily conceive of the manner in which vast multitudes of humanity have been removed from this planet to make room for still other races and peoples. The great pilgrimage still goes on. Unnumbered hordes following the secret instinct of evolution, unceasingly press forward from the East toward the setting sun. This same army, in a former incarnation, went forth over the land where they lived to slay and exterminate; in this embodiment, here in America, they hew out the rocks, and toil in the mines. They harvest the grain that is to feed the hungry multitude that is speeding on toward this new land as fast as the modern conveniences can fetch them. Thus they serve instead of destroying humanity—a great advance toward civilization.

There has been, there will always be an unvarying round of tearing down and upbuilding in the whole wide realm of nature. Nothing, not the tiniest grain or the most ponderous production of skilled hands, ever stands still. All things are in vibration, and their permanency depends wholly upon the rate of vibratory motion. Here and there all the way along, from the earliest times of which there has been any record, great souls have blossomed out, and have carried aloft the God-given light of intelligence and culture. These inspired minds, great souls, have persisted in announcing their message to a darkened world, often in the face of direct want and persecutions; misunderstood and maligned, they were and are the saviors of the people of this undeveloped planet. Even yet, they are known and valued by but a limited number of supposedly intelligent people. While these inspired light-bringers were seeking to shed abroad in the minds of men the truths that shall make men free, the Church was devoted to closing, and holding fast shut every avenue of the human mind that might have a tendency to teach the people anything outside of their tenets which were the outcome of their weird imaginations. If anything could cause a doubt to arise in the Creative Mind as to the wisdom of letting loose on this small planet the pestiferous peoples that have swarmed over and possessed it, it must have been aroused by their demoniacal performances in the name of religion, that have disgraced the nature of man from the beginning of our knowledge of the world. While a perception of beauty and harmony is latent in the minds of men, it is the last of the attributes of the soul to develop. The figured semblances of God, hewn out of stone or wood by the primitive races, are mostly hideous inventions of the evil thoughts of evil minds. From the terrifying African God, "Mumbo-Jumbo," to the artistic bronze representations of the Deity of the nations of the East all are marked with awe-enforcing ferocity and ugliness, instead of by the soul-inspiring lineaments of love and beauty. Tremblingly the minds of men have groped their way along through the mazes of ignorance and enforced darkness to a degree of personal liberty; and every picture painted, every bit of sculpture achieved in the interest of harmony and beauty is testimony to the persistency of the inspiration vouchsafed to man of the Creator's love of beauty, and of the final state of harmony to be reached by humanity.

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

"All evil is only undeveloped good" has come to be the "shibboleth" of not only the Spiritualists, but of many other of the latter-day cults. It sounds fine, beautiful, and is—Praise God!—in a large sense, true. It is a beautiful reaction from the ancient blasphemy taught by the priests and pastors anent hell and the devil. The comforting belief that the above quoted statement settles the whole matter is accepted and believed in. Since the supposed dethronement of "Auld Hornie," as the Scotch named him, as head devil, it has not been thought necessary to give the matter much if any consideration.

Mediums, especially, have gladly ignored the fact of the possibility of there often being in their séances the very presence of potent and powerful evil influences.

Spiritualism has flung wide the doors and given ignorant, and undeveloped humanity an equal opportunity with the refined, and good to express themselves. It is thus the only truly democratic religion ever made known on this planet! It recognizes all human beings, good and bad, as the children of one and the same Father, and that not one can be lost from the hand of God!

The peculiar people who have developed the strange power of mediatorship between this material world and the plane of existence known as the spiritual world have always been helped and sustained in their great work by their invisible friends and appointed spirit guardians, or they could never have carried forward their important mission to the people of this earth.

Regardless of all the efforts of the enemies and traducers of Spiritualism, the spread of the knowledge of the unfolding spiritual philosophy has been and is marvelous; and the establishment of the fact of man's existence, continued after physical death, through varied phenomena, is in itself the proof of its being the work, not of Satan, but of a beneficent God. And why not? The Creator of us all must know his earth-children's needs for their further evolution and growth!

There have been great searchings, at various times, trying to discover the "origin of evil." Vast stores of uncanny legends, and tales of wonders have been handed down to us in explanation of this most baffling mystery.

The destructive force in nature had no "origin." Just as God, the Constructive Force, had none. It was, as God was. It is and always will be, while God and nature are.

It rides the whirlwind and the flood, and differentiates itself through the smallest minutia of the affairs of human life. It is the primeval element, the "pure cussedness" which has to be conquered, or adjusted in every human being. It essays to bar all progress; Ignorance and Superstition are its blinded handmaids. It exacts the fearful penalties of scornfully misunderstood efforts, if not ostracism and persecution, for the use of the diviner faculties. It is the spirit of unconquered ill. It is the genius of the utterly selfish will of man.

But it is when it allies itself with the intellect and will of man, and becomes the motive power, and thus expresses itself in concrete form, as is often the case, that our sympathies are touched and our sense of justice aroused, and we feel our lack of protection from the "powers and principalities of the air." Our only refuge is in growing to and experiencing a perfect at-one-ment with the eternal law of the opposing, the Constructive Force—God. There is no protection, no safety, but in the Divine Love and Wisdom.

VIBRATION.

There was no beginning; there can be no ending. There is a constant, undeviating process of changing and readjustment of all the forces of the universe. All is vibration. None of nature's forces are at rest, at equilibrium. Build you a fine dwelling, and ere it is finished for your occupancy, the disintegrating forces will have made a raid upon the material of which it is constructed. Take notice of the signs of decomposition going on in everything around you—the accumulation of fluff in your rooms, in the innermost of your garments, along the seams. So also do the rocks and mountains yield themselves to dust, and so does all the planet reverberate with the resistless onward march of the law of progress, unfoldment, evolution from the lower to a higher form of expression.

Lands edging the seas and the inland waters, from their constant erosion, slip away and are lost. Continents disappear, undermined by earthquakes and similar convulsions of nature, and new lands arise from the bowels of some faraway ocean to keep the balance even.

LIFE.

From time immemorial the researches of men in the vain effort to discover and make known to the world the origin of life, of all life, on the planet earth and elsewhere, have been most anxiously considered. These efforts of the inquiring minds of men have not been altogether fruitless of results; because through them has been made manifest the most marvelous of all the facts in nature, that "there is no death," that "what seems so is transition." It has also become known and understood of late years, that from the ephemera of life, of an hour or of a day up to the highest archangel, through all the intermediate grades of being, visible and invisible, there are no vacant spaces. Everywhere there is an overwhelming volume of life, actual though not conscious or individualized, until the higher ranges of human life become known and correlated. Comes the man with the scalpel. He dissects the human brain, and is disgusted at finding no clew to the secret cause and source of life. He never suspects, he does not conceive of the fact that there is in everyone, an immutable, invisible power—a spirit germ—nor would he believe in its potency if he knew it were true. Then there is the man with the retorts and the scales, and the "residues." He announces to the world that he can create life without any help from the "Great Spirit" people talk so much about. There is also the man with the bottle full of water, with a handful of mud at the bottom. He is sure he can produce living organisms; might even set agoing a new race of beings, if he only had time, and a larger bottle! Back of every expression of life we know abides the source, the cause of all existence, so hid, so truly an integral part of life as never to yield a knowledge of itself either to the scalpel of the physicians or to the electrical battery of the explorer of mysteries. Into this sphere can no man come. Herein can be no meddling of the human intellect.

Through this searching for the source, the cause of life, man has been brought face to face with law, with a force he can never understand or conquer, or adjust to the demands or suggestions of his will. From ancient expressions of intelligence have been handed down to us the name, the title, God, as a concrete expression of this power that holds dominance over all created beings.

Another important revelation made to man is the fact that there is but one law, per se.

It is an established, consecutive, endless chain from the beginnings of human life here up to the absolute ultimate of the immortal soul. It proves the homogeneity of the whole human race; it declares the value of existence here, and explains the logical sequence of its continuance beyond this fragment of life into nature's invisible realms.

What we shall do, each one of us, with our individual portion of life; how we shall work out our personal experiences, and to what end is another matter. There is our heredity which is, in every case, so mixed as to yield but little of the primal strain, and which gives to each one of us unknown possibilities, or undesired idiosyncracies to fight out and eradicate from the nature. The many failures to discover the mystery of life surely ought to prove to all experimenters the truth that spirit holds the only key to its endless mystery.

CHURCHES MONEY MAKERS.

There is no detail of the ordinary human life of all who are in any way connected with the church, which has not been exploited for money.

There is no end to the myths and fables that have been put before the superstitious and ignorant, and each and every one has its price; and every celebration draws its pay; and all for the glory of God, not at all for the help of man. The peasants and other laborers starve, and are overwhelmed by the riot of fatal disease.

As a money-making concern, it leaves nothing to be wished for—it is a great success.

There was no "beginning," there can be no "ending." Whatever appears ended in our experience is only in seeming, and in other shapes and in transformed relationships will appear again and again, asserting "There is no death, what seems so is transition," change of elements and forces. There is but one law; one creative centre. One model for advanced individualized life in any world; in all worlds. The whole purpose and intent of all creation is simply to render all inert, unused matter into life. The universal Spirit pervades all things. Mineral; vegetable; animal; human; angel; one unbroken chain, from the sod up to divine perfection, from the pigmy races we see here, on this small globe, up, forever upward and onward to the courts of the "sons of God"; to the spheres of the eternally immortal. Ignorant mortals assert from time to time, the day and the hour of the "End of the World," and foolishly prepare for the final destruction of this planet. It is true, this earth is always coming to an end, and always rehabilitating itself with its own unused materials. Mountains slide down and fill up the valleys. The waters of the sea undermine and gnaw off big slices from the land; all, all is motion, vibration; nothing stands still. If it were possible for anything in the universe to stop, to break the everlasting chain, there would be no universe; there would be only chaos come again, and all the work of setting the planets a-spinning round and round their centres and apportioning the orbits of the stately suns, and their places in the precessions of their accompanying worlds; all would go for nothing, all would have to be begun again, and on the same lines exactly. There are no other; there is no other law, and the name of the law that holds all in imperishable harmony, is Love, just Love.

LIFE IN NATURE.

The microscope has revealed to us the life and habits of myriads of creatures of whose existence we had previously no knowledge. We had not even a suspicion that what to our unaided vision appeared inert elements held a rampant, multitudinous life, nowhere dead, but always surging and changing, ever replacing death and decay with a new life all its own. Nature's luxuriance everywhere fills us with wonder and delight. The fragrant ferny depths of the forest, and the lush growth of the rank marsh-land, the immeasurable sands of the ocean-edge hiding in their mysterious sameness innumerable and beautiful shells and corals, and the mountain top heaped up with boulders, or crumbling by nature's processes into pebbly imponderance.

Life, swarming everywhere. Tiny leaflets giving succor and shelter to tinier animal life—its special fairy. Huge beasts couchant in majestic trees, guarding against invasions, with a fierce, jealous rage inherited from the gnomes and satyrs.

Deep sea depths untouched by lightnings, where the kraken makes his home; jolly dolphins disporting in the sunlight, responding to the cry of the hovering wild duck and gull. Human beings overcrowding in the oldest settled portions of the globe, until nature's resources for their sustenance are wellnigh exhausted.

All these, and many more, might justly be enumerated to illustrate the bountiful and inexhaustible resources of the great creative, reconstructive Power in the universe of matter.

Life, everywhere life, forcing out death and decay. Ever changing its form of expression. Reforming itself upon steadily advancing models. All nature swinging in circles so wide and vast as to require centuries for their completion.

One of the most fascinating doctrines of the Swedish Seer is contained in the "law of correspondences." By it many things, seemingly irregular, "fall into line," and become parts of a great process of development. Following this method, the earnest, searching mind, looking through nature up to "Nature's God," seeks to go beyond the confines of the mere animal, material existence, and come into sympathy with and get a knowledge of the world unseen, but often felt and recognized, spiritual life, filling all the spaces which seem to the earth-dimmed senses dull and void. There is no death, no vacancy in this realm of nature, any more than in that other, more tangible one, the outgrowth and the necessity of this great storm-tossed planet. But all the expressions of life in this sphere are different from those to which our material senses are accustomed, and require the action of another, a finer, more spiritual set of faculties in order to comprehend them even partially which, at the best, is all we can hope to do while we remain denizens of and subject to the laws which control this world of material substance.

"Jacob's dream" was not a dream only. It was a reality. From supernal heights "Ladders" are ever being dropped down to our earth, into our midst, upon which forms immortal and real "ascend and descend" according to our need and our demand upon them for love and help.

We are continually overshadowed by this supermundane existence. Its influences are both positive and negative, good and evil. It has powers adapted to every issue of human experience; because it is the outgrowth, the fruitage of human life. Its roots are planted in this earth. Its topmost branches wave in the sunlight which flows from the "Throne of God." It is God. Not a separate and distinct being; but an intelligent principle of love abounding in everything; expressing itself through everything. Knowing no "high" or "low." Seeing no difference between the "just and the unjust"; showering down upon all alike, benisons of wisdom, and peace and good will.

Gathering all together in one embrace; the whole race of man, one undivided family. Its divine "Trinity" is Evolution, Progress, Liberty. Many minds reject this assumption of facts, because of the necessity which a recognition of them would involve for a readjustment of mental processes, and religious beliefs affecting their daily experience.

HEAVEN.

Millions of enfranchised souls pass from earth life and find the spirit world—the "Summerland"—a Heaven, and stay therein for vast lengths of time. The change from this life of toil, and misery to an existence of rest from all pain and sorrow of earthly existence is really Heaven enough for the average human mind. A place of beautiful surroundings, where everything necessary for their comfort is furnished them, without money and without price and, best of all, where they no longer fear being grabbed up and punished by the devil for their sins of ignorance committed when in the body. It is not possible for us, plunged, as we all are, into the vortex of this difficult existence, to realize what all this means to the world-weary. If one shall halt by the way, or fall aside from the great unending procession nothing stops. The terrible, tumultuous waves of humanity roll on, and the lost are not missed or mourned for, save by the few that were responsible for their coming, or for the awful lack of help and tendance that made them failures in the battle of life.

The great army of the commonplace, the neither positively good nor the very bad, is the largest class of all humanity. The most pestiferous and difficult to adjust to the law of progress and advancement. Hold one of them out of hell by the hair of the head, and when he is let go he only drops further in, and nothing teaches him but the "slings and arrows" of misfortune, and every dreadful experience that can be handed out to him. Much of this almost universally deplorable condition—it may be the whole of it—has been induced by false, unreasonable religious teachings. The human mind needs every inducement to effort to overcome its natural inertia instead of being put to sleep by promises of being exempt from all responsibility connected with its final redemption.

NATURE SPIRITS.

The "dwellers at the threshold" are the individualized entities of the elements of nature. Air, fire, earth depths, and seas. These belong to the domain of nature, pure and simple, and are met and controlled by the affinities of the chemicals of the material, physical organization of the individual. The most potent of these leading in the degree of material success to be achieved in dealing with material life.

Money getting in the mines, earth depths. All manufactories that require raging and continuous flame; ships to sail, and conquer water spirits; electrical and etherial forces that move in the air currents. These are the soulless, irresponsible "goblins" and "gnomes," "Fire spirits" and "ignes fatui" of the nether world. All human beings who progress at all have to deal with one or more of these forces. Beginning in blind ignorance, through struggle, the mortal will is developed and the mere animal man has set his foot upon a low rung of the ladder of the ascending series. Next, man has to deal with the primal races. The "Missing link" which will never be found save at the "threshold" where it combines its forces with those of man's other natural enemies, and keeps jealous watch and ward at every point of egress of the soul which seeks to enlarge its domain. Finally the will of man, with its long heredity of war with these potentialities, "at enmity with God," resisting the divine; even as these have striven to hold him in a perpetual slavery, is in its last struggle. The vast aggregation of human will, set free from the clog of the flesh, knowing nothing of the divine, seeing no guiding light, combines its forces, and commingles its powers with whatever its endless tentacles can reach. These are the powers and principalities of the air. These are the demons, "bad spirits," "devils" and "familiars" of the literature of the ages, and the presiding geniuses of many a phenomenon resulting from modern research into the mysteries of nature. As their intelligence exceeds that of the underlying grades, so just in that degree is their power increased, and used, to block the gateway that opens upon the path. Their abodes lie in outer darkness, or are illumined only by flashes of fictitious, and evanescent light from the expiring embers of earthly exhalations, and the phosphorescent gleams of decaying forms. The soul that has received an illumination from the Divine has in its keeping a talisman of power, yet none can escape these watchful ones.

"Here eyes do regard you in eternity's stillness." "Choose well; your choice is brief, but yet endless." The winged fiend, the "Appolyon," must be met and settled with at every turn of the way that leads to the kingdom which the Christ came to establish, and whose best name is "peace." In this grade, love finds no home, but its great prototype, the lust of the flesh, stealing ever the livery of heaven, lures on tender souls to their sad undoing.

By help of divine love alone can the soul journey safely onward and upward through this great concentrated, immediately-environing earth grade. It is solidly compact, sleepless and untiring, seeking ceaselessly whom it may win to its realm. It is the unrecognized longing of the soul for restoration to its divine heritage of love.

EXPERIENCE.

Experience is at the same time the surest and the slowest teacher of men. Wisdom, the crowning glory of humanity, is but an enlarged perception of man's needs, and how to meet them, based upon individual experience and observation of the effects of natural law upon all. An individual is an epitome of the world—society. Discipline is everywhere considered indispensable to the individual. Far more is it so to the world of society. Anarchy and revolution are no more efficient for the body politic than for the individual. Growth, slow and gradual, aggregation of power and wisdom through the education and enlightenment of its individual members, is the only safe and sure way to permanency and enduring life.

SPIRITUALISM.

In Spiritualism alone is to be found an expression of the religion of Jesus of Nazereth. It is truly democratic, giving to saint and sinner alike both here, in this life, and after death, an opportunity for redemption. Its first mission to the world is the proof it gives of a continued existence in which is still experienced all the idiosyncracies which marked the individual in earth life. This fact has either been ignored by certain classes of minds, or has been taken by them as proof positive of the hellish origin of its phenomena, whereas in this very expression of characteristic life lies its wonderful power and potency. From long-continued educational influence people out of churches, as well as inside of the influence of their superstitions, have come to idealize death, its awe-inspiring mystery and its strange variety. It is thought, by them, to be a sudden translation from a lower condition to a higher, wherein, through some divine hocus-pocus, the members of certain so-called "Evangelical" churches, no matter how worldly-minded, and selfish, or however false to their teachings they have been, or how false their lives to the divine ethics taught by the Lord, whose name they assume as their prerogative, that their through tickets to the supernal spheres are assured. It is believed that death purges them of all their sympathy with and attraction to mortal life, and that they are forever absolved from all their responsibilities, and freed from dependence upon the inter-relationships between the two conditions. Exactly the reverse is true. Multitudes of souls only begin their true living, their comprehension of life's meanings, after death has sifted them out of the ashes and lifeless embers of their mistaken ideas, or vicious indulgences. Shall these, then, be brought beneath the ban of limitless darkness, and exiled from the "many mansions" of our Heavenly Father's and Mother's house? A tiny rap, untraceable to any material source, a table moved by invisible force, a closed and locked piano skillfully played upon by unseen hands; these were the first links in an endless chain of eternal benefits pouring down from the smiling heavens upon the benighted children of earth. Again was heard "the voice as of one crying in the wilderness" of this world's marts for barter, and selfish gain; "Let him who hath ears to hear, let him hear." "The grave has lost its victory" and death is but a halt called in mercy and loving tenderness, that your weary souls may be refreshed by a draught from nature's founts and bountiful resources that you may mount upward as on the mighty wings of eagles; or discover for your wandering feet the path of rectitude and safety.

PHENOMENA.

All expressions of nature are phenomenal. Man is of all the most wonderful. A tiny spark of spirit encased in matter, by the irresistible law of progress evolving powers of brain, thought, consciousness, reason, intuition; unfolding, expanding; realizing finally his at-one-ment with his source, the cause of him—God—man immortal, illimitable. At certain points of unfoldment seemingly lost, great hue and cry from many—pin heads—who think they have discovered God, a failure. Watch out and see. Give the Lord a chance. Nothing is done with yet. In a very old hook of Hebrew history, there are recorded well-attested accounts of phenomena, which are so distinctly outside of the ordinary happenings of this material existence, that they were always recognized as being of a purely spiritual origin, method and purpose. Within the last century the same experiences have been vouchsafed to present humanity. Millions of people have attested the truth of a continuance of these same phenomena; they having taken place within the range of their own personal experience. And why not? The Creator knows what his children need in this, as well as in other ages. That human souls, the lives of human beings, persist after physical death, does not prove their eternal existence along the lines of highest soul evolution. The greatest possible unfoldment is not a gift of God. It is held only by the individual soul as the result of age-long study, and toil, through manifold embodiments, long-continued self renunciation, and sacrifices not yet known or understood. Its initiations are endless; its revelations of the infinite law are, at times, too seemingly trifling for recognition; but as the lapidary leaves no facet of the jewel uncut and unpolished, so the guardians—the guides and teachers of the candidates for spiritual unfoldment—omit no least lesson or discipline that can aid in perfecting the individual soul.

It is the meanest kind of bosh teaching people that there will be eternal punishment for ignorant wrong-doings in this short kindergarten experience of life, making them believe their last chance for anything better is gone forever. Half the sins that are committed here anyway are either sins against the conventionalities, or they have been hatched up by some unsext priests and have nothing to do with the case. Besides, the sins of the body in many a poor mortal are left with the body in the grave.

The ages, the aeons required for the perfecting of any given soul, are known only to its Creator, or how great must be the accumulation of ages ere the whole human family—the children of God—will respond to the eternal roll-call that shall usher in the redeemed of every land and clime, not one "Lost," or gone astray. Those who have stepped forth into the arena of this present manifestation of life on this planet, have, each in their place, their responsibility and task, to keep alight the beacons of reason, and intelligence, as guides to truth, and to pander never to the powers of ignorance and superstition, however manifested by Church or State.

MEDIUMSHIP.

Mediumship today is clearly an abnormalism. But the history of the world has been that the so-called abnormalisms of one generation are the accepted, commonplace realisms of the succeeding types. Sight, the desire to see, existed first in the mind of the unfolding human brain; the will joined its forces to aid the work of liberation and the visual nerves began to form and grow. The imprisoned soul within kept pushing on, until gradually the beautiful, complex organ of sight was evoluted and the soul possessed a window through which it could see things for itself. The evolutionary processes attending mediumship quite correspond to this physical process. Man demands to know concerning those things that have long been hid, and to understand the "deep things of God," and so the soul of him is saying, "I, too, have visions unspeakable," and closing up the avenues of his external sight, he sees and apprehends truth, a light upon his path, of which in his previous, darkened state he had never conceived. The intuitional faculties being the true interpreters of the immortal soul, are capable of unlimited cultivation, unlike those of the intellect which have always the limitations of cerebral organization. These powers are as limitless as God, and only through the expansion and recognized rational, practical use and application of these faculties—now sometimes falsely named supernatural—can the human race pass out from its present environment of darkness, and crime, and reaching upward expand into a saving knowledge of the truth, as made known by the Christs.

THE MIGRATIONS OF OUR RACE.

Vast numbers of times has the human race marched around this world on which we live. Each journey of the whole family has embraced a cycle of time. Each cycle has been rounded up by some great cataclysm of nature, which has left the earth desolated, in ruins, to rest from the invasions of its nomadic children.

Of the truth of these great convulsive throes of the planet we have many ancient legendary accounts. The Biblical accounts, and the irrefutable testimony of the globe itself, as recorded in the veined strata which have held their record for ages inviolably concealed, until man should finally bring to the unmasking of her secrets an intelligence clarified from the mists of superstition, and illuminated by the intuition not only of the soul, but of the intellect and reason.

THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE.

  "The mills of the gods grind always,
  They grind exceeding small,
  And with great exactness grind they all."

Their "hoppers" are too numerous to be counted. Physical pain, sorrow of many sorts and kinds, losses and crosses innumerable, unending disappointments, holding back the ambitions from all satisfactory realization of pet schemes, and finally, physical death. Not one human creature escapes. Into the hoppers they go, again and again, time after time, till the refining process is completed and the soul is fit to stand in holy and exalted presence, and to be set to do the work of the Master. Here and there some gifted soul realizes that its anguish means "growing pains." A was described as a "good man who let the Lord do anything He wanted to, to him."

The discipline of this life is hard to bear; but if people will not learn the lesson intended, here and now, they will be forced back through reembodiments until this life can teach them nothing more, and they have finally earned a right to a place in the heavens—the home of the gods—where perfect peace abides.

Men are naturally gregarious. In all phases of life they seek sympathetic comrades, or followers that they can hypnotize to do their will. They instinctively set themselves off into classes, and while this is useful as a protection from invasion, conditions in India show the evils of class-caste distinctions carried to a ridiculous extreme. The vast, surging, unyielding predatory classes on this earth consist of those who have but lately—comparatively—emerged from the animal kingdom, and have not yet been put through the mill of reincarnation times enough to rid them of their wild beast "tricks and manners," and make of them men and women fit to have around. The dreadful thing is, having to live on the same planet with them, and endure their terrible onslaughts upon the peace, and happiness of the unfolded, the civilized portions of the race. But all are of common origin. Such as they are, all have been, and such as the highly developed, educated and useful class are now, they will surely become.

HOMOGENEITY OF THE RACE.

The "dreamer" who passes through this life, satisfied with the creations of his own fancy, adds nothing to the practical needs or demands of his day and time. In all the years and ages of the intellective life of the planet, such men and women have lived and walked their little round atween the two oceans which bound the shores of birth and death.

But a truer concept of the meanings of an earthly existence has arisen in the minds of gifted humanity. The cloister gives way to the open court; the inspired ones are seeking the roads which may lead out from hazy, unproven cloud-land into the brightness of the everyday, practical life which the world must have experience of, along all lines, among all classes, high and low, ignorant and learned, ere it can dislodge the incubus of superstition, and undevelopment under which it has staggered along, through devious ways of despair and unbelief, to awaken at last to a realization of the final destiny of humanity.

To the average mind the far-off, unascertained and dim, is what is most attractive. Sending missionaries to the so-called "heathen," or speculating upon the social conditions of people supposed to be living on other planets, is of vital interest to their soaring minds. Any amount of money and good red blood of humanity, if need be, are not too large a price to pay for the gratification of these projects of unsatisfied mentality. The vast body politic, the struggling, seething masses of humanity grope and dig along their appointed ways, and the progress of the entire race of man toward an enlightened homogeneity is at a seeming stand-still. The homogeneity of the whole race in its absolute entirety, is the key-note of the life which is to be here, on this mortal earth, and thus every experience of individuals or of nations becomes of vast importance.

Every event, small or great, that serves to illustrate the possibility of fellowship, and brotherhood among the children of men, is a milestone on the way to this recognition of the homogeneity of the human race. In obedience to this law, this demand of the evolutionary forces our brave sons, and lovely daughters, are, all unconsciously to themselves, following the beckoning hand of noblest progress toward peace, and mutuality, and are allying themselves with the representatives of races and peoples hitherto considered foreign and unrelated to us, in all ways save the commercial. What bonds shall ever be forged between the nations of the earth that can supersede such ties of love and fealty to family and home?

The external aspects of these alliances, though yielding honors, and coveted opportunities, are of the smaller importance compared with the amazing factors of peace and amity between the nations that are silently and certainly working themselves out toward the beautiful exemplification of the universal Fatherhood of God, the inextinguishable sentiment of the final unity of his earthly children.

* * * * * *

One of the strangest phases of human life here is the almost universal resistance to improvement. But this conservative attitude is also a balance, prevents running off on tangents.

OF GOD.

It has been popularly reported that science has driven God out of the world. Science has refuted ignorant beliefs, driven superstition out of the minds of people, and opened many minds to the great facts of life as against the silly beliefs of primitive peoples. It is thought by many that the history of all God's doings is writ in the Holy (?) Book—the Bible. From the study of his character, one might fancy that "Great Jove of Mount High Olympus" was come again with only his name changed from Jove to Jehovah, for He brought with him all the "high days," and ceremonies, and every vice and delinquency, and outrage that had marked pagan rule. He gave special directions as to the killings-off of the Hitites, and the Jebusites and all the other ites. There weren't to be any Ites or any other "furriners" left alive to pester his chosen people. He went right on giving directions as to how these people were to be disposed of, making such awful suggestions, specially as to the women, that if He had not been known to be God, He might have been recognized as the Head-up Devil. It has been written: "By their fruits ye shall know them." What are the results, the "fruits," of the Jehovian dispensation? They are just exactly such as must naturally follow the teachings and influences of the spirit of hate and vengeance; the suppression of reason, holding back the progress of the race, fettering the brains of men with bonds of ignorance and superstition, a network of lies and myths. Through the dominance of selfishness and greed, the boasted freedom of men has been lost—they are slaves to a man-made religion. So science has served the highest interest of humanity in doing all it can to drive out this sort of a God, with his hell and eternal punishment, from the world. The reasoning, thinking world has outgrown such a wicked, despotic God, and is demanding quite another sort of Deity. Humanity has to be taught what it must have to equip it for its higher, nobler destiny. Justice to all in equal measure; Reason and Love must abide and work out their results, their "fruits," in human lives. The unanimous refusal of the framers of the "Constitution" of the United States to set forth therein the will of God, and his commands was wise and farseeing. It has raised up a barrier against the encroachments of every form of popular religion and has given a semblance to freedom of thought and speech.

All along the way, seers and prophets—inspired mediums—have wrought and sung of the days to come when all the earth should rejoice in peace and good will. The magnificence of their inspired and inspiring words, their immortal melodies of praise of the Creator will stand while this world lasts. The fact that his people had diviner instincts than had He whom they worshipped as God, showed that "Yahweh" was only the guardian spirit of the great and wonderful Hebrew race.

The greatest discovery of the past century, far greater than any revelation of science or knowledge of past ages, revealed by modern research is the discovery of a God of Love. Not of that sentimental expression of maudlin emotion that soon evaporates in hypocritical make-believe; but the profound recognition of the rightful consideration of every human being, regardless of race, color or belongings.

OF JESUS.

The knowledge we have gained through the study and research of earnest, truth-seeking souls who have found that all known religions have a common root—have the same basis of truth—is a proof of the value of the revelations given to the world through the teachings of our Christ.

From no other have we been given, in an externalized, practical form, those great, eternal religious principles which must forever stand as the rule and guide of human souls. No ancient philosopher had evolved to a God-likeness that enabled him to go beyond a high stand-point of moral perfection, or to give to his disciples what was most needed by the world for its comforting in the accumulating, expanding experiences incident to earthly life.

Jesus, our Christ, the Christ of the religion named for him was the transmitter of heavenly truths. To him the world owes forever a debt for making known a knowledge of the fact of the continued existence of the individual being after physical death, and it was given to him to point out the way of life that can alone lead to eternal happiness and peace. He is our Teacher, our Leader above all others. We have nothing to do with the impossible, faked-up personality that the priests have so long exploited as the "blood Redeemer" of the world; it is to the inspired philanthropist, the greatly-loving man that we owe our allegiance. This will appear more and more as time goes on, and a lot of untruths will fade out and give place to great realities.

THE GODS.

The pagan gods were innumerable and their distinctive attributes were understood. They well might be, as they were only deified men and women. The next unfoldment caused them to raise altars to "the unknown God." Then came Jesus, the Nazarene, who told them that the "unknown God" was their Heavenly Father, not of a chosen people only, but of all the human race. The new religion, inspired by Jesus—our Christ—and which was to bear his name, naturally brought with it all the superstitions of the pagans, and these have been handed down through the ages, and accepted and believed as true.

The primitive conception of a god was of a being with qualities like their own, and as men delighted in rapine and every possible accompanying vice and crime, so they endowed their gods in like manner, fashioning beings to be feared and to whom must be given big offerings and sacrifices. So long as these were limited to beasts it was a good thing, because the priests who ate the flesh thus consecrated were sure of cheap meat for a long time thereafter. But when the "firstlings of the flock" failed to bring satisfactory responses to the demands of the suppliants, they began sacrificing human lives in the vain hope of allaying the anger and vengeance of the dissatisfied all-powerful gods, and beautiful young maidens were thrust into the fiery jaws of Moloch, or crushed in the coils of sacred serpents, or slain upon altars according to the special god whose propitiation was sought.

From all these inhuman practices to a recognition of a God of love and mercy was a step so long that even yet there remain in the teachings of religionists indications of similar ideas, wherein not only nature's culminating efforts, but all the painful experiences of human beings are accepted and feared as expressions of the "wrath of God."

KNOWLEDGE OF OCCULT LAW.

The invitation of one of old to his followers, and fellow believers: "Come let us reason together," marks the dividing line between knowledge and superstition. The daring of the mind of man proves him to be, in very truth, "a child of God." No arcana of knowledge are too deeply hid in mystery to escape the prying of his curiosity, his longing for enlightenment, his long-sustained and vigorous efforts to surprise the hidden things of God and Nature. Livingston and Stanley wrought in the jungles of Africa, Audubon and Agassiz in the fastnesses of tropical America. These in the material world, the world of effects. Gessner and Varley, Darwin and Spencer, together with a long list of other inspired minds, have given their best thoughts, devoted their noblest energies to the explorations of the world of causes, the occult and invisible realms of pure principles in God and Nature. Back of all these there lies the richest bequest ever made to humanity in the discoveries and revelations of the most ancient "adepts," the fathers of mystical lore, in the light of modern discoveries and inventions, mystical no longer; but practical and full of earnest meaning in their adaptation and adjustment to the needs and wants of the citizens of the world today.

EVANESCENCE OF MERE BELIEFS.

Proclaim not mere beliefs today, and be not labelled and pigeon-holed and held to account on any special line of thought or action lest the individual soul be barred out from a conception and knowledge of some far grander truth. At best our view is narrow and contracted, else were we gods, and as we grow we discover our little, vaunted beliefs to be but as tiny shreds of color in God's great mosaic, our song of triumph and discovery but as the buzzing of the insect to the chorals of the chanting hosts of heaven. So, then, an eternal negation is the safest attitude of the unfolding soul. Mere beliefs, unproven by facts, are so many barriers set up for the soul to overleap and leave behind on its onward march.

THE FOUNT OF INSPIRATION FOR ALL.

"The righteous shall inherit the earth." Just so far as we are able to prove our rightness, the world—nay the whole universe of God—is ours. Our Heavenly Father has never said: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, upon the road to knowledge." Everything invites us; get wisdom, get understanding, and to thy knowledge add virtue are the recommendations from inspired sources, and to the soul that fears not, revelations upon every line stand invitingly open.

MAN VERSUS DEATH.

In all the domain of organized being, it is only man, who, in his crude egotisms, and defiant resistance to nature's laws, makes ado with death. The dainty denizen of the air, and the things that creep over the earth, the leviathan in his nature element, and his warmer-blooded brother whose passage causes the earth to tremble beneath his tread, all the multitudinous expressions of the animal kingdom, that disport themselves in fur, or feather, in filament of scales, or covering of hair, each and all recognize the approach of their final experience on earth, and hie themselves to their appointed coverts, to keep their tryst with their old mother in utter privacy. How well she loves her children! She sheds over them her varied mantle of leaf, and piney bloom, or scented brake, and soothes them with softly falling rain, or tender dew, and woos their elements back into her bosom from which they sprang. All this is in consonance with nature's arrangement for caring for her own. There is no such thing known among these as a vulgar display, or a flaunting of the deposed forces in the faces of the creatures left behind.

In man's treatment of his kind, there is everywhere betokened his unfaith and fear. His undeveloped spirituality leaves him without even so much power to adjust himself to the divine order of progress, by way of the gates of death—rebirth—as have his humble progenitors, his representatives in the animal kingdom; and so he plants himself upon his fancied prerogatives, and turns his dulled senses away from the God-call: "Come up higher," and moans and raves, and howls his despair in sounds and terms indicative of his tribal, or racial environment and relationship.

A voice of love has sounded down throughout the ages in unmistakable terms to the children of men. "My father has many mansions, invisible to your seared, earthly vision, but beautifully furnished forth for all your needs; nor hath eye seen or ear of yours heard the wonderfulness of the great preparation He hath made to receive you into his kingdom." And seer and sage have reiterated this in unmistakable language, and the enlightened of the older races have caught the straying tones of the vibrant air of the beyond, and have beheld the mirage of the homes of the blest, and have sought to impress the truth of the living reality of the beyond upon the inchoate brains of their fellows. But superstition rears its grizzled front alike in seats of learning, in the homes of the cultured, and in the hovels of the outcasts; in this sense, all the human family are of hellish kin, and in a large percentage of them their whole lives are given over to their effort of resistance to the divine ordering which speaks ever to the soul of man in unmistakable terms of tender consideration, saying: "Thy poor days here are full of pain and sorrow, because of necessary crudities. So live that when thy summons comes to join the everlasting cavalcade which sweeps across the world, thou shalt apprehend thy high emprise, and go forth exultingly to claim thine own meed of further existence in spheres yet undiscovered to thy longing ken."

"Earth loses thy pattern forever and aye" that thou mayst be renewed and set up in the finer mould of thy most excellent Karma, which is thy hidden reality of character. Rejoice then, O mortal! in the beneficence of nature and of thy Parents, God, for surely it is well that they call a halt for thee and thine beside the river of death, and loosen thy burthens of pain and heart-breaking sorrow, and let loose from thy soul that raven, "Never more," which has preyed long upon thy soul and held thee in the grip of unspoken despair and anguish. This is of all demons the blackest and most subtle. In tones of love it has been proclaimed by the divine mind that nought is ever taken away that shall not be restored to thee. Not as thou, in thy small, limited way, wouldst hold it back from its own high place, and mission in the universe and bend it to thy purpose; but according to the wisdom of its Creator and thine, shalt thou see and know and claim all that belongs to thee, be it the inspiration of thy nature, unexpressed here amid the din and rush of this chaotic existence; or power to carry forth thy grandly bold designs in conjunction with nature's illimitable chemistry; or to perfect within thy mind a knowledge of her laws; or to fold to thy bereaved heart thy lover, friend, or child, so lost to thee now in the great unexplored silences, that thou wilt not even try to see their way of life, but art ever persistent in saying they are dead. Whatever thy soul shalt cherish as highest and best good to be longed for, that shall be given to thee, in its new and resurrected form, over which has passed the chrism of the immortal and everlasting life. We need a new perception of that great law of the "survival of the fittest." Who are the "fit"? The nomadic tramp who yields no meed of use to his fellows? The willfully sin-sodden who poisons all his surrounding atmosphere with the noxious exhalations from his decaying organism? He who hoards and locks away from his fellows his treasures of gold or precious knowledge, and he, who having in his hands the powers of wealth and influence, never deigns to stretch forth his hand to relieve the cruel stress of the needy or to protect the helpless, or to sustain and strengthen the weaker ones of earth?

Nay! The true "survival" is not here on this underdone sphere, but outside, beyond, above, in the realms of the spiritual where our burdens are loosed and the souls of men are set free, and true liberty is accorded to each and everyone to be, and to do, all that in him lies toward the upbuilding of the great sum of the soul life we call God.

Once this perception of the soul and even some slight degree of knowledge concerning the laws which hold over the destiny of each individual being becomes, through a familiarity with phenomena now everywhere common, understood and accepted, the entire life on this planet will be changed, elevated and happified. Fancy living day after day under the bondage of the fear and dread of what everyone knows to be as inevitable as is the experience of each, of physical dissolution; and yet multitudes of people do so live. It is debasing, and disennobling in every way. It robs the soul of all its natural dignity and sends it through the world orphaned, and mourning, where it might and should recognize its divine relationship, and rejoice in its unfolding powers; and so you who may be giving a moment to the reading of this brief testimony to the great truth of immortality, consider, and realize thy divine paternity and demand what is, and has always been thine own by right of interblending of thy own inner nature with that of thy soul's origin, the heart of Him who hath made us.

The bond is eternal and indestructible. God in all humanity and we in Him, and the sooner we see this and yield ourselves in obedience, not like "dumb driven cattle" but as self-respecting, self-asserting mortals—within the law of accord with the highest—the sooner shall we enter into that "Nirvana" which is "peace."

FEAR OF DEATH.

In the childhood of the race, the time of its exclusively animal life, it was necessary for its protection that there should exist in the slowly unfolding human mind a great, overwhelming terror of death. In fact at that time indifference to death would have involved the entire race of man in utter extinction. From that time have come down to us superstitions and fears which, while acting still in the minds of the ignorant as a preservative of human life even under most terrible conditions, have at the same time shrouded countless numbers of good and useful lives with gloom, overshadowing them with a horror from which they could not escape. It has been less the actual fear of death, but of what might be in store for them after they should have passed through this experience which is so inevitable to us all. Jesus prophesied of a time to come wherein death should lose its sting, and thus be swallowed up in the victory of the spirit over matter.

The enjoyment of this life demands that, right here and now, we should begin to know and understand how we are to establish our individual relationship to the invisible, the real world—the world of causes, the world of law—so as to bring to us a sufficient knowledge of the hidden mysteries of the future life to give us some certain grounds for faith in the unseen. This can only be accomplished by the development of our own occult powers, or by learning of the psychic experiences of others which serve to point the way to what we may come to know for ourselves.

It is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere. Caught in the web of life, there is no escape from its demands upon the individual soul. Somewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate. Upward and onward, or down into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of things. It is free to make its choice. It can pursue the hard and toilsome path of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop around through all the hells of life unrelated to God, and resistant to the Christ.

It is the fear of death, of physical dissolution, that is to be individually conquered. This can only come as a result of a perception of spiritual law, and the unfoldment of the spiritual nature.

The fear of death, of what may lie beyond, has been nature's safeguard against a universal stampede out of this life when the miseries of existence on this earthly plane become too dreadful to be borne; when the tortures of the soul in the tortured body drives out all reason and all philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for surcease of agony. But when the "golden bowl" is broken—the silver cord of human life is severed—by suicide—nothing has been gained by a changed environment. There are the same responsibilities and soul needs, and the miseries and unsatisfied desires of their minds are exactly the same. Nothing has been gained, but much has been lost. Brave, staunch souls one by one obey the call to march over the "border land" into nature's invisible realms; they cannot help themselves, no one can. On they go, an endless caravan into the land of revelations, the place of reviews, where the utterly selfish are fetched up with a "round turn," and made to realize that a real godliness is the only thing that can "pass muster," that mere beliefs do not count, and only character tells. How swiftly, how inevitably their places are filled; nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of the gods—the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled. Life here is just one link in the endless, unbreakable chain of individual existence.

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Most fortunate is the soul that is started out to make the journey of life without being handicapped by some narrowing religious superstition or an intellectual bias that limits the mind, preventing all unfoldment of originality.

TEST OF CHARACTER.

Sooner or later everyone who has character enough to make any sort of a test worth while, has to have a regular bout with his "evil genius." Christ said: "The devil hath desired thee that he may sift thee as wheat." The form which the test takes depends entirely upon the organization of the individual. But it is in every case the same thing. The thorough arousal of the latent powers of the nature, and the suffering which ensues from the results of its unbalanced actions, constitute the discipline of this life. We can no more escape it, or subvert the action of this law of evolution than we can put a stop to any of the upheavals of nature. The volcano and the earthquake are but the expressions of power in the globe which we inhabit to throw off her old, and ascend through violent agitation to higher conditions. There is a natural correspondence in the experience of her inhabitants and that of our old, old mother!

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Back of protoplasm, back of organic human form is the soul—a thought of God, a spark of divine, eternal life; imperishable, immutable as God himself.

CHARACTER FORMING.

All animals, the human creature included, are born blind and this physical condition of man absolutely typifies his life-long state, owing either to his environment, his heredity, or his false education. The great mass of humanity come into the world unmarked by any specially-developed individuality. These are the legitimate prey of priests and teachers who have their place, or use in the evolution of the lower grades of life on this planet.

The smaller number of advanced souls that are "cast upon the shoals of time," the evolved thinkers, the philosophers have by far the more trying, and difficult life; for the highly individualized man or woman cannot belong to any set school of ethics; there are no fixed landmarks, religious or otherwise. Blinded by inherited prejudices, if not by destructive tendencies, with ideals for which there is no seeming avenue in this commonplace, workaday world; the life of such an one is ever a grope toward the light of truth.

Lacking the sagacity, the primal instinct of self-protection in common with the nature children of the wilds, he plunges forward on his unlit way, and has many a fall into the bogs and morasses of life until he finally sees that only from the higher, the spiritual side of existence can come to humanity redemption from the errors, wrong thinking and action that is the cause of all sin and sorrow of the world. Blessed, indeed, are those to whom this understanding comes in time to harmonize conflicting beliefs and tendencies, and to be the means of rounding out the life, and perfecting that most potent and powerful of all things, a noble human character.

MAN THE FINAL EARTH PRODUCT.

In man Nature has reached her highest evolution. His life and being are the topmost rung of the ladder, but she has not finished with him. It is universally believed that physical death severs everlastingly her dominion over him, and thus ends all her service to him. This is by no means true. Man is her offspring, her child, and to her he returns again and again, drawing from her complex, multitudinous, many-chambered heart such forces as shall bring to him the experiences he requires to further unfold his nature and bring forth all his possibilities.

Not man alone but the planet itself is in the mills of the gods. The seeds, the germs of life that were expressed in such ways in the beginnings of life on this world, still exist in a greatly modified degree and the misunderstood phases of nature's ministry are the results of the out-working of these primitive elements still inhering in the world-stuff of which human bodies are made.

Nature wields her powers of fire and flood and devastating epidemics mercilessly; she constantly rids herself of her superfluous offspring, and forces them to a new environment in her invisible realms, through which they pass, gaining more or less by the experience and from which each must emerge, and continue to evolve and grow according to the law of his own being.

SUPERSTITIONS.

Fear of the unknown has given birth to all the superstitions that have afflicted the minds of ignorant and unthinking people. Few people escape some form of superstition. For instance, the silly sayings, anent the moon, "Fair Priestess of the Night." It is unlucky to see it in its newness—so and so—when the real fact is, it is a merciful Providence that permits us to see it in any of its phases, over the left shoulder or over the right, or through the glass, or in any way at all. There is nothing more "lucky" or glorious than to have good eyesight of one's own, with which to behold this and all the other beauties of nature. The man who chanced to be passing under a ladder just at the moment when a workman half-way up let fall a bucket of paint which struck and deluged him, had some reason for thinking it "unlucky" to go under instead of around such an impediment to travel. But not once in a lifetime would such a thing happen to any one, and it is impossible to imagine what going under ladders or meeting loads of barrels, or funerals, or opening umbrellas in the house, instead of outside of it, or any of the hundreds of silly, puerile, fool superstitions that have sprung from no one knows where, and that have no scientific meaning, and no earthly bearing upon the realities of any life have "to do with the case." These are all the offsprings of minds tinctured by fear of they know not what, and which are peddled around and handed down religiously from one generation to another, to keep alive a sensationalism whose tendency is to blind those who accept them to the great living fact of God's providence which is and has ever been ruling the lives of his earthly children.

SELF-JUSTICE.

While self-abnegation is a valued experience in the spiritual discipline which goes to the formation of a perfect character, the reaction where the ego posits itself upon the law of justice to self, is in reality the beginning of salvation to the individual. But preachment from any source cannot avail with any soul deeply immersed in work for others. There is too much in array against it. The established heredity concerning the first duty of woman is of itself alone a formidable influence to be overcome; then either the real needs, or the selfishness of others, present obstacles beyond the power of loving, sensitive souls to resist. The change must come from the consciousness of the individual of her own needs along these lines, which alone can arouse one to sufficient will, and purpose to be true to one's self if the heavens fall. This is first, and above all other considerations.

SYMBOLISM.

A crude and inartistic symbolism is revolting to a spiritually-unfolded consciousness. True mystic symbolisms must observe accurately the finer law of correspondences or they fail to appeal to such as these, and become to the occult a mild form of blasphemy.

LOVE.

No phase of human character—of mental or spiritual philosophy—has engrossed so much attention or received such a variety of treatment as has human love. Nearly everyone who thinks at all, has been brought, at some stage of experience, to an attempt at analyzing the emotional, sentimental nature, asking: "What is Love?"

In contradistinction to that which repels, and disintegrates, it is attraction. Love is God, it draws elements together, and holds them in proper spheres. It centralizes and builds up. It is controlled by fixed laws; it is only "blind" to those who have not investigated its nature, and office unshrinkingly, with an eye to a complete understanding of its true function. Devoted humanitarians have shown us how to feed, exercise, and rest the physical system, in order to produce health. Ministers of the Gospel have taught souls the way of life ever-lasting. Professors of the various sciences and arts, useful and ornamental, have instructed the intellects of men, and now and then a woman; but with all these, the affections—the crowning—rather the integral element of all life and being, have had few, or no exponents who have ever attempted to treat them from any basis which can be called philosophical, or which could ever serve as a guide to one uninitiated in their occult phases.

The ordinary expression of this part of the nature, is a vampyrism which is constantly on the alert to see what, and how much it can gobble up for its own delectation. This is the lowest grade. It begins with the selfism of the individual, its manifestations are named lust. It seeks expression through the sensuous nature, but extends to the spirit and will.

O Love! What crimes are committed in thy name! What laying waste of true and tender hearts, what defacing of sweet bodies, fashioned and set up as temples of the spirit!

This vampyrism extends through every department of the affectional nature. It exists not only among men and women recognized as lovers, married or otherwise, but parents are ghouls to their children, and friends devour each other without stint. Attraction is that law which draws together two opposite elements or forces, positive and negative, or male and female. As the nature and attributes of a human being are multiform, so are the attractions, or loves, numerous. Ignorance of the laws which ought to control and adjust these loves, is the prime cause of all the misery and crime with which the earth is flooded. Two people of the opposite sex are attracted through the intellect on this plane, and realizing the limit of the law which draws them together, they could be admiring friends forever; but ignorant of their needs outside of this, they attempt to force a conjugal relationship which too often ends in dislike. Every grade of lust and love finds representation in the so-called marriage relation, as it stands today. Intellects and spirits without any bodies—worth mentioning—and gross mortal remains unvitalized by souls. The former class ignore the claims of the physical, and gather their robes together sanctimoniously indicating: "Avaunt, lest my purity be contaminated"; while the latter laugh their spiritual pride and fastidiousness to scorn. The war goes on between good and evil, whereas there is really no just ground for difference. All that is needed for the attainment of harmony and peace is a wise adjustment of these forces in individuals and in society.

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The growth of all true character must be slow and gradual. It is not enough that the soul perceives the beauty of a grand, moral life, it must also learn to live it humbly, earnestly and truly.

"IDEALS OF LOVE."

"Greater love hath no man than that he shall give his life for another," whether the scene be set upon the mimic stage, or on the broad theatre of the world. Heroic rescues, desperate efforts to save endangered lives, care of the battle-wounded or fatally diseased meet, from great and small, brutal and cultivated, deserved recognition, even to the extent of making the individual actors—so favored by the gods—famous, throughout the world.

The patient service of men and women to their families, of children to their parents, or of friends who rejoice in serving, that goes on all around us conforms so entirely with our established ideals of what is right and becoming, that it is unnoticed and wins no applause, but oftener only calls out from the recipient demands for further sacrifice.

In all such related service the real blessing comes to those who give far more than to those who receive. The operation of this law hallows all the relationships of this life, and must finally yield to the unselfish giver undreamed of compensations. Not here, perhaps, but in that sphere of being where love is indeed the fulfilling of the law, shall the patient givers, those who have served at love's altars, find themselves closely allied to the immortal ones, "who do his pleasure."

Love, garlanded, and adorned with all that wealth can bestow, enthroned in seats of honor, and social recognition is accepted as our ideal of what love should claim, and win from life; but I have looked into the faces of humble, patient toilers, and there I have seen that the sustaining influence with them was love, and have marvelled greatly over the compelling power of their ideals of love.

Remembering that foundations of love upon this earthly planet were, of necessity, laid in the selfish instincts of the race—a race as yet so undeveloped in all that "makes for righteousness"—we need not despair of the final outcome, and realization of its high behest to the children of men; for no expression of love, however mean in view of our own exalted ideals, but is, in reality, an effort towards something higher and better. The obdurate and selfish are unfolded, and taught by its painful misunderstandings, and awful tragedies.

Those poor souls who expect everything from this life, whose ideals are bounded by their own selfishness, who have never discovered that God is Love, and that only through love, purified, exalted and idealized can any of his earthly children ever reach to any conscious relationship with our Father in Heaven, and who, failing to realize even their low ideals, pass on from one experience to another vainly searching for the realization of what their dimly perceived intuitions of love constantly assure them should be theirs—for even such as these there must be a final redemption; for, like one of old, they have "loved much," and the sins of a vast ignorance are at last condoned by God's all pervading, untiring, illimitable law of love.

O ye! who labor for humanity's uplifting; O weary workers in the homely ways of the unskilled in every relationship of life, unrecognized by your fellows be ye of good cheer! As the circling waves of a calm lake spread wider, and more widely from a center disturbed by some heavy substance, so shall your least word, or thought of pure, unselfish love, from your overburdened lives, reach out and diffuse an influence throughout the universe of God, and become a part of the life immortal!

Love, and love alone creates the desire for immortality, lifts up and renews the oft fainting faith, the faltering, changeful hope, and perpetuates the expectations of the restoration of beloved companions, the reunion of families, and friends. It inspires the spirit, and seals the brokenhearted to the service of "ideal love." It leads the human soul onward, and upward, until it triumphs, at last, over this life's defeats and losses, and its manifold despairs.

Undeterred by the alarms of war, the wails of the diseased and famine-cursed, and the violent protests of the oppressed, and misery-steeped unfortunates of this plane of being, the "Prince of Peace" is calling together his scattered forces. The beacon lights shine along the high places where dwell the exalted, and powerful ones of earth, and glimmer faintly from the lowlands, where the dire enemies of mankind—ignorance and superstition—are, at last, learning that God, the true God, loves, and cannot hate.

The "ground-swell" of the "ideal love" cannot be resisted, nor overborne by any competing power in the universe, and with ever-increasing force and power to conquer all of earth's conditions of unrest, and dissatisfaction, born of false ideals, it will sweep resistlessly on, until it is merged in God. The recognition of the homogeneity of the race, and the "Fatherhood of God," shall bring the longed for fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of "Peace on Earth, and good will to Man."

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The priests endowed the gods with vices which they knew to be popular among their rich and powerful patrons.

THE NEEDS OF WOMAN.

Women need any and all disciplines which teach them self-justice. There are many noble and good women who allow their whole lives to be picked away from them by demands upon their time and strength which come to them under the guise of duties. Viewed from a higher standpoint, they are not duties, in that they conflict with the great underlying principle of self-justice. This is the pivotal idea of a true religion; for it is impossible to be true, to be just to others save as we are so to ourselves, and while no character can be perfected, except through the fiery ordeal of an entire self-abnegation, there is a higher, and a holier life in store for those who have the strength, and the courage to plant their feet upon this God-given and eternal law of justice to self.

It is comparatively easy to gird one's self for the conflict which is apparent, nearly all women souls are equal to that heroism; but it is in the daily round of the household, in relation to the church, and to society, or to the professions where women need to watch most jealously the weakness of self-sacrifice. Women have had the beauty of "unselfishness," and "amiability" dinned into their ears for so long that there is no depth of degradation, or of abnegation of true womanhood to which they will not descend for the sake of being so considered by those whose interest it is to keep them where they virtually endorse the vices of others by their own lack of self-justice. While we must grope along until we understand the wickedness of this, and until we outgrow that weakness, let us be ready for, and equal to the hour which shall give us the laurels of the victor. And why not laurels? Has it not been uttered by the mouth of inspired prophecy that the "last shall be first," and that "the stone rejected by the builders shall yet be the head of the corner?" It rests with us, individually, to represent that truthfulness, and faithful adherence to the justice due to womanhood which shall yet crown her with rejoicing.

To this end women must begin to gather in those pearls of unselfish devotion and self-abnegation which they have been so recklessly casting under the feet of ignorance and beastliness.

It is blessed for lovely and loving woman to bestow bountifully from the richness of her nature. But every grace has its complement, and the complement of this, for the present, is the greater blessing of conserving herself until she knows her power as an individual, and thoroughly comprehends what is due to her dignity and worth.

MAN VERSUS WOMAN.

Man, living entirely in his physical nature, goes on and on in the gratification of the senses until he becomes satiated, and "blasé," and there is nothing satisfactory left for him upon the sensuous plane. Then he either crystallizes into a hard, selfish being, or plunges still deeper into the slough of sensuality from which Divine Love alone can rescue him. This power is most often manifested by woman, the natural law-giver and redeemer. For ages man has projected his selfish human will into all the affairs of life, thus setting aside the higher law. In the love relations he has specially dominated woman, reversing the divine order of nature, and thus killing out all possible inspiration, and consequent happiness. Everywhere he has set up his own lustful desires as the rule and right of life in his relationship to woman, destroying the spiritual sacrament of marriage; and by his selfishness and greed of power, he has reduced her to a condition of prostitution. He outrages the helpless ones who have confided their honor, and their lives to his keeping, and the law—the vile, cursed, man-made law—upholds him in this slaughter of all that should make his heaven of trusting love. The wails of the wronged ones—specially those who suffer in the marriage relation—go up incessantly to God, and the woe of the children who, through these conditions, have inherited only animal love and instinct is enough to drown the "music of the spheres."

Parenthood being one phase of unfoldment, each individual must at some period of incarnation exercise this important function. To the uses of reproduction, the animal love with its blustering activities of expression, is, rightly understood, adjusted. But above and beyond this is the spiritual union which brings forth children of the mind, the fruitage of the soul, manifest in noble thoughts and brave deeds. Every expression of love, however crude and animal, is an impulsion of the flesh-enveloped soul toward the source of all love, and however distasteful one may seem, to such as have evolved a spiritual consciousness, and the demand for soul satisfaction, it cannot be ignored.

Through the pain of satiety, of disease, or suspended activity of the love nature, the ego at last senses its need of God. It comes to know that nothing less than divine love can ever satisfy this demand of the heart. The constant tendency of the inspired human being is to extremes. The "golden mean" is the "high water mark" of real cultivation. We have on one side the suppression of the ascetic, and at the other end of the line the abandonment of the debauchee—both sinful and false because extreme, both casting a reproach upon the laws of God as outworked in, and through nature. The ascetic, seeing the harmful results to the soul attending the usual unlimited, and undisciplined expression of nature which man accords to his supposed necessities, draws the line by cutting off all surplus of physical supplies and, stifling the cries of passion, retires into a cave or cell, and into himself, thus totally ignoring all the necessary activities attending the development of this planet and of the human race. He may thus reach a high altitude of purely spiritual perception; but it is, after all, a sublimated selfishness. His example is of no benefit to the world's workers. He is not of those who think and feel, and who are in the way of divulging esoteric knowledges to the quest of the vast army of earnest seekers after light upon these underlying laws of human life.

For the control by man of the love, and the life of woman there is a cut-and-dried sentiment and an enforced law concerning the segregated exercise of a natural function. By her acceptance, or rejection of this onesided "morale," is woman judged pure or impure, blessed or cursed, as the case may be. If this rule could be enforced equally upon both sexes, if there were not two distinct sets of moral laws, one for man, and quite another for woman, there would be no such injustice. As it is, there is but one way left open for woman. She must develop the power and will to be a law unto herself, regardless of the suspicion, and brutality of man, and with this also indifference to the foolness and the weak protest of her fellow slaves—women. These are "long, long thoughts." Ages must elapse ere the males of our kind will have evoluted up to a status where they will see that through justice to woman alone can they secure to themselves any degree of worthy, or lasting happiness, or satisfaction.

NATURAL CRUELTY OF THE UNDEVELOPED.

The most unaccountable phase of the minds of the leaders of religions has been their persistent effort to make their fellow beings wretched and miserable instead of glad and happy. We expect savagery from the Comanchee Indians and other primitive tribes and races; but from self-styled Christians the history of their cruelties is astounding. It is pure devil worship—that is what it is—if they but knew it.

One of the beautiful plans of theologians and priests for scaring half-witted people into their individual folds has been telling them that they were in danger of committing the most dreadful of all sins, the "sin against the Holy Ghost." The utterly "unpardonable sin" of all sins. This blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightened numbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modicum of brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even to the point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in lunatic asylums.

THE WORST SIN.

The much speculated over "sin against the Holy Ghost," the so-called "unpardonable sin" is the sin that men and women commit against themselves; for the most holy of all ghosts, or spirits, is that portion of God—the universal Spirit—embodied in their own separate personalities, and it is only "unpardonable" in that it sets the soul back from its possible and intended progress toward its ultimate perfection.

REINCARNATION.

The objections to the acceptance of a belief in the law of reincarnation are based upon the imperfect teaching, and the consequent inadequate understanding of the laws controlling such experiences.

Some of the reasons for disbelief are utterly illogical. For instance, one view is this: "I never want to come back to this earth after I once leave it." The fact is, that there could be no return to today's recognized conditions of life. If one were to return to this planet and become reembodied, he would find himself in some other country, and under such entirely changed conditions that he would be totally unconscious of being on the same world where he had formerly lived. Then, again, the law of vibration is so immanent in material things, the changes are so constantly undermining conditions and setting up quite others that if one were to return in one hundred or even in fifty years, it could not be the same, and that person could not be in any way subject to the same conditions, or to the same experiences.

Furthermore, it is nature's wise and provident law that there is hardly ever any memory of any previous life here. Still, after the soul has passed through many lives and has accumulated great knowledge, a vast consciousness which can not be laid aside, there come to individual souls faint gleams of memories of past experiences which, if heeded or understood, might become helpful and instructive, if not altogether consoling.

There has never been a time when the needs of humanity have so reached the great spiritual overlords of this planet as at present. Or, that those needs have been so responded to by the return to earth of wise, and godlike spirits as now. Many of these have sought to approach humanity through personal reembodiment in the flesh. It would be well for the world if, instead of cramming the brains of children with effete ideas and superstitions, the messages of these wise ones could be listened to and heeded.

A thorough understanding of the laws of reembodiment, so far as we can know them, entirely refutes the belief and the feeling of the injustice of the Creator towards any human being. The law of evolution carries the soul along from one expression of life to another giving to each individual the opportunity to accumulate such knowledge, and to grow such character as shall finally bring it to a state of perfection. The discrepancies in human life are largely external. The millionaire, envied by less fortunate beings, may be far below the poor, struggling laborer in point of real unfoldment of soul. And again, people so favored in this material experience of life may be forced by the very nature of existence to return into humble conditions to learn the real lessons of life here.

We are not the arbiters of our own destiny, and the sooner we conceive the idea of non-resistence to fate, realize that our lives are guided by unerring law, and simply set ourselves to trying to understand the meanings of our experiences, and to trying to wring from each one all that it is intended to teach us, seeking to learn from it all that we possibly can in order that we may not be forced to be taught the lessons over again, the better for our growth and happiness.

This earth, our birth place, our kindergarten school, and the university from which we must each graduate, having once received us, can never let go its hold upon one of its children until this final result is attained. Over and over again, the lives of all who belong to this planet pass into the invisible realms of Nature to rest from the sordid and wearisome experiences of material life, and again return to seek out further growth and understanding, until the final culmination is reached. The soul is hurried on through its experiences of departing and returning, until earth has no further lesson, no further service to perform. Then, indeed, it may graduate and ascend to its place among the gods.

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Newly-embodied souls might be considered as raw material flung out upon the sea of life to be ground and polished by experience, and grown into a semblance of perfection befitting the "children of God."

PROCESSES OF REINCARNATION.

Spirit has no consciousness on the material plane, except through the vibratory action of the human brain, the mortal mind. The individual ego gathers up from each incarnation—if it is true to itself—some knowledge, some wisdom, and stores it away in the spirit brain. Its experiences cover every opportunity to understand, from lowest to highest, all that any single one in the whole human family has ever known. This is the justice of the great Creator. The king today has been in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for a moment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he might remember and know how 'tis himself. Men and women of thought, of great character have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest from the destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the results of labor and effort.

When the practised soul familiarizes itself with the newly-born, fleshly tabernacle it is to inhabit and use for a long or a short time, it broods over the unconscious being, and at the first indication of intelligence, pours into the human brain-cells its own spiritual life, and what thus comes in is there to stay. The growth of the child, the development of the individual, depends mostly upon the capacity of the brain to receive and adjust this knowledge and inspiration to its use upon the earth plane upon which it is to live, the place, the environment in which it is to learn its next needed lessons.

The soul, the ego, thus placed, is bound and shackled by its human heredity. This is inevitable, it has no choice as to its lineaments or figure. It in a sense bears the "sins of the world"; it can in no way separate itself, really, from the whole human family.

When the experiences of the dual nature, the body and soul, from any cause, bring the body, or the brain into conditions where it can no longer respond to the uses of the spirit, then occurs what is called death—physical dissolution. But this change is simply the unclothing of the spirit from its earthly conditions, setting it free to return again to its home, there to review what it has gained, and added to its previous stock of knowledge. The individual soul in each incarnation forms for itself ties more or less real and lasting—with the mother, the fleshly vehicle, through whose mysterious service it enters upon its earthly life; with the male parent whose service to humanity may, or may not be godly or godlike, though natural and necessary; with family relations; and with friends, public and private. Nearly every person who passes through this unveiling comes to the grave-side with trains of friends to whom he is attached, and whom he will not forget, and he will stay on and on in his heaven till every claim upon his love, or service is fully satisfied. No more severing of ties; no more broken hearts, or disappointed hopes. No injustice, full fruition in heaven.

This adjustment measured by earthly reckoning may take long reaches of time, but finally, the soul, stirred by the eternal law of progress, of unfoldment, repeats its former experience, drinks of the cup of forgetfulness, and returns again to learn in the great university of unfolding life on this planet. A vast multitude, it is coming and going, unceasingly moving on. No two alike; each in its place pressing forward to the station which the totality of its experiences through many lives entitles it. There is but one law, but one method that abides. It is the spiritual law of evolution; everyone is held by it; all who seem exempt today from its influence upon their lives, have already passed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward to meet them.

Sooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, until it passes up through the whole gamut of earthly experience. Whatever character anyone achieves belongs to the individual eternally. It is the reward of patient service, of consecrated effort for the truth. Great souls are what they are, in the places they now occupy by virtue of their many incarnations. Through the great variety of experiences gained, they have come to know. They have earned the right to be what they are. There are usurpers in all the ways of life, ignorance and hypocracy masquerading as the real thing, but they do not last. Pretenders are soon unmasked and taken at their true value.

Sometimes the spirit is strong enough to ignore its present surroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with its material heredity. It depends upon the unfoldment of the spirit whether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield to the pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, and lose the opportunity for further growth.

EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.

Nearly all so-called civilized people set to work to cram the minds of their children, at the first indication of any degree of intelligence, with a religious bias such as they themselves have inherited or have been taught. Then the intellect must be shaped, forced and driven into accepted moulds, and the human being is considered ready to be turned out into the world to fight the battle which everyone, in one way or another, must fight all along the way of human life—to begin to test the value of the ideas and principles with which the soul has been furnished to meet all the exigencies incident to the pilgrimage from birth to the final exit from this state of being. It has taken uncounted ages to produce the perfected types of physical humanity we see on earth today. Here Nature calls a halt, saying: "As the handmaid, the co-worker with your Creator, I have brought you along to the point where you look and seem almost as gods. There is in each of you a divine ego—a thought of your Creator—a sure guide to perfection. To reach this goal must be now your constant endeavor. There is a spiritual body, the outgrowth of the physical."

Thousands of children, too young to choose for themselves, are being fettered in spirit by the chains of old, effete superstitions; their intellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creeds and vulgarizing ideas of God and his universe. There are numbers of Spiritualists and "liberal" men and women who expose the tender minds of their children to these same influences for society's sake, knowing though they do, from hard experience, what an effort it costs to free the mind of such serious bias, and re-educate it aright.

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The noblest teaching is that which puts us en rapport with our own inner, unspoken and unrecognized perceptions. No truth, however manifested, can adjust itself to our soul's needs, save as it finds in us a response through that preparation which comes from a certain degree of previous knowledge.

EGOTISM.

Egotism is the perception, and recognition by individuals of the rights and the possibilities of their real selves, their ego. Without it human beings would not stand up on their hind legs, they would crawl. It is at the same time a necessity and a danger. It has never been settled which is cause and which effect, whether insanity creates the awful manifestations of egotism or the unbalanced egotism induces insanity. "Keep us sane" is the wisest of all prayers, the greatest demand one can make upon his consciousness.

People pass into the spirit world in the full bloom of their egotism; hordes of them return to tell their friends things they know absolutely nothing about, and the folks on this side believe all they say, and so fool ignorance is passed along and stays in the minds of those who listen to the "messages" of egotism and ignorance. There are "dead loads" of people who think this is all there is of Spiritualism. While it is blessed that friends can return, and comfort the mourning ones by their assurances of remembrance and love, this should never be the final result sought for. Those who have lived but a limited time in the spirit world—the world of causes, of law—cannot teach people here the knowledge that can satisfy their souls. But there are educated souls, who have once lived honored and useful lives here, who are only too glad to respond to the needs of inquiring humanity, teaching them the ways of wisdom, and lifting them out of ignorance and darkness into the light.

RESPONSIVENESS.

Surely we are trying to solve the biggest problems before the class. The people who are our profoundest teachers, through whom come our largest experiences and knowledge are often most unconscious of their influence on other minds; and this is lawful, for the moment a human soul begins to wriggle either from anxiety or egotism, the divine "chemical affinities" are disturbed.

Long before we get up to God, our nearer relative, "Mother Nature," is most gracious in her methods of unfoldment, standing ever ready to whisper in the devoted, or willing ear, her "open sesame" to the manifold workings of her secret laws. It is ever the same old exhortation: "Seek and ye shall find," "Knock and it shall be opened to you," and the most wonderful of all is, the amount of unexpected testimony, and endorsement which she will contrive to bring to bear to prove to you the truth of what she asserts through your own individual experience.

"Elective affinities" hold their own royally. You shall think and feel deeply, and the first friend you meet shall tell you—quite spontaneously—of his ponderings which tally with your own, never suspecting that they are held to you by a subtle, and beautiful chemistry, the response of soul to soul.

There is but one integral law. All others are but its radiations. The natural tendency of the human mind is ever toward being satisfied with its present limitations, instead of which we ought to constantly exercise our will and aspiration to fling off the mists of prejudice which so easily envelop the soul, and strive ever to enlarge our horizon, and push on to higher and better things.

HELL.

Such men as J. Knox in Scotland and J. Edwards in this country must have had chronic indigestion or cancers in their insides, or they could not have revelled so in hell, and "eternal damnation" as they did. What unreckoned miseries would surely have been spared their listeners if they, and thousands of their sort, could have developed a modicum of Christian feeling and a little kindness toward their hypnotized hearers!

Not only from their immediate, personal teachings came awful fears of what must be the fate of all who were under the judgment as set forth by the unbalanced minds of such as these; but the long ineradicable chain of influences that haunt, and torture the minds of good folks, even to this day. The utter lack of wisdom and knowledge of God's laws and providence, in the realm of theological teachings, is undoubtedly the cause of much of the diablerie of the world today.

If all the priests and parsons who have ever infested this earth with their blasphemous theology were to unite their fiendish forces in a concentrated effort to doom one human soul—one spirit—to be burned forever in the endless hell fires which they have so long exulted in holding up over poor, wretched, ignorant peoples, they could not do it! They have had a glorious time persecuting, torturing, burning and slaying human bodies, driving millions of innocent inhabitants off the planet, who had just as much right to this—their home—as had, or can ever have any set of bloodthirsty ruffians, claiming their commissions from God Almighty! How thoughtless, expecting the religionists to put aside this, their most cherished dogma, of "eternal punishment in hell fires!" What would they have left to scare folks with, and make them hand over their dollars, and what, O what! vent could they have for their own natural, pure cussedness?

THE COMMONPLACE.

Great is the god Commonplace, and his prophets of the accredited order of the "Common, ornary Kusses" are legion. They are of both sexes and of every race, age and condition. Consent to render homage to their Deity by confessing by word and deed that every man is as good as another and better too, and they will continue to smile openly; but, in secret, they will prey upon you. Their capable emissaries go around with measuring line and shears, alert to discover, and ready to reduce to the proper dimensions anyone who shall dare to outgrow their prescribed proportions. You can never know when you are safe from their incursions.

The dignified old man who sits next you at your hotel table seeming to be entirely preoccupied by the discussion of his dinner, may only be biding his time, waiting an excuse to deliver you over to their insatiable maw, to be dealt with according to the rules of their society. Or, perhaps the lady who in the first flush of your acquaintance quite dazzles you with her fluent chat upon multitudinous topics, suddenly, upon finding you unguardedly expressing opinions not approved by the high priests of mediocrity, lets fall her mask, and shows herself to your astonished gaze a secret emissary, a determined servant of their most ancient and established order. "Thus far," so far as we can accompany you, "shalt thou go and no farther" at your peril. Woe to the soul that yields a ready obedience to the master's voice, that is ever calling to all who can hear: "Come up higher." The sash with which he would gird up his loins, "the latchet" with which he tightens his sandals that he may run more swiftly the race set before him, the staff upon which he would lean shall all be turned by these demon worshippers into scourges. He shall be "beaten with many stripes," for so it hath been ordained from long time, until the pain of his wounded heart and hurt brain shall deaden his sensibilities so that he can no more hear the voice nor see the helping hand.

Defy, resist, and the limp, sprawling, accommodating God becomes a sinuous, hydracrested, overpowering dragon, stopping at nothing to "put you where you belong"—his favorite battle cry—himself judge, jury and executioner. This he has not the power to do unless he can prove to you that you "belong" where he seeks to place you, for his veins are full of mud. He is of the "earth earthy," and in the rarified atmosphere of noble ambition and great achievements, he is utterly blind and of no account. Take heart, then, O aspiring soul! "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." Render unto every true principle that which is its due; but beware how you worship or lean upon teachers, leaders who, beneath their proudly-worn garb, and insignia of leadership, may be all the time wearing the robes of the high priests of the god Commonplace.

PETROLEUM.

"'Pears like" the affairs of life on this planet are dreadfully "higgledy-piggledy"; but in reality, there is a divine purpose, a use in it all. It is the soul's kindergarten. It is interesting to observe the curious and round-about ways Nature takes to insure the greatest good to the greatest number of her needy children. Long before the first nitro-glycerine "go-devil" was sent down, down, to the uttermost depths, to shatter the oil-bearing rock, and set free the wonderful deposit that was destined to mark a new era in the affairs of men, rang out the Biblical mandate: "Let there be light," and in due time the whole world was illuminated.

The sorcerers, who have abstracted vast wealth from this earth product have fancied it was for their special benefit and use, that nature had garnered up her stores to be thus liberated, and chemicalized into a thousand forms, by their sagacious work. Not so! Quite indeed, not so!

Came—at last—the kerosene lamp. How marvelous the light of its clear flame, after "tallow dips" and "pine knots"! How the little lamp of the first experiment grew, and grew into gorgeous centers of sun-like radiance, shining everywhere, illuminating hitherto darkened, impenetrable places, carrying the torch of civilization round the entire world. Alike in slum and palace, in homes of poverty, and set to shine in the gilded resorts of the noble and wealthy; blessing the student, and the vast army of enforced workers; lighting the paths of men, and the ways of the multitude; making vice and crime more difficult, by dispersing the darkness from hidden purlieus. Through primeval depths and mountain fastnesses, wherever the footsteps of men have wandered, the magic lamp has pioneered the way.

All war is horrible. Through what agonies of loss, and orgies of death, and tortures of the weak driven to the wall by unscrupulous men the war against material darkness on this planet has been carried on is utterly unimaginable and impossible ever to be known. The end has been reached, the great needs of humanity at large have been and are being served, and while superior sources of light have largely taken the place of the oil lamp, it still shines calmly on in the homes of the poor, and will, for ages yet to come.

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"As a man thinketh, so is he." This may be only measurably true, in consequence of the stress of circumstances; but sooner or later, the thought moulds the individual beyond the power of disguising the real character.

LAW.

It was all in order for Yahweh, the guardian spirit of the Hebrew race, to "hetchel" the Jews—and from all accounts they needed it—but the most anomalous phase of this whole affair consists in the fact that after having set forth to the world that the church, and all were to come under the rule of the "new dispensation," and represent the teachings of the Master, they should turn back to the old, old history of the Jews, and incorporate bodily into the so-called Christian religion, and into the political life and jurisprudence of nations, the restrictions, the penalties, and, in a word, the Hebraic law in its entirety. Law, as it is applied in America, is a process lacking in equity and justice. It is circumvented by $-s for the benefit of the rich, a menace to the poor man, binding on the needy burdens that kill, or lead to despair. Jesus Christ did not make law; he only indicated the presence of the higher law—the scientific law—that must rule all life on this planet ere justice to all can ever prevail.

The gospel of Jesus—the Nazarene—was the first that ever brought hope or promise of any possible good to the outcast, and the children of poverty.

COMMUNISM.

Communism is the beginning, and not the culminating state of societies and peoples. All efforts on this line fail, because they are based upon the false and impossible premise of the absolute equality of all men. There never has been, there never can be any such adjustment of the forces of nature on this planet; because no two souls are alike and there can only be equality in alikeness. Spirits come here in groups. They start simultaneously on their pilgrimage across the "sands of time"; but at the very outset there are obstacles and handicaps innumerable. At once there is heredity. There is no equality in heredity. It is good, bad or indifferent as the case may be. But the great divergence is in the soul itself; it grovels or aspires, and unfolds its powers according to the laws of its own individual being, and all men, and women should not be held accountable or judged alike. It is not just. Communism would seek to suppress all individuality and reduce everyone to the "dead level" of the commonplace, under the mistaken idea of universal equality. Gifted persons daring to lift up their heads above the common ruck of mankind, are at once shoved back into the narrow groove the heads of the cult have decided to be the proper rut for human beings to run in.

In this view, persons of ignoble and narrow natures may sit in judgment upon people of genius and refinement, and may force back the most aspiring seer into expressionless life by the utter lack of any comprehension by their dull, selfish fancy. Ye gods! How they exult in doing it! This trick is played upon sensitive, modest, gifted people everywhere. Fools set the pace and rule, and those who know the least of the responsibilities of living are the first to rush forward and grab them up. Envy and jealousy have it all their own way, and so it is the world around; everyone is forced to pay a fearful price for his superiority.

At different times poets and writers, good people of distinction and philanthropy, weary of the "storm and stress" of life and of invasions and intolerable "bumptiousness" of the vulgar and indiscriminating, have tried to secure a place and surroundings where high thinking and simple living might order their days and secure to them companionship fit for the gods; but the noblest and best of humanity are not permitted to go off by themselves in such ways and have a little heaven on earth all to themselves. This cannot be. They must stand apart each in their place, out in the world—"in the open"—that they may each one stand as a beacon light, object lesson, leader, and thus assist in "leavening the whole lump" of ignorant and unregenerate humanity.

HAPPINESS.

Happiness is the final achievement of the human soul. Perfect happiness can only come as the result of absolute at-one-ment with God, the divine will, and in this conforming there is no loss of personality, or of individuality; it only rounds out the soul into its godlike completeness. It is unimaginable that there should come loss of any attribute of the soul on its way up to the rendez-vous with its Parent, God. Rather, that its powers should increase in every possible direction with use, in conformity with divine law. This is the only true happiness.

The ideals of happiness cherished by men take in an immensely wide range, and bring into action all the peculiar attributes of the composite natures of man. The brutal instinct cries out: "Kill! kill!" Bloodsheding is its ravishing delight. When it arrives at a point where it may not destroy its fellows, the whole created animal kingdom—including woman—is its prey. Wars and rumors of wars will never cease on this planet until humanity at large develops out of this grade which expects to find happiness in the exercise of its very lowest, primitive instincts.

Further along in the line of the evolution of the soul, ideals of happiness pursued by man are simply futile and childish; the awakening to a realization of this is a commonplace, world-wide experience, and only repeated embodiments can purge the soul, educate the minds of men, and turn their attention to the only true and lasting ideals of happiness.

PAIN.

Physical pain beyond a certain point ceases to be pain and becomes an ecstasy. The same beneficent law controls mental and spiritual agonies. They each have their limit. To the keenest of sorrows, the deepest of griefs our Maker has spoken: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." Nurse them as we may, draw them as deeply as we can into our soul's recesses, and make them, in our morbid states, idols to cherish, they yet lose their power to hold our souls in subjection.

Both physically and mentally, the nerves of feeling refuse to respond. They have their limitation, and time holds for every heart-breaking experience a consolation. If it were not so, this world would be turned into a vast, howling lunatic asylum. Unseen and unrecognized by stricken hearts, "The Angels of His, who do His pleasure" stand ever ready to pour healing balm upon all our wounds, and to teach the great, eternal truth that afflictions are the real educators of the soul.

FOES IN THE HOUSEHOLD.

"A man's foes shall be they of his own household." This saying referred to the religious differences which the great prophet saw would arise in consequence of his peculiar teachings. There are no ill feelings between people so rancorous and lasting as those which spring from such causes, and as hate is but love inverted, the nearer and dearer the relationships, the more bitter is the feeling likely to be engendered. Proverbially, family feuds are the most deadly and difficult to eradicate.

The friend, the relative who knows you best, who has seen you in your hours of weakness when you have been entirely "off guard," is the one who can most injure you should anything occur to sever your hearts. There is no help for this save in that growth of charity and forbearance one toward another which teaches us to seek not our own, but to try to help each other in the great struggle of life.

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Who are the "pure in heart?" Those who aspire to the good, and sacrifice self to attain it. What is virtue? That which is best for the individual; not on either the animal or the spiritual plane alone; but in every lawful expression of the nature; the epitomization, and spiritualization of all past "karma" from the sod up to God.

THE INNER LIFE.

How unreal seems the existence of the inner life! How vain our intent to catch its meaning, and portray its deepest lessons, and yet, it is the reality. It forms the center around which all external life revolves, from which all outward being receives its vitality and assurance of existence. The passive soul heeds not the ever-recurring changes which its very continued life indicates, and will, when unveiled by the transforming hand of death, wonder at its wealth of life. The conscious being, ever alert, notes the changes and the indications of ever-progressing life with delight, and awe, and a profound recognition of the law of its being which sets the star of its existence higher and higher in the heavens, and lures it on for its own perfection even unto the perfect day. To such a soul there is little peace, or rest by the way; but it may finally learn a godlike heroism and patience which will enable it to trace its steps, and see in all its life's experiences a sequence which is divine and beneficent.

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Power is silent; power does not fume and bluster. It holds firmly and steadily on its way, and wins by force of its resistless and relentless sway.

ROOT OF EVILS.

The most unaccountable phase of philanthropic effort put forth by good people for the help of humanity is their utter failure to apply their remedial suggestions, or helpful agencies to the real roots, or causes, of great matters needing attention. Everything is approached and dealt with entirely from the external. Either from ignorance or fear of the probable results to be met with upon close inspection, the beginnings, the real causes of evil doings are let alone to grow until they become unbearable. Then comes the "hue and cry" joined in by all who seek to have wrongs righted.

Such has been, and is the "white slave evil." Ignorance is the cause of all evil; but the special cause of this great, terrible, devastating wrong starts with the utter lack of the education of children by their parents, especially of the necessary instruction of girls regarding their own natural functions, and their relationship to men. The most vitally important knowledge that can ever be theirs is left entirely out of their home education, and the natural curiosity of the young left to the foolish ignorance of their young mates, or of designing underlings.

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Woman is the magnet that draws souls to this life.

BEST IN CHANCE.

There is no method so surely successful in barring the progress of the soul as that of permitting a prejudice for one phase, or presentation of occult law to so blind the perceptions of the mind as to cause it to entirely disregard all such views as are not already set forth, and accepted.

It is as the old story of the two who fought over the shield with a gold side and a silver side; because, as neither could see both sides at once, each considered the statement of the other a willful falsehood. Let us try, at least, to bear in mind that our relationship to this universe has been of long enough duration to permit of the evolution, and establishment of many series of laws which do not, as would seem at the first glance, conflict, or force us to a disbelief in our own well-accredited experiences. The whole united universe is moving forward upon evolutionary lines, and what was, and is true in the beliefs of the East, must be today supplemented by the further knowledge revealed by the seers of the West. The extreme likeness which exists between the different religions of the world is everywhere apparent, and the devachan of the Theosophists corresponds to the expected rest in the tomb, until Gabriel sounds his horn on resurrection day of the orthodox Christian.

The only way the priests knew to prevent the knowledge of their ignorance coming to their followers was to draw a veil over the future of the invisible soul, and promise a long, long rest to the weary and heavy-laden ones, to whom this, alone, seemed compensation for their earthly cares.

People are just as tired today as they have ever been in the history of the world, but they are growing, through their superior knowledge of occult things, to see how to separate spirit and soul from matter, and to render unto each its just due in its proper sphere. In laying aside the physical body, and perceiving that the new life opening up before the spirit offers the truest possible rest to the enfranchised soul, through congenial activities, and obeying its behest finding a real heavenly experience through their recognition, and obedience to the undeviating law of uses.

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We do want God in the Constitution; but not the God of any creed or ism, but of the great moral principles, the ethical philosophy taught by Jesus, the Christ.

MISERLINESS.

There is such a thing as being miserly of thoughts and ideas as well as of lucre. One is as foolish as the other. Circulation is necessary to health and comfortable living. Cast off the leading strings of other minds. Out of the abundance of thine own heart speak thine own truest, highest thoughts. Think not thy supply will fail, or that by withholding thou shalt increase thy store. It is not possible to make a corner in this realm, or to take out a mortgage on God's gifts. Freely ye have received, freely give and thy "measure shall be pressed down and running over."

SPECIAL PROVIDENCE.

If the absolute homogeneity of the race were once understood and established in the minds of men, it would put an end to the varying modes and methods of thought which now only tend to separate their minds and hearts. To know, to feel the unity of soul with souls, and of the minds of men with the Infinite would forever wipe out the discord and inharmony which now prevail everywhere. Not my erring, and human will, but thy Will of Wisdom and Love be done on earth as it is in heaven, must be, finally, the attitude of every aspiring soul.

Too long the Christian world has accepted the legendary Hebraic God, in the place of our real "Father who art in heaven." The teachings of Jesus—the testimony he gave of the love of God, if taken to the heart—must dispose forever of the perception of God as a Being of cruelty and revenge, and given over to low attributes. The Creator of the universe—"without whom was nothing made"—manifests to us through the action of eternal and unchangeable law. This is demonstrated to us by and through his vice-gerents, the angels of his who do his pleasure. Down, down from the supernal regions, from the supernal plane of being, comes the Divine Mandate which is made known to the human soul through the instrumentality that can penetrate the surroundings, and best make manifest the inspiration, the warning, or the perception of the undeviating law which holds all human experience and its sure results in its care and keeping. And those who dwell upon the threshold of the door which opens upon the life eternal are those who have loved and who still do love the children of earth—fathers, mothers, children, friends who have walked the earth by our sides, and whom no starry crowns, and no glorious heaven could tempt away from the work of blessing and comforting the sorrowing souls still left on earth to mourn the loss of their loving companionship, and sympathy. And this is God's "Special Providence" made manifest in our lives whenever and wherever we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

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Once the soul really looks forth and sees, there can be, after that, no more sleeping. All is effort, weighing, balancing, deciding, groping painfully along, or running swiftly the race, bracing against fearful odds, or bravely out-riding the storm. Taking it all as it comes, it is increasing action, motion, change.

HUMAN DESTINY.

Confucius, long considered the oldest and wisest of all the ancient teachers, when he was consulted upon an abtruse point of ethics, said in effect: "Ask the ancients. I do not know." The results of modern research are constantly undermining the first-recorded ideas concerning the age, and the degree of scientific and religious culture of the race, and we may well feel like turning from the authenticated historical records with which we are familiar to ask of the old, old world the occult meanings of the messages graven on pillar and on chiselled stone. The records which have survived the storm and stress of the ages bringing down to us unexpected knowledge of the lives, the achievements, and the histories of far-off, long-buried, hidden and lost peoples, communities, and even distinct personalities, were carefully planned and exactly executed by those who, already perceiving the mutability of all human life, and all its affairs, who—in a word—realizing that "the fashion of this world passeth away," sought to immortalize and perpetuate forever an absolute history of their own, and kindred races, by the uprearing of vast, imperishable monuments and temples, and abodes of men. The pyramids, majestic rock-hewn places of worship, and subterranean crypts are but the fingerposts of destiny. The voice of the weird spirit of "Memnon" who sits enthroned within the awful wastes of the desert sands, moans on and on, ever the same awe-inspiring warning. "Listen, listen, vain, evanescent, puerile chrysalis, man! Such as thou art, so were these most ancient of days over the history of whose toilsome, groping lives we keep forever jealous watch and ward. As they are today, so shall ye become. A little space, a few cycles of time, and all that lives and stalks abroad in the full plentitude of energy and ambition shall become resolved into the unfathomable the unreadable mysteries of the ages."

Not after such fashion shall we of this age of widespread enlightenment write our history on the annals of the planet's life, and evolution. All that has gone before this time—the closing in of the vast cycle—has been, in a way, fragmentary, comet-like; the whole race of mankind has marched around the globe again and again. The leaders—the head—were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the vast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses, the grovelling slaves, but a remove from the beasts of burden.

The spur of necessity, the development of ambition, and avarice, and the unfolding of the ego in man forced him along upon unknown paths, kept him separate from his kind, and built up the distinct races, in order that the individuality of each might become distinctly marked and recognized, that each, in his own special environment, might become the highest possible expression of what climate, soil and other influences, incident to the natural heredity could evolve in the lives and beings of given races of men. It is as though Nature had disported herself in bringing to life an infinite variety and diversity among her perfected children. But men, here and there, have always shown the golden cord of kinship to astonish and bewilder the unwary and unthinking.

The virtue and honor of a race are considered mere superstition and a perpetuation of injustice and wrong, or are accepted as a lesson in charity and brotherhood. Thus is ever growing and becoming established the entire homogeneity of the race. We have girded the earth, and established our fiery rule in the depths of the seas; the time for the fulfilling of a prophecy far reaching in its results is even now at hand. "That which is spoken in the closets, shall be shouted from the housetops." Far and wide it is whispered in secret places, lest it be known of selfish greed or ambitious tyranny, and this it is that the human heart conceives, and human lips proclaim: "Liberty! liberty!! liberty!!!" Room for noble thought, freedom for grand and acceptable work in the cause of human enlightenment, and the soul's redemption. The whole vast aura of the earth, the illimitable ether trembles and thrills with the majesty of the word. High above the thunder-roll of human discontent and awful pain, blazes the lightning of thought, and the undying aspiration of the soul. And thus shall we tell our story—thus record the history of the now oncoming race. Not in material emblems only, consecrated to the forces of nature; but in the spiritual records which tell of the freeing of humanity from the tyranny of effete religions, and the upbuilding of a new composite race, fear free, and worshipful only of recognized universal truth.

ETHICAL LAW.

Setting aside all our hereditary beliefs, all our theological teachings let us try to consider the true teachings of Jesus as differentiated from the instructions given by Moses for the guidance of the Jews. Moses never told his people to love and forgive their enemies. Jesus made a strong point of this, even bidding his disciples to forgive injuries to the seventieth time. Moses impressed upon his people the excellence of revenge, always demanding "an eye for an eye," a life for a life. Jesus said all that sort of compensation rested forever with God, that He alone, who saw and knew the hearts of men, could deal justly with them. The old Jewish law stoned to death the immoral woman—not the man—O no! certainly not! Jesus said to a flagrant woman brought before him by a rabble of men: "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." What divine sarcasm, and how they are said to have slunk away under his perception of them!

How is it now with the Christian religion in the so-called Christian nations? Where on the face of the earth is there a community or a people that is governed and controlled by the real teachings of the Christ?

All our jurisprudence is based upon the laws given to the Jews by their leader and lawgiver. We take the lives of those people who are guilty of breaking certain laws of ours based upon the laws of Moses, and while we do not stone the life out of those women—not men—whom we prove guilty of breaking the seventh commandment, we do build up against them walls of conventionality, and of uncharity harder than the rocks once used for the killing of their bodies.

Consider this beautiful law now in operation in the state of New York. If a poor, starving, homeless, hopeless human being, maddened by the bitter woes of life, seeks surcease of pain by throwing off his own individual life, by committing suicide, the law insists that such a one shall be not only forced back to a continuance of a horrible existence here, but that each and every one of such sinners shall be punished by imprisonment and fine. If that isn't serving the devil, what in the name of common sense is it? Where are the good Samaritans among the pretended followers of the loving Christ? What sort of a reckoning will such lawmakers have to meet, and what penalties undergo under the applied judgment of the Great Teacher and exemplars? "Woe to him through whom offences come," he said, and again: "Because ye did not give aid and comfort to the least of these, I will not call you of my flock." Could anything be more brutally unmerciful than such a law as this in its dealings with the most helpless, forlorn, and seemingly Godforsaken of all earth's children—the voluntary suicide?

How the demons must gloat over the lost souls who formed and enforced such a fiendish law! Why this everlasting "harking back" to Moses, while posing as followers of teachings utterly at variance with his? Let us admit that we are Jews and stop persecuting them because they are not Christians, or let us try to know what Christ Jesus really meant us to understand by his ethics of love and good will to men.

Many people have lost all their faith in the immortality of the soul, because Moses did not preach it. It is quite possible that even the worshipped Moses did not know everything that men may yet come to know about this, and anent a world of other things. Neither did the troglodytes, nor the cliff dwellers know of electricity or the X-ray! But Jesus knew of the life—the eternal, unquenchable life—of the soul beyond this mortal existence, and he knew and taught the way and the life that leads to that higher life. All through his teachings run this under-current of belief in the value of the individual soul, and instructions as to the highest and best way to evolve it from its lowest estate up to the Infinite.

Fancy what a revolution would come to the whole so-called Christian world if the ethics of Jesus, so plainly set down in his legacy to the children of men, were understood and lived! What wrong and injustice would be done away with, what works of mercy would be wrought!

HUMAN LIFE.

From the earliest soul consciousness to this very hour the mystery of human life has been, and is the subject of greatest interest. What is the origin of man? What is he here for? What is the everlasting purpose of him? And what, O what is his destiny, here or hereafter?

The woeful story told in the Bible of the origin and the "Fall of man," entailing untold miseries and uncomprehended anguish upon the whole human race, has never been believed in by thinking minds. Especially all that "rot" about God's repenting Himself of having made man in his own image, and then setting Himself up in his only Son—a sacrifice to Himself—for the sins of the folks He had just made and set agoing, and told to subdue and master the planet He had made for them to live on; but this yarn caught the fancy of infantile and puerile minds, and also of the designing priests and theologians who have never, to this day, tired of "baring the backs" of humanity to this "devil's rod," increasing, and multiplying the tortures of the minds of such as could be made to accept such stuff by fears which could never be comprehended or justified even in the minds of such children.

Our Heavenly Father has never set "metes and bounds" to the souls of his earth children; there is no hidden mystery that cannot be fathomed by them; there is no knowledge withheld from the earnest seeker after truth. But first of all, the mind must be clarified and set free from the blasphemous superstitions engendered by the crude beliefs taught by theologians. The developed mind, and reason must arouse to rage and resistance in view of the wreck and ruin of untold millions of lives, the result of false teachings.

ANIMAL LIKENESS.

People have a way of saying of those they admire greatly: "She has the face of an angel," or "She is a perfect beauty," "Beauty beyond compare," et al, according to their ideas of what constitutes absolute beauty; but the human countenances that have in them no faintest suggestion of the kingdom below us are very rare. If one looks attentively at the faces of the crowd as it surges along the most attractive street, there may be seen on review surprising resemblances. A man looking like an elephant, another like a toad, bull dogs and wolves galore, beneficent faces of old people, calm and patient, resembling work-worn horses, always folk of both sexes who suggest sheep,—now and again a cantankerous billy goat. You may be sure that the vast numbers of reptiles are not left out of the human representation, and the birds, too. The "eagle eye," and the carnivorous beak require no introduction to the menagerie, they belong there. But the felines have it, the cats, little and big, monopolize the show. Men regard a recognized resemblance to the king of beasts—the lion—a compliment to their natural powers and rightful rulership, while women have to put up with being considered cats, and many of them prove by their cattish doings their resemblance to their animal ancestry. There are babies everywhere about. It is disheartening to peer into their tiny faces and see in so many of their eyes no "speculation," no suggestion of intelligence. They remind you of the eyes of a fish.

Human beings have through them strains suggestive of the animal kingdom. It seems quite right to expect each one to act like the creature he resembles, when under the stress of violent emotion.

NATURAL SUPERSTITION.

At the creation of the race there was thrown around it such safeguards as should tend to its continuance. These were, of course, implanted in the crude mentality of undeveloped man. Underlying all the rest and the most important to its perpetuation was fear. The ignorant child has no fear of consequences attendant upon any action; experience teaches him to know what they are, and how to protect himself from them. This was the first lesson of primitive man, and when, through the exercise of his inventive faculties, he had mastered his visible foes, the animal monsters surrounding him and threatening his life, and he found himself confronted by the action of terrible forces which he could not grasp or see, he, by analogy, endowed them with personality, and such attributes as he knew himself to be possessed of, adding thereto powers and possibilities which were limited only by his own imagination. This was the very beginning of the working of the mental in him, and while it was most grotesque and unreasoning, it yet drew a sharp line between the mere animal and the animal man, and his whole life being spent in conflict with his foes, he naturally carried forward his growing perceptions of the existence of supernatural powers which were influencing his life upon the same basis, i. e., of an unending warfare, wherein he must always be the one attacked and vanquished. Fear of the animal world developed into a shivering terror of the invisible, and so deep and lasting was this first impression of the spiritual world upon his crude faculties, that it was made an universal heredity among all races and peoples. It exists everywhere today, even among those who profess to be living in the light of a higher revelation of God's purpose in the life of man.

ADAPTIVENESS OF MAN.

The most surprising and extraordinary quality of mind manifested by man is his ready power of adaptation to whatever may become a part of his earthly experiences. It, alone, assures his continual progress upon all lines of growth connected not only with his earthly but also his immortal career. Great inventions, unexpected discoveries, and astounding revelations may stagger him for a moment; but the facility with which he finally absorbs all the hitherto unknown outworkings of science and natural law, and assimilates them to his inner sense of the fitness of things, changing all his relationship to his material life, and forcing himself to a readjustment not only of his mental perceptions, but also of his external existence gives proof sufficient of his being not only favored of the gods, but also of his near kinship with them. The marvels of mechanics, the divinely beautiful representations of art, and the exalted inspirations of literature were never so sought after, or so appreciated by large portions of the race as at the present time. The peasant's cot today is made comfortable and beautified by accessories which within our historical knowledge could not be commanded by kings and princes possessed of great riches.

The spiritual origin of the splendid architecture of the great "white city" and later of the southern expositions is perfectly apparent to the eye of the mystic and the seer, and these vast, concentrated exhibits of the world's work are object lessons of which the influence can never be outlived even by the careless and unobserving. Today the great leaders of men, led by inspiring thoughts which would have appalled their forefathers, perfect schemes for overcoming the obstacles inhering in the vast forces of nature, and harness them into subservience to the growing needs of the race.

What devil-worshippers those old chaps were! To him they ascribed all power over things animate and inanimate, and the effrontery of the man who should have even mentioned the possibility of talking over a wire, thousands of miles, or of utilizing the forces of Niagara, or of hundreds of inventions now in use in the most commonplace surroundings would have been met with condign punishment. Our inventors would be in dungeons instead of their comfortable laboratories, and our great engineers would long ago have lost their heads. What a time we have had getting the devil out of our mechanical life! Now he can only rule in the immaterial world, in the crude imaginations of the ignorant and superstitious.

DEVIL WORSHIP.

The Infinite Mind is in all things, everywhere what we are not. Where we are full of impatience, He is calm and unmoved; wherein we grope blindly, He, seeing the end from the beginning, is well content with his own handiwork, and with the final outcome of the souls of his earthly children. Many of the imperfections and individual shortcomings of people are laid aside in the dark crucible of physical death and the grave. Such of these tendencies as are carried over into the next plane of being, persisting in the spirit, are there dealt with as disease or ignorance, the results of malformation or bad environment. God is love, not hate, and "rejoiceth not in the death of the wicked," nor in the punishment of the wrongly educated; for a large portion of the sin and seeming iniquity of humanity is the result of heredity and of a misunderstanding of the laws of God expressed through nature. Undoubtedly there have been good men and true among those who sought to interpret God's law aright and formulate a code for the guidance and discipline of humanity in accordance with justice and equity. But their premises were all wrong. They took for their foundation the old Jewish history wherein the God of the Hebrews was always represented as a jealous being, rejoicing in revenge and rapine, and in all that the enlightened world can conceive of as characterizing a devil. So the modern world has been committed to a devil worship. Nowhere is the ethical teaching of Jesus recognized in our laws. It is the old Hebraic attitude toward life and God.

FANATICISM.

Physical death is the fulfilling of a natural law everywhere prevailing; a change, which the mutability of all material creations renders necessary, and salutary, and, when received without the prejudices engendered by education, pleasing. Religion has nothing to do with it, and more than that it ought to influence every act of life. No more has religion anything to do with the intercourse of disembodied spirits with those in the form. That also is wholly controlled by laws inherent in the nature of things, and will, when the ridiculous hue and cry raised by sensualistic minds has somewhat abated, resolve itself into a fixed fact having no more direct bearing upon human affairs than any other form of social intercourse. It has taught no new code of morals; it has not overthrown, so much as it has revealed the true state of things. It has revived the spiritual teachings of him by whom the world—called from him Christian—professes to be guided and controlled.

Fanaticism is the law of some minds, and it will display itself in whatever arena they are engaged. In politics the man they vote for is almost a god. In mechanics, they have invented a machine which shall ensure "perpetual motion;" in chemistry, the elixir of life, or a cure for all the ills of human life; in morals, the kingdom of heaven is speedily coming through the intervention of their dead friends.

The truest religion is that which adheres most faithfully to nature's laws; for strive we ever so hard, we must return to them. They are God's will made manifest, and the mind most free from prejudice engendered by false education is the one which secures to itself the most harmony, making possible that removal of "mountains" so often quoted—meaning the inevitable obstacles of spiritual life.

Christ said: "The kingdom of heaven is within you" and he might have added that of hell also. Here is the beginning, if not the ending of all growth and reform. There seems to be a universal tendency or wish to escape from one's self, and most so-called reforms begin at the surface—the ultimate—rather than at the centre. This should be an education to children, teaching them that their temptations are to be dreaded only as they are responded to by something within, and that loses all power with them as they gain self-knowledge and self-control.

TRUTH.

The demand for a knowledge of the truth, God's truth, is as old as the world, the world of intellect and knowledge, the world we know about, and of which we have a more of [Transcriber's note: or?] less true history. This cry of earnest and thoughtful men and women for truth, "nothing but the truth" has rung adown the ages from the pagan, and the nature worshipper through all the countless phases of belief to our modern presentations of inspired faith. Everyone who dares to think must realize how this longing of humanity has been met and exploited in times past by ignorant and self-seeking people, and suffering humanity has been imposed upon by superstitions and false teachings which have left it in sorrowful dissatisfaction, or lost in the mazes of doubt and unbelief.

The fool hath said in his heart "there is no God." Life is too short and too full of interest in other directions for us to turn aside to combat fools of any sort. If we admit into our inner consciousness the absolute recognition of the existence of a supremely loving and wise God whose attributes are more marvelously great and grand than it can ever enter into the heart of man, or the mind of the highest archangel to conceive, we shall have taken the first step toward so positing ourselves toward him, as we perceive him embodied in his works, as to begin to see some faint indications of the divine purpose concerning the souls of men created in his image. All that we know of his laws and his intentions toward us, as indicated by our experiences here and now, embodied as we are in matter, supplies the whole of the data from which we infer truth, the truth as it is in God.

We find, first of all, that we are set here a homogenous race, for as the means of communication between widely separated branches of the family become established and easy, our horizons expand, racial prejudice and antagonisms vanish, new interests and fresh sympathies arise, and we are thus brought to recognize the fact of our common origin.

What a dull and deadly uninteresting place this planet would be without the differentiation of the races! What if the whole united world were Irish or German, Russian, or even loudly pervading, assumptive American! What an awful element of boredom would be added to our existence; and yet there are people so blind to this most wonderful expression of God's Providence, that they limit their sympathetic regards to a chosen few, and virtually cast all other peoples into outer darkness. This applies especially to religious prejudices and beliefs. Let's see about this: your antecedents were, so far as you know, Scotch and English, but by some providential intervention you are now American. You are expected to scorn and despise all other clans and races, and to condone all the faults and crimes of these which have been so honored by you, and this is called patriotism, and makes you feel virtuous and popular, and it is necessary and right—politically considered—but not from the standpoint of the occult, the spiritual side of existence. There is a wise intention and purpose in the blending of the races in their intermarriages, it is for the breaking down of prejudices as old as the race itself, that have ever kept the peoples of the earth apart.

There is but one law of evolution, and that which holds for the individual epitomizes that of a nation, or a world. So as we see people at a certain stage of their unfoldment of individuality exhibit an extreme egotism, amounting almost to an insanity, by isolating them, by confining them to the radius of their own mentality, so it is with the different tribes and races and nations of the world. They are set apart to grow their own peculiar traits of character, possible only to their prescribed environment, that they may thus push forward their own special gifts and endowments to their own ultimates. This is but a phase of their evolutionary process, a class preparation looking toward a wider experience, wherein it shall come to be seen that all the world is akin. Referring again to the unit man. The shibboleth of the just present past time has been individualism which, rightly understood, means simply that the soul of man has progressed to a point where occult forces can lay hold on the crude being and shape it into a worthy likeness of its divine Maker, and it must there stand alone, until it feels its at-one-ment with the Divine and sees and acknowledges the higher law and purpose of its being, and furthermore recognizes why it has been called into existence.

Truth is like certain chemicals. It can only be retained by the mind wherein it finds an adapted affinity, and then it has in each a distinctly individual expression according to the mental and moral status of that mind. But laws and principles are stationary and unchangeable; it is our own personal knowledge which varies and changes with our growth. We may ignore and denounce certain phases of phenomena, but the phenomena work on just the same, unaffected by our beliefs or disbeliefs. The loss is ours if we willfully close our eyes and ears against the enlightening message which it would bring to us in passing our way.

CHRISTS.

Confucius, the moralist, Buddha, the intellectualist, Jesus, the loving. Why reject the teachings of any one of this trinity of inspired and inspiring ones? All are of God, light bringers to a darkened world.

HERO WORSHIP.

All along the individual life, the soul's development through matter, are strewn experiences which mark the dawning force which is finally to culminate in its marked individuality, and separation from the mass of organized, created beings. These experiences are the rare awakenings of the soul to the realization and use of its own native powers which flow from its divine paternity and origin, and which constitute its birthright and ultimate inheritance. At times, the gifts and powers of certain beings burst into bloom and fruition when least expected, and cast a radiance and a halo around the personality, which mark and award it a place among its fellow men, altogether superior to the general trend and outworkings of the recognized character. Around such illuminated points of high expression of the soul's possibilities gather other personalities and, by the action of a natural law, crystalize about the central magnet of the inspired, and the inspiring thought or action, and thus is leadership created. Barely does the entire life outwork itself upon lines which harmoniously express the inspiration which begot the godlike union of the human with the divine, and thus through the natural falling away from the ideal, those who seek the higher life through imitation or emulation of the model so set up are finally forced to put aside their hero worship and seek their own individual growth on the lines upon which they can lawfully unfold.

The varying moods, and idiosyncrasies of the hero or the saint turn away their followers to the contemplation and study of those great moral principles which rule the world and control the universe.

On the physical plane great strides are being made. The suppleness of one, the power of balance of another, the feats of the acrobat, the will of the juggler which commands the action, and the seeming suspension of natural law; all these expressions are ever increasing and varying through the industry and the ingenuity of man, and point to the possibilities of the hitherto undreamed of physical perfection of development, and grand unfolding of unknown powers. Man must master the earth by controlling the laws of the material world. This is the foundation of all things, and upon it shall be built all that the soul must have for its unfoldment, within the aura and the radius of this external plane.

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If there can be one thing more pitiful than all others it is to see little human bugs and reptiles mount their egotistical stilts and declare the non-existence of the Creator.

If the blatant critics would only give over blowing their individual horns, and remark for a little the value of quiet introspection, many mysteries would reveal themselves and much good would be realized.

REASON.

Human reason is the outgrowth of the intuition. In its final analysis, it is the comprehension by the soul of the reality of truth and of its just relationships and values. It is the power of discriminating and deciding between the perception of the intuition and the testimony of facts gathered by observation and experience. The intuition of man is of the will, that of woman is of the affections; thus it is more spiritual than man's. Just as the doctors have prospected and laid out and defined the functions of the physical body, so are the psychologists and the mental scientists seeking a way and method by which the attributes of the real being may be divided off into sections and labelled accordingly. The fact is, the individual soul is all the time struggling to reach its own at-one-ment with itself. When it comes under the tuition and discipline of the gods, and begins to perceive their methods, it can understand the whys and wherefores of the intentions of life's experiences. They are to consolidate and make practical vagrant emotions and tendencies, and lop off and scorch out the idiosyncrasies of heredity and custom, and rouse the soul to a knowledge of its need of harmony with divine law. Into the real soul depths can no divulging line and plummet reach. This domain belongs to its Creator alone. It is only as the tests of living and doing manifest hidden motives and meanings that we catch glimpses of the ego that abides within and through this life, submerged as it is in the flesh. We can know but little of what is now, or of what yet shall be, when the wholeness of the individual is established.

SYMPATHY.

Be not beguiled by pity masquerading in the guise of sympathy. Real sympathy comes only through an understanding of conditions as the result of the same, or of exactly similar experiences. But though experiences differ in details, according to the organizations and idiosyncrasies of individuals, the results in awakening the mind to a realization of truth, and final evolution and growth of the soul are enough alike to foster a real sympathy, and mutual understanding. Souls thus linked together are truly friends and comrades.

NEW RELIGIONS.

There is a great demand among the people of this, and probably of every past age, for something new in the revelations of religious thought and knowledge. When it has not been forthcoming according to the desires of aspiring worshippers, the imaginations of would-be teachers and leaders have set to work to devise new schemes for the beguiling of their fellow mortals that should hypnotize them, and hold their allegiance to some new revelation of religion, or so-called science. The following that some of the isms, and newly-hatched cults are getting together is simply amazing. They seem to reach out and pervade the world, and they are not confined to any particular grade or class of people. The "Zionists," the "Adventists," the "Perfectionists," the "Holy Rollers," the "Christian Scientists," the "Spiritualists," and unnumbered other forms of belief leave a wide margin for all sorts and kinds of people of peculiar idiosyncrasies. So much has been promised, and so little realized in the way of comfort and satisfaction that wails of doubt, and sorrow are undiminished. Every bit of this "groundswell" of seeking, tortured souls is just the reaction from slavish, blasphemous, orthodox religion.

From the perceptions of the primitive man to the understandings of the unfolded brains of the thinking, reasoning people of today is indeed a "far cry," and the queer vagaries, and the impossible goings on of the reputed gods, in partnership with Nature, that were once received with awe and profound belief, have now nearly lost their hold upon the credulity of modern humanity.

As man has unfolded and his perceptions have enlarged, his fears of the wrath of God, and of his possible interference with man's schemes and purposes have given way to man's own will, and to his determination to succeed in proving himself master of nature's forces, and of the whole planet. He has created the "New Earth" of material comfort and satisfaction that has been so long foretold; while from the heavens countless multitudes of awakened, arisen souls throng all the ways of life, proclaiming the truth of the absolute present existence of a "New Heaven" also. This is not a perfect time, by any means, even with all this manifestation of progressive power. Perfection in anything, in all things, is a matter of growth, of evolution, and the whole world is swinging along in the pathway of progress toward that goal, the knowledge of spiritual law which is God, as fast as time can move. But we are actually living in the enjoyment of the fulfillment of a profound prophecy, with but little thought or realization of all it means or portends.

THE GROWTH PROCESSES OF THE HUMAN SOUL.

It is pitiful to think of all the woe and sorrow that have been shed abroad in the hearts of men and women, and even of little children, by the teachings of ignorant and designing beings anent Death. Fortunately, all our modern cults are emphasizing the fact that it is the fear of death that is the "last enemy" of humanity that is to be put down and shorn of its terror. Physical death is only a step in our evolution. It cannot be otherwise than a progressive motion of the spirit. It recalls the spirit from the make-believe, and misunderstandings of its earthly environments, and experiences, and shows up the real and true status of life. Vast numbers of human beings, passing out of the chrysalis of the fleshly embodiment leave with the body sins for which they have been condemned, and idiosyncrasies for which they are not accountable: there are, too, packs of people who have been so bamboozled by orthodox teachings, so set up in their egotism, that they die believing in their superior claim to recognition by the gods, but who find themselves elected to a long sit down in purgatory, or devachan—or whatever the place is—while they get acquainted with themselves as they really are. The most deplorable state is that of the souls who cannot rise from the earth conditions with which they are loaded down. They fill the atmosphere; they walk the earth dismayed and helpless; their whilom friends and beloved ones will have none of them. Even if one such is fortunate enough to find a medium through whom he can communicate, he gets little or no recognition or welcome, unless he can absolutely conform to the wishes of the purblind folk, who, knowing nothing of spiritual law, try to insist upon making conditions, and getting tests which are so outside of the law that even the Creator could not meet their demands. For those who have no aspiration toward the spiritual life, the only way is to plunge back into matter through another incarnation in the flesh. There are no new souls created and relegated to this planet. Their number is fixed. They pass and pass, and come again; good, bad and indifferent all come under the same, the only law of evolution. The gates of life are crowded with such as these who, weary of prowling to no purpose, seek re-embodiment on this plane of existence. The process through which they thus pass is of itself one of refining and of readjusting to changed conditions, which means growth for the soul; for throughout the universe, the Great Law, the law which holds all things in equilibrium, is the law of progress, evolution, unfoldment.

It must be remembered always that back of all the recognized greetings, and the assurances of the continued, conscious life of our spirit friends, back of all the lesser gods, who were human beings, like unto ourselves, back of all the inspired teachings of all the seers and prophets is God, "our Heavenly Father," in whom we live and have our being.

Through his appointed teachers is vouchsafed to his earthly children a knowledge of his love and wisdom. It is boundless and free for all, and there are no "chosen people." He is the source, the fountain head from which flows all life, and all sustaining power. The heavens declare the glory of God—the Creator; and the arisen souls of men proclaim his wondrous and unfailing interest in all his created beings.

NECESSITY FOR PHENOMENA.

Some people are born so spiritual-minded that the proper adjustment of the several functions pertaining to the moral or religious nature stand clearly defined. Their immortality is never doubted, their faith in the unseen never obscured by clouds of passion, or dimmed by pressure of material necessities. These are the beacon lights in the world's progress. These are the mariners to whom has been given a sure guide and compass. The others are those who have little or no perception beyond what is seen to befall animal life, and their growth into a finer possibility must be slow and tedious. It is in fact necessary that many should "rise from the dead" and jam tables and chairs and things around their apartments, ere they can fancy the possibility of any existence separate from this material life.

The most abominable of all egotisms is that which forever studies to limit the possibilities of the Creator, to announce firmly that there is no further consciousness, and no need for human faculties after this life is ended. The most dignified attitude would be to give him the benefit of the doubt, to admit that He has the power to continue, and remould, and readjust through all time and all eternity. But this is not a class of subjects which can be settled by logic. It is based upon a conviction of the inner soul, and the most that anyone can do is to place himself as nearly as possible in harmony with some one law, and this will form a center around which a perception of more shall come, and revolve around it grandly and in perfect time, thus completing the rounding out—the fullness—of the character of the individual man or woman.

WILL.

Will, human will, is the result of concrete perceptions of the conscious mind. Its development depends upon the experiences of the individual soul, and its expression upon the environment, the education, and spiritual discipline of the individual. Having its foundation in the functions necessary to the sustainment of the mortal life of man, it naturally overrides all considerations outside of the objects of its own pursuit. It is the quality par excellence, the power of the gods, but only as it comes to relinquish all its selfish determinations, and yield obedience to the all-pervading Higher Will, the will of God, in whom all life has its source and continuance of being can it march along the royal highway that leads to perfection. This must be so eternally; for there can be no division of purpose or of interest in the divine Mind.

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All religions based upon or derived from sorceries obstruct the progress of the race, and will be, in the fullness of time, disintegrated and readjusted to meet the growing demands of humanity.

CHANGE OF ATOMS.

There is nothing so great that it cannot be undermined and destroyed. There is nothing so established and sanctioned by age-long, consecrated usage that shall not finally be swept along into oblivion and utterly forgotten.

There is no combination of material atoms—no mechanism, however strong and useful—that shall not dissolve and be rearranged, and take on ever higher forms of expression. This is, and has always been the unfailing law of progression, of the outworking of the ascending series. It involves all circumstances, and all earthly experiences. Happy are those who take Paul's advice, who can equip themselves with the armor of faith, which begets knowledge, and prepare to "fight the battle of life" with courage and fortitude.

OUR LIMITATIONS.

Much of our successful conduct of life depends upon our recognition of our limitations, and largely our limitations depend upon the will. The test lies in the power to discriminate between what one owes to one's self, and the duties and obligations imposed by responsibilities inherited or assumed. Temperaments are so variable, no two human beings alike. Much, too, depends upon the power and habit of observation.

FINAL RACE EXPERIENCE.

The fear of death—shared in by all created beings—is nature's safeguard against a universal stampede from this life by physical death, when the miseries of existence on this earthly plane become too dreadful to be borne, when the tortures of the soul, in the tortured body drives out all reason, and all philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for surcease of agony. Probably most people have experienced, for a moment, in a time of terrible crisis, a thought, if not an impulse, to seek thus to end all suffering by flinging off the bonds of life here, and thus pass out into—what? Simply life in a changed environment, with exactly the same responsibilities and soul needs, and the same causes of their miseries, and unsatisfied desires still existing in their minds.

Life here is just one link in the endless, unbreakable chain of existence. It is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere. Caught in the web of life, there is no escape from its demands upon the individual soul. Somewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate, upward and onward, or downward into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of things. It is free to make its choice. It can pursue the hard and toilsome path of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop around through all the hells of life unrelated to God, and resistant to Christ.

One by one all human beings must obey the call to march over into the border land, into nature's infinite invisible realm; they cannot help themselves; no one can; on they go, an endless caravan, to the land of revelations, the place of reviews where the utterly selfish are fetched up with a "round turn" and made to realize that a real Godliness is the only thing that can pass muster, that mere beliefs do not count, and only character tells. How swiftly, how inevitably their places are filled! Nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of the gods, the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled.

RELIGIOUS PERFORMANCES.

"It is to laugh" to "see the heathen rage and devise a vain thing." No hierarchy of earth, no multitudinous howl of ignorance and stupidity that "having eyes that see not; and having ears that hear not" can block the wheels of progress. It has worked in the past, "quite some," routing out tortured souls and bodies by the millions, sending them flying off from this planet which was, and is their real home, turning rack and screw, and setting baleful fires on tender flesh, threatening further eternal hell fires; all for what? Why, to prove that "tweedle dee," is greater than "tweedle dum," and this is the record of religion at the hands of the theologians and the priests! This is the story of accepted orthodox religion. Why, then, have a religion? Why not try the altruism taught by the great Master in a system of ethics that can never be superseded by one higher and more truth-inspiring, better adapted to the perfect unfoldment of the human race?

No more of these awful persecutions, and massacres, and killings for the "glory of God;" for the amusement of devils, really! Practical common sense, and reason will surely be, in time, the salvation of this world.

OF TEACHERS.

The wisest teacher is the one who shows the gradual processes of unfoldment and growth in the mind and body, and in all the outworkings of the material world. He who breaks down arbitrary distinctions in every realm of life does the most toward liberating and enlightening the world. We are from infancy so accustomed to petty distinctions which have originated in ignorance, and from long use have been formulated into laws, fixed and binding, that were some person clear-sighted enough to the truth to show us our invisible bonds, and how to sever them with the scalpel of common sense, and reason, we would be amazed at our great freedom, and astonished to see the light coming through thousands of loopholes and windows of the mind which are now closed by an accumulation of dust and cobwebs of the petty superstitions of ages.

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Millions of beings are born so starved that no after nourishing can make up for it.

WISE USE OF MONEY.

The money that has been spent in building up blasphemous theologies would have rid the whole world of poverty, and ignorance, if it had been beneficently employed with the kind intention of doing the peoples of the earth good, in every way, instead of trying to fix upon them damnation now, and also arrange for it in their life hereafter.

Here and there, scattered along the way, are souls who have escaped the "drag-net" of theology, but there are at this present moment great spirits that, even after having passed through death's dark crucible, are haunted by damning fears of bad results possible from too much freedom. The trail of the serpent is felt by them still.

GENIUS.

Genius means simply a high and true sympathy with inanimate and human nature, and the power to voice their various moods and tenses.

Paradoxes seem to run riot in all occult things. Extremes in all departments are rare. There are a far greater number of indifferently good and indifferently bad people than of the superlatively good or bad. So Nature everywhere keeps the equilibrium, and the eternal processes of evolution go on, and ever onward toward perfection.

All the pains of this human life come in consequence of the resistance of the souls of men to the law of progress which is always, and everywhere, laying hold of them to force them from the sod up to God. They squirm, and wriggle, and howl, and make no end of fuss, because the Lord calls upon them to awake from their animalism, and sloth, and arise, and seek the kingdom.

"He knoweth our frame," no more comforting, or encouraging words than these have ever been spoken. "He," the great soul-Father, knoweth us as we are. He knows how to inspire with hope, and courage the most sorrowing and lost. The felon in his cell, the outcast from all that men call good, are, with those of superior spiritual attainments, subjects of this beneficence. Nearly every soul feels, at some period of existence, its subtle relationship to a something, a power outside of its material life and surroundings. The experiences of this life are calculated to strengthen and perfect that relationship. Jesus Christ is credited with saying, "Be ye lifted up even as I am lifted up." That is, in spirit, to a perception of the relationship of your souls to the great "Over soul."

Be ye, then, patient with yourselves, and with each other. Be sure that you are being taught, "lifted up" to a perception and knowledge of these things, as fast as it is lawful for you to be.

In God's good time ye shall blossom and bear a goodly fruitage.

"THOUGHTS ARE THINGS."

But thoughts, as potent entities, must pass from the formative, nebulous condition into a crystallized state by, and through some form of externalization of language, spoken or written.

Thoughts must be created—born—through the absolute form-creation of the human brain, in order to secure to them potentiality, and immortality.

The status of the individual brain, decides its products, the character of its brain children. Thoughts that are not caught, clung to, and crystallized, through the action of the external brain can have no place in the external life of this world, although they do have their power and influence in the incorporate, silent, ever-working world of cause.

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The mind digs deep to bring forth the real.

The soul dreads the edicts of its ignorant prototypes. The ego comes forward with its battle-axe, and the spirit rejoices and exults. Body, Soul, and Spirit; Nature's trinity.

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As spirit per se, has no entity, and only evolves individuality through its relationship with matter, and has no other conscious expression, the so-long-talked-of "fall of man" was not a fall downward, but a process upward, necessary to his being, to his existence as man.

UNFOLDMENT.

The persistence of the human soul after physical death proves only that it is a candidate for immortality. The race is just begun. The path that leads onward to the eternal heights is so long, so beset with difficulties, with pains and penalties, losses and crosses, and all the paraphernalia of evolution and growth that the stoutest heart, the strongest will would fail to respond to the call to "come up higher," were one to at once become aware of what inevitably lay before him. When any individual soul has dwelt long enough in the spirit realm to begin to feel the unrest of the law of eternal progress, he senses the law of reincarnation, and his earthly home draws him by attraction. He is preferred the cup of "renunciation," and forgetfulness, and is shown the way to his next embodiment.

INVENTIONS.

The inspired thinker sends out a thought to the world, it is taken up and passed through other brains, it becomes distorted or is recognized by them in its integrity according to the caliber of mind, or the idiosyncrasies of the one representing it. A thought or idea, once given to the world, becomes common property. It is not possible to put on mortgages or limit the use that may be made of it, or how it may be made to bring in returns to commercially-inspired minds. A woman devised a style of dress which she wore for her comfort at her own convenience. Another woman gave exactly the same pattern and details to the public, and is now living in elegance on the income derived from another. A man—a worker—invents an improvement, or a better method of doing things. The firm adopts and makes money out of it, and its originator is forgotten. There are, however, clever people who know how to protect their inspirations, and get the benefit themselves. The greatest disappointment comes to the originator when the thought is intended to indicate and outline action. So few people can achieve the same point of view, so few can be depended upon for united, harmonious action that the best organizing power is at times fetched up with a "round turn," and the progress of the good work intended becomes greatly impeded, or virtually lost.

DIVINE HEALING.

There are today many cults professing to have healing powers; but whether they are named "Christian," or "Mental," or "Spiritual," or "Divine Science," or whether the place of healing be in some shrine sacred to an accredited saint, or only in the presence of the patient receiving the benediction; they all operate under the same law; there is no other.

Jesus was the great transmitter to humanity of a knowledge of the power of divine healing; he never specialized. He never said: "I have cured your liver complaint, or your lungs are healed," etc., according to the ailment of the person seeking his aid. He only told them: "Thy [own] faith hath made thee whole." It was spoken of God long ago: "He healeth all our infirmities." The quality and the amount of personal magnetism possessed by the healer—the transmitter of the divine healing—does make a vast difference in the results of such efforts. The "Nazarene" was devoid of egotism, and selfishness, and his desire to heal and bless humanity was with him an overwhelming passion.

That Jesus knew the value of right physical habits is evidenced by the way he had of admonishing his patients to "go and sin no more," that is, stop breaking nature's hygienic laws. He had all along told them that right thinking was necessary to right doing.

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The transcendentalism of one age, shorn of the peculiar shading given to it by the individuality of the mind through which it first manifests itself, becomes the hard "common sense" of the next.

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What is Truth? Truth is God. God is Truth. Nothing in the universe could exist for one instant unless it had in it some faint intuition of truth, and it is this that we are here to discover.

SURPLUS.

Human beings slaughtered on battle fields, or carried off by pestilence and famine by thousands, or perishing by accidents by sea or by land by hundreds, are individually dear and useful, and are mourned; but in the great aggregate of moving life on this planet, they count as surplus.

ANALYSIS OF THE "LORD'S PRAYER."

How shall we pray? To whom shall we pray? Shall we pray at all? These are unsettled questions in the minds of many good persons who are striving to perceive the highest truth and to be guided thereby. The tests that have been applied to the usefulness of prayer by a large class of religious people have been, for ages, purely materialistic. The Lord has been importuned for the bestowal of personal favors, from the manufacturing of the right kind of weather to the slaying of enemies, and from the righteous putting down of infidels, to the spending of dollars with which to build high steeples. Then, too, God has had the benefit of the very best advice concerning the way He ought to deal with the heathen, how He should treat sinners of every sort, so as to show himself equal to managing his fractious subjects, and, finally, how to carry things along generally after such a fashion as should win and hold the respect of his earthly advisers.

This utter misunderstanding of the true function of prayer has caused many earnest souls to sorrow over lost faith in what should have been to them a source of strength and uplifting. Jesus said: "Ask, and ye shall receive," and as all his teachings referred to things of the spirit, he must have meant to indicate to his followers that whatever was sought for in the line of true spiritual enlightenment would surely be given. No one prays for houses and lands, for gold and other forms of material wealth, "for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

All through the teachings of Jesus run the mention of his and our Heavenly Parent, "Our Father," and since much of our knowledge of spiritual things comes through our perception of the law of correspondences, we naturally feel and believe that we have not only a Father but also a Mother in heaven. The recognition of the mother element—the Divine Mother—has always been a most potent factor in the power of the Roman Catholic Church to retain the unchanging devotion of its faithful adherents.

The reaction from a bigoted belief in, and a blind reliance upon a jealous and tyrannical Overseer sitting in state to judge and condemn to everlasting torment all but a few of earth's children—a terror-inspiring God—has naturally turned the minds of many from recognition of any sort of relationship between humanity and a superior, divine and beneficent Power. The atheist glories in his disbelief, and calls exultingly upon those whose faith has become the stepping-stone to knowledge for proofs that he is not right in assuming to occupy the superior attitude of mind. Suppose for a moment, that all the world were brought to coincide with him. How would it benefit the race to prove it to be wholly orphaned—utterly left out of all consideration for its future care and happiness?

"Like as an earthly father pitieth his children," Jesus affirmed, is the love of our Father, God, for the human-race. "I and my Father are one." "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." These are some of the references made by Jesus to the relationship that he constantly asserted was established between his own soul and that of his Father, in the supernal world, and thus he taught his followers to pray:

"Our Father which art in Heaven." This is the first recorded utterance of the modern shibboleth: "The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man." In this now universally employed invocation, Jesus claimed for himself no other mention than that in which he instructed all of earth's children to join.

"Hallowed be thy name." In a sacred name there is power to hold the wavering thought; so may thy name be hallowed! i. e., held sacred. It is affirmed that every created thing has a real appellation, a name given to it by its Creator. We pass through this rudimentary state of existence known as John or Mary, or by some other of the thousand or more titles in vogue that are indicative of different personalities; but it was long ago shown to an inspired teacher that, at a given point of development, each soul should be given its true name, a new one that should be "written in the forehead." Our Puritan progenitors had a dim perception of a higher and inner meaning to names. By calling their children Grace, Mercy, Patience, Charity, etc., they sought to embody spiritual principles.

"Thy kingdom come." No heavenly kingdom can ever be "let down" to the earth. The earthly must become developed and interpenetrated by the spiritual, and thus be lifted up into an harmonious co-relationship with the Divine.

"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." There is but one will; so make it known to us that we may realize out [Transcriber's note: our?] at-one-ment with the Divine, even as do the "angels in heaven."

"Give us this day our daily bread." "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." (Make us partakers of thy bounty, that our bodies may have needed nourishment. Illuminate our spiritual understanding that we may take to ourselves each day such spiritual food as we are best fitted to appropriate and use.)

"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Up to this point there is simply suggested the personal relationship between the petitioner and the Being to whom he prays; but into this phrase quite another element is introduced—a new factor; forgive us, as we in turn forgive our enemies. This puts upon one who utters these words the responsibility of answering his own prayer, or of making the conditions whereby he shall be forgiven and accepted, that thus may be established the eternal vibrations that bind the very lowest to the Highest.

"And lead us not into temptation;" i. e., graciously protect us from following the devices of our own ignorance; but if we willfully go our own way, and are overcome with grief and disappointment because of our misdoing, "deliver us from [the] evil" consequences thereof, by inspiring our minds with courage to bear our pains and penalties with true heroism, and teach us through our experiences wherein lie our highest growth and wisdom for all our future lives. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power" to create and destroy, "and the glory." (All things begin and end in God.) "Forever and ever. Amen."

Jesus had undoubtedly learned the pure ethics of this all-embracing appeal. Principles are unchanging; but, as the law of evolution carries each succeeding representation of the underlying facts of spiritual science ever higher in the ascending series, on the spiral pathway that leads to the kingdom of God, so in each is embodied a more advanced phase or externalization of such facts. The revelations vouchsafed to the world through the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, and other saviors of men appealed only to the intellect. Jesus was the first to announce to the heart-hungry that "God so loved the world" that he sent one of his best beloved sons to bear witness to his own eternal love, and to show how all may become participators in its boundlessness.

The potency of prayer corresponds to the power of the thought or to the exalted aspiration of the soul projecting it. There are some who, seeking divine aid, are too weak in this respect to realize any special results, while the prayers of others ascend as on the wings of eagles. This attitude of the soul is not to be confounded with the "communion of saints." Communion indicates the existence of a degree of equality which, in the relation of finite man with his Maker, cannot be.

An occult wave has swept round the world. The seals are being broken, and the sphinxes are speaking wherever they find ears to hear and minds to comprehend. The heart of the mystery is this; there is no new thing to be proclaimed. "Spiritual things are spiritually discerned," and, with the divine illumination vouchsafed to all, "a wayfaring man, though a fool," may see and know the deep things of God. But no door will be opened, no angel or "minister of grace" or "spirit friend" will descend the ladder of light that leads to the realms supernal, no inspiration of God will ever come to any soul on earth without prayer—in response to either conscious supplication or unconscious aspiration toward the Giver of every good and perfect gift. The ultimate function and use of prayer is simply to establish our relationship with the divine and ever-lasting forces that rule and guide our lives. These are ever operating to help us to live above the purely personal relationships that limit our growth and advancement along the lines of spiritual unfoldment, and to open to our souls vistas of perfectness on the higher planes of wisdom and understanding of the mysteries of immortal life.

ABSURD BELIEFS.

The supreme egotism of man has been largely corrected through the influence of education and experience which have made him conscious of the ridiculousness of his demands for recognition of his supremacy. Each one of those high, old eastern Emperors had to have his pedestal, and his title of god, without reference to his real character. Modern men do not expect to be real head-up gods. They know too much to be so ridiculous. But there are those who seem to feel that they are at least "little tin gods on wheels."

When the Nazarene appeared among men possessing godlike qualities, it was entirely in line with the custom of the time to call him a god. There was neither logic nor common sense in the role Jesus was to play. He was God of all gods. He was, at the same time, the Only Begotten Son of God, and, as the idea of sacrifice to the numerous gods was an important part of the religious orgies of the time, they could only bring that into their new scheme for entrapping souls by making the Son—who was really God—a sacrifice to himself, to propitiate himself, and keep himself from utterly destroying and damning the folks He himself had created. So they made it out that this good man should be a propitiation for the "sins of the race." Silly; improbable; unlawful; incredible; impossible. The more useless and undeveloped people were, the more they believed that the sacrifice of a very God—to their egotistical minds—was not too much for the salvation of their infinitesimal, pinhead souls.

THE RESURRECTION.

It has been believed that dead folks stayed boxed up under ground waiting—ages perhaps—for the last trumpet to sound to call up the sleeping billions to the surface of the earth to the final "day of judgment," when they should all swarm up out of their graves to be let to know by the great Judge of all to which class they belong, the "sheep" or the "goats"—there was to be only those two kinds—sheep to go straight to heaven, all the others to be cast into hell fire to burn forever. The air would be full of toes and fingers and legs and heads coming from all directions to join themselves to the bodies from which they had been detached in their physical life; it was understood that in every case there would be no mistakes made, no white person, minus a member of his body in life, would find himself persistently chased up by arms or legs—especially by heads—of a different color, and form, from what he would know were his own; but, by some unaccountable magic, some divine law of attraction each dissevered member would instantly recognize its true belonging and fly to its former familiar location. Where this great final "round up" is to be held has not yet been made known to the "true believers." "Chautauqua" has been suggested, and also the lot back of the "White House" in Washington, D. C. There are objections, however, to these and some other places because of the limited area, but as "with God all things are possible" either spot might be made to answer. The great open-air university at Chautauqua is known everywhere on earth—and possibly beyond—and certainly would be a good point for the saints to hail from, in their upward journey, and the "White Lot" in Washington would shorten the journey for those who are booked for the trip in the other direction.

Out of this belief has grown quite a little sect which takes it upon itself to decide upon the fate of all the world outside of its very limited number. It is hard upon the Methodists and Presbyterians and all the other cults and sects scattered about over the whole earth that they should all be doomed to everlasting hell fires because of a little difference of opinion with these self-elected judges! The more insane of them have ignored all the claims of citizenship, have burned their fences and their barns, and given away all their earthly belongings, and refusing to be taught by the repeated failures of the many times set for the final ending of the planet, have donned their unbleached cotton "ascension robes," and have sat around on the hill-tops and waited long for the end of all things earthly, and the fun of seeing all the people who did not agree with them switched off into hell.

The real beginning of this came from two sayings purported to have been the words of Christ. While hanging upon the cross a man nailed to another cross, begged Jesus to save him. Jesus was an adept, highly clairvoyant. He saw that the man was good—probably better than the people who had hung him there to die—and that if he was a thief, as they said, he had stolen things for the benefit of his people for food and for sandals and things for the family. So he said: "This day you shall be with me in the spirit world." Some clever person caught on to this and said to himself: "That settles it, if one man can go straight through without being laid up in the ground after death, all can." This view furnished an altogether different outlook and gave people a new idea of the law. Jesus assured his disciples that the kingdom of heaven would come on earth very soon, in fact, while they were yet alive. Well, he knew a lot about the soul, and immortality and all that, but nothing at all about evolution, or electricity, or what wonderful unfoldment of brain and magnificent works man should achieve. The Nazarene, like all seers and prophets, was simply mistaken in point of time. He did not give the Creator time enough to bring all things to pass, and if the people who think this world is actually coming to an end pretty soon would just think once that the Creator does not set things agoing solely for the purpose of destroying his work, and let him have his own way and time, they would save themselves much trouble.

THE CREATOR.

God—the all-creative Spirit—is the most positive element, or force in nature, and nothing is or can have existence in the external world that is not conceived and formed first in the matrix of the spirit. So it is in the realm of the invisible that the law of progress, of unending evolution takes its rise and becomes operative. Still, however clearly defined may be a truth, a law in the mentality of the higher powers, it can only be externalized to the degree comprehended by the mind through which it is given to the world. All that saves this world from being in a state of utter darkness is the fact that from its very beginning there have been souls capable of being illuminated by the light from the higher life, spirits so grounded in a faith in its certainties that they have shone out upon the stern and awful path trod by the human race like beacon lights above a stormy sea, or beaming stars shedding a calm radiance upon a trackless waste.

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.

We know so little of the mysteries of occult, divine law, and yet taking thought of the entire history of the human race, such as we have, and our own personal experience and observation, we must recognize that there are certain fixed principles, certain laws, indicating the undying value of right living. To understand and apply these laws to the all around conduct of life, to the practical affairs of human effort, is in its highest, its spiritual sense the real business of earthly existence. Those religious teachers who have had a degree of spiritual enlightenment have wrapped up their perceptions of moral law, and disguised them with creeds and dogmas, and have used them to further their personal ambitions, and to hold their power over such people as they have been able to hypnotize into believing in them as the vice-gerents of the Most High. All this has been going on for long, and has been handed down through unnumbered generations until it has crystallized into forms and ceremonies, and unmoral conventionalities which stultify the race. "Dead loads" of good people believe they are doing God's service in trying to live up to these, never knowing how much they are the result of fanaticism and ignorance, and the concentrated intention of every sort of priests to keep their power over unthinking minds. Here and there, scattered along throughout the realms of intelligent being, there have always been noble and true men and women who have brought a sufficient comprehension of the out-working of the eternal principles of unswerving moral law to make their conduct of life here wise and dependable, and to give to them the assurance of a successful continuance of individual life in other spheres of being, beyond earthly limitations. Those untrammelled souls who thus unfold grow up into an at-one-ment with the divine, all-pervading principle we call God. They have been, and are light bringers, and saviors of humanity.

The perfection of individual character can only be achieved by determined effort, by unshrinking, concentrated labor. This simply means an acceptance of all the inevitable experiences incident to this life, coupled with a brave determination to wring from each and every one of them, good, or seemingly bad and unfortunate, all the lessons it can teach, and all the truth it can possibly reveal. This evolution of the soul is from the innermost sacred precincts of the personality, and it is often unrecognized by those who have the most inclusive development of the attributes and innate resources of their own souls.

Those people who are thus intent upon their souls' growth do not flaunt themselves in forms and ceremonies. Life is too short. The chief, the most important moral law is the law of justice, absolute unerring justice. This law is the very least comprehended of men, because its majesty, its even-handedness has been so misinterpreted, so travestied by various kinds of religious teachers, rulers, and self-appointed judges. Man-made laws which everywhere prevail tend always to segregate people into classes, producing results devoid of equity, favoring the materially superior. It is quite common for people who know nothing whatever of the operations of occult and spiritual law to ignore all responsibility for their unhappy earthly experiences, and "blame it all" on God. A child dies, the mother accuses God of making her the special subject of his unkindness in taking away from her the object of her love. Everywhere, among all classes of people this is not at all an unusual experience. The fact is, the prevailing ignorance of natural law—moral, spiritual law—is alone the cause of nearly all the misery of humanity. God has nothing whatever to do with it. There is this about it: there are the "eternal verities," the laws which speak ever to the consciousness of man, and whether they are broken in ignorance or willfully set aside, the results are nearly the same; the penalties exacted by beneficent justice are unalterable; only in one case, there must finally be regrets for ignorance; in the other, great remorse for wickedness and ill-doing. But these results are not eternal, though the dreadfully cruel teachings of religion have made people believe so. The faintest stirrings of desire to be better, the least aspiration toward the higher life is sure of a response from loving, compassionate beings in angelic ministrations.

The priests of different religions who have been most valiant and positive in preaching hell fire and eternal damnation have entirely lost sight of this fact. Not the most strenuous of the whole lot has ever been able to follow one miserable wretch into the spirit world to find out whether his prognostications anent his hypnotized victims, have "come true." "Au contraire," great numbers of reputed sinners have come back in their real personality to report to their friends that there is no such fate for anyone, that it is one great lie. But it must not be supposed that there are no sure enough hells. There have to be places for the hellish to stay till they come of a better mind. Nature provides for them other opportunities for their gradual redemption through re-embodiments in the flesh on this earth. There is besides a constant outpouring from the dark abodes of estrayed and benighted souls, for the all-embracing love of our Father-Mother reaches even the horribly suffering lunatics, made so by their selfish, vicious lives here on earth. There is, indeed, the greatest possible difference between an intended eternal punishment of sin, such as has been preached for ages for the purpose of scaring people out of their wits, and a recognized, just retribution for broken law. Punishments such as have been believed in suggest a punisher, and our Father in heaven has been blasphemously represented as "angry with the wicked every day" and glad to have a chance to pour out his "bottles of wrath" on their elected heads.

The torturing remorse of the slowly awakening consciousness of those who have lived selfishly and viciously is far beyond the pains of the burning, material fires. Every human being that has in it a living germ of spirit shall be liberated and helped toward the light, not by any so-called personal redeemer—that is not possible—but by the power of its own aspiring soul, and even moderately decent folk shall come to enjoy all that they have imagined and longed for, and all great souls shall find the peace they have dreamed of. All souls everywhere in the spirit world will have all they have truly earned in their earthly lives.

While we stay here we are hardly protected from the envious thoughts and deeds of evilly disposed and vengeful people. Once safely landed in that superior and satisfactory realm no such invasions can reach us ever.

THE SOUL.

The soul is the vehicle of the spirit. It passes from the earthly life along with physical death, its uses ended. Developed by earthly experiences, it grows and has the power to detach itself and represent the personality of the individual to which it belongs, but only while on earth; it is not employed thus after the spirit leaves the body. It is the "similacrum" of the body, and is often mistaken for the immortal part, the enfranchised spirit. But the spirit is generally unawakened and can only grow with the pabulum of spiritual influence, in harmony with spiritual law. It is this that complicates this life and retards the at-one-ment of the greatest of all trinities; body, soul and spirit, the natural three in one. The soul element is the bequest of the parents—especially of the mother—to their progeny. If the conditions are at all in harmony with divine law, the mother pours out all her soul's influence upon the forming body of her child in the divinest love ever manifested on earth. Its birth and manifestation are of the immortal spirit, and create in her offspring some consciousness of, some desire for immortality. Of all earthly phenomena this of motherhood is the most marvelous, and naturally the least understood, and the most slightingly regarded. Its universality reduces it to the commonplace.

* * * * * *

The conventionalities are not intended to keep people apart who really "belong" together and who ought to meet, but to protect those who wish to live good lives from the invasions of envious curiosity.

WOMAN.

Woman is the constructive, the upbuilding force. With what patient endurance she awaits the slow growth of the bodies she shelters beneath her heart that are to hold souls here and give them human instruments with which to do their work on the material plane of life. In this sphere, the destructive jealousy of man of the power of woman does not avail, her kingdom is everlasting. Crushed and enslaved she is, and always has been, but only to gather to herself greater power. She is the natural lawgiver, the supreme ruler. Man, the intimate holder of the material forces, dreads the power of woman, and fears her invasions of his long-established rights in his chosen domain.

* * * * * *

Unwilling motherhood has filled the world with vice and crime.

When men, women and children began to return to earth after physical death and give their recognized testimony to the fact of their spiritual resurrection, and of their continued real life with all its personal endowments exactly as they were here, the crude ideas of ignorant minds were forever set aside by millions who can now testify to the absolute truth of spirit return, instead of being buried in the earth waiting for an impossible time of reckoning and judgment. Do you call all this blasphemous? Open your eyes. Look! Listen! Discriminate! Know where is the real, high blasphemy. "God bless us every one."

ADIEU.

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