INSIGHTS AND HERESIES PERTAINING TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL

by

AMMYEETIS (Persian)

Second Edition 1916

Christopher Publishing HouseBostonCopyright 1913by the Christopher PressCopyright 1916by the Christopher Publishing House

DEDICATION. 

To those heroic minds who can truly say: "My soul is my own, " andbravely maintain it through everything--in spite of Church or State--Ido offer with earnest congratulations and my loving greetings, thesefragmentary thoughts of

AMMYEETIS. 

Our revered Emerson loaned his Plato to a neighbor. Meeting him sometime 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 ofmy idees. " And so, my readers--if there be such--there may be hereinset forth some of your own familiar thoughts which you may not havefound opportunity to express in such guise as appears in this smallbook. 

 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 innerconsciousness a new, a better religion, have found themselves bogged inthe mire of their egotism which has landed them in a police court, orthey have been confronted by exactly the same problems as those fromwhich they have sought to escape. Few, indeed, have survived the testof 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 thathath not (improved) shall be taken away that which he already has. "This was never meant to apply to material things--it could not--it wasspoken in reference to the gift of understanding, and of using theoccult, the psychic law. Many psychics have lost their spiritual giftsthrough failing to understand that endless progress is the law thatforces souls along the way of life. No stopping by the way to gathershells upon the shore, no aimless looking back; but work with stoutheart and resolute will. It all means work, overmastering habits ofthought and action, lifting the soul from the grooves of heredity, andin all ways making aspiration attract the inspiration that sustains thesoul. 

EVOLUTION. 

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

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

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

It is so comfortable to have our spiritual faith ready made for us, ourpaths all mapped out, and our final destiny made plain and sure, provided only that we remain faithful in our adherence to them as theyare set forth by our parents and spiritual guardians, that when thegreat, ever-surging, resistless tidal wave of progress first reachesthe soul, it can only stand in dumb agony, like one upon the seashorewatching its last hope go down beneath the waste of mighty waters. Torn from its anchorage of inherited beliefs, it is sure to betempest-tossed, rent and torn, buffeted by conflicting tendencies, castupon many a desert island of unfaith, and haunted by miserable doubtsand black despair, ere it hears and heeds the pilot of truth, the onlyguide to the peaceful haven of eternal life. Happy, indeed, are theywho tarry not upon the weary way; but who have within them thataspiration, that endless cry for light, which shall always, in God'sprovidence, compel the needed response and guidance; for many honest, earnest men and women, lacking this attribute of the soul, fail allthrough life to reach this only true solution of the riddle of humanexistence. Kind and sincere friends say of them: "Oh! if they had onlyremained faithful to the religion of their fathers, they would havefound happiness and peace. " But the law of evolution brings each andevery soul to the point where it must stand alone with God, there todiscover and establish its relationship to the Divine, irrespective ofall preconceived ideas and notions, superstitions, and ignorance. Thisis exactly what every soul must come to--the aggregation of powers andforces of body and soul resulting in the fully developed androunded-out individuality of any given personality. These are the rareand unusual men and women, the fully flowered out, the richest fruitageof any and all races, and it is to these that we must look for thatunion of sympathy with and comprehension of the needs and requirementsof all which is to usher in the reign of peace, and universal good willon earth. 

Jesus of Nazareth went before us on the path, the only way cast up forearnest souls to walk in. There has never been given to the world anysystem of ethics superior to his. He recognized the homogeneity of therace--"Each for all, all for each, " was the whole import of histeachings. In him was epitomized the experience of the race. Each andevery soul must wear its crown of thorns, and bear its cross and suffercrucifixion, ere the soul astray from God, immersed in, and overwhelmedby matter, can be forced to relinquish its hold on, its love for theexternal, 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 realizedby you, that you are but just now entering upon the inevitable roundswhich must attend your connection with, and relationship to thisearthly sphere of being. Such are as the insensate clod, having as yetneither spiritual sense, nor moral responsibility. Nature's processesare slow; but be sure that the goal is appointed, and that God will bethere and will wait till we come. 

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

So painful and slow is the process of character-forming that millionsof souls pass on from this sphere of life to the spirit world solacking in individuality that they have no more power for anyexpression of themselves upon that plane of being than they had whenthey were living here. Not as much, in fact, for the physical body andbrain have always some possible function and use while they hold theirrelationship to the world of material life, which function and use arelaid aside when they are put through the sifting process of physicaldeath, and in all cases, unless the powers of the ego as exercised hereare supplanted by a sufficient growth of the spiritual nature tosustain the ego in its new relationship, and give to it the impetusneeded to start it forward upon lines of usefulness and growth, itnaturally fails to waken to any sort of realization of itself and itspossible career in its new life. This is specially true of thosepersons who have been psychologized by those teachings which relegatethe souls of human beings to the cold clasp of the ground, until theexpected day of judgment; or of those poor, overworked men and women towhom heaven seems only a place to sleep and rest in; or again, of stillanother class of minds that has brought itself to a belief in utterextinction after the close of this external life. These are the"shades, " the "shells" we hear of, for there are times when the subtleinner sense of these sleeping ones is stirred to action by the wails ofthe loving, longing ones left on earth to mourn; and, as is the casewith one in somnambulic sleep, the spirit walks and talks, in responseto the demands of friends, through those persons who are gifted withthe aura necessary for the medial agency. These excursions of the soulinto the realm of matter, thus made by and through the offices ofclairvoyants and seers, the repeated arousings of the ego from itscontented sleep are finally highly educational, and result inresurrecting the forces of the enfranchised being, and setting them inmotion on the lines of useful work for humanity. For this medialservice which is thus being rendered to the spirit world by such giftedpersons still living here in the body, multitudes are daily and hourlyexpressing their gratitude and appreciation. 

We have somewhat abolished our old, long-established Hell, and now, tobe consistent, we must also do away with our preconceived ideas of aHeaven of eternal rest; for why should the souls of men be wrapped inuseless slumbers, until the strong overwhelming influence of the law ofprogress sweeps them up like dry leaves before a whirlwind, and rushesthem along to the gates of a conscious life, through a new relationshipupon the physical plane? The spirit does not weary, and when theexhausted body is laid aside, why not enlist the services of all towhom any appeal can be made? Thus shall we all be growing together, and Death shall be forced to cast aside its grim and dreadful seemingand show for the angel it is. Ah! how could we go on and on in thenarrow limitations of this small beginning of a life, if Nature did notkindly call a halt somewhere on the road, while we, taking freshcourage, start out in our new career with our entire being adjusted tolaws 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 theinner consciousness has clearly perceived that some given experiencemay mean an important crisis in the expression of their individualcharacter. But not frequently, in the ordinary lives of human beings, do they meet up with really great events, or personal experiences thatcreate for them special overturnings of their ideas, or any change ofpersonal habits. To the mind of youth, life seems a plainly simple, straight-forward way; but when overtaken by results of unconsideredactions, for which there has been no preparation, there dawns upon itthe consciousness of appalling vistas, and visions of futurepossibilities that are overpowering. 

As we journey forward on the path of existence, life becomes ever moreand more complicated, and the need, the overwhelming demand for anunderstanding of the ever-varying problems presented to the mind forconsideration, and the constantly urgent necessity for wise decisionsmust call into action all our highest powers of the intellect andreason, in order to secure to us the best results from theopportunities given us to acquire knowledge. Every one of ourexperiences are bits in the mosaic of our lives, and without them thepicture would be incomplete. 

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

THE WORK OF NATURE. 

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

A NEW SCIENCE. 

A science of Spiritual evolution could be erected, based upon theteachings and ethics of Jesus Christ, that would put souls consciouslyin their true rank and grade, and make them known just as people arerecognized 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 whichthe planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life. Its crudematerial was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and theawful corresponding animal life. Birds and beasts and reptiles, eachone more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earthand the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horriblecreatures. Into this unaccountable menagerie came also theforeshadowing of man--a huge hairy creature possessing size and powerto 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 perse--the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs. Fromsuch rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot thehuman soul. This, after vast ages, grew into a state and conditionthrough which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finallystarted 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 sunand finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods. The"phallic worship, " worship of the human organs of creative power, gavethe males great prominence. The female, woman, the mere matrix wasconsidered, from the first, of far less importance. No one stopped tothink, what is one without the other in the great world processes. 

Nature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possiblerepresentation of her power, buried here and there specimens of herhandiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even nowbeing restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientistshave been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, andthe habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings oflife on this earth. 

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

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

IMPERFECTIONS REVEALED. 

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

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

All souls are so veiled in the flesh, and held by the crowdingnecessities of their lives, that it is only on rare, unexpectedoccasions that the individual soul can throw down the barriers and showof what it is capable. 

WORLD ORIGIN. 

To be able to understand, even to our limited degree, something of ourorigin, and the purpose of our existence is most comforting andsustaining. In the beginning, the Creator sent to this planet a givennumber of beings intended for the exemplification of the law ofevolution and soul growth. In the everlasting rounds of human life, nonew souls are being created and sent here to work out their salvationthrough their experiences incident to the life of this young planet, earth. What appears to our limited perception to be the beginning ofnew lives is so only in relation to their present embodiment. All newsouls now being born here are but returning from some other phase ofexistence. The whole human race is one family. Bound to the wheel oflife, every individual soul must pass through all of the variedexperiences that are set for its evolution. What they are not today, they have been, or must become. But not all people march over just thesame highway to reach the soul's status. Details of experience do notcount. It is the lesson learned, and practically applied that forwardsthe unfoldment of the individual in a comprehension and understandingof God's eternal truth. Only results in all things, temporal andspiritual, 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 activityare necessary for his further progress. To expect to develop in theworlds of finer substance than that of earth before he has learned allthat earthly experiences can teach him, is like "placing a child in thehigher classes of a school before he has mastered the lessons of thelower. "

SPIRIT INDIVIDUALIZED THROUGH MATTER. 

As spirit _per se_ has no entity, and only evolves individualitythrough its relationship with matter; and has no other consciousexpression; the so long-talked-of "Fall of man" was not a falldownward, but it was a process upward, necessary to his being, to hisexistence as man. 

WORLD SIGNS. 

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

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

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

The trump of recollection and of recognition has sounded. The deadhave already risen, all along the lines, and no power can hale themback to their dreams. 

Onward, ever upward points the finger of progress. Long hoarded wisdomand knowledge of the forces of nature are pouring into the minds ofseers, and of wizards of science; and these long separated and divorcedstreams are evoluting to the unison of material and occult sciences, which is destined to bring in the reign of peace and prosperity to allthe peoples of the earth, and to bring to light the relics of pastages, cunningly hidden away in the vast womb of nature that they mightbe preserved and brought forth to our knowledge in these later days. By the undeniable record yielded up from buried cities and storiedcrypts, and in the skeletons of mummies of both animals and men ofthose most ancient times, she is showing us where she began the presentcycle, now closing in about the race, with great clattering of forcesand profound portents in earth and sky. 

The equilibrium of the universe is maintained by the transition of itsforces. Atlantis, matured and ripened, sinks beneath the sea, and heraccumulated wealth of wisdom and knowledge is transferred to othercontinents to arise at the appointed time to enrich and bless the landof their adoption; and all art and science is but shining today in thereflected, reawakened light of past ages. 

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

Nature buffets her children bitterly and wipes out her surplus of humanlife as she destroys the overproduction of beast and bird, of insectand reptilian life. She inspires the minds of men with anovermastering desire for possessions. She hides her wealth ininaccessible places and sets her jealous, invisible forces to guard anddeterminedly hold all possible avenues of approach to them. But thisworld was given to man to conquer and own and make much of; and theglitter of a speck of useful metal in a stray boulder in the lonelycañon; or the chance outcropping of rock which to the practised eyedenotes the nearness of the deposit of oil--these, or any of thethousand and one signs, she hangs out along the path in which man isdestined to march on his way to absolute sovereignty, set his forces ofintellect and will in motion, and he will never rest from his laborsuntil he stands upon the pinnacles of the gods, the crowned monarch ofall nature's forces on this planet. 

All phenomena are negative, and are only the external garniture of theworld of man, the spirit, the child of the Eternal, of the father andmother Creators of him. Thus man is, by absolute inheritance, theking, and the ruler over all nature. But not without effort can heenter and possess and maintain his power over his own. Ice and frosts, and searing sun, and lonely wilds, and trackless wastes, and countlesswaters, and evil beasts, and horrible reptiles--all, all he mustencounter and set at naught in his trackless journey. Carefully musthe force the wilderness to bloom, and by his wise efforts "make gladthe waste places" of the earth. Wherever the foot of man has been set, there is it "hallowed ground. " Whatever may have been his intent orwhatever his fate, in his wake shall surely follow the manifest purposeof that ever-ruling Power which led him. Everywhere along the way, Nature trails her loose ends, well baited, with which to catch theunwary, and the whitening bones of the lonely emigrant family lost onthe plains, and the snowy hair of the dead mountaineer bleaching onhigh summits or woven in the nests of birds, or the bodies of deadmariners, or the lonely corpse of the treacherously slain, pulsing withthe tide on foreign shores, or the miners in their pits, forced by thedeadly "damps" from all visible connection with human life, or thechild of a superior race held captive by savages, or the beautifulwhite girl sold into the harem of a barbarous sultan, or any or allother of such expressions of destiny in the isolated lives of men arebut pioneering the way of the race to complete homogeneousness andunquestioned ownership of the whole wide earth. 

WORLD GROWTH. 

All of nature's processes are slow and always evolutionary. Thecontrolling laws are subtle and secret and can never be comprehended orunderstood save as they work out in visible results. There is everyindication that it has required an illimitable series of ages to evolveeven the physical form of man in the unnumbered races of the humanfamily from the first semi-human life to man as we see him now--cleverand strong of brain and will, daring and equal to great emergencies, and in inventive, creative and executive gifts a very god of power andmight. The laws of evolution refer primarily to the individual planet, Earth, and include all that it contains--in a word, all things in anyway related to it. Mineral deposits and crumbling rocks nourish thevegetable world; the vegetable world provides sustenance to the animalkingdom, and it, in turn, with all the others combined, sustains allhuman life; but its real root, its permanent existence, is in theplanet itself. Each and all of these diverse manifestations of lawcoordinated, constitute the mysterious modes and methods of theevolution of life from the lower to the higher status of being, and itworks on, and ever on eternally, till human life finds its completionand satisfaction in the fulfillment of the law which merges theadvanced and prepared soul in the Universal Spirit and crowns its finalevolution with its at-one-ment with its Creator. 

Nature does not duplicate her handiwork, but cunningly sets her sign onevery leaf and branch to insure individuality. She throws protectingarms around all her growing life of fruit and vegetable in order thateach shall reproduce of its own kind, and thus keep intact the orderlysuccession, and that there shall be no lack of nourishment for thechildren of men. 

She gives without stint to all the peoples of the earth her world-stuffto be worked over into human flesh, and animal fibre. But no tiniestgrain 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 pervadedthem in their earthly career, the circle is rounded, and when thegrave-rite, dust to native dust we here restore to our great mother isuttered, she is the gainer; for the operation of thus passing thematerial of which the planet is made through the highest created formsof life, brings it into a certain relationship to spirit, and thus theevolution, the spiritualization of the world-stuff of the planet itselfis going forward. 

DEATH A BENEFACTOR. 

Death is a benefactor to the human race. How could we bear the burdenof existence if Nature did not somewhere on the march "call a halt"while the angels of dissolution tenderly unloose our burdens of painand sorrow, and disappointment, and stultifying regrets, and remorsesfor 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, andmurderous human family has swept around this globe. Here and thererelics of their status, their growth in the external, materialconditions of life are being exhumed, wrung from the faithful clasp ofMother Earth, to excite the wonder of the day and time. Many of theattributes of these lost races, their arts and their religions, havecome to light; but whence they came, and how they perished, is anunsolved mystery. From the processes of disintegration--earthquakes, and widespread volcanic action--now going on, we can readily conceiveof the manner in which vast multitudes of humanity have been removedfrom this planet to make room for still other races and peoples. Thegreat pilgrimage still goes on. Unnumbered hordes following the secretinstinct of evolution, unceasingly press forward from the East towardthe setting sun. This same army, in a former incarnation, went forthover the land where they lived to slay and exterminate; in thisembodiment, here in America, they hew out the rocks, and toil in themines. They harvest the grain that is to feed the hungry multitudethat is speeding on toward this new land as fast as the modernconveniences can fetch them. Thus they serve instead of destroyinghumanity--a great advance toward civilization. 

There has been, there will always be an unvarying round of tearing downand upbuilding in the whole wide realm of nature. Nothing, not thetiniest grain or the most ponderous production of skilled hands, everstands still. All things are in vibration, and their permanencydepends wholly upon the rate of vibratory motion. Here and there allthe way along, from the earliest times of which there has been anyrecord, great souls have blossomed out, and have carried aloft theGod-given light of intelligence and culture. These inspired minds, great souls, have persisted in announcing their message to a darkenedworld, often in the face of direct want and persecutions; misunderstoodand maligned, they were and are the saviors of the people of thisundeveloped planet. Even yet, they are known and valued by but alimited number of supposedly intelligent people. While these inspiredlight-bringers were seeking to shed abroad in the minds of men thetruths that shall make men free, the Church was devoted to closing, andholding fast shut every avenue of the human mind that might have atendency to teach the people anything outside of their tenets whichwere the outcome of their weird imaginations. If anything could causea doubt to arise in the Creative Mind as to the wisdom of letting looseon this small planet the pestiferous peoples that have swarmed over andpossessed it, it must have been aroused by their demoniacalperformances in the name of religion, that have disgraced the nature ofman from the beginning of our knowledge of the world. While aperception of beauty and harmony is latent in the minds of men, it isthe last of the attributes of the soul to develop. The figuredsemblances of God, hewn out of stone or wood by the primitive races, are mostly hideous inventions of the evil thoughts of evil minds. Fromthe terrifying African God, "Mumbo-Jumbo, " to the artistic bronzerepresentations of the Deity of the nations of the East all are markedwith awe-enforcing ferocity and ugliness, instead of by thesoul-inspiring lineaments of love and beauty. Tremblingly the minds ofmen have groped their way along through the mazes of ignorance andenforced darkness to a degree of personal liberty; and every picturepainted, every bit of sculpture achieved in the interest of harmony andbeauty is testimony to the persistency of the inspiration vouchsafed toman of the Creator's love of beauty, and of the final state of harmonyto be reached by humanity. 

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 

"All evil is only undeveloped good" has come to be the "shibboleth" ofnot 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 thepriests and pastors anent hell and the devil. The comforting beliefthat the above quoted statement settles the whole matter is acceptedand believed in. Since the supposed dethronement of "Auld Hornie, " asthe Scotch named him, as head devil, it has not been thought necessaryto give the matter much if any consideration. 

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

Spiritualism has flung wide the doors and given ignorant, andundeveloped humanity an equal opportunity with the refined, and good toexpress themselves. It is thus the only truly democratic religion evermade known on this planet! It recognizes all human beings, good andbad, as the children of one and the same Father, and that not one canbe lost from the hand of God!

The peculiar people who have developed the strange power ofmediatorship between this material world and the plane of existenceknown as the spiritual world have always been helped and sustained intheir great work by their invisible friends and appointed spiritguardians, or they could never have carried forward their importantmission to the people of this earth. 

Regardless of all the efforts of the enemies and traducers ofSpiritualism, the spread of the knowledge of the unfolding spiritualphilosophy has been and is marvelous; and the establishment of the factof man's existence, continued after physical death, through variedphenomena, 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 knowhis earth-children's needs for their further evolution and growth!

There have been great searchings, at various times, trying to discoverthe "origin of evil. " Vast stores of uncanny legends, and tales ofwonders have been handed down to us in explanation of this mostbaffling mystery. 

The destructive force in nature had no "origin. " Just as God, theConstructive Force, had none. It was, as God was. It is and alwayswill be, while God and nature are. 

It rides the whirlwind and the flood, and differentiates itself throughthe smallest minutia of the affairs of human life. It is the primevalelement, the "pure cussedness" which has to be conquered, or adjustedin every human being. It essays to bar all progress; Ignorance andSuperstition are its blinded handmaids. It exacts the fearfulpenalties of scornfully misunderstood efforts, if not ostracism andpersecution, for the use of the diviner faculties. It is the spirit ofunconquered 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, andbecomes the motive power, and thus expresses itself in concrete form, as is often the case, that our sympathies are touched and our sense ofjustice aroused, and we feel our lack of protection from the "powersand principalities of the air. " Our only refuge is in growing to andexperiencing a perfect at-one-ment with the eternal law of theopposing, the Constructive Force--God. There is no protection, nosafety, 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 ofthe universe. All is vibration. None of nature's forces are at rest, at equilibrium. Build you a fine dwelling, and ere it is finished foryour occupancy, the disintegrating forces will have made a raid uponthe material of which it is constructed. Take notice of the signs ofdecomposition going on in everything around you--the accumulation offluff in your rooms, in the innermost of your garments, along theseams. So also do the rocks and mountains yield themselves to dust, and so does all the planet reverberate with the resistless onward marchof the law of progress, unfoldment, evolution from the lower to ahigher form of expression. 

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

LIFE. 

From time immemorial the researches of men in the vain effort todiscover 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 altogetherfruitless of results; because through them has been made manifest themost marvelous of all the facts in nature, that "there is no death, "that "what seems so is transition. " It has also become known andunderstood of late years, that from the ephemera of life, of an hour orof a day up to the highest archangel, through all the intermediategrades of being, visible and invisible, there are no vacant spaces. Everywhere there is an overwhelming volume of life, actual though notconscious or individualized, until the higher ranges of human lifebecome known and correlated. Comes the man with the scalpel. Hedissects the human brain, and is disgusted at finding no clew to thesecret cause and source of life. He never suspects, he does notconceive of the fact that there is in everyone, an immutable, invisiblepower--a spirit germ--nor would he believe in its potency if he knew itwere true. Then there is the man with the retorts and the scales, andthe "residues. " He announces to the world that he can create lifewithout 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 ofmud at the bottom. He is sure he can produce living organisms; mighteven set agoing a new race of beings, if he only had time, and a largerbottle! Back of every expression of life we know abides the source, the cause of all existence, so hid, so truly an integral part of lifeas never to yield a knowledge of itself either to the scalpel of thephysicians or to the electrical battery of the explorer of mysteries. Into this sphere can no man come. Herein can be no meddling of thehuman intellect. 

Through this searching for the source, the cause of life, man has beenbrought face to face with law, with a force he can never understand orconquer, or adjust to the demands or suggestions of his will. Fromancient expressions of intelligence have been handed down to us thename, the title, God, as a concrete expression of this power that holdsdominance over all created beings. 

Another important revelation made to man is the fact that there is butone law, _per se_. 

It is an established, consecutive, endless chain from the beginnings ofhuman life here up to the absolute ultimate of the immortal soul. Itproves the homogeneity of the whole human race; it declares the valueof existence here, and explains the logical sequence of its continuancebeyond 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 isanother matter. There is our heredity which is, in every case, somixed as to yield but little of the primal strain, and which gives toeach one of us unknown possibilities, or undesired idiosyncracies tofight out and eradicate from the nature. The many failures to discoverthe mystery of life surely ought to prove to all experimenters thetruth 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 wayconnected with the church, which has not been exploited for money. 

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

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

There was no "beginning, " there can be no "ending. " Whatever appearsended in our experience is only in seeming, and in other shapes and intransformed relationships will appear again and again, asserting "Thereis no death, what seems so is transition, " change of elements andforces. There is but one law; one creative centre. One model foradvanced individualized life in any world; in all worlds. The wholepurpose 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 thesod up to divine perfection, from the pigmy races we see here, on thissmall globe, up, forever upward and onward to the courts of the "sonsof God"; to the spheres of the eternally immortal. Ignorant mortalsassert from time to time, the day and the hour of the "End of theWorld, " and foolishly prepare for the final destruction of this planet. It is true, this earth is always coming to an end, and alwaysrehabilitating itself with its own unused materials. Mountains slidedown and fill up the valleys. The waters of the sea undermine and gnawoff big slices from the land; all, all is motion, vibration; nothingstands still. If it were possible for anything in the universe tostop, to break the everlasting chain, there would be no universe; therewould be only chaos come again, and all the work of setting the planetsa-spinning round and round their centres and apportioning the orbits ofthe stately suns, and their places in the precessions of theiraccompanying worlds; all would go for nothing, all would have to bebegun again, and on the same lines exactly. There are no other; thereis no other law, and the name of the law that holds all in imperishableharmony, is Love, just Love. 

LIFE IN NATURE. 

The microscope has revealed to us the life and habits of myriads ofcreatures of whose existence we had previously no knowledge. We hadnot even a suspicion that what to our unaided vision appeared inertelements held a rampant, multitudinous life, nowhere dead, but alwayssurging and changing, ever replacing death and decay with a new lifeall its own. Nature's luxuriance everywhere fills us with wonder anddelight. The fragrant ferny depths of the forest, and the lush growthof the rank marsh-land, the immeasurable sands of the ocean-edge hidingin their mysterious sameness innumerable and beautiful shells andcorals, and the mountain top heaped up with boulders, or crumbling bynature's processes into pebbly imponderance. 

Life, swarming everywhere. Tiny leaflets giving succor and shelter totinier animal life--its special fairy. Huge beasts couchant inmajestic trees, guarding against invasions, with a fierce, jealous rageinherited from the gnomes and satyrs. 

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

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

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

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

"Jacob's dream" was not a dream only. It was a reality. From supernalheights "Ladders" are ever being dropped down to our earth, into ourmidst, 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. Itsinfluences are both positive and negative, good and evil. It haspowers adapted to every issue of human experience; because it is theoutgrowth, the fruitage of human life. Its roots are planted in thisearth. Its topmost branches wave in the sunlight which flows from the"Throne of God. " It is God. Not a separate and distinct being; but anintelligent principle of love abounding in everything; expressingitself through everything. Knowing no "high" or "low. " Seeing nodifference between the "just and the unjust"; showering down upon allalike, benisons of wisdom, and peace and good will. 

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

HEAVEN. 

Millions of enfranchised souls pass from earth life and find the spiritworld--the "Summerland"--a Heaven, and stay therein for vast lengths oftime. The change from this life of toil, and misery to an existence ofrest from all pain and sorrow of earthly existence is really Heavenenough for the average human mind. A place of beautiful surroundings, where everything necessary for their comfort is furnished them, withoutmoney and without price and, best of all, where they no longer fearbeing grabbed up and punished by the devil for their sins of ignorancecommitted when in the body. It is not possible for us, plunged, as weall are, into the vortex of this difficult existence, to realize whatall this means to the world-weary. If one shall halt by the way, orfall aside from the great unending procession nothing stops. Theterrible, tumultuous waves of humanity roll on, and the lost are notmissed or mourned for, save by the few that were responsible for theircoming, or for the awful lack of help and tendance that made themfailures in the battle of life. 

The great army of the commonplace, the neither positively good nor thevery bad, is the largest class of all humanity. The most pestiferousand difficult to adjust to the law of progress and advancement. Holdone of them out of hell by the hair of the head, and when he is let gohe only drops further in, and nothing teaches him but the "slings andarrows" of misfortune, and every dreadful experience that can be handedout to him. Much of this almost universally deplorable condition--itmay be the whole of it--has been induced by false, unreasonablereligious teachings. The human mind needs every inducement to effortto overcome its natural inertia instead of being put to sleep bypromises of being exempt from all responsibility connected with itsfinal redemption. 

NATURE SPIRITS. 

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

Money getting in the mines, earth depths. All manufactories thatrequire raging and continuous flame; ships to sail, and conquer waterspirits; electrical and etherial forces that move in the air currents. These are the soulless, irresponsible "goblins" and "gnomes, " "Firespirits" and "_ignes fatui_" of the nether world. All human beings whoprogress at all have to deal with one or more of these forces. Beginning in blind ignorance, through struggle, the mortal will isdeveloped and the mere animal man has set his foot upon a low rung ofthe ladder of the ascending series. Next, man has to deal with theprimal races. The "Missing link" which will never be found save at the"threshold" where it combines its forces with those of man's othernatural enemies, and keeps jealous watch and ward at every point ofegress of the soul which seeks to enlarge its domain. Finally the willof man, with its long heredity of war with these potentialities, "atenmity with God, " resisting the divine; even as these have striven tohold him in a perpetual slavery, is in its last struggle. The vastaggregation of human will, set free from the clog of the flesh, knowingnothing of the divine, seeing no guiding light, combines its forces, and commingles its powers with whatever its endless tentacles canreach. These are the powers and principalities of the air. These arethe demons, "bad spirits, " "devils" and "familiars" of the literatureof the ages, and the presiding geniuses of many a phenomenon resultingfrom modern research into the mysteries of nature. As theirintelligence exceeds that of the underlying grades, so just in thatdegree is their power increased, and used, to block the gateway thatopens upon the path. Their abodes lie in outer darkness, or areillumined only by flashes of fictitious, and evanescent light from theexpiring embers of earthly exhalations, and the phosphorescent gleamsof decaying forms. The soul that has received an illumination from theDivine has in its keeping a talisman of power, yet none can escapethese watchful ones. 

"Here eyes do regard you in eternity's stillness. " "Choose well; yourchoice 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 thekingdom 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 ontender souls to their sad undoing. 

By help of divine love alone can the soul journey safely onward andupward through this great concentrated, immediately-environing earthgrade. It is solidly compact, sleepless and untiring, seekingceaselessly whom it may win to its realm. It is the unrecognizedlonging of the soul for restoration to its divine heritage of love. 

EXPERIENCE. 

Experience is at the same time the surest and the slowest teacher ofmen. Wisdom, the crowning glory of humanity, is but an enlargedperception of man's needs, and how to meet them, based upon individualexperience and observation of the effects of natural law upon all. Anindividual is an epitome of the world--society. Discipline iseverywhere considered indispensable to the individual. Far more is itso to the world of society. Anarchy and revolution are no moreefficient for the body politic than for the individual. Growth, slowand gradual, aggregation of power and wisdom through the education andenlightenment of its individual members, is the only safe and sure wayto permanency and enduring life. 

SPIRITUALISM. 

In Spiritualism alone is to be found an expression of the religion ofJesus of Nazereth. It is truly democratic, giving to saint and sinneralike both here, in this life, and after death, an opportunity forredemption. Its first mission to the world is the proof it gives of acontinued existence in which is still experienced all theidiosyncracies which marked the individual in earth life. This facthas either been ignored by certain classes of minds, or has been takenby them as proof positive of the hellish origin of its phenomena, whereas in this very expression of characteristic life lies itswonderful power and potency. From long-continued educational influencepeople out of churches, as well as inside of the influence of theirsuperstitions, have come to idealize death, its awe-inspiring mysteryand its strange variety. It is thought, by them, to be a suddentranslation from a lower condition to a higher, wherein, through somedivine hocus-pocus, the members of certain so-called "Evangelical"churches, no matter how worldly-minded, and selfish, or however falseto their teachings they have been, or how false their lives to thedivine ethics taught by the Lord, whose name they assume as theirprerogative, that their through tickets to the supernal spheres areassured. It is believed that death purges them of all their sympathywith and attraction to mortal life, and that they are forever absolvedfrom all their responsibilities, and freed from dependence upon theinter-relationships between the two conditions. Exactly the reverse istrue. Multitudes of souls only begin their true living, theircomprehension of life's meanings, after death has sifted them out ofthe ashes and lifeless embers of their mistaken ideas, or viciousindulgences. Shall these, then, be brought beneath the ban oflimitless darkness, and exiled from the "many mansions" of our HeavenlyFather's and Mother's house? A tiny rap, untraceable to any materialsource, a table moved by invisible force, a closed and locked pianoskillfully played upon by unseen hands; these were the first links inan endless chain of eternal benefits pouring down from the smilingheavens upon the benighted children of earth. Again was heard "thevoice as of one crying in the wilderness" of this world's marts forbarter, and selfish gain; "Let him who hath ears to hear, let himhear. " "The grave has lost its victory" and death is but a halt calledin mercy and loving tenderness, that your weary souls may be refreshedby a draught from nature's founts and bountiful resources that you maymount upward as on the mighty wings of eagles; or discover for yourwandering feet the path of rectitude and safety. 

PHENOMENA. 

All expressions of nature are phenomenal. Man is of all the mostwonderful. A tiny spark of spirit encased in matter, by theirresistible law of progress evolving powers of brain, thought, consciousness, reason, intuition; unfolding, expanding; realizingfinally his at-one-ment with his source, the cause of him--God--manimmortal, illimitable. At certain points of unfoldment seemingly lost, great hue and cry from many--pin heads--who think they have discoveredGod, a failure. Watch out and see. Give the Lord a chance. Nothingis done with yet. In a very old hook of Hebrew history, there arerecorded well-attested accounts of phenomena, which are so distinctlyoutside of the ordinary happenings of this material existence, thatthey were always recognized as being of a purely spiritual origin, method and purpose. Within the last century the same experiences havebeen vouchsafed to present humanity. Millions of people have attestedthe truth of a continuance of these same phenomena; they having takenplace within the range of their own personal experience. And why not?The Creator knows what his children need in this, as well as in otherages. That human souls, the lives of human beings, persist afterphysical death, does not prove their eternal existence along the linesof highest soul evolution. The greatest possible unfoldment is not agift of God. It is held only by the individual soul as the result ofage-long study, and toil, through manifold embodiments, long-continuedself renunciation, and sacrifices not yet known or understood. Itsinitiations are endless; its revelations of the infinite law are, attimes, too seemingly trifling for recognition; but as the lapidaryleaves no facet of the jewel uncut and unpolished, so theguardians--the guides and teachers of the candidates for spiritualunfoldment--omit no least lesson or discipline that can aid inperfecting the individual soul. 

It is the meanest kind of bosh teaching people that there will beeternal punishment for ignorant wrong-doings in this short kindergartenexperience of life, making them believe their last chance for anythingbetter is gone forever. Half the sins that are committed here anywayare either sins against the conventionalities, or they have beenhatched 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 thebody in the grave. 

The ages, the aeons required for the perfecting of any given soul, areknown only to its Creator, or how great must be the accumulation ofages ere the whole human family--the children of God--will respond tothe eternal roll-call that shall usher in the redeemed of every landand clime, not one "Lost, " or gone astray. Those who have steppedforth into the arena of this present manifestation of life on thisplanet, have, each in their place, their responsibility and task, tokeep alight the beacons of reason, and intelligence, as guides totruth, 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 theworld has been that the so-called abnormalisms of one generation arethe accepted, commonplace realisms of the succeeding types. Sight, thedesire 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 visualnerves began to form and grow. The imprisoned soul within kept pushingon, until gradually the beautiful, complex organ of sight was evolutedand the soul possessed a window through which it could see things foritself. The evolutionary processes attending mediumship quitecorrespond to this physical process. Man demands to know concerningthose things that have long been hid, and to understand the "deepthings of God, " and so the soul of him is saying, "I, too, have visionsunspeakable, " and closing up the avenues of his external sight, he seesand apprehends truth, a light upon his path, of which in his previous, darkened state he had never conceived. The intuitional faculties beingthe true interpreters of the immortal soul, are capable of unlimitedcultivation, unlike those of the intellect which have always thelimitations of cerebral organization. These powers are as limitless asGod, and only through the expansion and recognized rational, practicaluse and application of these faculties--now sometimes falsely namedsupernatural--can the human race pass out from its present environmentof darkness, and crime, and reaching upward expand into a savingknowledge 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 onwhich we live. Each journey of the whole family has embraced a cycleof time. Each cycle has been rounded up by some great cataclysm ofnature, which has left the earth desolated, in ruins, to rest from theinvasions of its nomadic children. 

Of the truth of these great convulsive throes of the planet we havemany ancient legendary accounts. The Biblical accounts, and theirrefutable testimony of the globe itself, as recorded in the veinedstrata which have held their record for ages inviolably concealed, until man should finally bring to the unmasking of her secrets anintelligence clarified from the mists of superstition, and illuminatedby 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, sorrowof many sorts and kinds, losses and crosses innumerable, unendingdisappointments, holding back the ambitions from all satisfactoryrealization of pet schemes, and finally, physical death. Not one humancreature escapes. Into the hoppers they go, again and again, timeafter time, till the refining process is completed and the soul is fitto stand in holy and exalted presence, and to be set to do the work ofthe Master. Here and there some gifted soul realizes that its anguishmeans "growing pains. " A was described as a "good man who let the Lorddo anything He wanted to, to him. "

The discipline of this life is hard to bear; but if people will notlearn the lesson intended, here and now, they will be forced backthrough reembodiments until this life can teach them nothing more, andthey have finally earned a right to a place in the heavens--the home ofthe gods--where perfect peace abides. 

Men are naturally gregarious. In all phases of life they seeksympathetic comrades, or followers that they can hypnotize to do theirwill. They instinctively set themselves off into classes, and whilethis is useful as a protection from invasion, conditions in India showthe evils of class-caste distinctions carried to a ridiculous extreme. The vast, surging, unyielding predatory classes on this earth consistof those who have but lately--comparatively--emerged from the animalkingdom, and have not yet been put through the mill of reincarnationtimes enough to rid them of their wild beast "tricks and manners, " andmake 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 terribleonslaughts upon the peace, and happiness of the unfolded, the civilizedportions of the race. But all are of common origin. Such as they are, all have been, and such as the highly developed, educated and usefulclass are now, they will surely become. 

HOMOGENEITY OF THE RACE. 

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

But a truer concept of the meanings of an earthly existence has arisenin the minds of gifted humanity. The cloister gives way to the opencourt; the inspired ones are seeking the roads which may lead out fromhazy, unproven cloud-land into the brightness of the everyday, practical life which the world must have experience of, along alllines, among all classes, high and low, ignorant and learned, ere itcan dislodge the incubus of superstition, and undevelopment under whichit 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 mostattractive. Sending missionaries to the so-called "heathen, " orspeculating upon the social conditions of people supposed to be livingon other planets, is of vital interest to their soaring minds. Anyamount of money and good red blood of humanity, if need be, are not toolarge a price to pay for the gratification of these projects ofunsatisfied mentality. The vast body politic, the struggling, seethingmasses of humanity grope and dig along their appointed ways, and theprogress of the entire race of man toward an enlightened homogeneity isat a seeming stand-still. The homogeneity of the whole race in itsabsolute entirety, is the key-note of the life which is to be here, onthis mortal earth, and thus every experience of individuals or ofnations becomes of vast importance. 

Every event, small or great, that serves to illustrate the possibilityof fellowship, and brotherhood among the children of men, is amilestone on the way to this recognition of the homogeneity of thehuman race. In obedience to this law, this demand of the evolutionaryforces our brave sons, and lovely daughters, are, all unconsciously tothemselves, following the beckoning hand of noblest progress towardpeace, and mutuality, and are allying themselves with therepresentatives of races and peoples hitherto considered foreign andunrelated to us, in all ways save the commercial. What bonds shallever be forged between the nations of the earth that can supersede suchties of love and fealty to family and home?

The external aspects of these alliances, though yielding honors, andcoveted opportunities, are of the smaller importance compared with theamazing factors of peace and amity between the nations that aresilently and certainly working themselves out toward the beautifulexemplification of the universal Fatherhood of God, theinextinguishable sentiment of the final unity of his earthly children. 

 * * * * * *

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

OF GOD. 

It has been popularly reported that science has driven God out of theworld. Science has refuted ignorant beliefs, driven superstition outof the minds of people, and opened many minds to the great facts oflife as against the silly beliefs of primitive peoples. It is thoughtby 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 namechanged from Jove to Jehovah, for He brought with him all the "highdays, " and ceremonies, and every vice and delinquency, and outrage thathad marked pagan rule. He gave special directions as to thekillings-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 topester his chosen people. He went right on giving directions as to howthese 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, Hemight 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 asmust naturally follow the teachings and influences of the spirit ofhate and vengeance; the suppression of reason, holding back theprogress of the race, fettering the brains of men with bonds ofignorance and superstition, a network of lies and myths. Through thedominance of selfishness and greed, the boasted freedom of men has beenlost--they are slaves to a man-made religion. So science has servedthe highest interest of humanity in doing all it can to drive out thissort 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 betaught what it must have to equip it for its higher, nobler destiny. Justice to all in equal measure; Reason and Love must abide and workout their results, their "fruits, " in human lives. The unanimousrefusal of the framers of the "Constitution" of the United States toset forth therein the will of God, and his commands was wise andfarseeing. It has raised up a barrier against the encroachments ofevery form of popular religion and has given a semblance to freedom ofthought and speech. 

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

The greatest discovery of the past century, far greater than anyrevelation of science or knowledge of past ages, revealed by modernresearch is the discovery of a God of Love. Not of that sentimentalexpression of maudlin emotion that soon evaporates in hypocriticalmake-believe; but the profound recognition of the rightfulconsideration of every human being, regardless of race, color orbelongings. 

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 acommon root--have the same basis of truth--is a proof of the value ofthe 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 asthe rule and guide of human souls. No ancient philosopher had evolvedto a God-likeness that enabled him to go beyond a high stand-point ofmoral perfection, or to give to his disciples what was most needed bythe world for its comforting in the accumulating, expanding experiencesincident to earthly life. 

Jesus, our Christ, the Christ of the religion named for him was thetransmitter of heavenly truths. To him the world owes forever a debtfor making known a knowledge of the fact of the continued existence ofthe individual being after physical death, and it was given to him topoint out the way of life that can alone lead to eternal happiness andpeace. He is our Teacher, our Leader above all others. We havenothing to do with the impossible, faked-up personality that thepriests have so long exploited as the "blood Redeemer" of the world; itis to the inspired philanthropist, the greatly-loving man that we oweour allegiance. This will appear more and more as time goes on, and alot of untruths will fade out and give place to great realities. 

THE GODS. 

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

The primitive conception of a god was of a being with qualities liketheir own, and as men delighted in rapine and every possibleaccompanying vice and crime, so they endowed their gods in like manner, fashioning beings to be feared and to whom must be given big offeringsand sacrifices. So long as these were limited to beasts it was a goodthing, because the priests who ate the flesh thus consecrated were sureof cheap meat for a long time thereafter. But when the "firstlings ofthe flock" failed to bring satisfactory responses to the demands of thesuppliants, they began sacrificing human lives in the vain hope ofallaying 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 altarsaccording to the special god whose propitiation was sought. 

From all these inhuman practices to a recognition of a God of love andmercy was a step so long that even yet there remain in the teachings ofreligionists indications of similar ideas, wherein not only nature'sculminating efforts, but all the painful experiences of human beingsare 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 betweenknowledge and superstition. The daring of the mind of man proves himto be, in very truth, "a child of God. " No arcana of knowledge are toodeeply hid in mystery to escape the prying of his curiosity, hislonging for enlightenment, his long-sustained and vigorous efforts tosurprise the hidden things of God and Nature. Livingston and Stanleywrought in the jungles of Africa, Audubon and Agassiz in the fastnessesof tropical America. These in the material world, the world ofeffects. Gessner and Varley, Darwin and Spencer, together with a longlist of other inspired minds, have given their best thoughts, devotedtheir noblest energies to the explorations of the world of causes, theoccult and invisible realms of pure principles in God and Nature. Backof all these there lies the richest bequest ever made to humanity inthe discoveries and revelations of the most ancient "adepts, " thefathers of mystical lore, in the light of modern discoveries andinventions, mystical no longer; but practical and full of earnestmeaning in their adaptation and adjustment to the needs and wants ofthe citizens of the world today. 

EVANESCENCE OF MERE BELIEFS. 

Proclaim not mere beliefs today, and be not labelled and pigeon-holedand held to account on any special line of thought or action lest theindividual soul be barred out from a conception and knowledge of somefar grander truth. At best our view is narrow and contracted, elsewere we gods, and as we grow we discover our little, vaunted beliefs tobe but as tiny shreds of color in God's great mosaic, our song oftriumph and discovery but as the buzzing of the insect to the choralsof the chanting hosts of heaven. So, then, an eternal negation is thesafest attitude of the unfolding soul. Mere beliefs, unproven byfacts, are so many barriers set up for the soul to overleap and leavebehind on its onward march. 

THE FOUNT OF INSPIRATION FOR ALL. 

"The righteous shall inherit the earth. " Just so far as we are able toprove our rightness, the world--nay the whole universe of God--is ours. Our Heavenly Father has never said: "Thus far shalt thou go, and nofarther, upon the road to knowledge. " Everything invites us; getwisdom, get understanding, and to thy knowledge add virtue are therecommendations 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 crudeegotisms, and defiant resistance to nature's laws, makes ado withdeath. The dainty denizen of the air, and the things that creep overthe earth, the leviathan in his nature element, and his warmer-bloodedbrother whose passage causes the earth to tremble beneath his tread, all the multitudinous expressions of the animal kingdom, that disportthemselves in fur, or feather, in filament of scales, or covering ofhair, each and all recognize the approach of their final experience onearth, and hie themselves to their appointed coverts, to keep theirtryst with their old mother in utter privacy. How well she loves herchildren! She sheds over them her varied mantle of leaf, and pineybloom, or scented brake, and soothes them with softly falling rain, ortender dew, and woos their elements back into her bosom from which theysprang. All this is in consonance with nature's arrangement for caringfor her own. There is no such thing known among these as a vulgardisplay, or a flaunting of the deposed forces in the faces of thecreatures left behind. 

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

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

"Earth loses thy pattern forever and aye" that thou mayst be renewedand set up in the finer mould of thy most excellent Karma, which is thyhidden reality of character. Rejoice then, O mortal! in thebeneficence of nature and of thy Parents, God, for surely it is wellthat they call a halt for thee and thine beside the river of death, andloosen thy burthens of pain and heart-breaking sorrow, and let loosefrom thy soul that raven, "Never more, " which has preyed long upon thysoul and held thee in the grip of unspoken despair and anguish. Thisis of all demons the blackest and most subtle. In tones of love it hasbeen proclaimed by the divine mind that nought is ever taken away thatshall 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 theuniverse and bend it to thy purpose; but according to the wisdom of itsCreator and thine, shalt thou see and know and claim all that belongsto thee, be it the inspiration of thy nature, unexpressed here amid thedin and rush of this chaotic existence; or power to carry forth thygrandly bold designs in conjunction with nature's illimitablechemistry; or to perfect within thy mind a knowledge of her laws; or tofold to thy bereaved heart thy lover, friend, or child, so lost to theenow in the great unexplored silences, that thou wilt not even try tosee 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 longedfor, that shall be given to thee, in its new and resurrected form, overwhich has passed the chrism of the immortal and everlasting life. Weneed a new perception of that great law of the "survival of thefittest. " Who are the "fit"? The nomadic tramp who yields no meed ofuse to his fellows? The willfully sin-sodden who poisons all hissurrounding atmosphere with the noxious exhalations from his decayingorganism? He who hoards and locks away from his fellows his treasuresof gold or precious knowledge, and he, who having in his hands thepowers of wealth and influence, never deigns to stretch forth his handto relieve the cruel stress of the needy or to protect the helpless, orto sustain and strengthen the weaker ones of earth?

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

Once this perception of the soul and even some slight degree ofknowledge concerning the laws which hold over the destiny of eachindividual being becomes, through a familiarity with phenomena noweverywhere common, understood and accepted, the entire life on thisplanet will be changed, elevated and happified. Fancy living day afterday under the bondage of the fear and dread of what everyone knows tobe as inevitable as is the experience of each, of physical dissolution;and yet multitudes of people do so live. It is debasing, anddisennobling in every way. It robs the soul of all its natural dignityand sends it through the world orphaned, and mourning, where it mightand should recognize its divine relationship, and rejoice in itsunfolding powers; and so you who may be giving a moment to the readingof this brief testimony to the great truth of immortality, consider, and realize thy divine paternity and demand what is, and has alwaysbeen thine own by right of interblending of thy own inner nature withthat 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 inHim, and the sooner we see this and yield ourselves in obedience, notlike "dumb driven cattle" but as self-respecting, self-assertingmortals--within the law of accord with the highest--the sooner shall weenter 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 theslowly unfolding human mind a great, overwhelming terror of death. Infact at that time indifference to death would have involved the entirerace of man in utter extinction. From that time have come down to ussuperstitions and fears which, while acting still in the minds of theignorant as a preservative of human life even under most terribleconditions, have at the same time shrouded countless numbers of goodand useful lives with gloom, overshadowing them with a horror fromwhich they could not escape. It has been less the actual fear ofdeath, but of what might be in store for them after they should havepassed through this experience which is so inevitable to us all. Jesusprophesied of a time to come wherein death should lose its sting, andthus be swallowed up in the victory of the spirit over matter. 

The enjoyment of this life demands that, right here and now, we shouldbegin to know and understand how we are to establish our individualrelationship to the invisible, the real world--the world of causes, theworld of law--so as to bring to us a sufficient knowledge of the hiddenmysteries of the future life to give us some certain grounds for faithin the unseen. This can only be accomplished by the development of ourown occult powers, or by learning of the psychic experiences of otherswhich 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 andonward, or down into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of things. It is free to make its choice. It can pursue the hard and toilsomepath of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop aroundthrough all the hells of life unrelated to God, and resistant to theChrist. 

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

The fear of death, of what may lie beyond, has been nature's safeguardagainst a universal stampede out of this life when the miseries ofexistence on this earthly plane become too dreadful to be borne; whenthe tortures of the soul in the tortured body drives out all reason andall philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand forsurcease of agony. But when the "golden bowl" is broken--the silvercord of human life is severed--by suicide--nothing has been gained by achanged environment. There are the same responsibilities and soulneeds, and the miseries and unsatisfied desires of their minds areexactly the same. Nothing has been gained, but much has been lost. Brave, staunch souls one by one obey the call to march over the "borderland" into nature's invisible realms; they cannot help themselves, noone 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 onlything that can "pass muster, " that mere beliefs do not count, and onlycharacter tells. How swiftly, how inevitably their places are filled;nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of thegods--the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled. Life here isjust 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 oflife without being handicapped by some narrowing religious superstitionor an intellectual bias that limits the mind, preventing all unfoldmentof originality. 

TEST OF CHARACTER. 

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

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Back of protoplasm, back of organic human form is the soul--a thoughtof God, a spark of divine, eternal life; imperishable, immutable as Godhimself. 

CHARACTER FORMING. 

All animals, the human creature included, are born blind and thisphysical 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 anyspecially-developed individuality. These are the legitimate prey ofpriests and teachers who have their place, or use in the evolution ofthe lower grades of life on this planet. 

The smaller number of advanced souls that are "cast upon the shoals oftime, " the evolved thinkers, the philosophers have by far the moretrying, and difficult life; for the highly individualized man or womancannot belong to any set school of ethics; there are no fixedlandmarks, religious or otherwise. Blinded by inherited prejudices, ifnot by destructive tendencies, with ideals for which there is noseeming avenue in this commonplace, workaday world; the life of such anone is ever a grope toward the light of truth. 

Lacking the sagacity, the primal instinct of self-protection in commonwith the nature children of the wilds, he plunges forward on his unlitway, and has many a fall into the bogs and morasses of life until hefinally sees that only from the higher, the spiritual side of existencecan come to humanity redemption from the errors, wrong thinking andaction that is the cause of all sin and sorrow of the world. Blessed, indeed, are those to whom this understanding comes in time to harmonizeconflicting beliefs and tendencies, and to be the means of rounding outthe life, and perfecting that most potent and powerful of all things, anoble human character. 

MAN THE FINAL EARTH PRODUCT. 

In man Nature has reached her highest evolution. His life and beingare the topmost rung of the ladder, but she has not finished with him. It is universally believed that physical death severs everlastingly herdominion over him, and thus ends all her service to him. This is by nomeans true. Man is her offspring, her child, and to her he returnsagain and again, drawing from her complex, multitudinous, many-chambered heart such forces as shall bring to him the experienceshe requires to further unfold his nature and bring forth all hispossibilities. 

Not man alone but the planet itself is in the mills of the gods. Theseeds, the germs of life that were expressed in such ways in thebeginnings of life on this world, still exist in a greatly modifieddegree and the misunderstood phases of nature's ministry are theresults of the out-working of these primitive elements still inheringin the world-stuff of which human bodies are made. 

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

SUPERSTITIONS. 

Fear of the unknown has given birth to all the superstitions that haveafflicted the minds of ignorant and unthinking people. Few peopleescape some form of superstition. For instance, the silly sayings, anent the moon, "Fair Priestess of the Night. " It is unlucky to see itin its newness--so and so--when the real fact is, it is a mercifulProvidence that permits us to see it in any of its phases, over theleft shoulder or over the right, or through the glass, or in any way atall. There is nothing more "lucky" or glorious than to have goodeyesight of one's own, with which to behold this and all the otherbeauties of nature. The man who chanced to be passing under a ladderjust at the moment when a workman half-way up let fall a bucket ofpaint 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 itis impossible to imagine what going under ladders or meeting loads ofbarrels, or funerals, or opening umbrellas in the house, instead ofoutside of it, or any of the hundreds of silly, puerile, foolsuperstitions that have sprung from no one knows where, and that haveno scientific meaning, and no earthly bearing upon the realities of anylife have "to do with the case. " These are all the offsprings of mindstinctured by fear of they know not what, and which are peddled aroundand handed down religiously from one generation to another, to keepalive a sensationalism whose tendency is to blind those who accept themto the great living fact of God's providence which is and has ever beenruling the lives of his earthly children. 

SELF-JUSTICE. 

While self-abnegation is a valued experience in the spiritualdiscipline which goes to the formation of a perfect character, thereaction where the ego posits itself upon the law of justice to self, is in reality the beginning of salvation to the individual. Butpreachment from any source cannot avail with any soul deeply immersedin work for others. There is too much in array against it. Theestablished heredity concerning the first duty of woman is of itselfalone a formidable influence to be overcome; then either the realneeds, or the selfishness of others, present obstacles beyond the powerof loving, sensitive souls to resist. The change must come from theconsciousness of the individual of her own needs along these lines, which alone can arouse one to sufficient will, and purpose to be trueto one's self if the heavens fall. This is first, and above all otherconsiderations. 

SYMBOLISM. 

A crude and inartistic symbolism is revolting to a spiritually-unfoldedconsciousness. True mystic symbolisms must observe accurately thefiner 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--hasengrossed so much attention or received such a variety of treatment ashas 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 isattraction. Love is God, it draws elements together, and holds them inproper spheres. It centralizes and builds up. It is controlled byfixed laws; it is only "blind" to those who have not investigated itsnature, and office unshrinkingly, with an eye to a completeunderstanding of its true function. Devoted humanitarians have shownus how to feed, exercise, and rest the physical system, in order toproduce health. Ministers of the Gospel have taught souls the way oflife ever-lasting. Professors of the various sciences and arts, usefuland ornamental, have instructed the intellects of men, and now and thena woman; but with all these, the affections--the crowning--rather theintegral element of all life and being, have had few, or no exponentswho have ever attempted to treat them from any basis which can becalled philosophical, or which could ever serve as a guide to oneuninitiated in their occult phases. 

The ordinary expression of this part of the nature, is a vampyrismwhich is constantly on the alert to see what, and how much it cangobble up for its own delectation. This is the lowest grade. Itbegins with the selfism of the individual, its manifestations are namedlust. It seeks expression through the sensuous nature, but extends tothe spirit and will. 

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

This vampyrism extends through every department of the affectionalnature. It exists not only among men and women recognized as lovers, married or otherwise, but parents are ghouls to their children, andfriends devour each other without stint. Attraction is that law whichdraws together two opposite elements or forces, positive and negative, or male and female. As the nature and attributes of a human being aremultiform, so are the attractions, or loves, numerous. Ignorance ofthe laws which ought to control and adjust these loves, is the primecause of all the misery and crime with which the earth is flooded. Twopeople of the opposite sex are attracted through the intellect on thisplane, and realizing the limit of the law which draws them together, they could be admiring friends forever; but ignorant of their needsoutside of this, they attempt to force a conjugal relationship whichtoo often ends in dislike. Every grade of lust and love findsrepresentation in the so-called marriage relation, as it stands today. Intellects and spirits without any bodies--worth mentioning--and grossmortal remains unvitalized by souls. The former class ignore theclaims of the physical, and gather their robes together sanctimoniouslyindicating: "Avaunt, lest my purity be contaminated"; while the latterlaugh their spiritual pride and fastidiousness to scorn. The war goeson between good and evil, whereas there is really no just ground fordifference. All that is needed for the attainment of harmony and peaceis 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 notenough that the soul perceives the beauty of a grand, moral life, itmust also learn to live it humbly, earnestly and truly. 

"IDEALS OF LOVE. "

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

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

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

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

Remembering that foundations of love upon this earthly planet were, ofnecessity, laid in the selfish instincts of the race--a race as yet soundeveloped in all that "makes for righteousness"--we need not despairof the final outcome, and realization of its high behest to thechildren of men; for no expression of love, however mean in view of ourown exalted ideals, but is, in reality, an effort towards somethinghigher and better. The obdurate and selfish are unfolded, and taughtby its painful misunderstandings, and awful tragedies. 

Those poor souls who expect everything from this life, whose ideals arebounded by their own selfishness, who have never discovered that God isLove, and that only through love, purified, exalted and idealized canany of his earthly children ever reach to any conscious relationshipwith our Father in Heaven, and who, failing to realize even their lowideals, pass on from one experience to another vainly searching for therealization of what their dimly perceived intuitions of love constantlyassure them should be theirs--for even such as these there must be afinal redemption; for, like one of old, they have "loved much, " and thesins 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 homelyways of the unskilled in every relationship of life, unrecognized byyour fellows be ye of good cheer! As the circling waves of a calm lakespread wider, and more widely from a center disturbed by some heavysubstance, so shall your least word, or thought of pure, unselfishlove, from your overburdened lives, reach out and diffuse an influencethroughout the universe of God, and become a part of the life immortal!

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

Undeterred by the alarms of war, the wails of the diseased andfamine-cursed, and the violent protests of the oppressed, andmisery-steeped unfortunates of this plane of being, the "Prince ofPeace" is calling together his scattered forces. The beacon lightsshine along the high places where dwell the exalted, and powerful onesof earth, and glimmer faintly from the lowlands, where the dire enemiesof mankind--ignorance and superstition--are, at last, learning thatGod, the true God, loves, and cannot hate. 

The "ground-swell" of the "ideal love" cannot be resisted, noroverborne by any competing power in the universe, and withever-increasing force and power to conquer all of earth's conditions ofunrest, and dissatisfaction, born of false ideals, it will sweepresistlessly on, until it is merged in God. The recognition of thehomogeneity of the race, and the "Fatherhood of God, " shall bring thelonged for fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of "Peace on Earth, andgood will to Man. "

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The priests endowed the gods with vices which they knew to be popularamong 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 bepicked away from them by demands upon their time and strength whichcome to them under the guise of duties. Viewed from a higherstandpoint, they are not duties, in that they conflict with the greatunderlying principle of self-justice. This is the pivotal idea of atrue religion; for it is impossible to be true, to be just to otherssave as we are so to ourselves, and while no character can beperfected, except through the fiery ordeal of an entireself-abnegation, there is a higher, and a holier life in store forthose who have the strength, and the courage to plant their feet uponthis God-given and eternal law of justice to self. 

It is comparatively easy to gird one's self for the conflict which isapparent, nearly all women souls are equal to that heroism; but it isin the daily round of the household, in relation to the church, and tosociety, or to the professions where women need to watch most jealouslythe weakness of self-sacrifice. Women have had the beauty of"unselfishness, " and "amiability" dinned into their ears for so longthat there is no depth of degradation, or of abnegation of truewomanhood to which they will not descend for the sake of being soconsidered by those whose interest it is to keep them where theyvirtually endorse the vices of others by their own lack ofself-justice. While we must grope along until we understand thewickedness of this, and until we outgrow that weakness, let us be readyfor, and equal to the hour which shall give us the laurels of thevictor. And why not laurels? Has it not been uttered by the mouth ofinspired prophecy that the "last shall be first, " and that "the stonerejected by the builders shall yet be the head of the corner?" Itrests with us, individually, to represent that truthfulness, andfaithful adherence to the justice due to womanhood which shall yetcrown her with rejoicing. 

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

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

MAN VERSUS WOMAN. 

Man, living entirely in his physical nature, goes on and on in thegratification of the senses until he becomes satiated, and "blasé, " andthere is nothing satisfactory left for him upon the sensuous plane. Then he either crystallizes into a hard, selfish being, or plungesstill deeper into the slough of sensuality from which Divine Love alonecan rescue him. This power is most often manifested by woman, thenatural law-giver and redeemer. For ages man has projected his selfishhuman will into all the affairs of life, thus setting aside the higherlaw. In the love relations he has specially dominated woman, reversingthe divine order of nature, and thus killing out all possibleinspiration, and consequent happiness. Everywhere he has set up hisown lustful desires as the rule and right of life in his relationshipto woman, destroying the spiritual sacrament of marriage; and by hisselfishness and greed of power, he has reduced her to a condition ofprostitution. He outrages the helpless ones who have confided theirhonor, 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 hisheaven of trusting love. The wails of the wronged ones--speciallythose who suffer in the marriage relation--go up incessantly to God, and the woe of the children who, through these conditions, haveinherited only animal love and instinct is enough to drown the "musicof the spheres. "

Parenthood being one phase of unfoldment, each individual must at someperiod of incarnation exercise this important function. To the uses ofreproduction, the animal love with its blustering activities ofexpression, is, rightly understood, adjusted. But above and beyondthis 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 ofthe flesh-enveloped soul toward the source of all love, and howeverdistasteful one may seem, to such as have evolved a spiritualconsciousness, and the demand for soul satisfaction, it cannot beignored. 

Through the pain of satiety, of disease, or suspended activity of thelove nature, the ego at last senses its need of God. It comes to knowthat nothing less than divine love can ever satisfy this demand of theheart. The constant tendency of the inspired human being is toextremes. The "golden mean" is the "high water mark" of realcultivation. We have on one side the suppression of the ascetic, andat the other end of the line the abandonment of the debauchee--bothsinful and false because extreme, both casting a reproach upon the lawsof God as outworked in, and through nature. The ascetic, seeing theharmful results to the soul attending the usual unlimited, andundisciplined expression of nature which man accords to his supposednecessities, draws the line by cutting off all surplus of physicalsupplies and, stifling the cries of passion, retires into a cave orcell, and into himself, thus totally ignoring all the necessaryactivities attending the development of this planet and of the humanrace. He may thus reach a high altitude of purely spiritualperception; but it is, after all, a sublimated selfishness. Hisexample is of no benefit to the world's workers. He is not of thosewho think and feel, and who are in the way of divulging esotericknowledges to the quest of the vast army of earnest seekers after lightupon these underlying laws of human life. 

For the control by man of the love, and the life of woman there is acut-and-dried sentiment and an enforced law concerning the segregatedexercise of a natural function. By her acceptance, or rejection ofthis onesided "morale, " is woman judged pure or impure, blessed orcursed, as the case may be. If this rule could be enforced equallyupon both sexes, if there were not two distinct sets of moral laws, onefor 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 developthe power and will to be a law unto herself, regardless of thesuspicion, and brutality of man, and with this also indifference to thefoolness and the weak protest of her fellow slaves--women. These are"long, long thoughts. " Ages must elapse ere the males of our kind willhave evoluted up to a status where they will see that through justiceto woman alone can they secure to themselves any degree of worthy, orlasting happiness, or satisfaction. 

NATURAL CRUELTY OF THE UNDEVELOPED. 

The most unaccountable phase of the minds of the leaders of religionshas been their persistent effort to make their fellow beings wretchedand miserable instead of glad and happy. We expect savagery from theComanchee Indians and other primitive tribes and races; but fromself-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 scaringhalf-witted people into their individual folds has been telling themthat they were in danger of committing the most dreadful of all sins, the "sin against the Holy Ghost. " The utterly "unpardonable sin" ofall sins. This blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightenednumbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modicumof brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even tothe point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in lunaticasylums. 

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 thatportion of God--the universal Spirit--embodied in their own separatepersonalities, and it is only "unpardonable" in that it sets the soulback from its possible and intended progress toward its ultimateperfection. 

REINCARNATION. 

The objections to the acceptance of a belief in the law ofreincarnation are based upon the imperfect teaching, and the consequentinadequate 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 onceleave it. " The fact is, that there could be no return to today'srecognized conditions of life. If one were to return to this planetand become reembodied, he would find himself in some other country, andunder such entirely changed conditions that he would be totallyunconscious 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 upquite others that if one were to return in one hundred or even in fiftyyears, it could not be the same, and that person could not be in anyway subject to the same conditions, or to the same experiences. 

Furthermore, it is nature's wise and provident law that there is hardlyever any memory of any previous life here. Still, after the soul haspassed through many lives and has accumulated great knowledge, a vastconsciousness which can not be laid aside, there come to individualsouls faint gleams of memories of past experiences which, if heeded orunderstood, might become helpful and instructive, if not altogetherconsoling. 

There has never been a time when the needs of humanity have so reachedthe great spiritual overlords of this planet as at present. Or, thatthose needs have been so responded to by the return to earth of wise, and godlike spirits as now. Many of these have sought to approachhumanity through personal reembodiment in the flesh. It would be wellfor the world if, instead of cramming the brains of children witheffete ideas and superstitions, the messages of these wise ones couldbe listened to and heeded. 

A thorough understanding of the laws of reembodiment, so far as we canknow them, entirely refutes the belief and the feeling of the injusticeof the Creator towards any human being. The law of evolution carriesthe soul along from one expression of life to another giving to eachindividual the opportunity to accumulate such knowledge, and to growsuch character as shall finally bring it to a state of perfection. Thediscrepancies in human life are largely external. The millionaire, envied by less fortunate beings, may be far below the poor, strugglinglaborer in point of real unfoldment of soul. And again, people sofavored in this material experience of life may be forced by the verynature of existence to return into humble conditions to learn the reallessons of life here. 

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

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

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

PROCESSES OF REINCARNATION. 

Spirit has no consciousness on the material plane, except through thevibratory action of the human brain, the mortal mind. The individualego gathers up from each incarnation--if it is true to itself--someknowledge, some wisdom, and stores it away in the spirit brain. Itsexperiences cover every opportunity to understand, from lowest tohighest, all that any single one in the whole human family has everknown. This is the justice of the great Creator. The king today hasbeen in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for amoment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he mightremember and know how 'tis himself. Men and women of thought, of greatcharacter have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest fromthe destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the results oflabor 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 ofintelligence, pours into the human brain-cells its own spiritual life, and what thus comes in is there to stay. The growth of the child, thedevelopment of the individual, depends mostly upon the capacity of thebrain to receive and adjust this knowledge and inspiration to its useupon the earth plane upon which it is to live, the place, theenvironment in which it is to learn its next needed lessons. 

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

When the experiences of the dual nature, the body and soul, from anycause, bring the body, or the brain into conditions where it can nolonger respond to the uses of the spirit, then occurs what is calleddeath--physical dissolution. But this change is simply the unclothingof the spirit from its earthly conditions, setting it free to returnagain to its home, there to review what it has gained, and added to itsprevious stock of knowledge. The individual soul in each incarnationforms for itself ties more or less real and lasting--with the mother, the fleshly vehicle, through whose mysterious service it enters uponits earthly life; with the male parent whose service to humanity may, or may not be godly or godlike, though natural and necessary; withfamily relations; and with friends, public and private. Nearly everyperson who passes through this unveiling comes to the grave-side withtrains 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 hislove, or service is fully satisfied. No more severing of ties; no morebroken hearts, or disappointed hopes. No injustice, full fruition inheaven. 

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

Sooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, untilit passes up through the whole gamut of earthly experience. Whatevercharacter anyone achieves belongs to the individual eternally. It isthe reward of patient service, of consecrated effort for the truth. Great souls are what they are, in the places they now occupy by virtueof their many incarnations. Through the great variety of experiencesgained, they have come to know. They have earned the right to be whatthey are. There are usurpers in all the ways of life, ignorance andhypocracy 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 presentsurroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with itsmaterial heredity. It depends upon the unfoldment of the spiritwhether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield tothe pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, andlose the opportunity for further growth. 

EDUCATION OF CHILDREN. 

Nearly all so-called civilized people set to work to cram the minds oftheir children, at the first indication of any degree of intelligence, with a religious bias such as they themselves have inherited or havebeen taught. Then the intellect must be shaped, forced and driven intoaccepted moulds, and the human being is considered ready to be turnedout into the world to fight the battle which everyone, in one way oranother, must fight all along the way of human life--to begin to testthe value of the ideas and principles with which the soul has beenfurnished to meet all the exigencies incident to the pilgrimage frombirth to the final exit from this state of being. It has takenuncounted ages to produce the perfected types of physical humanity wesee on earth today. Here Nature calls a halt, saying: "As thehandmaid, the co-worker with your Creator, I have brought you along tothe point where you look and seem almost as gods. There is in each ofyou a divine ego--a thought of your Creator--a sure guide toperfection. 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 beingfettered in spirit by the chains of old, effete superstitions; theirintellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creedsand vulgarizing ideas of God and his universe. There are numbers ofSpiritualists and "liberal" men and women who expose the tender mindsof their children to these same influences for society's sake, knowingthough they do, from hard experience, what an effort it costs to freethe 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 owninner, unspoken and unrecognized perceptions. No truth, howevermanifested, can adjust itself to our soul's needs, save as it finds inus a response through that preparation which comes from a certaindegree of previous knowledge. 

EGOTISM. 

Egotism is the perception, and recognition by individuals of the rightsand the possibilities of their real selves, their ego. Without ithuman 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 beensettled which is cause and which effect, whether insanity creates theawful manifestations of egotism or the unbalanced egotism inducesinsanity. "Keep us sane" is the wisest of all prayers, the greatestdemand 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 absolutelynothing about, and the folks on this side believe all they say, and sofool ignorance is passed along and stays in the minds of those wholisten to the "messages" of egotism and ignorance. There are "deadloads" of people who think this is all there is of Spiritualism. Whileit _is_ blessed that friends can return, and comfort the mourning onesby their assurances of remembrance and love, this should never be thefinal result sought for. Those who have lived but a limited time inthe spirit world--the world of causes, of law--cannot teach people herethe knowledge that can satisfy their souls. But there are educatedsouls, who have once lived honored and useful lives here, who are onlytoo glad to respond to the needs of inquiring humanity, teaching themthe ways of wisdom, and lifting them out of ignorance and darkness intothe light. 

RESPONSIVENESS. 

Surely we are trying to solve the biggest problems before the class. The people who are our profoundest teachers, through whom come ourlargest experiences and knowledge are often most unconscious of theirinfluence on other minds; and this is lawful, for the moment a humansoul 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, " ismost gracious in her methods of unfoldment, standing ever ready towhisper in the devoted, or willing ear, her "open sesame" to themanifold workings of her secret laws. It is ever the same oldexhortation: "Seek and ye shall find, " "Knock and it shall be opened toyou, " and the most wonderful of all is, the amount of unexpectedtestimony, and endorsement which she will contrive to bring to bear toprove to you the truth of what she asserts through your own individualexperience. 

"Elective affinities" hold their own royally. You shall think and feeldeeply, and the first friend you meet shall tell you--quitespontaneously--of his ponderings which tally with your own, neversuspecting that they are held to you by a subtle, and beautifulchemistry, the response of soul to soul. 

There is but one integral law. All others are but its radiations. Thenatural tendency of the human mind is ever toward being satisfied withits present limitations, instead of which we ought to constantlyexercise our will and aspiration to fling off the mists of prejudicewhich so easily envelop the soul, and strive ever to enlarge ourhorizon, and push on to higher and better things. 

HELL. 

Such men as J. Knox in Scotland and J. Edwards in this country musthave had chronic indigestion or cancers in their insides, or they couldnot have revelled so in hell, and "eternal damnation" as they did. What unreckoned miseries would surely have been spared their listenersif they, and thousands of their sort, could have developed a modicum ofChristian feeling and a little kindness toward their hypnotized hearers!

Not only from their immediate, personal teachings came awful fears ofwhat must be the fate of all who were under the judgment as set forthby the unbalanced minds of such as these; but the long ineradicablechain 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 lawsand providence, in the realm of theological teachings, is undoubtedlythe cause of much of the diablerie of the world today. 

If all the priests and parsons who have ever infested this earth withtheir blasphemous theology were to unite their fiendish forces in aconcentrated effort to doom one human soul--one spirit--to be burnedforever in the endless hell fires which they have so long exulted inholding up over poor, wretched, ignorant peoples, they could not do it!They have had a glorious time persecuting, torturing, burning andslaying human bodies, driving millions of innocent inhabitants off theplanet, who had just as much right to this--their home--as had, or canever have any set of bloodthirsty ruffians, claiming their commissionsfrom God Almighty! How thoughtless, expecting the religionists to putaside this, their most cherished dogma, of "eternal punishment in hellfires!" What would they have left to scare folks with, and make themhand over their dollars, and what, O what! vent could they have fortheir own natural, pure cussedness?

THE COMMONPLACE. 

Great is the god Commonplace, and his prophets of the accredited orderof the "Common, ornary Kusses" are legion. They are of both sexes andof every race, age and condition. Consent to render homage to theirDeity by confessing by word and deed that every man is as good asanother and better too, and they will continue to smile openly; but, insecret, they will prey upon you. Their capable emissaries go aroundwith measuring line and shears, alert to discover, and ready to reduceto the proper dimensions anyone who shall dare to outgrow theirprescribed proportions. You can never know when you are safe fromtheir incursions. 

The dignified old man who sits next you at your hotel table seeming tobe entirely preoccupied by the discussion of his dinner, may only bebiding his time, waiting an excuse to deliver you over to theirinsatiable maw, to be dealt with according to the rules of theirsociety. Or, perhaps the lady who in the first flush of youracquaintance quite dazzles you with her fluent chat upon multitudinoustopics, suddenly, upon finding you unguardedly expressing opinions notapproved by the high priests of mediocrity, lets fall her mask, andshows herself to your astonished gaze a secret emissary, a determinedservant of their most ancient and established order. "Thus far, " sofar as we can accompany you, "shalt thou go and no farther" at yourperil. Woe to the soul that yields a ready obedience to the master'svoice, that is ever calling to all who can hear: "Come up higher. " Thesash with which he would gird up his loins, "the latchet" with which hetightens his sandals that he may run more swiftly the race set beforehim, the staff upon which he would lean shall all be turned by thesedemon worshippers into scourges. He shall be "beaten with manystripes, " for so it hath been ordained from long time, until the painof his wounded heart and hurt brain shall deaden his sensibilities sothat he can no more hear the voice nor see the helping hand. 

Defy, resist, and the limp, sprawling, accommodating God becomes asinuous, hydracrested, overpowering dragon, stopping at nothing to "putyou where you belong"--his favorite battle cry--himself judge, jury andexecutioner. This he has not the power to do unless he can prove toyou that you "belong" where he seeks to place you, for his veins arefull of mud. He is of the "earth earthy, " and in the rarifiedatmosphere of noble ambition and great achievements, he is utterlyblind and of no account. Take heart, then, O aspiring soul! "Proveall things; hold fast that which is good. " Render unto every trueprinciple that which is its due; but beware how you worship or leanupon teachers, leaders who, beneath their proudly-worn garb, andinsignia of leadership, may be all the time wearing the robes of thehigh 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 usein it all. It is the soul's kindergarten. It is interesting toobserve the curious and round-about ways Nature takes to insure thegreatest good to the greatest number of her needy children. Longbefore the first nitro-glycerine "go-devil" was sent down, down, to theuttermost depths, to shatter the oil-bearing rock, and set free thewonderful deposit that was destined to mark a new era in the affairs ofmen, rang out the Biblical mandate: "Let there be light, " and in duetime the whole world was illuminated. 

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

Came--at last--the kerosene lamp. How marvelous the light of its clearflame, after "tallow dips" and "pine knots"! How the little lamp ofthe first experiment grew, and grew into gorgeous centers of sun-likeradiance, shining everywhere, illuminating hitherto darkened, impenetrable places, carrying the torch of civilization round theentire world. Alike in slum and palace, in homes of poverty, and setto shine in the gilded resorts of the noble and wealthy; blessing thestudent, and the vast army of enforced workers; lighting the paths ofmen, and the ways of the multitude; making vice and crime moredifficult, by dispersing the darkness from hidden purlieus. Throughprimeval depths and mountain fastnesses, wherever the footsteps of menhave wandered, the magic lamp has pioneered the way. 

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

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"As a man thinketh, so is he. " This may be only measurably true, inconsequence of the stress of circumstances; but sooner or later, thethought moulds the individual beyond the power of disguising the realcharacter. 

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 themost anomalous phase of this whole affair consists in the fact thatafter having set forth to the world that the church, and all were tocome under the rule of the "new dispensation, " and represent theteachings of the Master, they should turn back to the old, old historyof the Jews, and incorporate bodily into the so-called Christianreligion, and into the political life and jurisprudence of nations, therestrictions, the penalties, and, in a word, the Hebraic law in itsentirety. Law, as it is applied in America, is a process lacking inequity and justice. It is circumvented by $-s for the benefit of therich, 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 indicatedthe presence of the higher law--the scientific law--that must rule alllife on this planet ere justice to all can ever prevail. 

The gospel of Jesus--the Nazarene--was the first that ever brought hopeor promise of any possible good to the outcast, and the children ofpoverty. 

COMMUNISM. 

Communism is the beginning, and not the culminating state of societiesand peoples. All efforts on this line fail, because they are basedupon the false and impossible premise of the absolute equality of allmen. There never has been, there never can be any such adjustment ofthe forces of nature on this planet; because no two souls are alike andthere can only be equality in alikeness. Spirits come here in groups. They start simultaneously on their pilgrimage across the "sands oftime"; but at the very outset there are obstacles and handicapsinnumerable. At once there is heredity. There is no equality inheredity. It is good, bad or indifferent as the case may be. But thegreat divergence is in the soul itself; it grovels or aspires, andunfolds 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 andreduce everyone to the "dead level" of the commonplace, under themistaken idea of universal equality. Gifted persons daring to lift uptheir heads above the common ruck of mankind, are at once shoved backinto the narrow groove the heads of the cult have decided to be theproper rut for human beings to run in. 

In this view, persons of ignoble and narrow natures may sit in judgmentupon people of genius and refinement, and may force back the mostaspiring seer into expressionless life by the utter lack of anycomprehension by their dull, selfish fancy. Ye gods! How they exultin doing it! This trick is played upon sensitive, modest, giftedpeople everywhere. Fools set the pace and rule, and those who know theleast of the responsibilities of living are the first to rush forwardand grab them up. Envy and jealousy have it all their own way, and soit is the world around; everyone is forced to pay a fearful price forhis superiority. 

At different times poets and writers, good people of distinction andphilanthropy, weary of the "storm and stress" of life and of invasionsand intolerable "bumptiousness" of the vulgar and indiscriminating, have tried to secure a place and surroundings where high thinking andsimple living might order their days and secure to them companionshipfit for the gods; but the noblest and best of humanity are notpermitted to go off by themselves in such ways and have a little heavenon earth all to themselves. This cannot be. They must stand aparteach in their place, out in the world--"in the open"--that they mayeach one stand as a beacon light, object lesson, leader, and thusassist in "leavening the whole lump" of ignorant and unregeneratehumanity. 

HAPPINESS. 

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

The ideals of happiness cherished by men take in an immensely widerange, and bring into action all the peculiar attributes of thecomposite natures of man. The brutal instinct cries out: "Kill! kill!"Bloodsheding is its ravishing delight. When it arrives at a pointwhere it may not destroy its fellows, the whole created animalkingdom--including woman--is its prey. Wars and rumors of wars willnever cease on this planet until humanity at large develops out of thisgrade which expects to find happiness in the exercise of its verylowest, primitive instincts. 

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

PAIN. 

Physical pain beyond a certain point ceases to be pain and becomes anecstasy. The same beneficent law controls mental and spiritualagonies. They each have their limit. To the keenest of sorrows, thedeepest of griefs our Maker has spoken: "Thus far shalt thou go, and nofarther. " Nurse them as we may, draw them as deeply as we can into oursoul'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-breakingexperience a consolation. If it were not so, this world would beturned into a vast, howling lunatic asylum. Unseen and unrecognized bystricken hearts, "The Angels of His, who do His pleasure" stand everready 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 sayingreferred to the religious differences which the great prophet saw wouldarise in consequence of his peculiar teachings. There are no illfeelings between people so rancorous and lasting as those which springfrom such causes, and as hate is but love inverted, the nearer anddearer the relationships, the more bitter is the feeling likely to beengendered. Proverbially, family feuds are the most deadly anddifficult to eradicate. 

The friend, the relative who knows you best, who has seen you in yourhours of weakness when you have been entirely "off guard, " is the onewho can most injure you should anything occur to sever your hearts. There is no help for this save in that growth of charity andforbearance 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, andsacrifice self to attain it. What is virtue? That which is best forthe individual; not on either the animal or the spiritual plane alone;but in every lawful expression of the nature; the epitomization, andspiritualization 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 intentto catch its meaning, and portray its deepest lessons, and yet, it isthe reality. It forms the center around which all external liferevolves, from which all outward being receives its vitality andassurance of existence. The passive soul heeds not the ever-recurringchanges which its very continued life indicates, and will, whenunveiled by the transforming hand of death, wonder at its wealth oflife. The conscious being, ever alert, notes the changes and theindications of ever-progressing life with delight, and awe, and aprofound recognition of the law of its being which sets the star of itsexistence higher and higher in the heavens, and lures it on for its ownperfection even unto the perfect day. To such a soul there is littlepeace, or rest by the way; but it may finally learn a godlike heroismand patience which will enable it to trace its steps, and see in allits life's experiences a sequence which is divine and beneficent. 

 * * * * * *

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

ROOT OF EVILS. 

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

Such has been, and is the "white slave evil. " Ignorance is the causeof all evil; but the special cause of this great, terrible, devastatingwrong starts with the utter lack of the education of children by theirparents, especially of the necessary instruction of girls regardingtheir own natural functions, and their relationship to men. The mostvitally important knowledge that can ever be theirs is left entirelyout of their home education, and the natural curiosity of the youngleft to the foolish ignorance of their young mates, or of designingunderlings. 

 * * * * * *

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 thesoul as that of permitting a prejudice for one phase, or presentationof occult law to so blind the perceptions of the mind as to cause it toentirely disregard all such views as are not already set forth, andaccepted. 

It is as the old story of the two who fought over the shield with agold side and a silver side; because, as neither could see both sidesat once, each considered the statement of the other a willfulfalsehood. Let us try, at least, to bear in mind that our relationshipto this universe has been of long enough duration to permit of theevolution, and establishment of many series of laws which do not, aswould seem at the first glance, conflict, or force us to a disbelief inour own well-accredited experiences. The whole united universe ismoving forward upon evolutionary lines, and what was, and is true inthe beliefs of the East, must be today supplemented by the furtherknowledge revealed by the seers of the West. The extreme likenesswhich exists between the different religions of the world is everywhereapparent, and the devachan of the Theosophists corresponds to theexpected rest in the tomb, until Gabriel sounds his horn onresurrection day of the orthodox Christian. 

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

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

 * * * * * *

We do want God in the Constitution; but not the God of any creed orism, but of the great moral principles, the ethical philosophy taughtby Jesus, the Christ. 

MISERLINESS. 

There is such a thing as being miserly of thoughts and ideas as well asof lucre. One is as foolish as the other. Circulation is necessary tohealth and comfortable living. Cast off the leading strings of otherminds. Out of the abundance of thine own heart speak thine own truest, highest thoughts. Think not thy supply will fail, or that bywithholding thou shalt increase thy store. It is not possible to makea 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 presseddown and running over. "

SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

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

Too long the Christian world has accepted the legendary Hebraic God, inthe place of our real "Father who art in heaven. " The teachings ofJesus--the testimony he gave of the love of God, if taken to theheart--must dispose forever of the perception of God as a Being ofcruelty and revenge, and given over to low attributes. The Creator ofthe universe--"without whom was nothing made"--manifests to us throughthe action of eternal and unchangeable law. This is demonstrated to usby 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 throughthe instrumentality that can penetrate the surroundings, and best makemanifest the inspiration, the warning, or the perception of theundeviating law which holds all human experience and its sure resultsin its care and keeping. And those who dwell upon the threshold of thedoor which opens upon the life eternal are those who have loved and whostill do love the children of earth--fathers, mothers, children, friends who have walked the earth by our sides, and whom no starrycrowns, and no glorious heaven could tempt away from the work ofblessing and comforting the sorrowing souls still left on earth tomourn the loss of their loving companionship, and sympathy. And thisis God's "Special Providence" made manifest in our lives whenever andwherever we have eyes to see and ears to hear. 

 * * * * * *

Once the soul really looks forth and sees, there can be, after that, nomore sleeping. All is effort, weighing, balancing, deciding, gropingpainfully along, or running swiftly the race, bracing against fearfulodds, or bravely out-riding the storm. Taking it all as it comes, itis increasing action, motion, change. 

HUMAN DESTINY. 

Confucius, long considered the oldest and wisest of all the ancientteachers, when he was consulted upon an abtruse point of ethics, saidin effect: "Ask the ancients. I do not know. " The results of modernresearch are constantly undermining the first-recorded ideas concerningthe age, and the degree of scientific and religious culture of therace, and we may well feel like turning from the authenticatedhistorical records with which we are familiar to ask of the old, oldworld the occult meanings of the messages graven on pillar and onchiselled stone. The records which have survived the storm and stressof the ages bringing down to us unexpected knowledge of the lives, theachievements, and the histories of far-off, long-buried, hidden andlost peoples, communities, and even distinct personalities, werecarefully planned and exactly executed by those who, already perceivingthe mutability of all human life, and all its affairs, who--in aword--realizing that "the fashion of this world passeth away, " soughtto immortalize and perpetuate forever an absolute history of their own, and kindred races, by the uprearing of vast, imperishable monuments andtemples, and abodes of men. The pyramids, majestic rock-hewn places ofworship, and subterranean crypts are but the fingerposts of destiny. The voice of the weird spirit of "Memnon" who sits enthroned within theawful wastes of the desert sands, moans on and on, ever the sameawe-inspiring warning. "Listen, listen, vain, evanescent, puerilechrysalis, man! Such as thou art, so were these most ancient of daysover the history of whose toilsome, groping lives we keep foreverjealous watch and ward. As they are today, so shall ye become. Alittle space, a few cycles of time, and all that lives and stalksabroad in the full plentitude of energy and ambition shall becomeresolved into the unfathomable the unreadable mysteries of the ages. "

Not after such fashion shall we of this age of widespread enlightenmentwrite our history on the annals of the planet's life, and evolution. All that has gone before this time--the closing in of the vastcycle--has been, in a way, fragmentary, comet-like; the whole race ofmankind has marched around the globe again and again. The leaders--thehead--were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; thevast 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, andthe unfolding of the ego in man forced him along upon unknown paths, kept him separate from his kind, and built up the distinct races, inorder that the individuality of each might become distinctly marked andrecognized, that each, in his own special environment, might become thehighest possible expression of what climate, soil and other influences, incident to the natural heredity could evolve in the lives and beingsof given races of men. It is as though Nature had disported herself inbringing to life an infinite variety and diversity among her perfectedchildren. But men, here and there, have always shown the golden cordof kinship to astonish and bewilder the unwary and unthinking. 

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

ETHICAL LAW. 

Setting aside all our hereditary beliefs, all our theological teachingslet us try to consider the true teachings of Jesus as differentiatedfrom the instructions given by Moses for the guidance of the Jews. Moses never told his people to love and forgive their enemies. Jesusmade a strong point of this, even bidding his disciples to forgiveinjuries to the seventieth time. Moses impressed upon his people theexcellence of revenge, always demanding "an eye for an eye, " a life fora life. Jesus said all that sort of compensation rested forever withGod, that He alone, who saw and knew the hearts of men, could dealjustly with them. The old Jewish law stoned to death the immoralwoman--not the man--O no! certainly not! Jesus said to a flagrantwoman brought before him by a rabble of men: "Let him that is withoutsin cast the first stone. " What divine sarcasm, and how they are saidto have slunk away under his perception of them!

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

All our jurisprudence is based upon the laws given to the Jews by theirleader and lawgiver. We take the lives of those people who are guiltyof breaking certain laws of ours based upon the laws of Moses, andwhile we do not stone the life out of those women--not men--whom weprove guilty of breaking the seventh commandment, we do build upagainst them walls of conventionality, and of uncharity harder than therocks 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 thebitter woes of life, seeks surcease of pain by throwing off his ownindividual life, by committing suicide, the law insists that such a oneshall be not only forced back to a continuance of a horrible existencehere, but that each and every one of such sinners shall be punished byimprisonment and fine. If that isn't serving the devil, what in thename of common sense is it? Where are the good Samaritans among thepretended followers of the loving Christ? What sort of a reckoningwill such lawmakers have to meet, and what penalties undergo under theapplied judgment of the Great Teacher and exemplars? "Woe to himthrough whom offences come, " he said, and again: "Because ye did notgive aid and comfort to the least of these, I will not call you of myflock. " Could anything be more brutally unmerciful than such a law asthis in its dealings with the most helpless, forlorn, and seeminglyGodforsaken of all earth's children--the voluntary suicide?

How the demons must gloat over the lost souls who formed and enforcedsuch 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 theyare not Christians, or let us try to know what Christ Jesus reallymeant 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 theworshipped Moses did not know everything that men may yet come to knowabout this, and anent a world of other things. Neither did thetroglodytes, nor the cliff dwellers know of electricity or the X-ray!But Jesus knew of the life--the eternal, unquenchable life--of the soulbeyond this mortal existence, and he knew and taught the way and thelife that leads to that higher life. All through his teachings runthis under-current of belief in the value of the individual soul, andinstructions as to the highest and best way to evolve it from itslowest estate up to the Infinite. 

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

HUMAN LIFE. 

From the earliest soul consciousness to this very hour the mystery ofhuman life has been, and is the subject of greatest interest. What isthe origin of man? What is he here for? What is the everlastingpurpose 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 wholehuman race, has never been believed in by thinking minds. Especiallyall that "rot" about God's repenting Himself of having made man in hisown image, and then setting Himself up in his only Son--a sacrifice toHimself--for the sins of the folks He had just made and set agoing, andtold 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 alsoof 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 couldbe made to accept such stuff by fears which could never be comprehendedor justified even in the minds of such children. 

Our Heavenly Father has never set "metes and bounds" to the souls ofhis earth children; there is no hidden mystery that cannot be fathomedby them; there is no knowledge withheld from the earnest seeker aftertruth. But first of all, the mind must be clarified and set free fromthe blasphemous superstitions engendered by the crude beliefs taught bytheologians. The developed mind, and reason must arouse to rage andresistance 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 theface of an angel, " or "She is a perfect beauty, " "Beauty beyondcompare, " et al, according to their ideas of what constitutes absolutebeauty; but the human countenances that have in them no faintestsuggestion of the kingdom below us are very rare. If one looksattentively at the faces of the crowd as it surges along the mostattractive street, there may be seen on review surprising resemblances. A man looking like an elephant, another like a toad, bull dogs andwolves galore, beneficent faces of old people, calm and patient, resembling work-worn horses, always folk of both sexes who suggestsheep, --now and again a cantankerous billy goat. You may be sure thatthe vast numbers of reptiles are not left out of the humanrepresentation, and the birds, too. The "eagle eye, " and thecarnivorous beak require no introduction to the menagerie, they belongthere. But the felines have it, the cats, little and big, monopolizethe show. Men regard a recognized resemblance to the king ofbeasts--the lion--a compliment to their natural powers and rightfulrulership, while women have to put up with being considered cats, andmany of them prove by their cattish doings their resemblance to theiranimal ancestry. There are babies everywhere about. It isdisheartening to peer into their tiny faces and see in so many of theireyes no "speculation, " no suggestion of intelligence. They remind youof the eyes of a fish. 

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

NATURAL SUPERSTITION. 

At the creation of the race there was thrown around it such safeguardsas should tend to its continuance. These were, of course, implanted inthe crude mentality of undeveloped man. Underlying all the rest andthe most important to its perpetuation was fear. The ignorant childhas no fear of consequences attendant upon any action; experienceteaches him to know what they are, and how to protect himself fromthem. This was the first lesson of primitive man, and when, throughthe exercise of his inventive faculties, he had mastered his visiblefoes, the animal monsters surrounding him and threatening his life, andhe found himself confronted by the action of terrible forces which hecould not grasp or see, he, by analogy, endowed them with personality, and such attributes as he knew himself to be possessed of, addingthereto powers and possibilities which were limited only by his ownimagination. This was the very beginning of the working of the mentalin him, and while it was most grotesque and unreasoning, it yet drew asharp line between the mere animal and the animal man, and his wholelife being spent in conflict with his foes, he naturally carriedforward his growing perceptions of the existence of supernatural powerswhich were influencing his life upon the same basis, i. E. , of anunending warfare, wherein he must always be the one attacked andvanquished. Fear of the animal world developed into a shivering terrorof the invisible, and so deep and lasting was this first impression ofthe spiritual world upon his crude faculties, that it was made anuniversal heredity among all races and peoples. It exists everywheretoday, even among those who profess to be living in the light of ahigher revelation of God's purpose in the life of man. 

ADAPTIVENESS OF MAN. 

The most surprising and extraordinary quality of mind manifested by manis his ready power of adaptation to whatever may become a part of hisearthly experiences. It, alone, assures his continual progress uponall lines of growth connected not only with his earthly but also hisimmortal career. Great inventions, unexpected discoveries, andastounding revelations may stagger him for a moment; but the facilitywith which he finally absorbs all the hitherto unknown outworkings ofscience and natural law, and assimilates them to his inner sense of thefitness of things, changing all his relationship to his material life, and forcing himself to a readjustment not only of his mentalperceptions, but also of his external existence gives proof sufficientof his being not only favored of the gods, but also of his near kinshipwith them. The marvels of mechanics, the divinely beautifulrepresentations of art, and the exalted inspirations of literature werenever so sought after, or so appreciated by large portions of the raceas at the present time. The peasant's cot today is made comfortableand beautified by accessories which within our historical knowledgecould not be commanded by kings and princes possessed of great riches. 

The spiritual origin of the splendid architecture of the great "whitecity" and later of the southern expositions is perfectly apparent tothe eye of the mystic and the seer, and these vast, concentratedexhibits of the world's work are object lessons of which the influencecan never be outlived even by the careless and unobserving. Today thegreat leaders of men, led by inspiring thoughts which would haveappalled their forefathers, perfect schemes for overcoming theobstacles inhering in the vast forces of nature, and harness them intosubservience to the growing needs of the race. 

What devil-worshippers those old chaps were! To him they ascribed allpower over things animate and inanimate, and the effrontery of the manwho should have even mentioned the possibility of talking over a wire, thousands of miles, or of utilizing the forces of Niagara, or ofhundreds of inventions now in use in the most commonplace surroundingswould have been met with condign punishment. Our inventors would be indungeons instead of their comfortable laboratories, and our greatengineers would long ago have lost their heads. What a time we havehad getting the devil out of our mechanical life! Now he can only rulein the immaterial world, in the crude imaginations of the ignorant andsuperstitious. 

DEVIL WORSHIP. 

The Infinite Mind is in all things, everywhere what we are not. Wherewe are full of impatience, He is calm and unmoved; wherein we gropeblindly, He, seeing the end from the beginning, is well content withhis own handiwork, and with the final outcome of the souls of hisearthly children. Many of the imperfections and individualshortcomings of people are laid aside in the dark crucible of physicaldeath and the grave. Such of these tendencies as are carried over intothe next plane of being, persisting in the spirit, are there dealt withas disease or ignorance, the results of malformation or badenvironment. God is love, not hate, and "rejoiceth not in the death ofthe wicked, " nor in the punishment of the wrongly educated; for a largeportion of the sin and seeming iniquity of humanity is the result ofheredity and of a misunderstanding of the laws of God expressed throughnature. Undoubtedly there have been good men and true among those whosought to interpret God's law aright and formulate a code for theguidance and discipline of humanity in accordance with justice andequity. But their premises were all wrong. They took for theirfoundation the old Jewish history wherein the God of the Hebrews wasalways represented as a jealous being, rejoicing in revenge and rapine, and in all that the enlightened world can conceive of as characterizinga devil. So the modern world has been committed to a devil worship. Nowhere is the ethical teaching of Jesus recognized in our laws. It isthe old Hebraic attitude toward life and God. 

FANATICISM. 

Physical death is the fulfilling of a natural law everywhereprevailing; a change, which the mutability of all material creationsrenders necessary, and salutary, and, when received without theprejudices engendered by education, pleasing. Religion has nothing todo 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 disembodiedspirits with those in the form. That also is wholly controlled by lawsinherent in the nature of things, and will, when the ridiculous hue andcry raised by sensualistic minds has somewhat abated, resolve itselfinto a fixed fact having no more direct bearing upon human affairs thanany other form of social intercourse. It has taught no new code ofmorals; it has not overthrown, so much as it has revealed the truestate of things. It has revived the spiritual teachings of him by whomthe world--called from him Christian--professes to be guided andcontrolled. 

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

The truest religion is that which adheres most faithfully to nature'slaws; for strive we ever so hard, we must return to them. They areGod's will made manifest, and the mind most free from prejudiceengendered by false education is the one which secures to itself themost harmony, making possible that removal of "mountains" so oftenquoted--meaning the inevitable obstacles of spiritual life. 

Christ said: "The kingdom of heaven is within you" and he might haveadded that of hell also. Here is the beginning, if not the ending ofall growth and reform. There seems to be a universal tendency or wishto escape from one's self, and most so-called reforms begin at thesurface--the ultimate--rather than at the centre. This should be aneducation to children, teaching them that their temptations are to bedreaded only as they are responded to by something within, and thatloses 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 theworld, the world of intellect and knowledge, the world we know about, and of which we have a more of [Transcriber's note: or?] less truehistory. This cry of earnest and thoughtful men and women for truth, "nothing but the truth" has rung adown the ages from the pagan, and thenature worshipper through all the countless phases of belief to ourmodern presentations of inspired faith. Everyone who dares to thinkmust realize how this longing of humanity has been met and exploited intimes past by ignorant and self-seeking people, and suffering humanityhas been imposed upon by superstitions and false teachings which haveleft it in sorrowful dissatisfaction, or lost in the mazes of doubt andunbelief. 

The fool hath said in his heart "there is no God. " Life is too shortand too full of interest in other directions for us to turn aside tocombat fools of any sort. If we admit into our inner consciousness theabsolute recognition of the existence of a supremely loving and wiseGod whose attributes are more marvelously great and grand than it canever enter into the heart of man, or the mind of the highest archangelto conceive, we shall have taken the first step toward so positingourselves toward him, as we perceive him embodied in his works, as tobegin to see some faint indications of the divine purpose concerningthe souls of men created in his image. All that we know of his lawsand his intentions toward us, as indicated by our experiences here andnow, embodied as we are in matter, supplies the whole of the data fromwhich we infer truth, the truth as it is in God. 

We find, first of all, that we are set here a homogenous race, for asthe means of communication between widely separated branches of thefamily become established and easy, our horizons expand, racialprejudice and antagonisms vanish, new interests and fresh sympathiesarise, and we are thus brought to recognize the fact of our commonorigin. 

What a dull and deadly uninteresting place this planet would be withoutthe differentiation of the races! What if the whole united world wereIrish or German, Russian, or even loudly pervading, assumptiveAmerican! What an awful element of boredom would be added to ourexistence; and yet there are people so blind to this most wonderfulexpression of God's Providence, that they limit their sympatheticregards to a chosen few, and virtually cast all other peoples intoouter darkness. This applies especially to religious prejudices andbeliefs. Let's see about this: your antecedents were, so far as youknow, Scotch and English, but by some providential intervention you arenow American. You are expected to scorn and despise all other clansand races, and to condone all the faults and crimes of these which havebeen so honored by you, and this is called patriotism, and makes youfeel virtuous and popular, and it is necessary and right--politicallyconsidered--but not from the standpoint of the occult, the spiritualside of existence. There is a wise intention and purpose in theblending of the races in their intermarriages, it is for the breakingdown of prejudices as old as the race itself, that have ever kept thepeoples of the earth apart. 

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

Truth is like certain chemicals. It can only be retained by the mindwherein it finds an adapted affinity, and then it has in each adistinctly individual expression according to the mental and moralstatus of that mind. But laws and principles are stationary andunchangeable; it is our own personal knowledge which varies and changeswith our growth. We may ignore and denounce certain phases ofphenomena, but the phenomena work on just the same, unaffected by ourbeliefs or disbeliefs. The loss is ours if we willfully close our eyesand ears against the enlightening message which it would bring to us inpassing our way. 

CHRISTS. 

Confucius, the moralist, Buddha, the intellectualist, Jesus, theloving. Why reject the teachings of any one of this trinity ofinspired and inspiring ones? All are of God, light bringers to adarkened 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 toculminate in its marked individuality, and separation from the mass oforganized, created beings. These experiences are the rare awakeningsof the soul to the realization and use of its own native powers whichflow from its divine paternity and origin, and which constitute itsbirthright and ultimate inheritance. At times, the gifts and powers ofcertain beings burst into bloom and fruition when least expected, andcast a radiance and a halo around the personality, which mark and awardit a place among its fellow men, altogether superior to the generaltrend and outworkings of the recognized character. Around suchilluminated points of high expression of the soul's possibilitiesgather other personalities and, by the action of a natural law, crystalize about the central magnet of the inspired, and the inspiringthought or action, and thus is leadership created. Barely does theentire life outwork itself upon lines which harmoniously express theinspiration which begot the godlike union of the human with the divine, and thus through the natural falling away from the ideal, those whoseek the higher life through imitation or emulation of the model so setup are finally forced to put aside their hero worship and seek theirown individual growth on the lines upon which they can lawfully unfold. 

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

On the physical plane great strides are being made. The suppleness ofone, the power of balance of another, the feats of the acrobat, thewill of the juggler which commands the action, and the seemingsuspension of natural law; all these expressions are ever increasingand varying through the industry and the ingenuity of man, and point tothe possibilities of the hitherto undreamed of physical perfection ofdevelopment, and grand unfolding of unknown powers. Man must masterthe earth by controlling the laws of the material world. This is thefoundation of all things, and upon it shall be built all that the soulmust have for its unfoldment, within the aura and the radius of thisexternal plane. 

 * * * * * *

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

If the blatant critics would only give over blowing their individualhorns, and remark for a little the value of quiet introspection, manymysteries 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 itsjust relationships and values. It is the power of discriminating anddeciding between the perception of the intuition and the testimony offacts gathered by observation and experience. The intuition of man isof the will, that of woman is of the affections; thus it is morespiritual than man's. Just as the doctors have prospected and laid outand defined the functions of the physical body, so are thepsychologists and the mental scientists seeking a way and method bywhich the attributes of the real being may be divided off into sectionsand labelled accordingly. The fact is, the individual soul is all thetime struggling to reach its own at-one-ment with itself. When itcomes under the tuition and discipline of the gods, and begins toperceive their methods, it can understand the whys and wherefores ofthe intentions of life's experiences. They are to consolidate and makepractical vagrant emotions and tendencies, and lop off and scorch outthe idiosyncrasies of heredity and custom, and rouse the soul to aknowledge of its need of harmony with divine law. Into the real souldepths can no divulging line and plummet reach. This domain belongs toits Creator alone. It is only as the tests of living and doingmanifest hidden motives and meanings that we catch glimpses of the egothat abides within and through this life, submerged as it is in theflesh. 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. Realsympathy comes only through an understanding of conditions as theresult of the same, or of exactly similar experiences. But thoughexperiences differ in details, according to the organizations andidiosyncrasies of individuals, the results in awakening the mind to arealization of truth, and final evolution and growth of the soul areenough 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 everypast age, for something new in the revelations of religious thought andknowledge. When it has not been forthcoming according to the desiresof aspiring worshippers, the imaginations of would-be teachers andleaders have set to work to devise new schemes for the beguiling oftheir fellow mortals that should hypnotize them, and hold theirallegiance to some new revelation of religion, or so-called science. The following that some of the isms, and newly-hatched cults aregetting together is simply amazing. They seem to reach out and pervadethe world, and they are not confined to any particular grade or classof people. The "Zionists, " the "Adventists, " the "Perfectionists, " the"Holy Rollers, " the "Christian Scientists, " the "Spiritualists, " andunnumbered other forms of belief leave a wide margin for all sorts andkinds of people of peculiar idiosyncrasies. So much has been promised, and so little realized in the way of comfort and satisfaction thatwails of doubt, and sorrow are undiminished. Every bit of this"groundswell" of seeking, tortured souls is just the reaction fromslavish, blasphemous, orthodox religion. 

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

As man has unfolded and his perceptions have enlarged, his fears of thewrath of God, and of his possible interference with man's schemes andpurposes have given way to man's own will, and to his determination tosucceed in proving himself master of nature's forces, and of the wholeplanet. He has created the "New Earth" of material comfort andsatisfaction that has been so long foretold; while from the heavenscountless multitudes of awakened, arisen souls throng all the ways oflife, proclaiming the truth of the absolute present existence of a "NewHeaven" also. This is not a perfect time, by any means, even with allthis manifestation of progressive power. Perfection in anything, inall things, is a matter of growth, of evolution, and the whole world isswinging along in the pathway of progress toward that goal, theknowledge of spiritual law which is God, as fast as time can move. Butwe are actually living in the enjoyment of the fulfillment of aprofound prophecy, with but little thought or realization of all itmeans or portends. 

THE GROWTH PROCESSES OF THE HUMAN SOUL. 

It is pitiful to think of all the woe and sorrow that have been shedabroad in the hearts of men and women, and even of little children, bythe teachings of ignorant and designing beings anent Death. Fortunately, all our modern cults are emphasizing the fact that it isthe fear of death that is the "last enemy" of humanity that is to beput down and shorn of its terror. Physical death is only a step in ourevolution. It cannot be otherwise than a progressive motion of thespirit. It recalls the spirit from the make-believe, andmisunderstandings of its earthly environments, and experiences, andshows up the real and true status of life. Vast numbers of humanbeings, passing out of the chrysalis of the fleshly embodiment leavewith the body sins for which they have been condemned, andidiosyncrasies for which they are not accountable: there are, too, packs of people who have been so bamboozled by orthodox teachings, soset up in their egotism, that they die believing in their superiorclaim to recognition by the gods, but who find themselves elected to along sit down in purgatory, or devachan--or whatever the placeis--while they get acquainted with themselves as they really are. Themost deplorable state is that of the souls who cannot rise from theearth conditions with which they are loaded down. They fill theatmosphere; they walk the earth dismayed and helpless; their whilomfriends and beloved ones will have none of them. Even if one such isfortunate enough to find a medium through whom he can communicate, hegets little or no recognition or welcome, unless he can absolutelyconform to the wishes of the purblind folk, who, knowing nothing ofspiritual law, try to insist upon making conditions, and getting testswhich are so outside of the law that even the Creator could not meettheir demands. For those who have no aspiration toward the spirituallife, the only way is to plunge back into matter through anotherincarnation in the flesh. There are no new souls created and relegatedto this planet. Their number is fixed. They pass and pass, and comeagain; good, bad and indifferent all come under the same, the only lawof evolution. The gates of life are crowded with such as these who, weary of prowling to no purpose, seek re-embodiment on this plane ofexistence. The process through which they thus pass is of itself oneof refining and of readjusting to changed conditions, which meansgrowth for the soul; for throughout the universe, the Great Law, thelaw 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 spiritfriends, back of all the lesser gods, who were human beings, like untoourselves, back of all the inspired teachings of all the seers andprophets is God, "our Heavenly Father, " in whom we live and have ourbeing. 

Through his appointed teachers is vouchsafed to his earthly children aknowledge of his love and wisdom. It is boundless and free for all, and there are no "chosen people. " He is the source, the fountain headfrom which flows all life, and all sustaining power. The heavensdeclare the glory of God--the Creator; and the arisen souls of menproclaim his wondrous and unfailing interest in all his created beings. 

NECESSITY FOR PHENOMENA. 

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

The most abominable of all egotisms is that which forever studies tolimit the possibilities of the Creator, to announce firmly that thereis no further consciousness, and no need for human faculties after thislife is ended. The most dignified attitude would be to give him thebenefit of the doubt, to admit that He has the power to continue, andremould, and readjust through all time and all eternity. But this isnot a class of subjects which can be settled by logic. It is basedupon a conviction of the inner soul, and the most that anyone can do isto place himself as nearly as possible in harmony with some one law, and this will form a center around which a perception of more shallcome, and revolve around it grandly and in perfect time, thuscompleting the rounding out--the fullness--of the character of theindividual man or woman. 

WILL. 

Will, human will, is the result of concrete perceptions of theconscious mind. Its development depends upon the experiences of theindividual soul, and its expression upon the environment, theeducation, and spiritual discipline of the individual. Having itsfoundation in the functions necessary to the sustainment of the mortallife of man, it naturally overrides all considerations outside of theobjects of its own pursuit. It is the quality _par excellence_, thepower of the gods, but only as it comes to relinquish all its selfishdeterminations, and yield obedience to the all-pervading Higher Will, the will of God, in whom all life has its source and continuance ofbeing can it march along the royal highway that leads to perfection. This must be so eternally; for there can be no division of purpose orof interest in the divine Mind. 

 * * * * * *

All religions based upon or derived from sorceries obstruct theprogress 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, consecratedusage that shall not finally be swept along into oblivion and utterlyforgotten. 

There is no combination of material atoms--no mechanism, however strongand useful--that shall not dissolve and be rearranged, and take on everhigher forms of expression. This is, and has always been the unfailinglaw of progression, of the outworking of the ascending series. Itinvolves all circumstances, and all earthly experiences. Happy arethose who take Paul's advice, who can equip themselves with the armorof faith, which begets knowledge, and prepare to "fight the battle oflife" with courage and fortitude. 

OUR LIMITATIONS. 

Much of our successful conduct of life depends upon our recognition ofour limitations, and largely our limitations depend upon the will. Thetest lies in the power to discriminate between what one owes to one'sself, and the duties and obligations imposed by responsibilitiesinherited or assumed. Temperaments are so variable, no two humanbeings alike. Much, too, depends upon the power and habit ofobservation. 

FINAL RACE EXPERIENCE. 

The fear of death--shared in by all created beings--is nature'ssafeguard against a universal stampede from this life by physicaldeath, when the miseries of existence on this earthly plane become toodreadful to be borne, when the tortures of the soul, in the torturedbody drives out all reason, and all philosophy, and the consciousnesssenses only the demand for surcease of agony. Probably most peoplehave experienced, for a moment, in a time of terrible crisis, athought, if not an impulse, to seek thus to end all suffering byflinging off the bonds of life here, and thus pass out into--what?Simply life in a changed environment, with exactly the sameresponsibilities 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 ofexistence. It is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere. Caught in theweb of life, there is no escape from its demands upon the individualsoul. Somewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate, upwardand onward, or downward into the purlieus of the crude beginnings ofthings. It is free to make its choice. It can pursue the hard andtoilsome path of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can floparound through all the hells of life unrelated to God, and resistant toChrist. 

One by one all human beings must obey the call to march over into theborder land, into nature's infinite invisible realm; they cannot helpthemselves; no one can; on they go, an endless caravan, to the land ofrevelations, the place of reviews where the utterly selfish are fetchedup with a "round turn" and made to realize that a real Godliness is theonly thing that can pass muster, that mere beliefs do not count, andonly character tells. How swiftly, how inevitably their places arefilled! Nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will ofthe 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. " Nohierarchy of earth, no multitudinous howl of ignorance and stupiditythat "having eyes that see not; and having ears that hear not" canblock the wheels of progress. It has worked in the past, "quite some, "routing out tortured souls and bodies by the millions, sending themflying off from this planet which was, and is their real home, turningrack and screw, and setting baleful fires on tender flesh, threateningfurther eternal hell fires; all for what? Why, to prove that "tweedledee, " is greater than "tweedle dum, " and this is the record of religionat the hands of the theologians and the priests! This is the story ofaccepted orthodox religion. Why, then, have a religion? Why not trythe altruism taught by the great Master in a system of ethics that cannever be superseded by one higher and more truth-inspiring, betteradapted to the perfect unfoldment of the human race?

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

OF TEACHERS. 

The wisest teacher is the one who shows the gradual processes ofunfoldment and growth in the mind and body, and in all the outworkingsof the material world. He who breaks down arbitrary distinctions inevery realm of life does the most toward liberating and enlighteningthe world. We are from infancy so accustomed to petty distinctionswhich have originated in ignorance, and from long use have beenformulated into laws, fixed and binding, that were some personclear-sighted enough to the truth to show us our invisible bonds, andhow to sever them with the scalpel of common sense, and reason, wewould be amazed at our great freedom, and astonished to see the lightcoming through thousands of loopholes and windows of the mind which arenow closed by an accumulation of dust and cobwebs of the pettysuperstitions of ages. 

 * * * * * *

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

WISE USE OF MONEY. 

The money that has been spent in building up blasphemous theologieswould have rid the whole world of poverty, and ignorance, if it hadbeen beneficently employed with the kind intention of doing the peoplesof the earth good, in every way, instead of trying to fix upon themdamnation 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 greatspirits that, even after having passed through death's dark crucible, are haunted by damning fears of bad results possible from too muchfreedom. The trail of the serpent is felt by them still. 

GENIUS. 

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

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

All the pains of this human life come in consequence of the resistanceof the souls of men to the law of progress which is always, andeverywhere, 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, becausethe Lord calls upon them to awake from their animalism, and sloth, andarise, and seek the kingdom. 

"He knoweth our frame, " no more comforting, or encouraging words thanthese have ever been spoken. "He, " the great soul-Father, knoweth usas we are. He knows how to inspire with hope, and courage the mostsorrowing and lost. The felon in his cell, the outcast from all thatmen call good, are, with those of superior spiritual attainments, subjects of this beneficence. Nearly every soul feels, at some periodof existence, its subtle relationship to a something, a power outsideof its material life and surroundings. The experiences of this lifeare calculated to strengthen and perfect that relationship. JesusChrist is credited with saying, "Be ye lifted up even as I am liftedup. " That is, in spirit, to a perception of the relationship of yoursouls to the great "Over soul. "

Be ye, then, patient with yourselves, and with each other. Be surethat you are being taught, "lifted up" to a perception and knowledge ofthese 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 formof externalization of language, spoken or written. 

Thoughts must be created--born--through the absolute form-creation ofthe human brain, in order to secure to them potentiality, andimmortality. 

The status of the individual brain, decides its products, the characterof its brain children. Thoughts that are not caught, clung to, andcrystallized, through the action of the external brain can have noplace in the external life of this world, although they do have theirpower and influence in the incorporate, silent, ever-working world ofcause. 

 * * * * * *

The mind digs deep to bring forth the real. 

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

 * * * * * *

As spirit _per se_, has no entity, and only evolves individualitythrough its relationship with matter, and has no other consciousexpression, the so-long-talked-of "fall of man" was not a falldownward, but a process upward, necessary to his being, to hisexistence as man. 

UNFOLDMENT. 

The persistence of the human soul after physical death proves only thatit is a candidate for immortality. The race is just begun. The paththat leads onward to the eternal heights is so long, so beset withdifficulties, with pains and penalties, losses and crosses, and all theparaphernalia of evolution and growth that the stoutest heart, thestrongest 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 tobegin to feel the unrest of the law of eternal progress, he senses thelaw of reincarnation, and his earthly home draws him by attraction. Heis preferred the cup of "renunciation, " and forgetfulness, and is shownthe way to his next embodiment. 

INVENTIONS. 

The inspired thinker sends out a thought to the world, it is taken upand passed through other brains, it becomes distorted or is recognizedby them in its integrity according to the caliber of mind, or theidiosyncrasies of the one representing it. A thought or idea, oncegiven to the world, becomes common property. It is not possible to puton mortgages or limit the use that may be made of it, or how it may bemade to bring in returns to commercially-inspired minds. A womandevised a style of dress which she wore for her comfort at her ownconvenience. Another woman gave exactly the same pattern and detailsto the public, and is now living in elegance on the income derived fromanother. A man--a worker--invents an improvement, or a better methodof doing things. The firm adopts and makes money out of it, and itsoriginator is forgotten. There are, however, clever people who knowhow to protect their inspirations, and get the benefit themselves. Thegreatest disappointment comes to the originator when the thought isintended to indicate and outline action. So few people can achieve thesame point of view, so few can be depended upon for united, harmoniousaction that the best organizing power is at times fetched up with a"round turn, " and the progress of the good work intended becomesgreatly impeded, or virtually lost. 

DIVINE HEALING. 

There are today many cults professing to have healing powers; butwhether they are named "Christian, " or "Mental, " or "Spiritual, " or"Divine Science, " or whether the place of healing be in some shrinesacred to an accredited saint, or only in the presence of the patientreceiving the benediction; they all operate under the same law; thereis no other. 

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

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

 * * * * * *

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

 * * * * * *

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

SURPLUS. 

Human beings slaughtered on battle fields, or carried off by pestilenceand famine by thousands, or perishing by accidents by sea or by land byhundreds, are individually dear and useful, and are mourned; but in thegreat 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 arestriving to perceive the highest truth and to be guided thereby. Thetests that have been applied to the usefulness of prayer by a largeclass of religious people have been, for ages, purely materialistic. The Lord has been importuned for the bestowal of personal favors, fromthe manufacturing of the right kind of weather to the slaying ofenemies, and from the righteous putting down of infidels, to thespending of dollars with which to build high steeples. Then, too, Godhas had the benefit of the very best advice concerning the way He oughtto deal with the heathen, how He should treat sinners of every sort, soas to show himself equal to managing his fractious subjects, and, finally, how to carry things along generally after such a fashion asshould win and hold the respect of his earthly advisers. 

This utter misunderstanding of the true function of prayer has causedmany earnest souls to sorrow over lost faith in what should have beento them a source of strength and uplifting. Jesus said: "Ask, and yeshall receive, " and as all his teachings referred to things of thespirit, he must have meant to indicate to his followers that whateverwas sought for in the line of true spiritual enlightenment would surelybe given. No one prays for houses and lands, for gold and other formsof material wealth, "for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. "

All through the teachings of Jesus run the mention of his and ourHeavenly Parent, "Our Father, " and since much of our knowledge ofspiritual things comes through our perception of the law ofcorrespondences, we naturally feel and believe that we have not only aFather but also a Mother in heaven. The recognition of the motherelement--the Divine Mother--has always been a most potent factor in thepower of the Roman Catholic Church to retain the unchanging devotion ofits faithful adherents. 

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

"Like as an earthly father pitieth his children, " Jesus affirmed, isthe love of our Father, God, for the human-race. "I and my Father areone. " "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. " These are some of thereferences made by Jesus to the relationship that he constantlyasserted 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 utteranceof the modern shibboleth: "The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood ofMan. " In this now universally employed invocation, Jesus claimed forhimself no other mention than that in which he instructed all ofearth's children to join. 

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

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

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

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

"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. " Up to thispoint there is simply suggested the personal relationship between thepetitioner and the Being to whom he prays; but into this phrase quiteanother element is introduced--a new factor; forgive us, as we in turnforgive our enemies. This puts upon one who utters these words theresponsibility of answering his own prayer, or of making the conditionswhereby he shall be forgiven and accepted, that thus may be establishedthe eternal vibrations that bind the very lowest to the Highest. 

"And lead us not into temptation;" _i. E. _, graciously protect us fromfollowing the devices of our own ignorance; but if we willfully go ourown way, and are overcome with grief and disappointment because of ourmisdoing, "deliver us from [the] evil" consequences thereof, byinspiring our minds with courage to bear our pains and penalties withtrue heroism, and teach us through our experiences wherein lie ourhighest growth and wisdom for all our future lives. "For thine is thekingdom, and the power" to create and destroy, "and the glory. " (Allthings begin and end in God. ) "Forever and ever. Amen. "

Jesus had undoubtedly learned the pure ethics of this all-embracingappeal. Principles are unchanging; but, as the law of evolutioncarries each succeeding representation of the underlying facts ofspiritual science ever higher in the ascending series, on the spiralpathway that leads to the kingdom of God, so in each is embodied a moreadvanced phase or externalization of such facts. The revelationsvouchsafed to the world through the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, andother saviors of men appealed only to the intellect. Jesus was thefirst 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 owneternal love, and to show how all may become participators in itsboundlessness. 

The potency of prayer corresponds to the power of the thought or to theexalted aspiration of the soul projecting it. There are some who, seeking divine aid, are too weak in this respect to realize any specialresults, while the prayers of others ascend as on the wings of eagles. This attitude of the soul is not to be confounded with the "communionof saints. " Communion indicates the existence of a degree of equalitywhich, 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 mindsto comprehend. The heart of the mystery is this; there is no new thingto 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 doorwill be opened, no angel or "minister of grace" or "spirit friend" willdescend the ladder of light that leads to the realms supernal, noinspiration of God will ever come to any soul on earth withoutprayer--in response to either conscious supplication or unconsciousaspiration toward the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Theultimate function and use of prayer is simply to establish ourrelationship with the divine and ever-lasting forces that rule andguide our lives. These are ever operating to help us to live above thepurely personal relationships that limit our growth and advancementalong the lines of spiritual unfoldment, and to open to our soulsvistas of perfectness on the higher planes of wisdom and understandingof the mysteries of immortal life. 

ABSURD BELIEFS. 

The supreme egotism of man has been largely corrected through theinfluence of education and experience which have made him conscious ofthe 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. Modernmen do not expect to be real head-up gods. They know too much to be soridiculous. But there are those who seem to feel that they are atleast "little tin gods on wheels. "

When the Nazarene appeared among men possessing godlike qualities, itwas 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 BegottenSon of God, and, as the idea of sacrifice to the numerous gods was animportant part of the religious orgies of the time, they could onlybring that into their new scheme for entrapping souls by making theSon--who was really God--a sacrifice to himself, to propitiate himself, and keep himself from utterly destroying and damning the folks Hehimself had created. So they made it out that this good man should bea propitiation for the "sins of the race. " Silly; improbable;unlawful; incredible; impossible. The more useless and undevelopedpeople were, the more they believed that the sacrifice of a veryGod--to their egotistical minds--was not too much for the salvation oftheir infinitesimal, pinhead souls. 

THE RESURRECTION. 

It has been believed that dead folks stayed boxed up under groundwaiting--ages perhaps--for the last trumpet to sound to call up thesleeping billions to the surface of the earth to the final "day ofjudgment, " when they should all swarm up out of their graves to be letto 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 togo straight to heaven, all the others to be cast into hell fire to burnforever. The air would be full of toes and fingers and legs and headscoming from all directions to join themselves to the bodies from whichthey had been detached in their physical life; it was understood thatin every case there would be no mistakes made, no white person, minus amember of his body in life, would find himself persistently chased upby 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 instantlyrecognize its true belonging and fly to its former familiar location. Where this great final "round up" is to be held has not yet been madeknown to the "true believers. " "Chautauqua" has been suggested, andalso the lot back of the "White House" in Washington, D. C. There areobjections, however, to these and some other places because of thelimited area, but as "with God all things are possible" either spotmight be made to answer. The great open-air university at Chautauquais known everywhere on earth--and possibly beyond--and certainly wouldbe a good point for the saints to hail from, in their upward journey, and the "White Lot" in Washington would shorten the journey for thosewho are booked for the trip in the other direction. 

Out of this belief has grown quite a little sect which takes it uponitself to decide upon the fate of all the world outside of its verylimited number. It is hard upon the Methodists and Presbyterians andall the other cults and sects scattered about over the whole earth thatthey should all be doomed to everlasting hell fires because of a littledifference of opinion with these self-elected judges! The more insaneof them have ignored all the claims of citizenship, have burned theirfences and their barns, and given away all their earthly belongings, and refusing to be taught by the repeated failures of the many timesset for the final ending of the planet, have donned their unbleachedcotton "ascension robes, " and have sat around on the hill-tops andwaited long for the end of all things earthly, and the fun of seeingall the people who did not agree with them switched off into hell. 

The real beginning of this came from two sayings purported to have beenthe words of Christ. While hanging upon the cross a man nailed toanother cross, begged Jesus to save him. Jesus was an adept, highlyclairvoyant. He saw that the man was good--probably better than thepeople who had hung him there to die--and that if he was a thief, asthey said, he had stolen things for the benefit of his people for foodand for sandals and things for the family. So he said: "This day youshall be with me in the spirit world. " Some clever person caught on tothis and said to himself: "That settles it, if one man can go straightthrough without being laid up in the ground after death, all can. "This view furnished an altogether different outlook and gave people anew idea of the law. Jesus assured his disciples that the kingdom ofheaven would come on earth very soon, in fact, while they were yetalive. Well, he knew a lot about the soul, and immortality and allthat, but nothing at all about evolution, or electricity, or whatwonderful unfoldment of brain and magnificent works man should achieve. The Nazarene, like all seers and prophets, was simply mistaken in pointof time. He did not give the Creator time enough to bring all thingsto pass, and if the people who think this world is actually coming toan end pretty soon would just think once that the Creator does not setthings agoing solely for the purpose of destroying his work, and lethim 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 innature, and nothing is or can have existence in the external world thatis not conceived and formed first in the matrix of the spirit. So itis in the realm of the invisible that the law of progress, of unendingevolution takes its rise and becomes operative. Still, however clearlydefined may be a truth, a law in the mentality of the higher powers, itcan only be externalized to the degree comprehended by the mind throughwhich it is given to the world. All that saves this world from beingin a state of utter darkness is the fact that from its very beginningthere have been souls capable of being illuminated by the light fromthe higher life, spirits so grounded in a faith in its certainties thatthey have shone out upon the stern and awful path trod by the humanrace like beacon lights above a stormy sea, or beaming stars shedding acalm radiance upon a trackless waste. 

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 

We know so little of the mysteries of occult, divine law, and yettaking thought of the entire history of the human race, such as wehave, and our own personal experience and observation, we mustrecognize that there are certain fixed principles, certain laws, indicating the undying value of right living. To understand and applythese laws to the all around conduct of life, to the practical affairsof human effort, is in its highest, its spiritual sense the realbusiness of earthly existence. Those religious teachers who have had adegree of spiritual enlightenment have wrapped up their perceptions ofmoral law, and disguised them with creeds and dogmas, and have usedthem to further their personal ambitions, and to hold their power oversuch people as they have been able to hypnotize into believing in themas the vice-gerents of the Most High. All this has been going on forlong, and has been handed down through unnumbered generations until ithas crystallized into forms and ceremonies, and unmoralconventionalities which stultify the race. "Dead loads" of good peoplebelieve 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 theirpower over unthinking minds. Here and there, scattered alongthroughout the realms of intelligent being, there have always beennoble and true men and women who have brought a sufficientcomprehension of the out-working of the eternal principles ofunswerving moral law to make their conduct of life here wise anddependable, and to give to them the assurance of a successfulcontinuance of individual life in other spheres of being, beyondearthly limitations. Those untrammelled souls who thus unfold grow upinto an at-one-ment with the divine, all-pervading principle we callGod. They have been, and are light bringers, and saviors of humanity. 

The perfection of individual character can only be achieved bydetermined effort, by unshrinking, concentrated labor. This simplymeans an acceptance of all the inevitable experiences incident to thislife, coupled with a brave determination to wring from each and everyone of them, good, or seemingly bad and unfortunate, all the lessons itcan teach, and all the truth it can possibly reveal. This evolution ofthe soul is from the innermost sacred precincts of the personality, andit is often unrecognized by those who have the most inclusivedevelopment of the attributes and innate resources of their own souls. 

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

The priests of different religions who have been most valiant andpositive in preaching hell fire and eternal damnation have entirelylost sight of this fact. Not the most strenuous of the whole lot hasever been able to follow one miserable wretch into the spirit world tofind out whether his prognostications anent his hypnotized victims, have "come true. " "_Au contraire_, " great numbers of reputed sinnershave come back in their real personality to report to their friendsthat there is no such fate for anyone, that it is one great lie. Butit must not be supposed that there are no sure enough hells. Therehave to be places for the hellish to stay till they come of a bettermind. Nature provides for them other opportunities for their gradualredemption through re-embodiments in the flesh on this earth. There isbesides a constant outpouring from the dark abodes of estrayed andbenighted souls, for the all-embracing love of our Father-Motherreaches even the horribly suffering lunatics, made so by their selfish, vicious lives here on earth. There is, indeed, the greatest possibledifference between an intended eternal punishment of sin, such as hasbeen preached for ages for the purpose of scaring people out of theirwits, and a recognized, just retribution for broken law. Punishmentssuch as have been believed in suggest a punisher, and our Father inheaven has been blasphemously represented as "angry with the wickedevery 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 thosewho have lived selfishly and viciously is far beyond the pains of theburning, material fires. Every human being that has in it a livinggerm of spirit shall be liberated and helped toward the light, not byany so-called personal redeemer--that is not possible--but by the powerof its own aspiring soul, and even moderately decent folk shall come toenjoy all that they have imagined and longed for, and all great soulsshall find the peace they have dreamed of. All souls everywhere in thespirit world will have all they have truly earned in their earthlylives. 

While we stay here we are hardly protected from the envious thoughtsand deeds of evilly disposed and vengeful people. Once safely landedin that superior and satisfactory realm no such invasions can reach usever. 

THE SOUL. 

The soul is the vehicle of the spirit. It passes from the earthly lifealong with physical death, its uses ended. Developed by earthlyexperiences, it grows and has the power to detach itself and representthe personality of the individual to which it belongs, but only whileon earth; it is not employed thus after the spirit leaves the body. Itis the "similacrum" of the body, and is often mistaken for the immortalpart, the enfranchised spirit. But the spirit is generally unawakenedand can only grow with the pabulum of spiritual influence, in harmonywith spiritual law. It is this that complicates this life and retardsthe at-one-ment of the greatest of all trinities; body, soul andspirit, the natural three in one. The soul element is the bequest ofthe parents--especially of the mother--to their progeny. If theconditions are at all in harmony with divine law, the mother pours outall her soul's influence upon the forming body of her child in thedivinest love ever manifested on earth. Its birth and manifestationare of the immortal spirit, and create in her offspring someconsciousness of, some desire for immortality. Of all earthlyphenomena this of motherhood is the most marvelous, and naturally theleast understood, and the most slightingly regarded. Its universalityreduces it to the commonplace. 

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

WOMAN. 

Woman is the constructive, the upbuilding force. With what patientendurance she awaits the slow growth of the bodies she shelters beneathher heart that are to hold souls here and give them human instrumentswith which to do their work on the material plane of life. In thissphere, the destructive jealousy of man of the power of woman does notavail, her kingdom is everlasting. Crushed and enslaved she is, andalways has been, but only to gather to herself greater power. She isthe natural lawgiver, the supreme ruler. Man, the intimate holder ofthe material forces, dreads the power of woman, and fears her invasionsof his long-established rights in his chosen domain. 

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Unwilling motherhood has filled the world with vice and crime. 

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

ADIEU.