{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_18355/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_18355","id":"gutenberg_18355","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18355","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Spiritual life -- Miscellanea"],"text":"E-text prepared by Al Haines\n\n\n\nINSIGHTS AND HERESIES PERTAINING TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOUL\n\nby\n\nAMMYEETIS (Persian)\n\nSecond Edition 1916\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChristopher Publishing House\nBoston\nCopyright 1913\nby the Christopher Press\nCopyright 1916\nby the Christopher Publishing House\n\n\n\n\n\nDEDICATION.\n\n\nTo those heroic minds who can truly say: \"My soul is my own,\" and\nbravely maintain it through everything--in spite of Church or State--I\ndo offer with earnest congratulations and my loving greetings, these\nfragmentary thoughts of\n\nAMMYEETIS.\n\n\n\n\nOur revered Emerson loaned his Plato to a neighbor.  Meeting him some\ntime afterward he said to him: \"How did you like Plato?\"  \"Very much,\"\nthe farmer answered, \"very much indeed.  I see he has a great many of\nmy idees.\"  And so, my readers--if there be such--there may be herein\nset forth some of your own familiar thoughts which you may not have\nfound opportunity to express in such guise as appears in this small\nbook.\n\n\n\n\n  CONTENTS.\n\n\n  No New Thing\n  Evolution\n  Slowness of Evolution\n  The Work of Nature\n  A New Science\n  World Making\n  Imperfections Revealed\n  World Origin\n  Spirit Individualized through Matter\n  World Signs\n  World Growth\n  Death a Benefactor\n  World Progress\n  The Origin of Evil\n  Vibration\n  Life\n  Churches Money Makers\n  Life in Nature\n  Heaven\n  Nature Spirits\n  Experience\n  Spiritualism\n  Phenomena\n  Mediumship\n  The Migrations of our Race\n  The Discipline of Life\n  Homogeneity of the Race\n  Of God\n  Of Jesus\n  The Gods\n  Knowledge of Occult Law\n  Evanescence of Mere Beliefs\n  The Fount of Inspiration for All\n  Man versus Death\n  Fear of Death\n  Test of Character\n  Character Forming\n  Man the Final Earth Product\n  Superstitions\n  Self-Justice\n  Symbolism\n  Love\n  Ideals of Love\n  The Needs of Woman\n  Man versus Woman\n  Natural Cruelty of the Undeveloped\n  The Worst Sin\n  Reincarnation\n  Processes of Reincarnation\n  Education of Children\n  Egotism\n  Responsiveness\n  Hell\n  The Commonplace\n  Petroleum\n  Law\n  Communism\n  Happiness\n  Pain\n  Foes in the Household\n  The Inner Life\n  Root of Evils\n  Rest in Change\n  Miserliness\n  Special Providence\n  Human Destiny\n  Ethical Law\n  Human Life\n  Animal Likeness\n  Natural Superstition\n  Adaptiveness of Man\n  Devil Worship\n  Fanaticism\n  Truth\n  Christs\n  Hero Worship\n  Reason\n  Sympathy\n  New Religions\n  The Growth Processes of the Human Soul\n  Necessity for Phenomena\n  Will\n  Change of Atoms\n  Our Limitations\n  Final Race Experience\n  Religious Performances\n  Of Teachers\n  Wise Use of Money\n  Genius\n  Thoughts Are Things\n  Unfoldment\n  Inventions\n  Divine Healing\n  Surplus\n  Analysis of the Lord's Prayer\n  Absurd Beliefs\n  The Resurrection\n  The Creator\n  Retributive Justice\n  The Soul\n  Woman\n\n\n\n\nInsights and Heresies\n\nPertaining to\n\nThe Evolution of The Soul\n\n\nNO NEW THING.\n\nThere is no new revelation to be given to man; there is no need of it.\nThose who have labored most strenuously to evolve from their inner\nconsciousness a new, a better religion, have found themselves bogged in\nthe mire of their egotism which has landed them in a police court, or\nthey have been confronted by exactly the same problems as those from\nwhich they have sought to escape.  Few, indeed, have survived the test\nof time.  There is an ancient promise that stands yet for man's use:\n\"To him that hath (improved) shall more be given, and from him that\nhath not (improved) shall be taken away that which he already has.\"\nThis was never meant to apply to material things--it could not--it was\nspoken in reference to the gift of understanding, and of using the\noccult, the psychic law.  Many psychics have lost their spiritual gifts\nthrough failing to understand that endless progress is the law that\nforces souls along the way of life.  No stopping by the way to gather\nshells upon the shore, no aimless looking back; but work with stout\nheart and resolute will.  It all means work, overmastering habits of\nthought and action, lifting the soul from the grooves of heredity, and\nin all ways making aspiration attract the inspiration that sustains the\nsoul.\n\n\n\n\nEVOLUTION.\n\nAll subjects pertaining to our knowledge of the soul are too subtle to\nbe weighed and proved by external intellect alone.  Our lives are ruled\nby such a hotch-potch of inherited beliefs and tendencies, that it is\nalmost impossible for us to use any discrimination concerning them; or\nto arraign ourselves before the tribunal of our own better judgment in\nsuch manner as to enable us to separate the false and effete ethical\nand religious influences, from the wise and true, which alone are\nabiding and permanent.\n\nThus we grope and stumble along through our earthly lives, burdened\nwith ideas which were set in motion far back in a crude age, and which\nwere so well adapted to their time that they still vibrate to the\ntendencies of our own day.  This applies to every department of human\nexperience, and were it not that we are, as a huge family, better than\nour cherished beliefs, higher in the scale of development than these\nwould seem to indicate, we should still be under the dominion of the\nso-called \"Dark Ages.\"  The most important and the dearest phase of\nhuman experience must come, of course, through its religious beliefs,\nand as they are narrow and superstitious, on the one hand, or grand\nwith faith and understanding of law, on the other, do we judge of the\nstatus of the individual, the community, and the race; and the advances\nmade upon this line mark the progress of what we term civilization on\nthis planet.\n\nThere is no time so trying, so full of agony to the soul, as is that\nhour when it first begins to doubt the absolute, unquestionable truth\nof the creeds it has hitherto blindly accepted, and in which it has\nfully believed.  Creeds are the swaddling clothes of the soul, and must\ninevitably be outgrown and laid aside as the mind of man grows more and\nmore capable of comprehending the truth which is to set it free from\nthe trammels of mere blind belief.\n\nIt is so comfortable to have our spiritual faith ready made for us, our\npaths all mapped out, and our final destiny made plain and sure,\nprovided only that we remain faithful in our adherence to them as they\nare set forth by our parents and spiritual guardians, that when the\ngreat, ever-surging, resistless tidal wave of progress first reaches\nthe soul, it can only stand in dumb agony, like one upon the seashore\nwatching its last hope go down beneath the waste of mighty waters.\nTorn from its anchorage of inherited beliefs, it is sure to be\ntempest-tossed, rent and torn, buffeted by conflicting tendencies, cast\nupon many a desert island of unfaith, and haunted by miserable doubts\nand black despair, ere it hears and heeds the pilot of truth, the only\nguide to the peaceful haven of eternal life.  Happy, indeed, are they\nwho tarry not upon the weary way; but who have within them that\naspiration, that endless cry for light, which shall always, in God's\nprovidence, compel the needed response and guidance; for many honest,\nearnest men and women, lacking this attribute of the soul, fail all\nthrough life to reach this only true solution of the riddle of human\nexistence.  Kind and sincere friends say of them: \"Oh! if they had only\nremained faithful to the religion of their fathers, they would have\nfound happiness and peace.\"  But the law of evolution brings each and\nevery soul to the point where it must stand alone with God, there to\ndiscover and establish its relationship to the Divine, irrespective of\nall preconceived ideas and notions, superstitions, and ignorance.  This\nis exactly what every soul must come to--the aggregation of powers and\nforces of body and soul resulting in the fully developed and\nrounded-out individuality of any given personality.  These are the rare\nand unusual men and women, the fully flowered out, the richest fruitage\nof any and all races, and it is to these that we must look for that\nunion of sympathy with and comprehension of the needs and requirements\nof all which is to usher in the reign of peace, and universal good will\non earth.\n\nJesus of Nazareth went before us on the path, the only way cast up for\nearnest souls to walk in.  There has never been given to the world any\nsystem of ethics superior to his.  He recognized the homogeneity of the\nrace--\"Each for all, all for each,\" was the whole import of his\nteachings.  In him was epitomized the experience of the race.  Each and\nevery soul must wear its crown of thorns, and bear its cross and suffer\ncrucifixion, ere the soul astray from God, immersed in, and overwhelmed\nby matter, can be forced to relinquish its hold on, its love for the\nexternal, material things pertaining to this world.  But it has to be,\nit certainly must be, the experience of every creature born of woman.\nBe sure, O soul! if none of these experiences have ever been realized\nby you, that you are but just now entering upon the inevitable rounds\nwhich must attend your connection with, and relationship to this\nearthly sphere of being.  Such are as the insensate clod, having as yet\nneither spiritual sense, nor moral responsibility.  Nature's processes\nare slow; but be sure that the goal is appointed, and that God will be\nthere and will wait till we come.\n\nWhen Jesus said: \"The poor ye have always with you,\" he did not refer\nto dollars and cents only, but to that poverty of intellect, that\nbarrenness of the moral nature which makes a human being a reproach and\na terror to his kind.  These we shall always have to deal with, to\neducate if we can, to constrain from overt acts of evil, and to protect\nourselves from in all the works and ways of life.\n\nSo painful and slow is the process of character-forming that millions\nof souls pass on from this sphere of life to the spirit world so\nlacking in individuality that they have no more power for any\nexpression of themselves upon that plane of being than they had when\nthey were living here.  Not as much, in fact, for the physical body and\nbrain have always some possible function and use while they hold their\nrelationship to the world of material life, which function and use are\nlaid aside when they are put through the sifting process of physical\ndeath, and in all cases, unless the powers of the ego as exercised here\nare supplanted by a sufficient growth of the spiritual nature to\nsustain the ego in its new relationship, and give to it the impetus\nneeded to start it forward upon lines of usefulness and growth, it\nnaturally fails to waken to any sort of realization of itself and its\npossible career in its new life.  This is specially true of those\npersons who have been psychologized by those teachings which relegate\nthe souls of human beings to the cold clasp of the ground, until the\nexpected day of judgment; or of those poor, overworked men and women to\nwhom heaven seems only a place to sleep and rest in; or again, of still\nanother class of minds that has brought itself to a belief in utter\nextinction after the close of this external life.  These are the\n\"shades,\" the \"shells\" we hear of, for there are times when the subtle\ninner sense of these sleeping ones is stirred to action by the wails of\nthe loving, longing ones left on earth to mourn; and, as is the case\nwith one in somnambulic sleep, the spirit walks and talks, in response\nto the demands of friends, through those persons who are gifted with\nthe aura necessary for the medial agency.  These excursions of the soul\ninto the realm of matter, thus made by and through the offices of\nclairvoyants and seers, the repeated arousings of the ego from its\ncontented sleep are finally highly educational, and result in\nresurrecting the forces of the enfranchised being, and setting them in\nmotion on the lines of useful work for humanity.  For this medial\nservice which is thus being rendered to the spirit world by such gifted\npersons still living here in the body, multitudes are daily and hourly\nexpressing their gratitude and appreciation.\n\nWe have somewhat abolished our old, long-established Hell, and now, to\nbe consistent, we must also do away with our preconceived ideas of a\nHeaven of eternal rest; for why should the souls of men be wrapped in\nuseless slumbers, until the strong overwhelming influence of the law of\nprogress sweeps them up like dry leaves before a whirlwind, and rushes\nthem along to the gates of a conscious life, through a new relationship\nupon the physical plane?  The spirit does not weary, and when the\nexhausted body is laid aside, why not enlist the services of all to\nwhom any appeal can be made?  Thus shall we all be growing together,\nand Death shall be forced to cast aside its grim and dreadful seeming\nand show for the angel it is.  Ah! how could we go on and on in the\nnarrow limitations of this small beginning of a life, if Nature did not\nkindly call a halt somewhere on the road, while we, taking fresh\ncourage, start out in our new career with our entire being adjusted to\nlaws which are working in harmony with the divine will.\n\n\n\n\nSLOWNESS OF EVOLUTION\n\nThere have been times in the lives of all soul-grown people when the\ninner consciousness has clearly perceived that some given experience\nmay mean an important crisis in the expression of their individual\ncharacter.  But not frequently, in the ordinary lives of human beings,\ndo they meet up with really great events, or personal experiences that\ncreate for them special overturnings of their ideas, or any change of\npersonal habits.  To the mind of youth, life seems a plainly simple,\nstraight-forward way; but when overtaken by results of unconsidered\nactions, for which there has been no preparation, there dawns upon it\nthe consciousness of appalling vistas, and visions of future\npossibilities that are overpowering.\n\nAs we journey forward on the path of existence, life becomes ever more\nand more complicated, and the need, the overwhelming demand for an\nunderstanding of the ever-varying problems presented to the mind for\nconsideration, and the constantly urgent necessity for wise decisions\nmust call into action all our highest powers of the intellect and\nreason, in order to secure to us the best results from the\nopportunities given us to acquire knowledge.  Every one of our\nexperiences are bits in the mosaic of our lives, and without them the\npicture would be incomplete.\n\nBut with all, we are forced to realize how unfinished and\nunsatisfactory are nearly all of our experiences of earthly existence.\nIt is, indeed, \"a thing of shreds and patches.\"  But we are caught in\nthe web of material existence from which there can be no lawful escape,\nsave by unpremeditated physical death.  We are thrust into the seething\ncauldron of formative life.  The entire race of man, forced forward by\nthe resistless power of the law of progress, is on the everlasting\njourney to the heights of perfected being.  To us, enmeshed in the ties\nof interest and affection, the various heredities and the worldly\nKarmas which hold us fast, the slow, unnumbered processes of evolution\non this, our home world, as recorded in history seem unendurably long.\nBut time is naught--eternity is unending--and \"ten thousand years are\nbut as a day with God,\" the great Maker and Moulder of our immortal\nsouls.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WORK OF NATURE.\n\nThe planet itself is stirred to its very centre.  On one side, the\nearth opens its horrible maw and swallows up uncounted numbers of her\nchildren, or spews out her molten interior in vast lava tides,\noverwhelming and destroying all within their reach.  At the opposite\nside, great floods of gas and rock oil, set free by the operation of\nthe drill, shoot up in the air and fall back upon the soil in a\nluminous spray, as like to liquid gold as aught not filled with the\nbeloved auriferous metal could be.  The waters loosed from their\nfastnesses over-reach their accustomed bounds, and great tidal waves\nare encountered in unexpected latitudes.  Nature is rounding up her\ngreat circle, and making conditions for a new era.\n\n\n\n\nA NEW SCIENCE.\n\nA science of Spiritual evolution could be erected, based upon the\nteachings and ethics of Jesus Christ, that would put souls consciously\nin their true rank and grade, and make them known just as people are\nrecognized by the college curriculums from which they have graduated.\n\n\n\n\nWORLD MAKING.\n\nThe \"fire-mist\" and the mephitic vapors were finally swept away;\nanother era was preparing.  Incorporate in the world substance of which\nthe planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life.  Its crude\nmaterial was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and the\nawful corresponding animal life.  Birds and beasts and reptiles, each\none more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earth\nand the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horrible\ncreatures.  Into this unaccountable menagerie came also the\nforeshadowing of man--a huge hairy creature possessing size and power\nto do battle with his animal compeers for supremacy in the seething,\nupgrowing land.\n\nThis was only the differentiation of the animal-man from the animal per\nse--the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs.  From\nsuch rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot the\nhuman soul.  This, after vast ages, grew into a state and condition\nthrough which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finally\nstarted on its endless earthly career.\n\nWith the birth of the soul came what we call the religious instinct,\nand man began to worship natural objects; animals and reptiles, the sun\nand finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods.  The\n\"phallic worship,\" worship of the human organs of creative power, gave\nthe males great prominence.  The female, woman, the mere matrix was\nconsidered, from the first, of far less importance.  No one stopped to\nthink, what is one without the other in the great world processes.\n\nNature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possible\nrepresentation of her power, buried here and there specimens of her\nhandiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even now\nbeing restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientists\nhave been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, and\nthe habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings of\nlife on this earth.\n\nAmong these, too, have also been found the bones of huge human-like\nbeings whose decadent progeny are still alive in limited number.\n\nThe gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the\nearth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends\nforth his note of warning, beating his great hairy breast, and all\nliving things flee before him.  Fancy what the awful first man--his\nprogenitor--must have been!  Science has never yet been able to\ndiscover the probable length of time it required for this crude age to\nendure in order to lay the foundation of the world; for time was not,\nand existence was recorded only by ages and aeons.  But seven times\ntheir infernal progeny were nearly all swept off the planet by awful\ncataclysms and the whole affair had to be begun over again.\n\n\n\n\nIMPERFECTIONS REVEALED.\n\nThe soul digs deep into the age-long deposits of knowledge, the results\nof countless experiences, and brings up the Real.\n\nThis has to be, the most successful egotist, the most deluded hypocrite\nmust inevitably meet up with himself some day and begin to know the\ntruth versus make-believe.\n\nAll souls are so veiled in the flesh, and held by the crowding\nnecessities of their lives, that it is only on rare, unexpected\noccasions that the individual soul can throw down the barriers and show\nof what it is capable.\n\n\n\n\nWORLD ORIGIN.\n\nTo be able to understand, even to our limited degree, something of our\norigin, and the purpose of our existence is most comforting and\nsustaining.  In the beginning, the Creator sent to this planet a given\nnumber of beings intended for the exemplification of the law of\nevolution and soul growth.  In the everlasting rounds of human life, no\nnew souls are being created and sent here to work out their salvation\nthrough their experiences incident to the life of this young planet,\nearth.  What appears to our limited perception to be the beginning of\nnew lives is so only in relation to their present embodiment.  All new\nsouls now being born here are but returning from some other phase of\nexistence.  The whole human race is one family.  Bound to the wheel of\nlife, every individual soul must pass through all of the varied\nexperiences that are set for its evolution.  What they are not today,\nthey have been, or must become.  But not all people march over just the\nsame highway to reach the soul's status.  Details of experience do not\ncount.  It is the lesson learned, and practically applied that forwards\nthe unfoldment of the individual in a comprehension and understanding\nof God's eternal truth.  Only results in all things, temporal and\nspiritual, attest the unfoldment and growth of each and every soul.\n\nIt is only when man has evolved to the point of being more than a man,\n\"a little lower than the angels,\" that the higher spheres of activity\nare necessary for his further progress.  To expect to develop in the\nworlds of finer substance than that of earth before he has learned all\nthat earthly experiences can teach him, is like \"placing a child in the\nhigher classes of a school before he has mastered the lessons of the\nlower.\"\n\n\n\n\nSPIRIT INDIVIDUALIZED THROUGH MATTER.\n\nAs spirit _per se_ has no entity, and only evolves individuality\nthrough its relationship with matter; and has no other conscious\nexpression; the so long-talked-of \"Fall of man\" was not a fall\ndownward, but it was a process upward, necessary to his being, to his\nexistence as man.\n\n\n\n\nWORLD SIGNS.\n\nOur planet, true to her everlasting record, has put forth her potent\nreorganizing power to celebrate the ushering in of the new era.\n\nNot less marvelous are the signs and indications of great changes\ntaking place upon the visible planes of the lives of men.  Hand in hand\nmarch the visible and the imponderable forces of this earthly life.\nIgnorance and vapid superstitions can no longer block the doorway of\nthe living Christ.\n\nGod wills to know, and be known of his own, and to hold his love a free\ngift to all races of men.\n\nThe trump of recollection and of recognition has sounded.  The dead\nhave already risen, all along the lines, and no power can hale them\nback to their dreams.\n\nOnward, ever upward points the finger of progress.  Long hoarded wisdom\nand knowledge of the forces of nature are pouring into the minds of\nseers, and of wizards of science; and these long separated and divorced\nstreams are evoluting to the unison of material and occult sciences,\nwhich is destined to bring in the reign of peace and prosperity to all\nthe peoples of the earth, and to bring to light the relics of past\nages, cunningly hidden away in the vast womb of nature that they might\nbe preserved and brought forth to our knowledge in these later days.\nBy the undeniable record yielded up from buried cities and storied\ncrypts, and in the skeletons of mummies of both animals and men of\nthose most ancient times, she is showing us where she began the present\ncycle, now closing in about the race, with great clattering of forces\nand profound portents in earth and sky.\n\nThe equilibrium of the universe is maintained by the transition of its\nforces.  Atlantis, matured and ripened, sinks beneath the sea, and her\naccumulated wealth of wisdom and knowledge is transferred to other\ncontinents to arise at the appointed time to enrich and bless the land\nof their adoption; and all art and science is but shining today in the\nreflected, reawakened light of past ages.\n\nIn view of the revelations being made on all sides, we may well\nreiterate Solomon's wise saying: \"There is nothing new under the sun.\"\nThere can be nothing absolutely new.  There is only endless iteration\nand readjustment of powers and forces to fit the need of the day and\ngeneration.\n\nNature buffets her children bitterly and wipes out her surplus of human\nlife as she destroys the overproduction of beast and bird, of insect\nand reptilian life.  She inspires the minds of men with an\novermastering desire for possessions.  She hides her wealth in\ninaccessible places and sets her jealous, invisible forces to guard and\ndeterminedly hold all possible avenues of approach to them.  But this\nworld was given to man to conquer and own and make much of; and the\nglitter of a speck of useful metal in a stray boulder in the lonely\ncanon; or the chance outcropping of rock which to the practised eye\ndenotes the nearness of the deposit of oil--these, or any of the\nthousand and one signs, she hangs out along the path in which man is\ndestined to march on his way to absolute sovereignty, set his forces of\nintellect and will in motion, and he will never rest from his labors\nuntil he stands upon the pinnacles of the gods, the crowned monarch of\nall nature's forces on this planet.\n\nAll phenomena are negative, and are only the external garniture of the\nworld of man, the spirit, the child of the Eternal, of the father and\nmother Creators of him.  Thus man is, by absolute inheritance, the\nking, and the ruler over all nature.  But not without effort can he\nenter and possess and maintain his power over his own.  Ice and frosts,\nand searing sun, and lonely wilds, and trackless wastes, and countless\nwaters, and evil beasts, and horrible reptiles--all, all he must\nencounter and set at naught in his trackless journey.  Carefully must\nhe force the wilderness to bloom, and by his wise efforts \"make glad\nthe waste places\" of the earth.  Wherever the foot of man has been set,\nthere is it \"hallowed ground.\"  Whatever may have been his intent or\nwhatever his fate, in his wake shall surely follow the manifest purpose\nof that ever-ruling Power which led him.  Everywhere along the way,\nNature trails her loose ends, well baited, with which to catch the\nunwary, and the whitening bones of the lonely emigrant family lost on\nthe plains, and the snowy hair of the dead mountaineer bleaching on\nhigh summits or woven in the nests of birds, or the bodies of dead\nmariners, or the lonely corpse of the treacherously slain, pulsing with\nthe tide on foreign shores, or the miners in their pits, forced by the\ndeadly \"damps\" from all visible connection with human life, or the\nchild of a superior race held captive by savages, or the beautiful\nwhite girl sold into the harem of a barbarous sultan, or any or all\nother of such expressions of destiny in the isolated lives of men are\nbut pioneering the way of the race to complete homogeneousness and\nunquestioned ownership of the whole wide earth.\n\n\n\n\nWORLD GROWTH.\n\nAll of nature's processes are slow and always evolutionary.  The\ncontrolling laws are subtle and secret and can never be comprehended or\nunderstood save as they work out in visible results.  There is every\nindication that it has required an illimitable series of ages to evolve\neven the physical form of man in the unnumbered races of the human\nfamily from the first semi-human life to man as we see him now--clever\nand strong of brain and will, daring and equal to great emergencies,\nand in inventive, creative and executive gifts a very god of power and\nmight.  The laws of evolution refer primarily to the individual planet,\nEarth, and include all that it contains--in a word, all things in any\nway related to it.  Mineral deposits and crumbling rocks nourish the\nvegetable world; the vegetable world provides sustenance to the animal\nkingdom, and it, in turn, with all the others combined, sustains all\nhuman life; but its real root, its permanent existence, is in the\nplanet itself.  Each and all of these diverse manifestations of law\ncoordinated, constitute the mysterious modes and methods of the\nevolution of life from the lower to the higher status of being, and it\nworks on, and ever on eternally, till human life finds its completion\nand satisfaction in the fulfillment of the law which merges the\nadvanced and prepared soul in the Universal Spirit and crowns its final\nevolution with its at-one-ment with its Creator.\n\nNature does not duplicate her handiwork, but cunningly sets her sign on\nevery leaf and branch to insure individuality.  She throws protecting\narms around all her growing life of fruit and vegetable in order that\neach shall reproduce of its own kind, and thus keep intact the orderly\nsuccession, and that there shall be no lack of nourishment for the\nchildren of men.\n\nShe gives without stint to all the peoples of the earth her world-stuff\nto be worked over into human flesh, and animal fibre.  But no tiniest\ngrain of her possessions has ever, or will ever escape from her hand,\nand the daily debris from all earth-made bodies is her constant toll.\nWhen the forms are set free from the life principle which has pervaded\nthem in their earthly career, the circle is rounded, and when the\ngrave-rite, dust to native dust we here restore to our great mother is\nuttered, she is the gainer; for the operation of thus passing the\nmaterial of which the planet is made through the highest created forms\nof life, brings it into a certain relationship to spirit, and thus the\nevolution, the spiritualization of the world-stuff of the planet itself\nis going forward.\n\n\n\n\nDEATH A BENEFACTOR.\n\nDeath is a benefactor to the human race.  How could we bear the burden\nof existence if Nature did not somewhere on the march \"call a halt\"\nwhile the angels of dissolution tenderly unloose our burdens of pain\nand sorrow, and disappointment, and stultifying regrets, and remorses\nfor past ill doings and shortcomings?\n\n\n\n\nWORLD PROGRESS.\n\nIt is known only to the lesser gods, who keep the celestial \"accounts,\"\nhow many times the swaggering, bully-ragging, brawling, piratical, and\nmurderous human family has swept around this globe.  Here and there\nrelics of their status, their growth in the external, material\nconditions of life are being exhumed, wrung from the faithful clasp of\nMother Earth, to excite the wonder of the day and time.  Many of the\nattributes of these lost races, their arts and their religions, have\ncome to light; but whence they came, and how they perished, is an\nunsolved mystery.  From the processes of disintegration--earthquakes,\nand widespread volcanic action--now going on, we can readily conceive\nof the manner in which vast multitudes of humanity have been removed\nfrom this planet to make room for still other races and peoples.  The\ngreat pilgrimage still goes on.  Unnumbered hordes following the secret\ninstinct of evolution, unceasingly press forward from the East toward\nthe setting sun.  This same army, in a former incarnation, went forth\nover the land where they lived to slay and exterminate; in this\nembodiment, here in America, they hew out the rocks, and toil in the\nmines.  They harvest the grain that is to feed the hungry multitude\nthat is speeding on toward this new land as fast as the modern\nconveniences can fetch them.  Thus they serve instead of destroying\nhumanity--a great advance toward civilization.\n\nThere has been, there will always be an unvarying round of tearing down\nand upbuilding in the whole wide realm of nature.  Nothing, not the\ntiniest grain or the most ponderous production of skilled hands, ever\nstands still.  All things are in vibration, and their permanency\ndepends wholly upon the rate of vibratory motion.  Here and there all\nthe way along, from the earliest times of which there has been any\nrecord, great souls have blossomed out, and have carried aloft the\nGod-given light of intelligence and culture.  These inspired minds,\ngreat souls, have persisted in announcing their message to a darkened\nworld, often in the face of direct want and persecutions; misunderstood\nand maligned, they were and are the saviors of the people of this\nundeveloped planet.  Even yet, they are known and valued by but a\nlimited number of supposedly intelligent people.  While these inspired\nlight-bringers were seeking to shed abroad in the minds of men the\ntruths that shall make men free, the Church was devoted to closing, and\nholding fast shut every avenue of the human mind that might have a\ntendency to teach the people anything outside of their tenets which\nwere the outcome of their weird imaginations.  If anything could cause\na doubt to arise in the Creative Mind as to the wisdom of letting loose\non this small planet the pestiferous peoples that have swarmed over and\npossessed it, it must have been aroused by their demoniacal\nperformances in the name of religion, that have disgraced the nature of\nman from the beginning of our knowledge of the world.  While a\nperception of beauty and harmony is latent in the minds of men, it is\nthe last of the attributes of the soul to develop.  The figured\nsemblances of God, hewn out of stone or wood by the primitive races,\nare mostly hideous inventions of the evil thoughts of evil minds.  From\nthe terrifying African God, \"Mumbo-Jumbo,\" to the artistic bronze\nrepresentations of the Deity of the nations of the East all are marked\nwith awe-enforcing ferocity and ugliness, instead of by the\nsoul-inspiring lineaments of love and beauty.  Tremblingly the minds of\nmen have groped their way along through the mazes of ignorance and\nenforced darkness to a degree of personal liberty; and every picture\npainted, every bit of sculpture achieved in the interest of harmony and\nbeauty is testimony to the persistency of the inspiration vouchsafed to\nman of the Creator's love of beauty, and of the final state of harmony\nto be reached by humanity.\n\n\n\n\nTHE ORIGIN OF EVIL.\n\n\"All evil is only undeveloped good\" has come to be the \"shibboleth\" of\nnot only the Spiritualists, but of many other of the latter-day cults.\nIt sounds fine, beautiful, and is--Praise God!--in a large sense, true.\nIt is a beautiful reaction from the ancient blasphemy taught by the\npriests and pastors anent hell and the devil.  The comforting belief\nthat the above quoted statement settles the whole matter is accepted\nand believed in.  Since the supposed dethronement of \"Auld Hornie,\" as\nthe Scotch named him, as head devil, it has not been thought necessary\nto give the matter much if any consideration.\n\nMediums, especially, have gladly ignored the fact of the possibility of\nthere often being in their seances the very presence of potent and\npowerful evil influences.\n\nSpiritualism has flung wide the doors and given ignorant, and\nundeveloped humanity an equal opportunity with the refined, and good to\nexpress themselves.  It is thus the only truly democratic religion ever\nmade known on this planet!  It recognizes all human beings, good and\nbad, as the children of one and the same Father, and that not one can\nbe lost from the hand of God!\n\nThe peculiar people who have developed the strange power of\nmediatorship between this material world and the plane of existence\nknown as the spiritual world have always been helped and sustained in\ntheir great work by their invisible friends and appointed spirit\nguardians, or they could never have carried forward their important\nmission to the people of this earth.\n\nRegardless of all the efforts of the enemies and traducers of\nSpiritualism, the spread of the knowledge of the unfolding spiritual\nphilosophy has been and is marvelous; and the establishment of the fact\nof man's existence, continued after physical death, through varied\nphenomena, is in itself the proof of its being the work, not of Satan,\nbut of a beneficent God.  And why not?  The Creator of us all must know\nhis earth-children's needs for their further evolution and growth!\n\nThere have been great searchings, at various times, trying to discover\nthe \"origin of evil.\"  Vast stores of uncanny legends, and tales of\nwonders have been handed down to us in explanation of this most\nbaffling mystery.\n\nThe destructive force in nature had no \"origin.\"  Just as God, the\nConstructive Force, had none.  It was, as God was.  It is and always\nwill be, while God and nature are.\n\nIt rides the whirlwind and the flood, and differentiates itself through\nthe smallest minutia of the affairs of human life.  It is the primeval\nelement, the \"pure cussedness\" which has to be conquered, or adjusted\nin every human being.  It essays to bar all progress; Ignorance and\nSuperstition are its blinded handmaids.  It exacts the fearful\npenalties of scornfully misunderstood efforts, if not ostracism and\npersecution, for the use of the diviner faculties.  It is the spirit of\nunconquered ill.  It is the genius of the utterly selfish will of man.\n\nBut it is when it allies itself with the intellect and will of man, and\nbecomes the motive power, and thus expresses itself in concrete form,\nas is often the case, that our sympathies are touched and our sense of\njustice aroused, and we feel our lack of protection from the \"powers\nand principalities of the air.\"  Our only refuge is in growing to and\nexperiencing a perfect at-one-ment with the eternal law of the\nopposing, the Constructive Force--God.  There is no protection, no\nsafety, but in the Divine Love and Wisdom.\n\n\n\n\nVIBRATION.\n\nThere was no beginning; there can be no ending.  There is a constant,\nundeviating process of changing and readjustment of all the forces of\nthe universe.  All is vibration.  None of nature's forces are at rest,\nat equilibrium.  Build you a fine dwelling, and ere it is finished for\nyour occupancy, the disintegrating forces will have made a raid upon\nthe material of which it is constructed.  Take notice of the signs of\ndecomposition going on in everything around you--the accumulation of\nfluff in your rooms, in the innermost of your garments, along the\nseams.  So also do the rocks and mountains yield themselves to dust,\nand so does all the planet reverberate with the resistless onward march\nof the law of progress, unfoldment, evolution from the lower to a\nhigher form of expression.\n\nLands edging the seas and the inland waters, from their constant\nerosion, slip away and are lost.  Continents disappear, undermined by\nearthquakes and similar convulsions of nature, and new lands arise from\nthe bowels of some faraway ocean to keep the balance even.\n\n\n\n\nLIFE.\n\nFrom time immemorial the researches of men in the vain effort to\ndiscover and make known to the world the origin of life, of all life,\non the planet earth and elsewhere, have been most anxiously considered.\nThese efforts of the inquiring minds of men have not been altogether\nfruitless of results; because through them has been made manifest the\nmost marvelous of all the facts in nature, that \"there is no death,\"\nthat \"what seems so is transition.\"  It has also become known and\nunderstood of late years, that from the ephemera of life, of an hour or\nof a day up to the highest archangel, through all the intermediate\ngrades of being, visible and invisible, there are no vacant spaces.\nEverywhere there is an overwhelming volume of life, actual though not\nconscious or individualized, until the higher ranges of human life\nbecome known and correlated.  Comes the man with the scalpel.  He\ndissects the human brain, and is disgusted at finding no clew to the\nsecret cause and source of life.  He never suspects, he does not\nconceive of the fact that there is in everyone, an immutable, invisible\npower--a spirit germ--nor would he believe in its potency if he knew it\nwere true.  Then there is the man with the retorts and the scales, and\nthe \"residues.\"  He announces to the world that he can create life\nwithout any help from the \"Great Spirit\" people talk so much about.\nThere is also the man with the bottle full of water, with a handful of\nmud at the bottom.  He is sure he can produce living organisms; might\neven set agoing a new race of beings, if he only had time, and a larger\nbottle!  Back of every expression of life we know abides the source,\nthe cause of all existence, so hid, so truly an integral part of life\nas never to yield a knowledge of itself either to the scalpel of the\nphysicians or to the electrical battery of the explorer of mysteries.\nInto this sphere can no man come.  Herein can be no meddling of the\nhuman intellect.\n\nThrough this searching for the source, the cause of life, man has been\nbrought face to face with law, with a force he can never understand or\nconquer, or adjust to the demands or suggestions of his will.  From\nancient expressions of intelligence have been handed down to us the\nname, the title, God, as a concrete expression of this power that holds\ndominance over all created beings.\n\nAnother important revelation made to man is the fact that there is but\none law, _per se_.\n\nIt is an established, consecutive, endless chain from the beginnings of\nhuman life here up to the absolute ultimate of the immortal soul.  It\nproves the homogeneity of the whole human race; it declares the value\nof existence here, and explains the logical sequence of its continuance\nbeyond this fragment of life into nature's invisible realms.\n\nWhat we shall do, each one of us, with our individual portion of life;\nhow we shall work out our personal experiences, and to what end is\nanother matter.  There is our heredity which is, in every case, so\nmixed as to yield but little of the primal strain, and which gives to\neach one of us unknown possibilities, or undesired idiosyncracies to\nfight out and eradicate from the nature.  The many failures to discover\nthe mystery of life surely ought to prove to all experimenters the\ntruth that spirit holds the only key to its endless mystery.\n\n\n\n\nCHURCHES MONEY MAKERS.\n\nThere is no detail of the ordinary human life of all who are in any way\nconnected with the church, which has not been exploited for money.\n\nThere is no end to the myths and fables that have been put before the\nsuperstitious and ignorant, and each and every one has its price; and\nevery celebration draws its pay; and all for the glory of God, not at\nall for the help of man.  The peasants and other laborers starve, and\nare overwhelmed by the riot of fatal disease.\n\nAs a money-making concern, it leaves nothing to be wished for--it is a\ngreat success.\n\nThere was no \"beginning,\" there can be no \"ending.\"  Whatever appears\nended in our experience is only in seeming, and in other shapes and in\ntransformed relationships will appear again and again, asserting \"There\nis no death, what seems so is transition,\" change of elements and\nforces.  There is but one law; one creative centre.  One model for\nadvanced individualized life in any world; in all worlds.  The whole\npurpose and intent of all creation is simply to render all inert,\nunused matter into life.  The universal Spirit pervades all things.\nMineral; vegetable; animal; human; angel; one unbroken chain, from the\nsod up to divine perfection, from the pigmy races we see here, on this\nsmall globe, up, forever upward and onward to the courts of the \"sons\nof God\"; to the spheres of the eternally immortal.  Ignorant mortals\nassert from time to time, the day and the hour of the \"End of the\nWorld,\" and foolishly prepare for the final destruction of this planet.\nIt is true, this earth is always coming to an end, and always\nrehabilitating itself with its own unused materials.  Mountains slide\ndown and fill up the valleys.  The waters of the sea undermine and gnaw\noff big slices from the land; all, all is motion, vibration; nothing\nstands still.  If it were possible for anything in the universe to\nstop, to break the everlasting chain, there would be no universe; there\nwould be only chaos come again, and all the work of setting the planets\na-spinning round and round their centres and apportioning the orbits of\nthe stately suns, and their places in the precessions of their\naccompanying worlds; all would go for nothing, all would have to be\nbegun again, and on the same lines exactly.  There are no other; there\nis no other law, and the name of the law that holds all in imperishable\nharmony, is Love, just Love.\n\n\n\n\nLIFE IN NATURE.\n\nThe microscope has revealed to us the life and habits of myriads of\ncreatures of whose existence we had previously no knowledge.  We had\nnot even a suspicion that what to our unaided vision appeared inert\nelements held a rampant, multitudinous life, nowhere dead, but always\nsurging and changing, ever replacing death and decay with a new life\nall its own.  Nature's luxuriance everywhere fills us with wonder and\ndelight.  The fragrant ferny depths of the forest, and the lush growth\nof the rank marsh-land, the immeasurable sands of the ocean-edge hiding\nin their mysterious sameness innumerable and beautiful shells and\ncorals, and the mountain top heaped up with boulders, or crumbling by\nnature's processes into pebbly imponderance.\n\nLife, swarming everywhere.  Tiny leaflets giving succor and shelter to\ntinier animal life--its special fairy.  Huge beasts couchant in\nmajestic trees, guarding against invasions, with a fierce, jealous rage\ninherited from the gnomes and satyrs.\n\nDeep sea depths untouched by lightnings, where the kraken makes his\nhome; jolly dolphins disporting in the sunlight, responding to the cry\nof the hovering wild duck and gull.  Human beings overcrowding in the\noldest settled portions of the globe, until nature's resources for\ntheir sustenance are wellnigh exhausted.\n\nAll these, and many more, might justly be enumerated to illustrate the\nbountiful and inexhaustible resources of the great creative,\nreconstructive Power in the universe of matter.\n\nLife, everywhere life, forcing out death and decay.  Ever changing its\nform of expression.  Reforming itself upon steadily advancing models.\nAll nature swinging in circles so wide and vast as to require centuries\nfor their completion.\n\nOne of the most fascinating doctrines of the Swedish Seer is contained\nin the \"law of correspondences.\"  By it many things, seemingly\nirregular, \"fall into line,\" and become parts of a great process of\ndevelopment.  Following this method, the earnest, searching mind,\nlooking through nature up to \"Nature's God,\" seeks to go beyond the\nconfines of the mere animal, material existence, and come into sympathy\nwith and get a knowledge of the world unseen, but often felt and\nrecognized, spiritual life, filling all the spaces which seem to the\nearth-dimmed senses dull and void.  There is no death, no vacancy in\nthis realm of nature, any more than in that other, more tangible one,\nthe outgrowth and the necessity of this great storm-tossed planet.  But\nall the expressions of life in this sphere are different from those to\nwhich our material senses are accustomed, and require the action of\nanother, a finer, more spiritual set of faculties in order to\ncomprehend them even partially which, at the best, is all we can hope\nto do while we remain denizens of and subject to the laws which control\nthis world of material substance.\n\n\"Jacob's dream\" was not a dream only.  It was a reality.  From supernal\nheights \"Ladders\" are ever being dropped down to our earth, into our\nmidst, upon which forms immortal and real \"ascend and descend\"\naccording to our need and our demand upon them for love and help.\n\nWe are continually overshadowed by this supermundane existence.  Its\ninfluences are both positive and negative, good and evil.  It has\npowers adapted to every issue of human experience; because it is the\noutgrowth, the fruitage of human life.  Its roots are planted in this\nearth.  Its topmost branches wave in the sunlight which flows from the\n\"Throne of God.\"  It is God.  Not a separate and distinct being; but an\nintelligent principle of love abounding in everything; expressing\nitself through everything.  Knowing no \"high\" or \"low.\"  Seeing no\ndifference between the \"just and the unjust\"; showering down upon all\nalike, benisons of wisdom, and peace and good will.\n\nGathering all together in one embrace; the whole race of man, one\nundivided family.  Its divine \"Trinity\" is Evolution, Progress,\nLiberty.  Many minds reject this assumption of facts, because of the\nnecessity which a recognition of them would involve for a readjustment\nof mental processes, and religious beliefs affecting their daily\nexperience.\n\n\n\n\nHEAVEN.\n\nMillions of enfranchised souls pass from earth life and find the spirit\nworld--the \"Summerland\"--a Heaven, and stay therein for vast lengths of\ntime.  The change from this life of toil, and misery to an existence of\nrest from all pain and sorrow of earthly existence is really Heaven\nenough for the average human mind.  A place of beautiful surroundings,\nwhere everything necessary for their comfort is furnished them, without\nmoney and without price and, best of all, where they no longer fear\nbeing grabbed up and punished by the devil for their sins of ignorance\ncommitted when in the body.  It is not possible for us, plunged, as we\nall are, into the vortex of this difficult existence, to realize what\nall this means to the world-weary.  If one shall halt by the way, or\nfall aside from the great unending procession nothing stops.  The\nterrible, tumultuous waves of humanity roll on, and the lost are not\nmissed or mourned for, save by the few that were responsible for their\ncoming, or for the awful lack of help and tendance that made them\nfailures in the battle of life.\n\nThe great army of the commonplace, the neither positively good nor the\nvery bad, is the largest class of all humanity.  The most pestiferous\nand difficult to adjust to the law of progress and advancement.  Hold\none of them out of hell by the hair of the head, and when he is let go\nhe only drops further in, and nothing teaches him but the \"slings and\narrows\" of misfortune, and every dreadful experience that can be handed\nout to him.  Much of this almost universally deplorable condition--it\nmay be the whole of it--has been induced by false, unreasonable\nreligious teachings.  The human mind needs every inducement to effort\nto overcome its natural inertia instead of being put to sleep by\npromises of being exempt from all responsibility connected with its\nfinal redemption.\n\n\n\n\nNATURE SPIRITS.\n\nThe \"dwellers at the threshold\" are the individualized entities of the\nelements of nature.  Air, fire, earth depths, and seas.  These belong\nto the domain of nature, pure and simple, and are met and controlled by\nthe affinities of the chemicals of the material, physical organization\nof the individual.  The most potent of these leading in the degree of\nmaterial success to be achieved in dealing with material life.\n\nMoney getting in the mines, earth depths.  All manufactories that\nrequire raging and continuous flame; ships to sail, and conquer water\nspirits; electrical and etherial forces that move in the air currents.\nThese are the soulless, irresponsible \"goblins\" and \"gnomes,\" \"Fire\nspirits\" and \"_ignes fatui_\" of the nether world.  All human beings who\nprogress at all have to deal with one or more of these forces.\nBeginning in blind ignorance, through struggle, the mortal will is\ndeveloped and the mere animal man has set his foot upon a low rung of\nthe ladder of the ascending series.  Next, man has to deal with the\nprimal races.  The \"Missing link\" which will never be found save at the\n\"threshold\" where it combines its forces with those of man's other\nnatural enemies, and keeps jealous watch and ward at every point of\negress of the soul which seeks to enlarge its domain.  Finally the will\nof man, with its long heredity of war with these potentialities, \"at\nenmity with God,\" resisting the divine; even as these have striven to\nhold him in a perpetual slavery, is in its last struggle.  The vast\naggregation of human will, set free from the clog of the flesh, knowing\nnothing of the divine, seeing no guiding light, combines its forces,\nand commingles its powers with whatever its endless tentacles can\nreach.  These are the powers and principalities of the air.  These are\nthe demons, \"bad spirits,\" \"devils\" and \"familiars\" of the literature\nof the ages, and the presiding geniuses of many a phenomenon resulting\nfrom modern research into the mysteries of nature.  As their\nintelligence exceeds that of the underlying grades, so just in that\ndegree is their power increased, and used, to block the gateway that\nopens upon the path.  Their abodes lie in outer darkness, or are\nillumined only by flashes of fictitious, and evanescent light from the\nexpiring embers of earthly exhalations, and the phosphorescent gleams\nof decaying forms.  The soul that has received an illumination from the\nDivine has in its keeping a talisman of power, yet none can escape\nthese watchful ones.\n\n\"Here eyes do regard you in eternity's stillness.\"  \"Choose well; your\nchoice is brief, but yet endless.\"  The winged fiend, the \"Appolyon,\"\nmust be met and settled with at every turn of the way that leads to the\nkingdom which the Christ came to establish, and whose best name is\n\"peace.\"  In this grade, love finds no home, but its great prototype,\nthe lust of the flesh, stealing ever the livery of heaven, lures on\ntender souls to their sad undoing.\n\nBy help of divine love alone can the soul journey safely onward and\nupward through this great concentrated, immediately-environing earth\ngrade.  It is solidly compact, sleepless and untiring, seeking\nceaselessly whom it may win to its realm.  It is the unrecognized\nlonging of the soul for restoration to its divine heritage of love.\n\n\n\n\nEXPERIENCE.\n\nExperience is at the same time the surest and the slowest teacher of\nmen.  Wisdom, the crowning glory of humanity, is but an enlarged\nperception of man's needs, and how to meet them, based upon individual\nexperience and observation of the effects of natural law upon all.  An\nindividual is an epitome of the world--society.  Discipline is\neverywhere considered indispensable to the individual.  Far more is it\nso to the world of society.  Anarchy and revolution are no more\nefficient for the body politic than for the individual.  Growth, slow\nand gradual, aggregation of power and wisdom through the education and\nenlightenment of its individual members, is the only safe and sure way\nto permanency and enduring life.\n\n\n\n\nSPIRITUALISM.\n\nIn Spiritualism alone is to be found an expression of the religion of\nJesus of Nazereth.  It is truly democratic, giving to saint and sinner\nalike both here, in this life, and after death, an opportunity for\nredemption.  Its first mission to the world is the proof it gives of a\ncontinued existence in which is still experienced all the\nidiosyncracies which marked the individual in earth life.  This fact\nhas either been ignored by certain classes of minds, or has been taken\nby them as proof positive of the hellish origin of its phenomena,\nwhereas in this very expression of characteristic life lies its\nwonderful power and potency.  From long-continued educational influence\npeople out of churches, as well as inside of the influence of their\nsuperstitions, have come to idealize death, its awe-inspiring mystery\nand its strange variety.  It is thought, by them, to be a sudden\ntranslation from a lower condition to a higher, wherein, through some\ndivine hocus-pocus, the members of certain so-called \"Evangelical\"\nchurches, no matter how worldly-minded, and selfish, or however false\nto their teachings they have been, or how false their lives to the\ndivine ethics taught by the Lord, whose name they assume as their\nprerogative, that their through tickets to the supernal spheres are\nassured.  It is believed that death purges them of all their sympathy\nwith and attraction to mortal life, and that they are forever absolved\nfrom all their responsibilities, and freed from dependence upon the\ninter-relationships between the two conditions.  Exactly the reverse is\ntrue.  Multitudes of souls only begin their true living, their\ncomprehension of life's meanings, after death has sifted them out of\nthe ashes and lifeless embers of their mistaken ideas, or vicious\nindulgences.  Shall these, then, be brought beneath the ban of\nlimitless darkness, and exiled from the \"many mansions\" of our Heavenly\nFather's and Mother's house?  A tiny rap, untraceable to any material\nsource, a table moved by invisible force, a closed and locked piano\nskillfully played upon by unseen hands; these were the first links in\nan endless chain of eternal benefits pouring down from the smiling\nheavens upon the benighted children of earth.  Again was heard \"the\nvoice as of one crying in the wilderness\" of this world's marts for\nbarter, and selfish gain; \"Let him who hath ears to hear, let him\nhear.\"  \"The grave has lost its victory\" and death is but a halt called\nin mercy and loving tenderness, that your weary souls may be refreshed\nby a draught from nature's founts and bountiful resources that you may\nmount upward as on the mighty wings of eagles; or discover for your\nwandering feet the path of rectitude and safety.\n\n\n\n\nPHENOMENA.\n\nAll expressions of nature are phenomenal.  Man is of all the most\nwonderful.  A tiny spark of spirit encased in matter, by the\nirresistible law of progress evolving powers of brain, thought,\nconsciousness, reason, intuition; unfolding, expanding; realizing\nfinally his at-one-ment with his source, the cause of him--God--man\nimmortal, illimitable.  At certain points of unfoldment seemingly lost,\ngreat hue and cry from many--pin heads--who think they have discovered\nGod, a failure.  Watch out and see.  Give the Lord a chance.  Nothing\nis done with yet.  In a very old hook of Hebrew history, there are\nrecorded well-attested accounts of phenomena, which are so distinctly\noutside of the ordinary happenings of this material existence, that\nthey were always recognized as being of a purely spiritual origin,\nmethod and purpose.  Within the last century the same experiences have\nbeen vouchsafed to present humanity.  Millions of people have attested\nthe truth of a continuance of these same phenomena; they having taken\nplace within the range of their own personal experience.  And why not?\nThe Creator knows what his children need in this, as well as in other\nages.  That human souls, the lives of human beings, persist after\nphysical death, does not prove their eternal existence along the lines\nof highest soul evolution.  The greatest possible unfoldment is not a\ngift of God.  It is held only by the individual soul as the result of\nage-long study, and toil, through manifold embodiments, long-continued\nself renunciation, and sacrifices not yet known or understood.  Its\ninitiations are endless; its revelations of the infinite law are, at\ntimes, too seemingly trifling for recognition; but as the lapidary\nleaves no facet of the jewel uncut and unpolished, so the\nguardians--the guides and teachers of the candidates for spiritual\nunfoldment--omit no least lesson or discipline that can aid in\nperfecting the individual soul.\n\nIt is the meanest kind of bosh teaching people that there will be\neternal punishment for ignorant wrong-doings in this short kindergarten\nexperience of life, making them believe their last chance for anything\nbetter is gone forever.  Half the sins that are committed here anyway\nare either sins against the conventionalities, or they have been\nhatched up by some unsext priests and have nothing to do with the case.\nBesides, the sins of the body in many a poor mortal are left with the\nbody in the grave.\n\nThe ages, the aeons required for the perfecting of any given soul, are\nknown only to its Creator, or how great must be the accumulation of\nages ere the whole human family--the children of God--will respond to\nthe eternal roll-call that shall usher in the redeemed of every land\nand clime, not one \"Lost,\" or gone astray.  Those who have stepped\nforth into the arena of this present manifestation of life on this\nplanet, have, each in their place, their responsibility and task, to\nkeep alight the beacons of reason, and intelligence, as guides to\ntruth, and to pander never to the powers of ignorance and superstition,\nhowever manifested by Church or State.\n\n\n\n\nMEDIUMSHIP.\n\nMediumship today is clearly an abnormalism.  But the history of the\nworld has been that the so-called abnormalisms of one generation are\nthe accepted, commonplace realisms of the succeeding types.  Sight, the\ndesire to see, existed first in the mind of the unfolding human brain;\nthe will joined its forces to aid the work of liberation and the visual\nnerves began to form and grow.  The imprisoned soul within kept pushing\non, until gradually the beautiful, complex organ of sight was evoluted\nand the soul possessed a window through which it could see things for\nitself.  The evolutionary processes attending mediumship quite\ncorrespond to this physical process.  Man demands to know concerning\nthose things that have long been hid, and to understand the \"deep\nthings of God,\" and so the soul of him is saying, \"I, too, have visions\nunspeakable,\" and closing up the avenues of his external sight, he sees\nand apprehends truth, a light upon his path, of which in his previous,\ndarkened state he had never conceived.  The intuitional faculties being\nthe true interpreters of the immortal soul, are capable of unlimited\ncultivation, unlike those of the intellect which have always the\nlimitations of cerebral organization.  These powers are as limitless as\nGod, and only through the expansion and recognized rational, practical\nuse and application of these faculties--now sometimes falsely named\nsupernatural--can the human race pass out from its present environment\nof darkness, and crime, and reaching upward expand into a saving\nknowledge of the truth, as made known by the Christs.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MIGRATIONS OF OUR RACE.\n\nVast numbers of times has the human race marched around this world on\nwhich we live.  Each journey of the whole family has embraced a cycle\nof time.  Each cycle has been rounded up by some great cataclysm of\nnature, which has left the earth desolated, in ruins, to rest from the\ninvasions of its nomadic children.\n\nOf the truth of these great convulsive throes of the planet we have\nmany ancient legendary accounts.  The Biblical accounts, and the\nirrefutable testimony of the globe itself, as recorded in the veined\nstrata which have held their record for ages inviolably concealed,\nuntil man should finally bring to the unmasking of her secrets an\nintelligence clarified from the mists of superstition, and illuminated\nby the intuition not only of the soul, but of the intellect and reason.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE.\n\n  \"The mills of the gods grind always,\n  They grind exceeding small,\n  And with great exactness grind they all.\"\n\nTheir \"hoppers\" are too numerous to be counted.  Physical pain, sorrow\nof many sorts and kinds, losses and crosses innumerable, unending\ndisappointments, holding back the ambitions from all satisfactory\nrealization of pet schemes, and finally, physical death.  Not one human\ncreature escapes.  Into the hoppers they go, again and again, time\nafter time, till the refining process is completed and the soul is fit\nto stand in holy and exalted presence, and to be set to do the work of\nthe Master.  Here and there some gifted soul realizes that its anguish\nmeans \"growing pains.\"  A was described as a \"good man who let the Lord\ndo anything He wanted to, to him.\"\n\nThe discipline of this life is hard to bear; but if people will not\nlearn the lesson intended, here and now, they will be forced back\nthrough reembodiments until this life can teach them nothing more, and\nthey have finally earned a right to a place in the heavens--the home of\nthe gods--where perfect peace abides.\n\nMen are naturally gregarious.  In all phases of life they seek\nsympathetic comrades, or followers that they can hypnotize to do their\nwill.  They instinctively set themselves off into classes, and while\nthis is useful as a protection from invasion, conditions in India show\nthe evils of class-caste distinctions carried to a ridiculous extreme.\nThe vast, surging, unyielding predatory classes on this earth consist\nof those who have but lately--comparatively--emerged from the animal\nkingdom, and have not yet been put through the mill of reincarnation\ntimes enough to rid them of their wild beast \"tricks and manners,\" and\nmake of them men and women fit to have around.  The dreadful thing is,\nhaving to live on the same planet with them, and endure their terrible\nonslaughts upon the peace, and happiness of the unfolded, the civilized\nportions of the race.  But all are of common origin.  Such as they are,\nall have been, and such as the highly developed, educated and useful\nclass are now, they will surely become.\n\n\n\n\nHOMOGENEITY OF THE RACE.\n\nThe \"dreamer\" who passes through this life, satisfied with the\ncreations of his own fancy, adds nothing to the practical needs or\ndemands of his day and time.  In all the years and ages of the\nintellective life of the planet, such men and women have lived and\nwalked their little round atween the two oceans which bound the shores\nof birth and death.\n\nBut a truer concept of the meanings of an earthly existence has arisen\nin the minds of gifted humanity.  The cloister gives way to the open\ncourt; the inspired ones are seeking the roads which may lead out from\nhazy, unproven cloud-land into the brightness of the everyday,\npractical life which the world must have experience of, along all\nlines, among all classes, high and low, ignorant and learned, ere it\ncan dislodge the incubus of superstition, and undevelopment under which\nit has staggered along, through devious ways of despair and unbelief,\nto awaken at last to a realization of the final destiny of humanity.\n\nTo the average mind the far-off, unascertained and dim, is what is most\nattractive.  Sending missionaries to the so-called \"heathen,\" or\nspeculating upon the social conditions of people supposed to be living\non other planets, is of vital interest to their soaring minds.  Any\namount of money and good red blood of humanity, if need be, are not too\nlarge a price to pay for the gratification of these projects of\nunsatisfied mentality.  The vast body politic, the struggling, seething\nmasses of humanity grope and dig along their appointed ways, and the\nprogress of the entire race of man toward an enlightened homogeneity is\nat a seeming stand-still.  The homogeneity of the whole race in its\nabsolute entirety, is the key-note of the life which is to be here, on\nthis mortal earth, and thus every experience of individuals or of\nnations becomes of vast importance.\n\nEvery event, small or great, that serves to illustrate the possibility\nof fellowship, and brotherhood among the children of men, is a\nmilestone on the way to this recognition of the homogeneity of the\nhuman race.  In obedience to this law, this demand of the evolutionary\nforces our brave sons, and lovely daughters, are, all unconsciously to\nthemselves, following the beckoning hand of noblest progress toward\npeace, and mutuality, and are allying themselves with the\nrepresentatives of races and peoples hitherto considered foreign and\nunrelated to us, in all ways save the commercial.  What bonds shall\never be forged between the nations of the earth that can supersede such\nties of love and fealty to family and home?\n\nThe external aspects of these alliances, though yielding honors, and\ncoveted opportunities, are of the smaller importance compared with the\namazing factors of peace and amity between the nations that are\nsilently and certainly working themselves out toward the beautiful\nexemplification of the universal Fatherhood of God, the\ninextinguishable sentiment of the final unity of his earthly children.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nOne of the strangest phases of human life here is the almost universal\nresistance to improvement.  But this conservative attitude is also a\nbalance, prevents running off on tangents.\n\n\n\n\nOF GOD.\n\nIt has been popularly reported that science has driven God out of the\nworld.  Science has refuted ignorant beliefs, driven superstition out\nof the minds of people, and opened many minds to the great facts of\nlife as against the silly beliefs of primitive peoples.  It is thought\nby many that the history of all God's doings is writ in the Holy (?)\nBook--the Bible.  From the study of his character, one might fancy that\n\"Great Jove of Mount High Olympus\" was come again with only his name\nchanged from Jove to Jehovah, for He brought with him all the \"high\ndays,\" and ceremonies, and every vice and delinquency, and outrage that\nhad marked pagan rule.  He gave special directions as to the\nkillings-off of the Hitites, and the Jebusites and all the other ites.\nThere weren't to be any Ites or any other \"furriners\" left alive to\npester his chosen people.  He went right on giving directions as to how\nthese people were to be disposed of, making such awful suggestions,\nspecially as to the women, that if He had not been known to be God, He\nmight have been recognized as the Head-up Devil.  It has been written:\n\"By their fruits ye shall know them.\"  What are the results, the\n\"fruits,\" of the Jehovian dispensation?  They are just exactly such as\nmust naturally follow the teachings and influences of the spirit of\nhate and vengeance; the suppression of reason, holding back the\nprogress of the race, fettering the brains of men with bonds of\nignorance and superstition, a network of lies and myths.  Through the\ndominance of selfishness and greed, the boasted freedom of men has been\nlost--they are slaves to a man-made religion.  So science has served\nthe highest interest of humanity in doing all it can to drive out this\nsort of a God, with his hell and eternal punishment, from the world.\nThe reasoning, thinking world has outgrown such a wicked, despotic God,\nand is demanding quite another sort of Deity.  Humanity has to be\ntaught what it must have to equip it for its higher, nobler destiny.\nJustice to all in equal measure; Reason and Love must abide and work\nout their results, their \"fruits,\" in human lives.  The unanimous\nrefusal of the framers of the \"Constitution\" of the United States to\nset forth therein the will of God, and his commands was wise and\nfarseeing.  It has raised up a barrier against the encroachments of\nevery form of popular religion and has given a semblance to freedom of\nthought and speech.\n\nAll along the way, seers and prophets--inspired mediums--have wrought\nand sung of the days to come when all the earth should rejoice in peace\nand good will.  The magnificence of their inspired and inspiring words,\ntheir immortal melodies of praise of the Creator will stand while this\nworld lasts.  The fact that his people had diviner instincts than had\nHe whom they worshipped as God, showed that \"Yahweh\" was only the\nguardian spirit of the great and wonderful Hebrew race.\n\nThe greatest discovery of the past century, far greater than any\nrevelation of science or knowledge of past ages, revealed by modern\nresearch is the discovery of a God of Love.  Not of that sentimental\nexpression of maudlin emotion that soon evaporates in hypocritical\nmake-believe; but the profound recognition of the rightful\nconsideration of every human being, regardless of race, color or\nbelongings.\n\n\n\n\nOF JESUS.\n\nThe knowledge we have gained through the study and research of earnest,\ntruth-seeking souls who have found that all known religions have a\ncommon root--have the same basis of truth--is a proof of the value of\nthe revelations given to the world through the teachings of our Christ.\n\nFrom no other have we been given, in an externalized, practical form,\nthose great, eternal religious principles which must forever stand as\nthe rule and guide of human souls.  No ancient philosopher had evolved\nto a God-likeness that enabled him to go beyond a high stand-point of\nmoral perfection, or to give to his disciples what was most needed by\nthe world for its comforting in the accumulating, expanding experiences\nincident to earthly life.\n\nJesus, our Christ, the Christ of the religion named for him was the\ntransmitter of heavenly truths.  To him the world owes forever a debt\nfor making known a knowledge of the fact of the continued existence of\nthe individual being after physical death, and it was given to him to\npoint out the way of life that can alone lead to eternal happiness and\npeace.  He is our Teacher, our Leader above all others.  We have\nnothing to do with the impossible, faked-up personality that the\npriests have so long exploited as the \"blood Redeemer\" of the world; it\nis to the inspired philanthropist, the greatly-loving man that we owe\nour allegiance.  This will appear more and more as time goes on, and a\nlot of untruths will fade out and give place to great realities.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GODS.\n\nThe pagan gods were innumerable and their distinctive attributes were\nunderstood.  They well might be, as they were only deified men and\nwomen.  The next unfoldment caused them to raise altars to \"the unknown\nGod.\"  Then came Jesus, the Nazarene, who told them that the \"unknown\nGod\" was their Heavenly Father, not of a chosen people only, but of all\nthe human race.  The new religion, inspired by Jesus--our Christ--and\nwhich was to bear his name, naturally brought with it all the\nsuperstitions of the pagans, and these have been handed down through\nthe ages, and accepted and believed as true.\n\nThe primitive conception of a god was of a being with qualities like\ntheir own, and as men delighted in rapine and every possible\naccompanying vice and crime, so they endowed their gods in like manner,\nfashioning beings to be feared and to whom must be given big offerings\nand sacrifices.  So long as these were limited to beasts it was a good\nthing, because the priests who ate the flesh thus consecrated were sure\nof cheap meat for a long time thereafter.  But when the \"firstlings of\nthe flock\" failed to bring satisfactory responses to the demands of the\nsuppliants, they began sacrificing human lives in the vain hope of\nallaying the anger and vengeance of the dissatisfied all-powerful gods,\nand beautiful young maidens were thrust into the fiery jaws of Moloch,\nor crushed in the coils of sacred serpents, or slain upon altars\naccording to the special god whose propitiation was sought.\n\nFrom all these inhuman practices to a recognition of a God of love and\nmercy was a step so long that even yet there remain in the teachings of\nreligionists indications of similar ideas, wherein not only nature's\nculminating efforts, but all the painful experiences of human beings\nare accepted and feared as expressions of the \"wrath of God.\"\n\n\n\n\nKNOWLEDGE OF OCCULT LAW.\n\nThe invitation of one of old to his followers, and fellow believers:\n\"Come let us reason together,\" marks the dividing line between\nknowledge and superstition.  The daring of the mind of man proves him\nto be, in very truth, \"a child of God.\"  No arcana of knowledge are too\ndeeply hid in mystery to escape the prying of his curiosity, his\nlonging for enlightenment, his long-sustained and vigorous efforts to\nsurprise the hidden things of God and Nature.  Livingston and Stanley\nwrought in the jungles of Africa, Audubon and Agassiz in the fastnesses\nof tropical America.  These in the material world, the world of\neffects.  Gessner and Varley, Darwin and Spencer, together with a long\nlist of other inspired minds, have given their best thoughts, devoted\ntheir noblest energies to the explorations of the world of causes, the\noccult and invisible realms of pure principles in God and Nature.  Back\nof all these there lies the richest bequest ever made to humanity in\nthe discoveries and revelations of the most ancient \"adepts,\" the\nfathers of mystical lore, in the light of modern discoveries and\ninventions, mystical no longer; but practical and full of earnest\nmeaning in their adaptation and adjustment to the needs and wants of\nthe citizens of the world today.\n\n\n\n\nEVANESCENCE OF MERE BELIEFS.\n\nProclaim not mere beliefs today, and be not labelled and pigeon-holed\nand held to account on any special line of thought or action lest the\nindividual soul be barred out from a conception and knowledge of some\nfar grander truth.  At best our view is narrow and contracted, else\nwere we gods, and as we grow we discover our little, vaunted beliefs to\nbe but as tiny shreds of color in God's great mosaic, our song of\ntriumph and discovery but as the buzzing of the insect to the chorals\nof the chanting hosts of heaven.  So, then, an eternal negation is the\nsafest attitude of the unfolding soul.  Mere beliefs, unproven by\nfacts, are so many barriers set up for the soul to overleap and leave\nbehind on its onward march.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FOUNT OF INSPIRATION FOR ALL.\n\n\"The righteous shall inherit the earth.\"  Just so far as we are able to\nprove our rightness, the world--nay the whole universe of God--is ours.\nOur Heavenly Father has never said: \"Thus far shalt thou go, and no\nfarther, upon the road to knowledge.\"  Everything invites us; get\nwisdom, get understanding, and to thy knowledge add virtue are the\nrecommendations from inspired sources, and to the soul that fears not,\nrevelations upon every line stand invitingly open.\n\n\n\n\nMAN VERSUS DEATH.\n\nIn all the domain of organized being, it is only man, who, in his crude\negotisms, and defiant resistance to nature's laws, makes ado with\ndeath.  The dainty denizen of the air, and the things that creep over\nthe earth, the leviathan in his nature element, and his warmer-blooded\nbrother whose passage causes the earth to tremble beneath his tread,\nall the multitudinous expressions of the animal kingdom, that disport\nthemselves in fur, or feather, in filament of scales, or covering of\nhair, each and all recognize the approach of their final experience on\nearth, and hie themselves to their appointed coverts, to keep their\ntryst with their old mother in utter privacy.  How well she loves her\nchildren!  She sheds over them her varied mantle of leaf, and piney\nbloom, or scented brake, and soothes them with softly falling rain, or\ntender dew, and woos their elements back into her bosom from which they\nsprang.  All this is in consonance with nature's arrangement for caring\nfor her own.  There is no such thing known among these as a vulgar\ndisplay, or a flaunting of the deposed forces in the faces of the\ncreatures left behind.\n\nIn man's treatment of his kind, there is everywhere betokened his\nunfaith and fear.  His undeveloped spirituality leaves him without even\nso much power to adjust himself to the divine order of progress, by way\nof the gates of death--rebirth--as have his humble progenitors, his\nrepresentatives in the animal kingdom; and so he plants himself upon\nhis fancied prerogatives, and turns his dulled senses away from the\nGod-call: \"Come up higher,\" and moans and raves, and howls his despair\nin sounds and terms indicative of his tribal, or racial environment and\nrelationship.\n\nA voice of love has sounded down throughout the ages in unmistakable\nterms to the children of men.  \"My father has many mansions, invisible\nto your seared, earthly vision, but beautifully furnished forth for all\nyour needs; nor hath eye seen or ear of yours heard the wonderfulness\nof the great preparation He hath made to receive you into his kingdom.\"\nAnd seer and sage have reiterated this in unmistakable language, and\nthe enlightened of the older races have caught the straying tones of\nthe vibrant air of the beyond, and have beheld the mirage of the homes\nof the blest, and have sought to impress the truth of the living\nreality of the beyond upon the inchoate brains of their fellows.  But\nsuperstition rears its grizzled front alike in seats of learning, in\nthe homes of the cultured, and in the hovels of the outcasts; in this\nsense, all the human family are of hellish kin, and in a large\npercentage of them their whole lives are given over to their effort of\nresistance to the divine ordering which speaks ever to the soul of man\nin unmistakable terms of tender consideration, saying: \"Thy poor days\nhere are full of pain and sorrow, because of necessary crudities.  So\nlive that when thy summons comes to join the everlasting cavalcade\nwhich sweeps across the world, thou shalt apprehend thy high emprise,\nand go forth exultingly to claim thine own meed of further existence in\nspheres yet undiscovered to thy longing ken.\"\n\n\"Earth loses thy pattern forever and aye\" that thou mayst be renewed\nand set up in the finer mould of thy most excellent Karma, which is thy\nhidden reality of character.  Rejoice then, O mortal! in the\nbeneficence of nature and of thy Parents, God, for surely it is well\nthat they call a halt for thee and thine beside the river of death, and\nloosen thy burthens of pain and heart-breaking sorrow, and let loose\nfrom thy soul that raven, \"Never more,\" which has preyed long upon thy\nsoul and held thee in the grip of unspoken despair and anguish.  This\nis of all demons the blackest and most subtle.  In tones of love it has\nbeen proclaimed by the divine mind that nought is ever taken away that\nshall not be restored to thee.  Not as thou, in thy small, limited way,\nwouldst hold it back from its own high place, and mission in the\nuniverse and bend it to thy purpose; but according to the wisdom of its\nCreator and thine, shalt thou see and know and claim all that belongs\nto thee, be it the inspiration of thy nature, unexpressed here amid the\ndin and rush of this chaotic existence; or power to carry forth thy\ngrandly bold designs in conjunction with nature's illimitable\nchemistry; or to perfect within thy mind a knowledge of her laws; or to\nfold to thy bereaved heart thy lover, friend, or child, so lost to thee\nnow in the great unexplored silences, that thou wilt not even try to\nsee their way of life, but art ever persistent in saying they are dead.\nWhatever thy soul shalt cherish as highest and best good to be longed\nfor, that shall be given to thee, in its new and resurrected form, over\nwhich has passed the chrism of the immortal and everlasting life.  We\nneed a new perception of that great law of the \"survival of the\nfittest.\"  Who are the \"fit\"?  The nomadic tramp who yields no meed of\nuse to his fellows?  The willfully sin-sodden who poisons all his\nsurrounding atmosphere with the noxious exhalations from his decaying\norganism?  He who hoards and locks away from his fellows his treasures\nof gold or precious knowledge, and he, who having in his hands the\npowers of wealth and influence, never deigns to stretch forth his hand\nto relieve the cruel stress of the needy or to protect the helpless, or\nto sustain and strengthen the weaker ones of earth?\n\nNay!  The true \"survival\" is not here on this underdone sphere, but\noutside, beyond, above, in the realms of the spiritual where our\nburdens are loosed and the souls of men are set free, and true liberty\nis accorded to each and everyone to be, and to do, all that in him lies\ntoward the upbuilding of the great sum of the soul life we call God.\n\nOnce this perception of the soul and even some slight degree of\nknowledge concerning the laws which hold over the destiny of each\nindividual being becomes, through a familiarity with phenomena now\neverywhere common, understood and accepted, the entire life on this\nplanet will be changed, elevated and happified.  Fancy living day after\nday under the bondage of the fear and dread of what everyone knows to\nbe as inevitable as is the experience of each, of physical dissolution;\nand yet multitudes of people do so live.  It is debasing, and\ndisennobling in every way.  It robs the soul of all its natural dignity\nand sends it through the world orphaned, and mourning, where it might\nand should recognize its divine relationship, and rejoice in its\nunfolding powers; and so you who may be giving a moment to the reading\nof this brief testimony to the great truth of immortality, consider,\nand realize thy divine paternity and demand what is, and has always\nbeen thine own by right of interblending of thy own inner nature with\nthat of thy soul's origin, the heart of Him who hath made us.\n\nThe bond is eternal and indestructible.  God in all humanity and we in\nHim, and the sooner we see this and yield ourselves in obedience, not\nlike \"dumb driven cattle\" but as self-respecting, self-asserting\nmortals--within the law of accord with the highest--the sooner shall we\nenter into that \"Nirvana\" which is \"peace.\"\n\n\n\n\nFEAR OF DEATH.\n\nIn the childhood of the race, the time of its exclusively animal life,\nit was necessary for its protection that there should exist in the\nslowly unfolding human mind a great, overwhelming terror of death.  In\nfact at that time indifference to death would have involved the entire\nrace of man in utter extinction.  From that time have come down to us\nsuperstitions and fears which, while acting still in the minds of the\nignorant as a preservative of human life even under most terrible\nconditions, have at the same time shrouded countless numbers of good\nand useful lives with gloom, overshadowing them with a horror from\nwhich they could not escape.  It has been less the actual fear of\ndeath, but of what might be in store for them after they should have\npassed through this experience which is so inevitable to us all.  Jesus\nprophesied of a time to come wherein death should lose its sting, and\nthus be swallowed up in the victory of the spirit over matter.\n\nThe enjoyment of this life demands that, right here and now, we should\nbegin to know and understand how we are to establish our individual\nrelationship to the invisible, the real world--the world of causes, the\nworld of law--so as to bring to us a sufficient knowledge of the hidden\nmysteries of the future life to give us some certain grounds for faith\nin the unseen.  This can only be accomplished by the development of our\nown occult powers, or by learning of the psychic experiences of others\nwhich serve to point the way to what we may come to know for ourselves.\n\nIt is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere.  Caught in the web of life,\nthere is no escape from its demands upon the individual soul.\nSomewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate.  Upward and\nonward, or down into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of things.\nIt is free to make its choice.  It can pursue the hard and toilsome\npath of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop around\nthrough all the hells of life unrelated to God, and resistant to the\nChrist.\n\nIt is the fear of death, of physical dissolution, that is to be\nindividually conquered.  This can only come as a result of a perception\nof spiritual law, and the unfoldment of the spiritual nature.\n\nThe fear of death, of what may lie beyond, has been nature's safeguard\nagainst a universal stampede out of this life when the miseries of\nexistence on this earthly plane become too dreadful to be borne; when\nthe tortures of the soul in the tortured body drives out all reason and\nall philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for\nsurcease of agony.  But when the \"golden bowl\" is broken--the silver\ncord of human life is severed--by suicide--nothing has been gained by a\nchanged environment.  There are the same responsibilities and soul\nneeds, and the miseries and unsatisfied desires of their minds are\nexactly the same.  Nothing has been gained, but much has been lost.\nBrave, staunch souls one by one obey the call to march over the \"border\nland\" into nature's invisible realms; they cannot help themselves, no\none can.  On they go, an endless caravan into the land of revelations,\nthe place of reviews, where the utterly selfish are fetched up with a\n\"round turn,\" and made to realize that a real godliness is the only\nthing that can \"pass muster,\" that mere beliefs do not count, and only\ncharacter tells.  How swiftly, how inevitably their places are filled;\nnothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of the\ngods--the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled.  Life here is\njust one link in the endless, unbreakable chain of individual existence.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nMost fortunate is the soul that is started out to make the journey of\nlife without being handicapped by some narrowing religious superstition\nor an intellectual bias that limits the mind, preventing all unfoldment\nof originality.\n\n\n\n\nTEST OF CHARACTER.\n\nSooner or later everyone who has character enough to make any sort of a\ntest worth while, has to have a regular bout with his \"evil genius.\"\nChrist said: \"The devil hath desired thee that he may sift thee as\nwheat.\"  The form which the test takes depends entirely upon the\norganization of the individual.  But it is in every case the same\nthing.  The thorough arousal of the latent powers of the nature, and\nthe suffering which ensues from the results of its unbalanced actions,\nconstitute the discipline of this life.  We can no more escape it, or\nsubvert the action of this law of evolution than we can put a stop to\nany of the upheavals of nature.  The volcano and the earthquake are but\nthe expressions of power in the globe which we inhabit to throw off her\nold, and ascend through violent agitation to higher conditions.  There\nis a natural correspondence in the experience of her inhabitants and\nthat of our old, old mother!\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nBack of protoplasm, back of organic human form is the soul--a thought\nof God, a spark of divine, eternal life; imperishable, immutable as God\nhimself.\n\n\n\n\nCHARACTER FORMING.\n\nAll animals, the human creature included, are born blind and this\nphysical condition of man absolutely typifies his life-long state,\nowing either to his environment, his heredity, or his false education.\nThe great mass of humanity come into the world unmarked by any\nspecially-developed individuality.  These are the legitimate prey of\npriests and teachers who have their place, or use in the evolution of\nthe lower grades of life on this planet.\n\nThe smaller number of advanced souls that are \"cast upon the shoals of\ntime,\" the evolved thinkers, the philosophers have by far the more\ntrying, and difficult life; for the highly individualized man or woman\ncannot belong to any set school of ethics; there are no fixed\nlandmarks, religious or otherwise.  Blinded by inherited prejudices, if\nnot by destructive tendencies, with ideals for which there is no\nseeming avenue in this commonplace, workaday world; the life of such an\none is ever a grope toward the light of truth.\n\nLacking the sagacity, the primal instinct of self-protection in common\nwith the nature children of the wilds, he plunges forward on his unlit\nway, and has many a fall into the bogs and morasses of life until he\nfinally sees that only from the higher, the spiritual side of existence\ncan come to humanity redemption from the errors, wrong thinking and\naction that is the cause of all sin and sorrow of the world.  Blessed,\nindeed, are those to whom this understanding comes in time to harmonize\nconflicting beliefs and tendencies, and to be the means of rounding out\nthe life, and perfecting that most potent and powerful of all things, a\nnoble human character.\n\n\n\n\nMAN THE FINAL EARTH PRODUCT.\n\nIn man Nature has reached her highest evolution.  His life and being\nare the topmost rung of the ladder, but she has not finished with him.\nIt is universally believed that physical death severs everlastingly her\ndominion over him, and thus ends all her service to him.  This is by no\nmeans true.  Man is her offspring, her child, and to her he returns\nagain and again, drawing from her complex, multitudinous,\nmany-chambered heart such forces as shall bring to him the experiences\nhe requires to further unfold his nature and bring forth all his\npossibilities.\n\nNot man alone but the planet itself is in the mills of the gods.  The\nseeds, the germs of life that were expressed in such ways in the\nbeginnings of life on this world, still exist in a greatly modified\ndegree and the misunderstood phases of nature's ministry are the\nresults of the out-working of these primitive elements still inhering\nin the world-stuff of which human bodies are made.\n\nNature wields her powers of fire and flood and devastating epidemics\nmercilessly; she constantly rids herself of her superfluous offspring,\nand forces them to a new environment in her invisible realms, through\nwhich they pass, gaining more or less by the experience and from which\neach must emerge, and continue to evolve and grow according to the law\nof his own being.\n\n\n\n\nSUPERSTITIONS.\n\nFear of the unknown has given birth to all the superstitions that have\nafflicted the minds of ignorant and unthinking people.  Few people\nescape some form of superstition.  For instance, the silly sayings,\nanent the moon, \"Fair Priestess of the Night.\"  It is unlucky to see it\nin its newness--so and so--when the real fact is, it is a merciful\nProvidence that permits us to see it in any of its phases, over the\nleft shoulder or over the right, or through the glass, or in any way at\nall.  There is nothing more \"lucky\" or glorious than to have good\neyesight of one's own, with which to behold this and all the other\nbeauties of nature.  The man who chanced to be passing under a ladder\njust at the moment when a workman half-way up let fall a bucket of\npaint which struck and deluged him, had some reason for thinking it\n\"unlucky\" to go under instead of around such an impediment to travel.\nBut not once in a lifetime would such a thing happen to any one, and it\nis impossible to imagine what going under ladders or meeting loads of\nbarrels, or funerals, or opening umbrellas in the house, instead of\noutside of it, or any of the hundreds of silly, puerile, fool\nsuperstitions that have sprung from no one knows where, and that have\nno scientific meaning, and no earthly bearing upon the realities of any\nlife have \"to do with the case.\"  These are all the offsprings of minds\ntinctured by fear of they know not what, and which are peddled around\nand handed down religiously from one generation to another, to keep\nalive a sensationalism whose tendency is to blind those who accept them\nto the great living fact of God's providence which is and has ever been\nruling the lives of his earthly children.\n\n\n\n\nSELF-JUSTICE.\n\nWhile self-abnegation is a valued experience in the spiritual\ndiscipline which goes to the formation of a perfect character, the\nreaction where the ego posits itself upon the law of justice to self,\nis in reality the beginning of salvation to the individual.  But\npreachment from any source cannot avail with any soul deeply immersed\nin work for others.  There is too much in array against it.  The\nestablished heredity concerning the first duty of woman is of itself\nalone a formidable influence to be overcome; then either the real\nneeds, or the selfishness of others, present obstacles beyond the power\nof loving, sensitive souls to resist.  The change must come from the\nconsciousness of the individual of her own needs along these lines,\nwhich alone can arouse one to sufficient will, and purpose to be true\nto one's self if the heavens fall.  This is first, and above all other\nconsiderations.\n\n\n\n\nSYMBOLISM.\n\nA crude and inartistic symbolism is revolting to a spiritually-unfolded\nconsciousness.  True mystic symbolisms must observe accurately the\nfiner law of correspondences or they fail to appeal to such as these,\nand become to the occult a mild form of blasphemy.\n\n\n\n\nLOVE.\n\nNo phase of human character--of mental or spiritual philosophy--has\nengrossed so much attention or received such a variety of treatment as\nhas human love.  Nearly everyone who thinks at all, has been brought,\nat some stage of experience, to an attempt at analyzing the emotional,\nsentimental nature, asking: \"What is Love?\"\n\nIn contradistinction to that which repels, and disintegrates, it is\nattraction.  Love is God, it draws elements together, and holds them in\nproper spheres.  It centralizes and builds up.  It is controlled by\nfixed laws; it is only \"blind\" to those who have not investigated its\nnature, and office unshrinkingly, with an eye to a complete\nunderstanding of its true function.  Devoted humanitarians have shown\nus how to feed, exercise, and rest the physical system, in order to\nproduce health.  Ministers of the Gospel have taught souls the way of\nlife ever-lasting.  Professors of the various sciences and arts, useful\nand ornamental, have instructed the intellects of men, and now and then\na woman; but with all these, the affections--the crowning--rather the\nintegral element of all life and being, have had few, or no exponents\nwho have ever attempted to treat them from any basis which can be\ncalled philosophical, or which could ever serve as a guide to one\nuninitiated in their occult phases.\n\nThe ordinary expression of this part of the nature, is a vampyrism\nwhich is constantly on the alert to see what, and how much it can\ngobble up for its own delectation.  This is the lowest grade.  It\nbegins with the selfism of the individual, its manifestations are named\nlust.  It seeks expression through the sensuous nature, but extends to\nthe spirit and will.\n\nO Love!  What crimes are committed in thy name!  What laying waste of\ntrue and tender hearts, what defacing of sweet bodies, fashioned and\nset up as temples of the spirit!\n\nThis vampyrism extends through every department of the affectional\nnature.  It exists not only among men and women recognized as lovers,\nmarried or otherwise, but parents are ghouls to their children, and\nfriends devour each other without stint.  Attraction is that law which\ndraws together two opposite elements or forces, positive and negative,\nor male and female.  As the nature and attributes of a human being are\nmultiform, so are the attractions, or loves, numerous.  Ignorance of\nthe laws which ought to control and adjust these loves, is the prime\ncause of all the misery and crime with which the earth is flooded.  Two\npeople of the opposite sex are attracted through the intellect on this\nplane, and realizing the limit of the law which draws them together,\nthey could be admiring friends forever; but ignorant of their needs\noutside of this, they attempt to force a conjugal relationship which\ntoo often ends in dislike.  Every grade of lust and love finds\nrepresentation in the so-called marriage relation, as it stands today.\nIntellects and spirits without any bodies--worth mentioning--and gross\nmortal remains unvitalized by souls.  The former class ignore the\nclaims of the physical, and gather their robes together sanctimoniously\nindicating: \"Avaunt, lest my purity be contaminated\"; while the latter\nlaugh their spiritual pride and fastidiousness to scorn.  The war goes\non between good and evil, whereas there is really no just ground for\ndifference.  All that is needed for the attainment of harmony and peace\nis a wise adjustment of these forces in individuals and in society.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe growth of all true character must be slow and gradual.  It is not\nenough that the soul perceives the beauty of a grand, moral life, it\nmust also learn to live it humbly, earnestly and truly.\n\n\n\n\n\"IDEALS OF LOVE.\"\n\n\"Greater love hath no man than that he shall give his life for\nanother,\" whether the scene be set upon the mimic stage, or on the\nbroad theatre of the world.  Heroic rescues, desperate efforts to save\nendangered lives, care of the battle-wounded or fatally diseased meet,\nfrom great and small, brutal and cultivated, deserved recognition, even\nto the extent of making the individual actors--so favored by the\ngods--famous, throughout the world.\n\nThe patient service of men and women to their families, of children to\ntheir parents, or of friends who rejoice in serving, that goes on all\naround us conforms so entirely with our established ideals of what is\nright and becoming, that it is unnoticed and wins no applause, but\noftener only calls out from the recipient demands for further sacrifice.\n\nIn all such related service the real blessing comes to those who give\nfar more than to those who receive.  The operation of this law hallows\nall the relationships of this life, and must finally yield to the\nunselfish giver undreamed of compensations.  Not here, perhaps, but in\nthat sphere of being where love is indeed the fulfilling of the law,\nshall the patient givers, those who have served at love's altars, find\nthemselves closely allied to the immortal ones, \"who do his pleasure.\"\n\nLove, garlanded, and adorned with all that wealth can bestow, enthroned\nin seats of honor, and social recognition is accepted as our ideal of\nwhat love should claim, and win from life; but I have looked into the\nfaces of humble, patient toilers, and there I have seen that the\nsustaining influence with them was love, and have marvelled greatly\nover the compelling power of their ideals of love.\n\nRemembering that foundations of love upon this earthly planet were, of\nnecessity, laid in the selfish instincts of the race--a race as yet so\nundeveloped in all that \"makes for righteousness\"--we need not despair\nof the final outcome, and realization of its high behest to the\nchildren of men; for no expression of love, however mean in view of our\nown exalted ideals, but is, in reality, an effort towards something\nhigher and better.  The obdurate and selfish are unfolded, and taught\nby its painful misunderstandings, and awful tragedies.\n\nThose poor souls who expect everything from this life, whose ideals are\nbounded by their own selfishness, who have never discovered that God is\nLove, and that only through love, purified, exalted and idealized can\nany of his earthly children ever reach to any conscious relationship\nwith our Father in Heaven, and who, failing to realize even their low\nideals, pass on from one experience to another vainly searching for the\nrealization of what their dimly perceived intuitions of love constantly\nassure them should be theirs--for even such as these there must be a\nfinal redemption; for, like one of old, they have \"loved much,\" and the\nsins of a vast ignorance are at last condoned by God's all pervading,\nuntiring, illimitable law of love.\n\nO ye! who labor for humanity's uplifting; O weary workers in the homely\nways of the unskilled in every relationship of life, unrecognized by\nyour fellows be ye of good cheer!  As the circling waves of a calm lake\nspread wider, and more widely from a center disturbed by some heavy\nsubstance, so shall your least word, or thought of pure, unselfish\nlove, from your overburdened lives, reach out and diffuse an influence\nthroughout the universe of God, and become a part of the life immortal!\n\nLove, and love alone creates the desire for immortality, lifts up and\nrenews the oft fainting faith, the faltering, changeful hope, and\nperpetuates the expectations of the restoration of beloved companions,\nthe reunion of families, and friends.  It inspires the spirit, and\nseals the brokenhearted to the service of \"ideal love.\"  It leads the\nhuman soul onward, and upward, until it triumphs, at last, over this\nlife's defeats and losses, and its manifold despairs.\n\nUndeterred by the alarms of war, the wails of the diseased and\nfamine-cursed, and the violent protests of the oppressed, and\nmisery-steeped unfortunates of this plane of being, the \"Prince of\nPeace\" is calling together his scattered forces.  The beacon lights\nshine along the high places where dwell the exalted, and powerful ones\nof earth, and glimmer faintly from the lowlands, where the dire enemies\nof mankind--ignorance and superstition--are, at last, learning that\nGod, the true God, loves, and cannot hate.\n\nThe \"ground-swell\" of the \"ideal love\" cannot be resisted, nor\noverborne by any competing power in the universe, and with\never-increasing force and power to conquer all of earth's conditions of\nunrest, and dissatisfaction, born of false ideals, it will sweep\nresistlessly on, until it is merged in God.  The recognition of the\nhomogeneity of the race, and the \"Fatherhood of God,\" shall bring the\nlonged for fulfillment of the ancient prophecy of \"Peace on Earth, and\ngood will to Man.\"\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe priests endowed the gods with vices which they knew to be popular\namong their rich and powerful patrons.\n\n\n\n\nTHE NEEDS OF WOMAN.\n\nWomen need any and all disciplines which teach them self-justice.\nThere are many noble and good women who allow their whole lives to be\npicked away from them by demands upon their time and strength which\ncome to them under the guise of duties.  Viewed from a higher\nstandpoint, they are not duties, in that they conflict with the great\nunderlying principle of self-justice.  This is the pivotal idea of a\ntrue religion; for it is impossible to be true, to be just to others\nsave as we are so to ourselves, and while no character can be\nperfected, except through the fiery ordeal of an entire\nself-abnegation, there is a higher, and a holier life in store for\nthose who have the strength, and the courage to plant their feet upon\nthis God-given and eternal law of justice to self.\n\nIt is comparatively easy to gird one's self for the conflict which is\napparent, nearly all women souls are equal to that heroism; but it is\nin the daily round of the household, in relation to the church, and to\nsociety, or to the professions where women need to watch most jealously\nthe weakness of self-sacrifice.  Women have had the beauty of\n\"unselfishness,\" and \"amiability\" dinned into their ears for so long\nthat there is no depth of degradation, or of abnegation of true\nwomanhood to which they will not descend for the sake of being so\nconsidered by those whose interest it is to keep them where they\nvirtually endorse the vices of others by their own lack of\nself-justice.  While we must grope along until we understand the\nwickedness of this, and until we outgrow that weakness, let us be ready\nfor, and equal to the hour which shall give us the laurels of the\nvictor.  And why not laurels?  Has it not been uttered by the mouth of\ninspired prophecy that the \"last shall be first,\" and that \"the stone\nrejected by the builders shall yet be the head of the corner?\"  It\nrests with us, individually, to represent that truthfulness, and\nfaithful adherence to the justice due to womanhood which shall yet\ncrown her with rejoicing.\n\nTo this end women must begin to gather in those pearls of unselfish\ndevotion and self-abnegation which they have been so recklessly casting\nunder the feet of ignorance and beastliness.\n\nIt is blessed for lovely and loving woman to bestow bountifully from\nthe richness of her nature.  But every grace has its complement, and\nthe complement of this, for the present, is the greater blessing of\nconserving herself until she knows her power as an individual, and\nthoroughly comprehends what is due to her dignity and worth.\n\n\n\n\nMAN VERSUS WOMAN.\n\nMan, living entirely in his physical nature, goes on and on in the\ngratification of the senses until he becomes satiated, and \"blase,\" and\nthere is nothing satisfactory left for him upon the sensuous plane.\nThen he either crystallizes into a hard, selfish being, or plunges\nstill deeper into the slough of sensuality from which Divine Love alone\ncan rescue him.  This power is most often manifested by woman, the\nnatural law-giver and redeemer.  For ages man has projected his selfish\nhuman will into all the affairs of life, thus setting aside the higher\nlaw.  In the love relations he has specially dominated woman, reversing\nthe divine order of nature, and thus killing out all possible\ninspiration, and consequent happiness.  Everywhere he has set up his\nown lustful desires as the rule and right of life in his relationship\nto woman, destroying the spiritual sacrament of marriage; and by his\nselfishness and greed of power, he has reduced her to a condition of\nprostitution.  He outrages the helpless ones who have confided their\nhonor, and their lives to his keeping, and the law--the vile, cursed,\nman-made law--upholds him in this slaughter of all that should make his\nheaven of trusting love.  The wails of the wronged ones--specially\nthose who suffer in the marriage relation--go up incessantly to God,\nand the woe of the children who, through these conditions, have\ninherited only animal love and instinct is enough to drown the \"music\nof the spheres.\"\n\nParenthood being one phase of unfoldment, each individual must at some\nperiod of incarnation exercise this important function.  To the uses of\nreproduction, the animal love with its blustering activities of\nexpression, is, rightly understood, adjusted.  But above and beyond\nthis is the spiritual union which brings forth children of the mind,\nthe fruitage of the soul, manifest in noble thoughts and brave deeds.\nEvery expression of love, however crude and animal, is an impulsion of\nthe flesh-enveloped soul toward the source of all love, and however\ndistasteful one may seem, to such as have evolved a spiritual\nconsciousness, and the demand for soul satisfaction, it cannot be\nignored.\n\nThrough the pain of satiety, of disease, or suspended activity of the\nlove nature, the ego at last senses its need of God.  It comes to know\nthat nothing less than divine love can ever satisfy this demand of the\nheart.  The constant tendency of the inspired human being is to\nextremes.  The \"golden mean\" is the \"high water mark\" of real\ncultivation.  We have on one side the suppression of the ascetic, and\nat the other end of the line the abandonment of the debauchee--both\nsinful and false because extreme, both casting a reproach upon the laws\nof God as outworked in, and through nature.  The ascetic, seeing the\nharmful results to the soul attending the usual unlimited, and\nundisciplined expression of nature which man accords to his supposed\nnecessities, draws the line by cutting off all surplus of physical\nsupplies and, stifling the cries of passion, retires into a cave or\ncell, and into himself, thus totally ignoring all the necessary\nactivities attending the development of this planet and of the human\nrace.  He may thus reach a high altitude of purely spiritual\nperception; but it is, after all, a sublimated selfishness.  His\nexample is of no benefit to the world's workers.  He is not of those\nwho think and feel, and who are in the way of divulging esoteric\nknowledges to the quest of the vast army of earnest seekers after light\nupon these underlying laws of human life.\n\nFor the control by man of the love, and the life of woman there is a\ncut-and-dried sentiment and an enforced law concerning the segregated\nexercise of a natural function.  By her acceptance, or rejection of\nthis onesided \"morale,\" is woman judged pure or impure, blessed or\ncursed, as the case may be.  If this rule could be enforced equally\nupon both sexes, if there were not two distinct sets of moral laws, one\nfor man, and quite another for woman, there would be no such injustice.\nAs it is, there is but one way left open for woman.  She must develop\nthe power and will to be a law unto herself, regardless of the\nsuspicion, and brutality of man, and with this also indifference to the\nfoolness and the weak protest of her fellow slaves--women.  These are\n\"long, long thoughts.\"  Ages must elapse ere the males of our kind will\nhave evoluted up to a status where they will see that through justice\nto woman alone can they secure to themselves any degree of worthy, or\nlasting happiness, or satisfaction.\n\n\n\n\nNATURAL CRUELTY OF THE UNDEVELOPED.\n\nThe most unaccountable phase of the minds of the leaders of religions\nhas been their persistent effort to make their fellow beings wretched\nand miserable instead of glad and happy.  We expect savagery from the\nComanchee Indians and other primitive tribes and races; but from\nself-styled Christians the history of their cruelties is astounding.\nIt is pure devil worship--that is what it is--if they but knew it.\n\nOne of the beautiful plans of theologians and priests for scaring\nhalf-witted people into their individual folds has been telling them\nthat they were in danger of committing the most dreadful of all sins,\nthe \"sin against the Holy Ghost.\"  The utterly \"unpardonable sin\" of\nall sins.  This blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightened\nnumbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modicum\nof brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even to\nthe point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in lunatic\nasylums.\n\n\n\n\nTHE WORST SIN.\n\nThe much speculated over \"sin against the Holy Ghost,\" the so-called\n\"unpardonable sin\" is the sin that men and women commit against\n_themselves_; for the most holy of all ghosts, or spirits, is that\nportion of God--the universal Spirit--embodied in their own separate\npersonalities, and it is only \"unpardonable\" in that it sets the soul\nback from its possible and intended progress toward its ultimate\nperfection.\n\n\n\n\nREINCARNATION.\n\nThe objections to the acceptance of a belief in the law of\nreincarnation are based upon the imperfect teaching, and the consequent\ninadequate understanding of the laws controlling such experiences.\n\nSome of the reasons for disbelief are utterly illogical.  For instance,\none view is this: \"I never want to come back to this earth after I once\nleave it.\"  The fact is, that there could be no return to today's\nrecognized conditions of life.  If one were to return to this planet\nand become reembodied, he would find himself in some other country, and\nunder such entirely changed conditions that he would be totally\nunconscious of being on the same world where he had formerly lived.\nThen, again, the law of vibration is so immanent in material things,\nthe changes are so constantly undermining conditions and setting up\nquite others that if one were to return in one hundred or even in fifty\nyears, it could not be the same, and that person could not be in any\nway subject to the same conditions, or to the same experiences.\n\nFurthermore, it is nature's wise and provident law that there is hardly\never any memory of any previous life here.  Still, after the soul has\npassed through many lives and has accumulated great knowledge, a vast\nconsciousness which can not be laid aside, there come to individual\nsouls faint gleams of memories of past experiences which, if heeded or\nunderstood, might become helpful and instructive, if not altogether\nconsoling.\n\nThere has never been a time when the needs of humanity have so reached\nthe great spiritual overlords of this planet as at present.  Or, that\nthose needs have been so responded to by the return to earth of wise,\nand godlike spirits as now.  Many of these have sought to approach\nhumanity through personal reembodiment in the flesh.  It would be well\nfor the world if, instead of cramming the brains of children with\neffete ideas and superstitions, the messages of these wise ones could\nbe listened to and heeded.\n\nA thorough understanding of the laws of reembodiment, so far as we can\nknow them, entirely refutes the belief and the feeling of the injustice\nof the Creator towards any human being.  The law of evolution carries\nthe soul along from one expression of life to another giving to each\nindividual the opportunity to accumulate such knowledge, and to grow\nsuch character as shall finally bring it to a state of perfection.  The\ndiscrepancies in human life are largely external.  The millionaire,\nenvied by less fortunate beings, may be far below the poor, struggling\nlaborer in point of real unfoldment of soul.  And again, people so\nfavored in this material experience of life may be forced by the very\nnature of existence to return into humble conditions to learn the real\nlessons of life here.\n\nWe are not the arbiters of our own destiny, and the sooner we conceive\nthe idea of non-resistence to fate, realize that our lives are guided\nby unerring law, and simply set ourselves to trying to understand the\nmeanings of our experiences, and to trying to wring from each one all\nthat it is intended to teach us, seeking to learn from it all that we\npossibly can in order that we may not be forced to be taught the\nlessons over again, the better for our growth and happiness.\n\nThis earth, our birth place, our kindergarten school, and the\nuniversity from which we must each graduate, having once received us,\ncan never let go its hold upon one of its children until this final\nresult is attained.  Over and over again, the lives of all who belong\nto this planet pass into the invisible realms of Nature to rest from\nthe sordid and wearisome experiences of material life, and again return\nto seek out further growth and understanding, until the final\nculmination is reached.  The soul is hurried on through its experiences\nof departing and returning, until earth has no further lesson, no\nfurther service to perform.  Then, indeed, it may graduate and ascend\nto its place among the gods.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nNewly-embodied souls might be considered as raw material flung out upon\nthe sea of life to be ground and polished by experience, and grown into\na semblance of perfection befitting the \"children of God.\"\n\n\n\n\nPROCESSES OF REINCARNATION.\n\nSpirit has no consciousness on the material plane, except through the\nvibratory action of the human brain, the mortal mind.  The individual\nego gathers up from each incarnation--if it is true to itself--some\nknowledge, some wisdom, and stores it away in the spirit brain.  Its\nexperiences cover every opportunity to understand, from lowest to\nhighest, all that any single one in the whole human family has ever\nknown.  This is the justice of the great Creator.  The king today has\nbeen in some previous life an oppressed laborer, and if he could for a\nmoment lay aside his egotistical pride of power and place, he might\nremember and know how 'tis himself.  Men and women of thought, of great\ncharacter have returned from each separate incarnation, for rest from\nthe destroyed physical, loaded like the honey bee with the results of\nlabor and effort.\n\nWhen the practised soul familiarizes itself with the newly-born,\nfleshly tabernacle it is to inhabit and use for a long or a short time,\nit broods over the unconscious being, and at the first indication of\nintelligence, pours into the human brain-cells its own spiritual life,\nand what thus comes in is there to stay.  The growth of the child, the\ndevelopment of the individual, depends mostly upon the capacity of the\nbrain to receive and adjust this knowledge and inspiration to its use\nupon the earth plane upon which it is to live, the place, the\nenvironment in which it is to learn its next needed lessons.\n\nThe soul, the ego, thus placed, is bound and shackled by its human\nheredity.  This is inevitable, it has no choice as to its lineaments or\nfigure.  It in a sense bears the \"sins of the world\"; it can in no way\nseparate itself, really, from the whole human family.\n\nWhen the experiences of the dual nature, the body and soul, from any\ncause, bring the body, or the brain into conditions where it can no\nlonger respond to the uses of the spirit, then occurs what is called\ndeath--physical dissolution.  But this change is simply the unclothing\nof the spirit from its earthly conditions, setting it free to return\nagain to its home, there to review what it has gained, and added to its\nprevious stock of knowledge.  The individual soul in each incarnation\nforms for itself ties more or less real and lasting--with the mother,\nthe fleshly vehicle, through whose mysterious service it enters upon\nits earthly life; with the male parent whose service to humanity may,\nor may not be godly or godlike, though natural and necessary; with\nfamily relations; and with friends, public and private.  Nearly every\nperson who passes through this unveiling comes to the grave-side with\ntrains of friends to whom he is attached, and whom he will not forget,\nand he will stay on and on in his heaven till every claim upon his\nlove, or service is fully satisfied.  No more severing of ties; no more\nbroken hearts, or disappointed hopes.  No injustice, full fruition in\nheaven.\n\nThis adjustment measured by earthly reckoning may take long reaches of\ntime, but finally, the soul, stirred by the eternal law of progress, of\nunfoldment, repeats its former experience, drinks of the cup of\nforgetfulness, and returns again to learn in the great university of\nunfolding life on this planet.  A vast multitude, it is coming and\ngoing, unceasingly moving on.  No two alike; each in its place pressing\nforward to the station which the totality of its experiences through\nmany lives entitles it.  There is but one law, but one method that\nabides.  It is the spiritual law of evolution; everyone is held by it;\nall who seem exempt today from its influence upon their lives, have\nalready passed the crucial tests, or are traveling forward to meet them.\n\nSooner or later every human soul must inevitably take its turn, until\nit passes up through the whole gamut of earthly experience.  Whatever\ncharacter anyone achieves belongs to the individual eternally.  It is\nthe reward of patient service, of consecrated effort for the truth.\nGreat souls are what they are, in the places they now occupy by virtue\nof their many incarnations.  Through the great variety of experiences\ngained, they have come to know.  They have earned the right to be what\nthey are.  There are usurpers in all the ways of life, ignorance and\nhypocracy masquerading as the real thing, but they do not last.\nPretenders are soon unmasked and taken at their true value.\n\nSometimes the spirit is strong enough to ignore its present\nsurroundings and rise above all the obstacles connected with its\nmaterial heredity.  It depends upon the unfoldment of the spirit\nwhether it shall espouse the cause of progress and truth, or yield to\nthe pressure of its environment and shrink back into a lower grade, and\nlose the opportunity for further growth.\n\n\n\n\nEDUCATION OF CHILDREN.\n\nNearly all so-called civilized people set to work to cram the minds of\ntheir children, at the first indication of any degree of intelligence,\nwith a religious bias such as they themselves have inherited or have\nbeen taught.  Then the intellect must be shaped, forced and driven into\naccepted moulds, and the human being is considered ready to be turned\nout into the world to fight the battle which everyone, in one way or\nanother, must fight all along the way of human life--to begin to test\nthe value of the ideas and principles with which the soul has been\nfurnished to meet all the exigencies incident to the pilgrimage from\nbirth to the final exit from this state of being.  It has taken\nuncounted ages to produce the perfected types of physical humanity we\nsee on earth today.  Here Nature calls a halt, saying: \"As the\nhandmaid, the co-worker with your Creator, I have brought you along to\nthe point where you look and seem almost as gods.  There is in each of\nyou a divine ego--a thought of your Creator--a sure guide to\nperfection.  To reach this goal must be now your constant endeavor.\nThere is a spiritual body, the outgrowth of the physical.\"\n\nThousands of children, too young to choose for themselves, are being\nfettered in spirit by the chains of old, effete superstitions; their\nintellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creeds\nand vulgarizing ideas of God and his universe.  There are numbers of\nSpiritualists and \"liberal\" men and women who expose the tender minds\nof their children to these same influences for society's sake, knowing\nthough they do, from hard experience, what an effort it costs to free\nthe mind of such serious bias, and re-educate it aright.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe noblest teaching is that which puts us _en rapport_ with our own\ninner, unspoken and unrecognized perceptions.  No truth, however\nmanifested, can adjust itself to our soul's needs, save as it finds in\nus a response through that preparation which comes from a certain\ndegree of previous knowledge.\n\n\n\n\nEGOTISM.\n\nEgotism is the perception, and recognition by individuals of the rights\nand the possibilities of their real selves, their ego.  Without it\nhuman beings would not stand up on their hind legs, they would crawl.\nIt is at the same time a necessity and a danger.  It has never been\nsettled which is cause and which effect, whether insanity creates the\nawful manifestations of egotism or the unbalanced egotism induces\ninsanity.  \"Keep us sane\" is the wisest of all prayers, the greatest\ndemand one can make upon his consciousness.\n\nPeople pass into the spirit world in the full bloom of their egotism;\nhordes of them return to tell their friends things they know absolutely\nnothing about, and the folks on this side believe all they say, and so\nfool ignorance is passed along and stays in the minds of those who\nlisten to the \"messages\" of egotism and ignorance.  There are \"dead\nloads\" of people who think this is all there is of Spiritualism.  While\nit _is_ blessed that friends can return, and comfort the mourning ones\nby their assurances of remembrance and love, this should never be the\nfinal result sought for.  Those who have lived but a limited time in\nthe spirit world--the world of causes, of law--cannot teach people here\nthe knowledge that can satisfy their souls.  But there are educated\nsouls, who have once lived honored and useful lives here, who are only\ntoo glad to respond to the needs of inquiring humanity, teaching them\nthe ways of wisdom, and lifting them out of ignorance and darkness into\nthe light.\n\n\n\n\nRESPONSIVENESS.\n\nSurely we are trying to solve the biggest problems before the class.\nThe people who are our profoundest teachers, through whom come our\nlargest experiences and knowledge are often most unconscious of their\ninfluence on other minds; and this is lawful, for the moment a human\nsoul begins to wriggle either from anxiety or egotism, the divine\n\"chemical affinities\" are disturbed.\n\nLong before we get up to God, our nearer relative, \"Mother Nature,\" is\nmost gracious in her methods of unfoldment, standing ever ready to\nwhisper in the devoted, or willing ear, her \"open sesame\" to the\nmanifold workings of her secret laws.  It is ever the same old\nexhortation: \"Seek and ye shall find,\" \"Knock and it shall be opened to\nyou,\" and the most wonderful of all is, the amount of unexpected\ntestimony, and endorsement which she will contrive to bring to bear to\nprove to you the truth of what she asserts through your own individual\nexperience.\n\n\"Elective affinities\" hold their own royally.  You shall think and feel\ndeeply, and the first friend you meet shall tell you--quite\nspontaneously--of his ponderings which tally with your own, never\nsuspecting that they are held to you by a subtle, and beautiful\nchemistry, the response of soul to soul.\n\nThere is but one integral law.  All others are but its radiations.  The\nnatural tendency of the human mind is ever toward being satisfied with\nits present limitations, instead of which we ought to constantly\nexercise our will and aspiration to fling off the mists of prejudice\nwhich so easily envelop the soul, and strive ever to enlarge our\nhorizon, and push on to higher and better things.\n\n\n\n\nHELL.\n\nSuch men as J. Knox in Scotland and J. Edwards in this country must\nhave had chronic indigestion or cancers in their insides, or they could\nnot have revelled so in hell, and \"eternal damnation\" as they did.\nWhat unreckoned miseries would surely have been spared their listeners\nif they, and thousands of their sort, could have developed a modicum of\nChristian feeling and a little kindness toward their hypnotized hearers!\n\nNot only from their immediate, personal teachings came awful fears of\nwhat must be the fate of all who were under the judgment as set forth\nby the unbalanced minds of such as these; but the long ineradicable\nchain of influences that haunt, and torture the minds of good folks,\neven to this day.  The utter lack of wisdom and knowledge of God's laws\nand providence, in the realm of theological teachings, is undoubtedly\nthe cause of much of the diablerie of the world today.\n\nIf all the priests and parsons who have ever infested this earth with\ntheir blasphemous theology were to unite their fiendish forces in a\nconcentrated effort to doom one human soul--one spirit--to be burned\nforever in the endless hell fires which they have so long exulted in\nholding up over poor, wretched, ignorant peoples, they could not do it!\nThey have had a glorious time persecuting, torturing, burning and\nslaying human bodies, driving millions of innocent inhabitants off the\nplanet, who had just as much right to this--their home--as had, or can\never have any set of bloodthirsty ruffians, claiming their commissions\nfrom God Almighty!  How thoughtless, expecting the religionists to put\naside this, their most cherished dogma, of \"eternal punishment in hell\nfires!\"  What would they have left to scare folks with, and make them\nhand over their dollars, and what, O what! vent could they have for\ntheir own natural, pure cussedness?\n\n\n\n\nTHE COMMONPLACE.\n\nGreat is the god Commonplace, and his prophets of the accredited order\nof the \"Common, ornary Kusses\" are legion.  They are of both sexes and\nof every race, age and condition.  Consent to render homage to their\nDeity by confessing by word and deed that every man is as good as\nanother and better too, and they will continue to smile openly; but, in\nsecret, they will prey upon you.  Their capable emissaries go around\nwith measuring line and shears, alert to discover, and ready to reduce\nto the proper dimensions anyone who shall dare to outgrow their\nprescribed proportions.  You can never know when you are safe from\ntheir incursions.\n\nThe dignified old man who sits next you at your hotel table seeming to\nbe entirely preoccupied by the discussion of his dinner, may only be\nbiding his time, waiting an excuse to deliver you over to their\ninsatiable maw, to be dealt with according to the rules of their\nsociety.  Or, perhaps the lady who in the first flush of your\nacquaintance quite dazzles you with her fluent chat upon multitudinous\ntopics, suddenly, upon finding you unguardedly expressing opinions not\napproved by the high priests of mediocrity, lets fall her mask, and\nshows herself to your astonished gaze a secret emissary, a determined\nservant of their most ancient and established order.  \"Thus far,\" so\nfar as we can accompany you, \"shalt thou go and no farther\" at your\nperil.  Woe to the soul that yields a ready obedience to the master's\nvoice, that is ever calling to all who can hear: \"Come up higher.\"  The\nsash with which he would gird up his loins, \"the latchet\" with which he\ntightens his sandals that he may run more swiftly the race set before\nhim, the staff upon which he would lean shall all be turned by these\ndemon worshippers into scourges.  He shall be \"beaten with many\nstripes,\" for so it hath been ordained from long time, until the pain\nof his wounded heart and hurt brain shall deaden his sensibilities so\nthat he can no more hear the voice nor see the helping hand.\n\nDefy, resist, and the limp, sprawling, accommodating God becomes a\nsinuous, hydracrested, overpowering dragon, stopping at nothing to \"put\nyou where you belong\"--his favorite battle cry--himself judge, jury and\nexecutioner.  This he has not the power to do unless he can prove to\nyou that you \"belong\" where he seeks to place you, for his veins are\nfull of mud.  He is of the \"earth earthy,\" and in the rarified\natmosphere of noble ambition and great achievements, he is utterly\nblind and of no account.  Take heart, then, O aspiring soul!  \"Prove\nall things; hold fast that which is good.\"  Render unto every true\nprinciple that which is its due; but beware how you worship or lean\nupon teachers, leaders who, beneath their proudly-worn garb, and\ninsignia of leadership, may be all the time wearing the robes of the\nhigh priests of the god Commonplace.\n\n\n\n\nPETROLEUM.\n\n\"'Pears like\" the affairs of life on this planet are dreadfully\n\"higgledy-piggledy\"; but in reality, there is a divine purpose, a use\nin it all.  It is the soul's kindergarten.  It is interesting to\nobserve the curious and round-about ways Nature takes to insure the\ngreatest good to the greatest number of her needy children.  Long\nbefore the first nitro-glycerine \"go-devil\" was sent down, down, to the\nuttermost depths, to shatter the oil-bearing rock, and set free the\nwonderful deposit that was destined to mark a new era in the affairs of\nmen, rang out the Biblical mandate: \"Let there be light,\" and in due\ntime the whole world was illuminated.\n\nThe sorcerers, who have abstracted vast wealth from this earth product\nhave fancied it was for their special benefit and use, that nature had\ngarnered up her stores to be thus liberated, and chemicalized into a\nthousand forms, by their sagacious work.  Not so!  Quite indeed, not so!\n\nCame--at last--the kerosene lamp.  How marvelous the light of its clear\nflame, after \"tallow dips\" and \"pine knots\"!  How the little lamp of\nthe first experiment grew, and grew into gorgeous centers of sun-like\nradiance, shining everywhere, illuminating hitherto darkened,\nimpenetrable places, carrying the torch of civilization round the\nentire world.  Alike in slum and palace, in homes of poverty, and set\nto shine in the gilded resorts of the noble and wealthy; blessing the\nstudent, and the vast army of enforced workers; lighting the paths of\nmen, and the ways of the multitude; making vice and crime more\ndifficult, by dispersing the darkness from hidden purlieus.  Through\nprimeval depths and mountain fastnesses, wherever the footsteps of men\nhave wandered, the magic lamp has pioneered the way.\n\nAll war is horrible.  Through what agonies of loss, and orgies of\ndeath, and tortures of the weak driven to the wall by unscrupulous men\nthe war against material darkness on this planet has been carried on is\nutterly unimaginable and impossible ever to be known.  The end has been\nreached, the great needs of humanity at large have been and are being\nserved, and while superior sources of light have largely taken the\nplace of the oil lamp, it still shines calmly on in the homes of the\npoor, and will, for ages yet to come.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\n\"As a man thinketh, so is he.\"  This may be only measurably true, in\nconsequence of the stress of circumstances; but sooner or later, the\nthought moulds the individual beyond the power of disguising the real\ncharacter.\n\n\n\n\nLAW.\n\nIt was all in order for Yahweh, the guardian spirit of the Hebrew race,\nto \"hetchel\" the Jews--and from all accounts they needed it--but the\nmost anomalous phase of this whole affair consists in the fact that\nafter having set forth to the world that the church, and all were to\ncome under the rule of the \"new dispensation,\" and represent the\nteachings of the Master, they should turn back to the old, old history\nof the Jews, and incorporate bodily into the so-called Christian\nreligion, and into the political life and jurisprudence of nations, the\nrestrictions, the penalties, and, in a word, the Hebraic law in its\nentirety.  Law, as it is applied in America, is a process lacking in\nequity and justice.  It is circumvented by $-s for the benefit of the\nrich, a menace to the poor man, binding on the needy burdens that kill,\nor lead to despair.  Jesus Christ did not make law; he only indicated\nthe presence of the higher law--the scientific law--that must rule all\nlife on this planet ere justice to all can ever prevail.\n\nThe gospel of Jesus--the Nazarene--was the first that ever brought hope\nor promise of any possible good to the outcast, and the children of\npoverty.\n\n\n\n\nCOMMUNISM.\n\nCommunism is the beginning, and not the culminating state of societies\nand peoples.  All efforts on this line fail, because they are based\nupon the false and impossible premise of the absolute equality of all\nmen.  There never has been, there never can be any such adjustment of\nthe forces of nature on this planet; because no two souls are alike and\nthere can only be equality in alikeness.  Spirits come here in groups.\nThey start simultaneously on their pilgrimage across the \"sands of\ntime\"; but at the very outset there are obstacles and handicaps\ninnumerable.  At once there is heredity.  There is no equality in\nheredity.  It is good, bad or indifferent as the case may be.  But the\ngreat divergence is in the soul itself; it grovels or aspires, and\nunfolds its powers according to the laws of its own individual being,\nand all men, and women should not be held accountable or judged alike.\nIt is not just.  Communism would seek to suppress all individuality and\nreduce everyone to the \"dead level\" of the commonplace, under the\nmistaken idea of universal equality.  Gifted persons daring to lift up\ntheir heads above the common ruck of mankind, are at once shoved back\ninto the narrow groove the heads of the cult have decided to be the\nproper rut for human beings to run in.\n\nIn this view, persons of ignoble and narrow natures may sit in judgment\nupon people of genius and refinement, and may force back the most\naspiring seer into expressionless life by the utter lack of any\ncomprehension by their dull, selfish fancy.  Ye gods!  How they exult\nin doing it!  This trick is played upon sensitive, modest, gifted\npeople everywhere.  Fools set the pace and rule, and those who know the\nleast of the responsibilities of living are the first to rush forward\nand grab them up.  Envy and jealousy have it all their own way, and so\nit is the world around; everyone is forced to pay a fearful price for\nhis superiority.\n\nAt different times poets and writers, good people of distinction and\nphilanthropy, weary of the \"storm and stress\" of life and of invasions\nand intolerable \"bumptiousness\" of the vulgar and indiscriminating,\nhave tried to secure a place and surroundings where high thinking and\nsimple living might order their days and secure to them companionship\nfit for the gods; but the noblest and best of humanity are not\npermitted to go off by themselves in such ways and have a little heaven\non earth all to themselves.  This cannot be.  They must stand apart\neach in their place, out in the world--\"in the open\"--that they may\neach one stand as a beacon light, object lesson, leader, and thus\nassist in \"leavening the whole lump\" of ignorant and unregenerate\nhumanity.\n\n\n\n\nHAPPINESS.\n\nHappiness is the final achievement of the human soul.  Perfect\nhappiness can only come as the result of absolute at-one-ment with God,\nthe divine will, and in this conforming there is no loss of\npersonality, or of individuality; it only rounds out the soul into its\ngodlike completeness.  It is unimaginable that there should come loss\nof any attribute of the soul on its way up to the rendez-vous with its\nParent, God.  Rather, that its powers should increase in every possible\ndirection with use, in conformity with divine law.  This is the only\ntrue happiness.\n\nThe ideals of happiness cherished by men take in an immensely wide\nrange, and bring into action all the peculiar attributes of the\ncomposite natures of man.  The brutal instinct cries out: \"Kill! kill!\"\nBloodsheding is its ravishing delight.  When it arrives at a point\nwhere it may not destroy its fellows, the whole created animal\nkingdom--including woman--is its prey.  Wars and rumors of wars will\nnever cease on this planet until humanity at large develops out of this\ngrade which expects to find happiness in the exercise of its very\nlowest, primitive instincts.\n\nFurther along in the line of the evolution of the soul, ideals of\nhappiness pursued by man are simply futile and childish; the awakening\nto a realization of this is a commonplace, world-wide experience, and\nonly repeated embodiments can purge the soul, educate the minds of men,\nand turn their attention to the only true and lasting ideals of\nhappiness.\n\n\n\n\nPAIN.\n\nPhysical pain beyond a certain point ceases to be pain and becomes an\necstasy.  The same beneficent law controls mental and spiritual\nagonies.  They each have their limit.  To the keenest of sorrows, the\ndeepest of griefs our Maker has spoken: \"Thus far shalt thou go, and no\nfarther.\"  Nurse them as we may, draw them as deeply as we can into our\nsoul's recesses, and make them, in our morbid states, idols to cherish,\nthey yet lose their power to hold our souls in subjection.\n\nBoth physically and mentally, the nerves of feeling refuse to respond.\nThey have their limitation, and time holds for every heart-breaking\nexperience a consolation.  If it were not so, this world would be\nturned into a vast, howling lunatic asylum.  Unseen and unrecognized by\nstricken hearts, \"The Angels of His, who do His pleasure\" stand ever\nready to pour healing balm upon all our wounds, and to teach the great,\neternal truth that afflictions are the real educators of the soul.\n\n\n\n\nFOES IN THE HOUSEHOLD.\n\n\"A man's foes shall be they of his own household.\"  This saying\nreferred to the religious differences which the great prophet saw would\narise in consequence of his peculiar teachings.  There are no ill\nfeelings between people so rancorous and lasting as those which spring\nfrom such causes, and as hate is but love inverted, the nearer and\ndearer the relationships, the more bitter is the feeling likely to be\nengendered.  Proverbially, family feuds are the most deadly and\ndifficult to eradicate.\n\nThe friend, the relative who knows you best, who has seen you in your\nhours of weakness when you have been entirely \"off guard,\" is the one\nwho can most injure you should anything occur to sever your hearts.\nThere is no help for this save in that growth of charity and\nforbearance one toward another which teaches us to seek not our own,\nbut to try to help each other in the great struggle of life.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nWho are the \"pure in heart?\"  Those who aspire to the good, and\nsacrifice self to attain it.  What is virtue?  That which is best for\nthe individual; not on either the animal or the spiritual plane alone;\nbut in every lawful expression of the nature; the epitomization, and\nspiritualization of all past \"karma\" from the sod up to God.\n\n\n\n\nTHE INNER LIFE.\n\nHow unreal seems the existence of the inner life!  How vain our intent\nto catch its meaning, and portray its deepest lessons, and yet, it is\nthe reality.  It forms the center around which all external life\nrevolves, from which all outward being receives its vitality and\nassurance of existence.  The passive soul heeds not the ever-recurring\nchanges which its very continued life indicates, and will, when\nunveiled by the transforming hand of death, wonder at its wealth of\nlife.  The conscious being, ever alert, notes the changes and the\nindications of ever-progressing life with delight, and awe, and a\nprofound recognition of the law of its being which sets the star of its\nexistence higher and higher in the heavens, and lures it on for its own\nperfection even unto the perfect day.  To such a soul there is little\npeace, or rest by the way; but it may finally learn a godlike heroism\nand patience which will enable it to trace its steps, and see in all\nits life's experiences a sequence which is divine and beneficent.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nPower is silent; power does not fume and bluster.  It holds firmly and\nsteadily on its way, and wins by force of its resistless and relentless\nsway.\n\n\n\n\nROOT OF EVILS.\n\nThe most unaccountable phase of philanthropic effort put forth by good\npeople for the help of humanity is their utter failure to apply their\nremedial suggestions, or helpful agencies to the real roots, or causes,\nof great matters needing attention.  Everything is approached and dealt\nwith entirely from the external.  Either from ignorance or fear of the\nprobable results to be met with upon close inspection, the beginnings,\nthe real causes of evil doings are let alone to grow until they become\nunbearable.  Then comes the \"hue and cry\" joined in by all who seek to\nhave wrongs righted.\n\nSuch has been, and is the \"white slave evil.\"  Ignorance is the cause\nof all evil; but the special cause of this great, terrible, devastating\nwrong starts with the utter lack of the education of children by their\nparents, especially of the necessary instruction of girls regarding\ntheir own natural functions, and their relationship to men.  The most\nvitally important knowledge that can ever be theirs is left entirely\nout of their home education, and the natural curiosity of the young\nleft to the foolish ignorance of their young mates, or of designing\nunderlings.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nWoman is the magnet that draws souls to this life.\n\n\n\n\nBEST IN CHANCE.\n\nThere is no method so surely successful in barring the progress of the\nsoul as that of permitting a prejudice for one phase, or presentation\nof occult law to so blind the perceptions of the mind as to cause it to\nentirely disregard all such views as are not already set forth, and\naccepted.\n\nIt is as the old story of the two who fought over the shield with a\ngold side and a silver side; because, as neither could see both sides\nat once, each considered the statement of the other a willful\nfalsehood.  Let us try, at least, to bear in mind that our relationship\nto this universe has been of long enough duration to permit of the\nevolution, and establishment of many series of laws which do not, as\nwould seem at the first glance, conflict, or force us to a disbelief in\nour own well-accredited experiences.  The whole united universe is\nmoving forward upon evolutionary lines, and what was, and is true in\nthe beliefs of the East, must be today supplemented by the further\nknowledge revealed by the seers of the West.  The extreme likeness\nwhich exists between the different religions of the world is everywhere\napparent, and the devachan of the Theosophists corresponds to the\nexpected rest in the tomb, until Gabriel sounds his horn on\nresurrection day of the orthodox Christian.\n\nThe only way the priests knew to prevent the knowledge of their\nignorance coming to their followers was to draw a veil over the future\nof the invisible soul, and promise a long, long rest to the weary and\nheavy-laden ones, to whom this, alone, seemed compensation for their\nearthly cares.\n\nPeople are just as tired today as they have ever been in the history of\nthe world, but they are growing, through their superior knowledge of\noccult things, to see how to separate spirit and soul from matter, and\nto render unto each its just due in its proper sphere.  In laying aside\nthe physical body, and perceiving that the new life opening up before\nthe spirit offers the truest possible rest to the enfranchised soul,\nthrough congenial activities, and obeying its behest finding a real\nheavenly experience through their recognition, and obedience to the\nundeviating law of uses.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nWe do want God in the Constitution; but not the God of any creed or\nism, but of the great moral principles, the ethical philosophy taught\nby Jesus, the Christ.\n\n\n\n\nMISERLINESS.\n\nThere is such a thing as being miserly of thoughts and ideas as well as\nof lucre.  One is as foolish as the other.  Circulation is necessary to\nhealth and comfortable living.  Cast off the leading strings of other\nminds.  Out of the abundance of thine own heart speak thine own truest,\nhighest thoughts.  Think not thy supply will fail, or that by\nwithholding thou shalt increase thy store.  It is not possible to make\na corner in this realm, or to take out a mortgage on God's gifts.\nFreely ye have received, freely give and thy \"measure shall be pressed\ndown and running over.\"\n\n\n\n\nSPECIAL PROVIDENCE.\n\nIf the absolute homogeneity of the race were once understood and\nestablished in the minds of men, it would put an end to the varying\nmodes and methods of thought which now only tend to separate their\nminds and hearts.  To know, to feel the unity of soul with souls, and\nof the minds of men with the Infinite would forever wipe out the\ndiscord and inharmony which now prevail everywhere.  Not my erring, and\nhuman will, but thy Will of Wisdom and Love be done on earth as it is\nin heaven, must be, finally, the attitude of every aspiring soul.\n\nToo long the Christian world has accepted the legendary Hebraic God, in\nthe place of our real \"Father who art in heaven.\"  The teachings of\nJesus--the testimony he gave of the love of God, if taken to the\nheart--must dispose forever of the perception of God as a Being of\ncruelty and revenge, and given over to low attributes.  The Creator of\nthe universe--\"without whom was nothing made\"--manifests to us through\nthe action of eternal and unchangeable law.  This is demonstrated to us\nby and through his vice-gerents, the angels of his who do his pleasure.\nDown, down from the supernal regions, from the supernal plane of being,\ncomes the Divine Mandate which is made known to the human soul through\nthe instrumentality that can penetrate the surroundings, and best make\nmanifest the inspiration, the warning, or the perception of the\nundeviating law which holds all human experience and its sure results\nin its care and keeping.  And those who dwell upon the threshold of the\ndoor which opens upon the life eternal are those who have loved and who\nstill do love the children of earth--fathers, mothers, children,\nfriends who have walked the earth by our sides, and whom no starry\ncrowns, and no glorious heaven could tempt away from the work of\nblessing and comforting the sorrowing souls still left on earth to\nmourn the loss of their loving companionship, and sympathy.  And this\nis God's \"Special Providence\" made manifest in our lives whenever and\nwherever we have eyes to see and ears to hear.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nOnce the soul really looks forth and sees, there can be, after that, no\nmore sleeping.  All is effort, weighing, balancing, deciding, groping\npainfully along, or running swiftly the race, bracing against fearful\nodds, or bravely out-riding the storm.  Taking it all as it comes, it\nis increasing action, motion, change.\n\n\n\n\nHUMAN DESTINY.\n\nConfucius, long considered the oldest and wisest of all the ancient\nteachers, when he was consulted upon an abtruse point of ethics, said\nin effect: \"Ask the ancients.  I do not know.\"  The results of modern\nresearch are constantly undermining the first-recorded ideas concerning\nthe age, and the degree of scientific and religious culture of the\nrace, and we may well feel like turning from the authenticated\nhistorical records with which we are familiar to ask of the old, old\nworld the occult meanings of the messages graven on pillar and on\nchiselled stone.  The records which have survived the storm and stress\nof the ages bringing down to us unexpected knowledge of the lives, the\nachievements, and the histories of far-off, long-buried, hidden and\nlost peoples, communities, and even distinct personalities, were\ncarefully planned and exactly executed by those who, already perceiving\nthe mutability of all human life, and all its affairs, who--in a\nword--realizing that \"the fashion of this world passeth away,\" sought\nto immortalize and perpetuate forever an absolute history of their own,\nand kindred races, by the uprearing of vast, imperishable monuments and\ntemples, and abodes of men.  The pyramids, majestic rock-hewn places of\nworship, and subterranean crypts are but the fingerposts of destiny.\nThe voice of the weird spirit of \"Memnon\" who sits enthroned within the\nawful wastes of the desert sands, moans on and on, ever the same\nawe-inspiring warning.  \"Listen, listen, vain, evanescent, puerile\nchrysalis, man!  Such as thou art, so were these most ancient of days\nover the history of whose toilsome, groping lives we keep forever\njealous watch and ward.  As they are today, so shall ye become.  A\nlittle space, a few cycles of time, and all that lives and stalks\nabroad in the full plentitude of energy and ambition shall become\nresolved into the unfathomable the unreadable mysteries of the ages.\"\n\nNot after such fashion shall we of this age of widespread enlightenment\nwrite our history on the annals of the planet's life, and evolution.\nAll that has gone before this time--the closing in of the vast\ncycle--has been, in a way, fragmentary, comet-like; the whole race of\nmankind has marched around the globe again and again.  The leaders--the\nhead--were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the\nvast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses,\nthe grovelling slaves, but a remove from the beasts of burden.\n\nThe spur of necessity, the development of ambition, and avarice, and\nthe unfolding of the ego in man forced him along upon unknown paths,\nkept him separate from his kind, and built up the distinct races, in\norder that the individuality of each might become distinctly marked and\nrecognized, that each, in his own special environment, might become the\nhighest possible expression of what climate, soil and other influences,\nincident to the natural heredity could evolve in the lives and beings\nof given races of men.  It is as though Nature had disported herself in\nbringing to life an infinite variety and diversity among her perfected\nchildren.  But men, here and there, have always shown the golden cord\nof kinship to astonish and bewilder the unwary and unthinking.\n\nThe virtue and honor of a race are considered mere superstition and a\nperpetuation of injustice and wrong, or are accepted as a lesson in\ncharity and brotherhood.  Thus is ever growing and becoming established\nthe entire homogeneity of the race.  We have girded the earth, and\nestablished our fiery rule in the depths of the seas; the time for the\nfulfilling of a prophecy far reaching in its results is even now at\nhand.  \"That which is spoken in the closets, shall be shouted from the\nhousetops.\"  Far and wide it is whispered in secret places, lest it be\nknown of selfish greed or ambitious tyranny, and this it is that the\nhuman heart conceives, and human lips proclaim: \"Liberty! liberty!!\nliberty!!!\"  Room for noble thought, freedom for grand and acceptable\nwork in the cause of human enlightenment, and the soul's redemption.\nThe whole vast aura of the earth, the illimitable ether trembles and\nthrills with the majesty of the word.  High above the thunder-roll of\nhuman discontent and awful pain, blazes the lightning of thought, and\nthe undying aspiration of the soul.  And thus shall we tell our\nstory--thus record the history of the now oncoming race.  Not in\nmaterial emblems only, consecrated to the forces of nature; but in the\nspiritual records which tell of the freeing of humanity from the\ntyranny of effete religions, and the upbuilding of a new composite\nrace, fear free, and worshipful only of recognized universal truth.\n\n\n\n\nETHICAL LAW.\n\nSetting aside all our hereditary beliefs, all our theological teachings\nlet us try to consider the true teachings of Jesus as differentiated\nfrom the instructions given by Moses for the guidance of the Jews.\nMoses never told his people to love and forgive their enemies.  Jesus\nmade a strong point of this, even bidding his disciples to forgive\ninjuries to the seventieth time.  Moses impressed upon his people the\nexcellence of revenge, always demanding \"an eye for an eye,\" a life for\na life.  Jesus said all that sort of compensation rested forever with\nGod, that He alone, who saw and knew the hearts of men, could deal\njustly with them.  The old Jewish law stoned to death the immoral\nwoman--not the man--O no! certainly not!  Jesus said to a flagrant\nwoman brought before him by a rabble of men: \"Let him that is without\nsin cast the first stone.\"  What divine sarcasm, and how they are said\nto have slunk away under his perception of them!\n\nHow is it now with the Christian religion in the so-called Christian\nnations?  Where on the face of the earth is there a community or a\npeople that is governed and controlled by the real teachings of the\nChrist?\n\nAll our jurisprudence is based upon the laws given to the Jews by their\nleader and lawgiver.  We take the lives of those people who are guilty\nof breaking certain laws of ours based upon the laws of Moses, and\nwhile we do not stone the life out of those women--not men--whom we\nprove guilty of breaking the seventh commandment, we do build up\nagainst them walls of conventionality, and of uncharity harder than the\nrocks once used for the killing of their bodies.\n\nConsider this beautiful law now in operation in the state of New York.\nIf a poor, starving, homeless, hopeless human being, maddened by the\nbitter woes of life, seeks surcease of pain by throwing off his own\nindividual life, by committing suicide, the law insists that such a one\nshall be not only forced back to a continuance of a horrible existence\nhere, but that each and every one of such sinners shall be punished by\nimprisonment and fine.  If that isn't serving the devil, what in the\nname of common sense is it?  Where are the good Samaritans among the\npretended followers of the loving Christ?  What sort of a reckoning\nwill such lawmakers have to meet, and what penalties undergo under the\napplied judgment of the Great Teacher and exemplars?  \"Woe to him\nthrough whom offences come,\" he said, and again: \"Because ye did not\ngive aid and comfort to the least of these, I will not call you of my\nflock.\"  Could anything be more brutally unmerciful than such a law as\nthis in its dealings with the most helpless, forlorn, and seemingly\nGodforsaken of all earth's children--the voluntary suicide?\n\nHow the demons must gloat over the lost souls who formed and enforced\nsuch a fiendish law!  Why this everlasting \"harking back\" to Moses,\nwhile posing as followers of teachings utterly at variance with his?\nLet us admit that we are Jews and stop persecuting them because they\nare not Christians, or let us try to know what Christ Jesus really\nmeant us to understand by his ethics of love and good will to men.\n\nMany people have lost all their faith in the immortality of the soul,\nbecause Moses did not preach it.  It is quite possible that even the\nworshipped Moses did not know everything that men may yet come to know\nabout this, and anent a world of other things.  Neither did the\ntroglodytes, nor the cliff dwellers know of electricity or the X-ray!\nBut Jesus knew of the life--the eternal, unquenchable life--of the soul\nbeyond this mortal existence, and he knew and taught the way and the\nlife that leads to that higher life.  All through his teachings run\nthis under-current of belief in the value of the individual soul, and\ninstructions as to the highest and best way to evolve it from its\nlowest estate up to the Infinite.\n\nFancy what a revolution would come to the whole so-called Christian\nworld if the ethics of Jesus, so plainly set down in his legacy to the\nchildren of men, were understood and lived!  What wrong and injustice\nwould be done away with, what works of mercy would be wrought!\n\n\n\n\nHUMAN LIFE.\n\nFrom the earliest soul consciousness to this very hour the mystery of\nhuman life has been, and is the subject of greatest interest.  What is\nthe origin of man?  What is he here for?  What is the everlasting\npurpose of him?  And what, O what is his destiny, here or hereafter?\n\nThe woeful story told in the Bible of the origin and the \"Fall of man,\"\nentailing untold miseries and uncomprehended anguish upon the whole\nhuman race, has never been believed in by thinking minds.  Especially\nall that \"rot\" about God's repenting Himself of having made man in his\nown image, and then setting Himself up in his only Son--a sacrifice to\nHimself--for the sins of the folks He had just made and set agoing, and\ntold to subdue and master the planet He had made for them to live on;\nbut this yarn caught the fancy of infantile and puerile minds, and also\nof the designing priests and theologians who have never, to this day,\ntired of \"baring the backs\" of humanity to this \"devil's rod,\"\nincreasing, and multiplying the tortures of the minds of such as could\nbe made to accept such stuff by fears which could never be comprehended\nor justified even in the minds of such children.\n\nOur Heavenly Father has never set \"metes and bounds\" to the souls of\nhis earth children; there is no hidden mystery that cannot be fathomed\nby them; there is no knowledge withheld from the earnest seeker after\ntruth.  But first of all, the mind must be clarified and set free from\nthe blasphemous superstitions engendered by the crude beliefs taught by\ntheologians.  The developed mind, and reason must arouse to rage and\nresistance in view of the wreck and ruin of untold millions of lives,\nthe result of false teachings.\n\n\n\n\nANIMAL LIKENESS.\n\nPeople have a way of saying of those they admire greatly: \"She has the\nface of an angel,\" or \"She is a perfect beauty,\" \"Beauty beyond\ncompare,\" et al, according to their ideas of what constitutes absolute\nbeauty; but the human countenances that have in them no faintest\nsuggestion of the kingdom below us are very rare.  If one looks\nattentively at the faces of the crowd as it surges along the most\nattractive street, there may be seen on review surprising resemblances.\nA man looking like an elephant, another like a toad, bull dogs and\nwolves galore, beneficent faces of old people, calm and patient,\nresembling work-worn horses, always folk of both sexes who suggest\nsheep,--now and again a cantankerous billy goat.  You may be sure that\nthe vast numbers of reptiles are not left out of the human\nrepresentation, and the birds, too.  The \"eagle eye,\" and the\ncarnivorous beak require no introduction to the menagerie, they belong\nthere.  But the felines have it, the cats, little and big, monopolize\nthe show.  Men regard a recognized resemblance to the king of\nbeasts--the lion--a compliment to their natural powers and rightful\nrulership, while women have to put up with being considered cats, and\nmany of them prove by their cattish doings their resemblance to their\nanimal ancestry.  There are babies everywhere about.  It is\ndisheartening to peer into their tiny faces and see in so many of their\neyes no \"speculation,\" no suggestion of intelligence.  They remind you\nof the eyes of a fish.\n\nHuman beings have through them strains suggestive of the animal\nkingdom.  It seems quite right to expect each one to act like the\ncreature he resembles, when under the stress of violent emotion.\n\n\n\n\nNATURAL SUPERSTITION.\n\nAt the creation of the race there was thrown around it such safeguards\nas should tend to its continuance.  These were, of course, implanted in\nthe crude mentality of undeveloped man.  Underlying all the rest and\nthe most important to its perpetuation was fear.  The ignorant child\nhas no fear of consequences attendant upon any action; experience\nteaches him to know what they are, and how to protect himself from\nthem.  This was the first lesson of primitive man, and when, through\nthe exercise of his inventive faculties, he had mastered his visible\nfoes, the animal monsters surrounding him and threatening his life, and\nhe found himself confronted by the action of terrible forces which he\ncould not grasp or see, he, by analogy, endowed them with personality,\nand such attributes as he knew himself to be possessed of, adding\nthereto powers and possibilities which were limited only by his own\nimagination.  This was the very beginning of the working of the mental\nin him, and while it was most grotesque and unreasoning, it yet drew a\nsharp line between the mere animal and the animal man, and his whole\nlife being spent in conflict with his foes, he naturally carried\nforward his growing perceptions of the existence of supernatural powers\nwhich were influencing his life upon the same basis, i. e., of an\nunending warfare, wherein he must always be the one attacked and\nvanquished.  Fear of the animal world developed into a shivering terror\nof the invisible, and so deep and lasting was this first impression of\nthe spiritual world upon his crude faculties, that it was made an\nuniversal heredity among all races and peoples.  It exists everywhere\ntoday, even among those who profess to be living in the light of a\nhigher revelation of God's purpose in the life of man.\n\n\n\n\nADAPTIVENESS OF MAN.\n\nThe most surprising and extraordinary quality of mind manifested by man\nis his ready power of adaptation to whatever may become a part of his\nearthly experiences.  It, alone, assures his continual progress upon\nall lines of growth connected not only with his earthly but also his\nimmortal career.  Great inventions, unexpected discoveries, and\nastounding revelations may stagger him for a moment; but the facility\nwith which he finally absorbs all the hitherto unknown outworkings of\nscience and natural law, and assimilates them to his inner sense of the\nfitness of things, changing all his relationship to his material life,\nand forcing himself to a readjustment not only of his mental\nperceptions, but also of his external existence gives proof sufficient\nof his being not only favored of the gods, but also of his near kinship\nwith them.  The marvels of mechanics, the divinely beautiful\nrepresentations of art, and the exalted inspirations of literature were\nnever so sought after, or so appreciated by large portions of the race\nas at the present time.  The peasant's cot today is made comfortable\nand beautified by accessories which within our historical knowledge\ncould not be commanded by kings and princes possessed of great riches.\n\nThe spiritual origin of the splendid architecture of the great \"white\ncity\" and later of the southern expositions is perfectly apparent to\nthe eye of the mystic and the seer, and these vast, concentrated\nexhibits of the world's work are object lessons of which the influence\ncan never be outlived even by the careless and unobserving.  Today the\ngreat leaders of men, led by inspiring thoughts which would have\nappalled their forefathers, perfect schemes for overcoming the\nobstacles inhering in the vast forces of nature, and harness them into\nsubservience to the growing needs of the race.\n\nWhat devil-worshippers those old chaps were!  To him they ascribed all\npower over things animate and inanimate, and the effrontery of the man\nwho should have even mentioned the possibility of talking over a wire,\nthousands of miles, or of utilizing the forces of Niagara, or of\nhundreds of inventions now in use in the most commonplace surroundings\nwould have been met with condign punishment.  Our inventors would be in\ndungeons instead of their comfortable laboratories, and our great\nengineers would long ago have lost their heads.  What a time we have\nhad getting the devil out of our mechanical life!  Now he can only rule\nin the immaterial world, in the crude imaginations of the ignorant and\nsuperstitious.\n\n\n\n\nDEVIL WORSHIP.\n\nThe Infinite Mind is in all things, everywhere what we are not.  Where\nwe are full of impatience, He is calm and unmoved; wherein we grope\nblindly, He, seeing the end from the beginning, is well content with\nhis own handiwork, and with the final outcome of the souls of his\nearthly children.  Many of the imperfections and individual\nshortcomings of people are laid aside in the dark crucible of physical\ndeath and the grave.  Such of these tendencies as are carried over into\nthe next plane of being, persisting in the spirit, are there dealt with\nas disease or ignorance, the results of malformation or bad\nenvironment.  God is love, not hate, and \"rejoiceth not in the death of\nthe wicked,\" nor in the punishment of the wrongly educated; for a large\nportion of the sin and seeming iniquity of humanity is the result of\nheredity and of a misunderstanding of the laws of God expressed through\nnature.  Undoubtedly there have been good men and true among those who\nsought to interpret God's law aright and formulate a code for the\nguidance and discipline of humanity in accordance with justice and\nequity.  But their premises were all wrong.  They took for their\nfoundation the old Jewish history wherein the God of the Hebrews was\nalways represented as a jealous being, rejoicing in revenge and rapine,\nand in all that the enlightened world can conceive of as characterizing\na devil.  So the modern world has been committed to a devil worship.\nNowhere is the ethical teaching of Jesus recognized in our laws.  It is\nthe old Hebraic attitude toward life and God.\n\n\n\n\nFANATICISM.\n\nPhysical death is the fulfilling of a natural law everywhere\nprevailing; a change, which the mutability of all material creations\nrenders necessary, and salutary, and, when received without the\nprejudices engendered by education, pleasing.  Religion has nothing to\ndo with it, and more than that it ought to influence every act of life.\nNo more has religion anything to do with the intercourse of disembodied\nspirits with those in the form.  That also is wholly controlled by laws\ninherent in the nature of things, and will, when the ridiculous hue and\ncry raised by sensualistic minds has somewhat abated, resolve itself\ninto a fixed fact having no more direct bearing upon human affairs than\nany other form of social intercourse.  It has taught no new code of\nmorals; it has not overthrown, so much as it has revealed the true\nstate of things.  It has revived the spiritual teachings of him by whom\nthe world--called from him Christian--professes to be guided and\ncontrolled.\n\nFanaticism is the law of some minds, and it will display itself in\nwhatever arena they are engaged.  In politics the man they vote for is\nalmost a god.  In mechanics, they have invented a machine which shall\nensure \"perpetual motion;\" in chemistry, the elixir of life, or a cure\nfor all the ills of human life; in morals, the kingdom of heaven is\nspeedily coming through the intervention of their dead friends.\n\nThe truest religion is that which adheres most faithfully to nature's\nlaws; for strive we ever so hard, we must return to them.  They are\nGod's will made manifest, and the mind most free from prejudice\nengendered by false education is the one which secures to itself the\nmost harmony, making possible that removal of \"mountains\" so often\nquoted--meaning the inevitable obstacles of spiritual life.\n\nChrist said: \"The kingdom of heaven is within you\" and he might have\nadded that of hell also.  Here is the beginning, if not the ending of\nall growth and reform.  There seems to be a universal tendency or wish\nto escape from one's self, and most so-called reforms begin at the\nsurface--the ultimate--rather than at the centre.  This should be an\neducation to children, teaching them that their temptations are to be\ndreaded only as they are responded to by something within, and that\nloses all power with them as they gain self-knowledge and self-control.\n\n\n\n\nTRUTH.\n\nThe demand for a knowledge of the truth, God's truth, is as old as the\nworld, the world of intellect and knowledge, the world we know about,\nand of which we have a more of [Transcriber's note: or?] less true\nhistory.  This cry of earnest and thoughtful men and women for truth,\n\"nothing but the truth\" has rung adown the ages from the pagan, and the\nnature worshipper through all the countless phases of belief to our\nmodern presentations of inspired faith.  Everyone who dares to think\nmust realize how this longing of humanity has been met and exploited in\ntimes past by ignorant and self-seeking people, and suffering humanity\nhas been imposed upon by superstitions and false teachings which have\nleft it in sorrowful dissatisfaction, or lost in the mazes of doubt and\nunbelief.\n\nThe fool hath said in his heart \"there is no God.\"  Life is too short\nand too full of interest in other directions for us to turn aside to\ncombat fools of any sort.  If we admit into our inner consciousness the\nabsolute recognition of the existence of a supremely loving and wise\nGod whose attributes are more marvelously great and grand than it can\never enter into the heart of man, or the mind of the highest archangel\nto conceive, we shall have taken the first step toward so positing\nourselves toward him, as we perceive him embodied in his works, as to\nbegin to see some faint indications of the divine purpose concerning\nthe souls of men created in his image.  All that we know of his laws\nand his intentions toward us, as indicated by our experiences here and\nnow, embodied as we are in matter, supplies the whole of the data from\nwhich we infer truth, the truth as it is in God.\n\nWe find, first of all, that we are set here a homogenous race, for as\nthe means of communication between widely separated branches of the\nfamily become established and easy, our horizons expand, racial\nprejudice and antagonisms vanish, new interests and fresh sympathies\narise, and we are thus brought to recognize the fact of our common\norigin.\n\nWhat a dull and deadly uninteresting place this planet would be without\nthe differentiation of the races!  What if the whole united world were\nIrish or German, Russian, or even loudly pervading, assumptive\nAmerican!  What an awful element of boredom would be added to our\nexistence; and yet there are people so blind to this most wonderful\nexpression of God's Providence, that they limit their sympathetic\nregards to a chosen few, and virtually cast all other peoples into\nouter darkness.  This applies especially to religious prejudices and\nbeliefs.  Let's see about this: your antecedents were, so far as you\nknow, Scotch and English, but by some providential intervention you are\nnow American.  You are expected to scorn and despise all other clans\nand races, and to condone all the faults and crimes of these which have\nbeen so honored by you, and this is called patriotism, and makes you\nfeel virtuous and popular, and it is necessary and right--politically\nconsidered--but not from the standpoint of the occult, the spiritual\nside of existence.  There is a wise intention and purpose in the\nblending of the races in their intermarriages, it is for the breaking\ndown of prejudices as old as the race itself, that have ever kept the\npeoples of the earth apart.\n\nThere is but one law of evolution, and that which holds for the\nindividual epitomizes that of a nation, or a world.  So as we see\npeople at a certain stage of their unfoldment of individuality exhibit\nan extreme egotism, amounting almost to an insanity, by isolating them,\nby confining them to the radius of their own mentality, so it is with\nthe different tribes and races and nations of the world.  They are set\napart to grow their own peculiar traits of character, possible only to\ntheir prescribed environment, that they may thus push forward their own\nspecial gifts and endowments to their own ultimates.  This is but a\nphase of their evolutionary process, a class preparation looking toward\na wider experience, wherein it shall come to be seen that all the world\nis akin.  Referring again to the unit man.  The shibboleth of the just\npresent past time has been individualism which, rightly understood,\nmeans simply that the soul of man has progressed to a point where\noccult forces can lay hold on the crude being and shape it into a\nworthy likeness of its divine Maker, and it must there stand alone,\nuntil it feels its at-one-ment with the Divine and sees and\nacknowledges the higher law and purpose of its being, and furthermore\nrecognizes why it has been called into existence.\n\nTruth is like certain chemicals.  It can only be retained by the mind\nwherein it finds an adapted affinity, and then it has in each a\ndistinctly individual expression according to the mental and moral\nstatus of that mind.  But laws and principles are stationary and\nunchangeable; it is our own personal knowledge which varies and changes\nwith our growth.  We may ignore and denounce certain phases of\nphenomena, but the phenomena work on just the same, unaffected by our\nbeliefs or disbeliefs.  The loss is ours if we willfully close our eyes\nand ears against the enlightening message which it would bring to us in\npassing our way.\n\n\n\n\nCHRISTS.\n\nConfucius, the moralist, Buddha, the intellectualist, Jesus, the\nloving.  Why reject the teachings of any one of this trinity of\ninspired and inspiring ones?  All are of God, light bringers to a\ndarkened world.\n\n\n\n\nHERO WORSHIP.\n\nAll along the individual life, the soul's development through matter,\nare strewn experiences which mark the dawning force which is finally to\nculminate in its marked individuality, and separation from the mass of\norganized, created beings.  These experiences are the rare awakenings\nof the soul to the realization and use of its own native powers which\nflow from its divine paternity and origin, and which constitute its\nbirthright and ultimate inheritance.  At times, the gifts and powers of\ncertain beings burst into bloom and fruition when least expected, and\ncast a radiance and a halo around the personality, which mark and award\nit a place among its fellow men, altogether superior to the general\ntrend and outworkings of the recognized character.  Around such\nilluminated points of high expression of the soul's possibilities\ngather other personalities and, by the action of a natural law,\ncrystalize about the central magnet of the inspired, and the inspiring\nthought or action, and thus is leadership created.  Barely does the\nentire life outwork itself upon lines which harmoniously express the\ninspiration which begot the godlike union of the human with the divine,\nand thus through the natural falling away from the ideal, those who\nseek the higher life through imitation or emulation of the model so set\nup are finally forced to put aside their hero worship and seek their\nown individual growth on the lines upon which they can lawfully unfold.\n\nThe varying moods, and idiosyncrasies of the hero or the saint turn\naway their followers to the contemplation and study of those great\nmoral principles which rule the world and control the universe.\n\nOn the physical plane great strides are being made.  The suppleness of\none, the power of balance of another, the feats of the acrobat, the\nwill of the juggler which commands the action, and the seeming\nsuspension of natural law; all these expressions are ever increasing\nand varying through the industry and the ingenuity of man, and point to\nthe possibilities of the hitherto undreamed of physical perfection of\ndevelopment, and grand unfolding of unknown powers.  Man must master\nthe earth by controlling the laws of the material world.  This is the\nfoundation of all things, and upon it shall be built all that the soul\nmust have for its unfoldment, within the aura and the radius of this\nexternal plane.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nIf there can be one thing more pitiful than all others it is to see\nlittle human bugs and reptiles mount their egotistical stilts and\ndeclare the non-existence of the Creator.\n\nIf the blatant critics would only give over blowing their individual\nhorns, and remark for a little the value of quiet introspection, many\nmysteries would reveal themselves and much good would be realized.\n\n\n\n\nREASON.\n\nHuman reason is the outgrowth of the intuition.  In its final analysis,\nit is the comprehension by the soul of the reality of truth and of its\njust relationships and values.  It is the power of discriminating and\ndeciding between the perception of the intuition and the testimony of\nfacts gathered by observation and experience.  The intuition of man is\nof the will, that of woman is of the affections; thus it is more\nspiritual than man's.  Just as the doctors have prospected and laid out\nand defined the functions of the physical body, so are the\npsychologists and the mental scientists seeking a way and method by\nwhich the attributes of the real being may be divided off into sections\nand labelled accordingly.  The fact is, the individual soul is all the\ntime struggling to reach its own at-one-ment with itself.  When it\ncomes under the tuition and discipline of the gods, and begins to\nperceive their methods, it can understand the whys and wherefores of\nthe intentions of life's experiences.  They are to consolidate and make\npractical vagrant emotions and tendencies, and lop off and scorch out\nthe idiosyncrasies of heredity and custom, and rouse the soul to a\nknowledge of its need of harmony with divine law.  Into the real soul\ndepths can no divulging line and plummet reach.  This domain belongs to\nits Creator alone.  It is only as the tests of living and doing\nmanifest hidden motives and meanings that we catch glimpses of the ego\nthat abides within and through this life, submerged as it is in the\nflesh.  We can know but little of what is now, or of what yet shall be,\nwhen the wholeness of the individual is established.\n\n\n\n\nSYMPATHY.\n\nBe not beguiled by pity masquerading in the guise of sympathy.  Real\nsympathy comes only through an understanding of conditions as the\nresult of the same, or of exactly similar experiences.  But though\nexperiences differ in details, according to the organizations and\nidiosyncrasies of individuals, the results in awakening the mind to a\nrealization of truth, and final evolution and growth of the soul are\nenough alike to foster a real sympathy, and mutual understanding.\nSouls thus linked together are truly friends and comrades.\n\n\n\n\nNEW RELIGIONS.\n\nThere is a great demand among the people of this, and probably of every\npast age, for something new in the revelations of religious thought and\nknowledge.  When it has not been forthcoming according to the desires\nof aspiring worshippers, the imaginations of would-be teachers and\nleaders have set to work to devise new schemes for the beguiling of\ntheir fellow mortals that should hypnotize them, and hold their\nallegiance to some new revelation of religion, or so-called science.\nThe following that some of the isms, and newly-hatched cults are\ngetting together is simply amazing.  They seem to reach out and pervade\nthe world, and they are not confined to any particular grade or class\nof people.  The \"Zionists,\" the \"Adventists,\" the \"Perfectionists,\" the\n\"Holy Rollers,\" the \"Christian Scientists,\" the \"Spiritualists,\" and\nunnumbered other forms of belief leave a wide margin for all sorts and\nkinds of people of peculiar idiosyncrasies.  So much has been promised,\nand so little realized in the way of comfort and satisfaction that\nwails of doubt, and sorrow are undiminished.  Every bit of this\n\"groundswell\" of seeking, tortured souls is just the reaction from\nslavish, blasphemous, orthodox religion.\n\nFrom the perceptions of the primitive man to the understandings of the\nunfolded brains of the thinking, reasoning people of today is indeed a\n\"far cry,\" and the queer vagaries, and the impossible goings on of the\nreputed gods, in partnership with Nature, that were once received with\nawe and profound belief, have now nearly lost their hold upon the\ncredulity of modern humanity.\n\nAs man has unfolded and his perceptions have enlarged, his fears of the\nwrath of God, and of his possible interference with man's schemes and\npurposes have given way to man's own will, and to his determination to\nsucceed in proving himself master of nature's forces, and of the whole\nplanet.  He has created the \"New Earth\" of material comfort and\nsatisfaction that has been so long foretold; while from the heavens\ncountless multitudes of awakened, arisen souls throng all the ways of\nlife, proclaiming the truth of the absolute present existence of a \"New\nHeaven\" also.  This is not a perfect time, by any means, even with all\nthis manifestation of progressive power.  Perfection in anything, in\nall things, is a matter of growth, of evolution, and the whole world is\nswinging along in the pathway of progress toward that goal, the\nknowledge of spiritual law which is God, as fast as time can move.  But\nwe are actually living in the enjoyment of the fulfillment of a\nprofound prophecy, with but little thought or realization of all it\nmeans or portends.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GROWTH PROCESSES OF THE HUMAN SOUL.\n\nIt is pitiful to think of all the woe and sorrow that have been shed\nabroad in the hearts of men and women, and even of little children, by\nthe teachings of ignorant and designing beings anent Death.\nFortunately, all our modern cults are emphasizing the fact that it is\nthe fear of death that is the \"last enemy\" of humanity that is to be\nput down and shorn of its terror.  Physical death is only a step in our\nevolution.  It cannot be otherwise than a progressive motion of the\nspirit.  It recalls the spirit from the make-believe, and\nmisunderstandings of its earthly environments, and experiences, and\nshows up the real and true status of life.  Vast numbers of human\nbeings, passing out of the chrysalis of the fleshly embodiment leave\nwith the body sins for which they have been condemned, and\nidiosyncrasies for which they are not accountable: there are, too,\npacks of people who have been so bamboozled by orthodox teachings, so\nset up in their egotism, that they die believing in their superior\nclaim to recognition by the gods, but who find themselves elected to a\nlong sit down in purgatory, or devachan--or whatever the place\nis--while they get acquainted with themselves as they really are.  The\nmost deplorable state is that of the souls who cannot rise from the\nearth conditions with which they are loaded down.  They fill the\natmosphere; they walk the earth dismayed and helpless; their whilom\nfriends and beloved ones will have none of them.  Even if one such is\nfortunate enough to find a medium through whom he can communicate, he\ngets little or no recognition or welcome, unless he can absolutely\nconform to the wishes of the purblind folk, who, knowing nothing of\nspiritual law, try to insist upon making conditions, and getting tests\nwhich are so outside of the law that even the Creator could not meet\ntheir demands.  For those who have no aspiration toward the spiritual\nlife, the only way is to plunge back into matter through another\nincarnation in the flesh.  There are no new souls created and relegated\nto this planet.  Their number is fixed.  They pass and pass, and come\nagain; good, bad and indifferent all come under the same, the only law\nof evolution.  The gates of life are crowded with such as these who,\nweary of prowling to no purpose, seek re-embodiment on this plane of\nexistence.  The process through which they thus pass is of itself one\nof refining and of readjusting to changed conditions, which means\ngrowth for the soul; for throughout the universe, the Great Law, the\nlaw which holds all things in equilibrium, is the law of progress,\nevolution, unfoldment.\n\nIt must be remembered always that back of all the recognized greetings,\nand the assurances of the continued, conscious life of our spirit\nfriends, back of all the lesser gods, who were human beings, like unto\nourselves, back of all the inspired teachings of all the seers and\nprophets is God, \"our Heavenly Father,\" in whom we live and have our\nbeing.\n\nThrough his appointed teachers is vouchsafed to his earthly children a\nknowledge of his love and wisdom.  It is boundless and free for all,\nand there are no \"chosen people.\"  He is the source, the fountain head\nfrom which flows all life, and all sustaining power.  The heavens\ndeclare the glory of God--the Creator; and the arisen souls of men\nproclaim his wondrous and unfailing interest in all his created beings.\n\n\n\n\nNECESSITY FOR PHENOMENA.\n\nSome people are born so spiritual-minded that the proper adjustment of\nthe several functions pertaining to the moral or religious nature stand\nclearly defined.  Their immortality is never doubted, their faith in\nthe unseen never obscured by clouds of passion, or dimmed by pressure\nof material necessities.  These are the beacon lights in the world's\nprogress.  These are the mariners to whom has been given a sure guide\nand compass.  The others are those who have little or no perception\nbeyond what is seen to befall animal life, and their growth into a\nfiner possibility must be slow and tedious.  It is in fact necessary\nthat many should \"rise from the dead\" and jam tables and chairs and\nthings around their apartments, ere they can fancy the possibility of\nany existence separate from this material life.\n\nThe most abominable of all egotisms is that which forever studies to\nlimit the possibilities of the Creator, to announce firmly that there\nis no further consciousness, and no need for human faculties after this\nlife is ended.  The most dignified attitude would be to give him the\nbenefit of the doubt, to admit that He has the power to continue, and\nremould, and readjust through all time and all eternity.  But this is\nnot a class of subjects which can be settled by logic.  It is based\nupon a conviction of the inner soul, and the most that anyone can do is\nto place himself as nearly as possible in harmony with some one law,\nand this will form a center around which a perception of more shall\ncome, and revolve around it grandly and in perfect time, thus\ncompleting the rounding out--the fullness--of the character of the\nindividual man or woman.\n\n\n\n\nWILL.\n\nWill, human will, is the result of concrete perceptions of the\nconscious mind.  Its development depends upon the experiences of the\nindividual soul, and its expression upon the environment, the\neducation, and spiritual discipline of the individual.  Having its\nfoundation in the functions necessary to the sustainment of the mortal\nlife of man, it naturally overrides all considerations outside of the\nobjects of its own pursuit.  It is the quality _par excellence_, the\npower of the gods, but only as it comes to relinquish all its selfish\ndeterminations, and yield obedience to the all-pervading Higher Will,\nthe will of God, in whom all life has its source and continuance of\nbeing can it march along the royal highway that leads to perfection.\nThis must be so eternally; for there can be no division of purpose or\nof interest in the divine Mind.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nAll religions based upon or derived from sorceries obstruct the\nprogress of the race, and will be, in the fullness of time,\ndisintegrated and readjusted to meet the growing demands of humanity.\n\n\n\n\nCHANGE OF ATOMS.\n\nThere is nothing so great that it cannot be undermined and destroyed.\nThere is nothing so established and sanctioned by age-long, consecrated\nusage that shall not finally be swept along into oblivion and utterly\nforgotten.\n\nThere is no combination of material atoms--no mechanism, however strong\nand useful--that shall not dissolve and be rearranged, and take on ever\nhigher forms of expression.  This is, and has always been the unfailing\nlaw of progression, of the outworking of the ascending series.  It\ninvolves all circumstances, and all earthly experiences.  Happy are\nthose who take Paul's advice, who can equip themselves with the armor\nof faith, which begets knowledge, and prepare to \"fight the battle of\nlife\" with courage and fortitude.\n\n\n\n\nOUR LIMITATIONS.\n\nMuch of our successful conduct of life depends upon our recognition of\nour limitations, and largely our limitations depend upon the will.  The\ntest lies in the power to discriminate between what one owes to one's\nself, and the duties and obligations imposed by responsibilities\ninherited or assumed.  Temperaments are so variable, no two human\nbeings alike.  Much, too, depends upon the power and habit of\nobservation.\n\n\n\n\nFINAL RACE EXPERIENCE.\n\nThe fear of death--shared in by all created beings--is nature's\nsafeguard against a universal stampede from this life by physical\ndeath, when the miseries of existence on this earthly plane become too\ndreadful to be borne, when the tortures of the soul, in the tortured\nbody drives out all reason, and all philosophy, and the consciousness\nsenses only the demand for surcease of agony.  Probably most people\nhave experienced, for a moment, in a time of terrible crisis, a\nthought, if not an impulse, to seek thus to end all suffering by\nflinging off the bonds of life here, and thus pass out into--what?\nSimply life in a changed environment, with exactly the same\nresponsibilities and soul needs, and the same causes of their miseries,\nand unsatisfied desires still existing in their minds.\n\nLife here is just one link in the endless, unbreakable chain of\nexistence.  It is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere.  Caught in the\nweb of life, there is no escape from its demands upon the individual\nsoul.  Somewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate, upward\nand onward, or downward into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of\nthings.  It is free to make its choice.  It can pursue the hard and\ntoilsome path of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop\naround through all the hells of life unrelated to God, and resistant to\nChrist.\n\nOne by one all human beings must obey the call to march over into the\nborder land, into nature's infinite invisible realm; they cannot help\nthemselves; no one can; on they go, an endless caravan, to the land of\nrevelations, the place of reviews where the utterly selfish are fetched\nup with a \"round turn\" and made to realize that a real Godliness is the\nonly thing that can pass muster, that mere beliefs do not count, and\nonly character tells.  How swiftly, how inevitably their places are\nfilled!  Nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of\nthe gods, the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled.\n\n\n\n\nRELIGIOUS PERFORMANCES.\n\n\"It is to laugh\" to \"see the heathen rage and devise a vain thing.\"  No\nhierarchy of earth, no multitudinous howl of ignorance and stupidity\nthat \"having eyes that see not; and having ears that hear not\" can\nblock the wheels of progress.  It has worked in the past, \"quite some,\"\nrouting out tortured souls and bodies by the millions, sending them\nflying off from this planet which was, and is their real home, turning\nrack and screw, and setting baleful fires on tender flesh, threatening\nfurther eternal hell fires; all for what?  Why, to prove that \"tweedle\ndee,\" is greater than \"tweedle dum,\" and this is the record of religion\nat the hands of the theologians and the priests!  This is the story of\naccepted orthodox religion.  Why, then, have a religion?  Why not try\nthe altruism taught by the great Master in a system of ethics that can\nnever be superseded by one higher and more truth-inspiring, better\nadapted to the perfect unfoldment of the human race?\n\nNo more of these awful persecutions, and massacres, and killings for\nthe \"glory of God;\" for the amusement of devils, really!  Practical\ncommon sense, and reason will surely be, in time, the salvation of this\nworld.\n\n\n\n\nOF TEACHERS.\n\nThe wisest teacher is the one who shows the gradual processes of\nunfoldment and growth in the mind and body, and in all the outworkings\nof the material world.  He who breaks down arbitrary distinctions in\nevery realm of life does the most toward liberating and enlightening\nthe world.  We are from infancy so accustomed to petty distinctions\nwhich have originated in ignorance, and from long use have been\nformulated into laws, fixed and binding, that were some person\nclear-sighted enough to the truth to show us our invisible bonds, and\nhow to sever them with the scalpel of common sense, and reason, we\nwould be amazed at our great freedom, and astonished to see the light\ncoming through thousands of loopholes and windows of the mind which are\nnow closed by an accumulation of dust and cobwebs of the petty\nsuperstitions of ages.\n\n     *     *     *     *     *     *\n\nMillions of beings are born so starved that no after nourishing can\nmake up for it.\n\n\n\n\nWISE USE OF MONEY.\n\nThe money that has been spent in building up blasphemous theologies\nwould have rid the whole world of poverty, and ignorance, if it had\nbeen beneficently employed with the kind intention of doing the peoples\nof the earth good, in every way, instead of trying to fix upon them\ndamnation now, and also arrange for it in their life hereafter.\n\nHere and there, scattered along the way, are souls who have escaped the\n\"drag-net\" of theology, but there are at this present moment great\nspirits that, even after having passed through death's dark crucible,\nare haunted by damning fears of bad results possible from too much\nfreedom.  The trail of the serpent is felt by them still.\n\n\n\n\nGENIUS.\n\nGenius means simply a high and true sympathy with inanimate and human\nnature, and the power to voice their various moods and tenses.\n\nParadoxes seem to run riot in all occult things.  Extremes in all\ndepartments are rare.  There are a far greater number of indifferently\ngood and indifferently bad people than of the superlatively good or\nbad.  So Nature everywhere keeps the equilibrium, and the eternal\nprocesses of evolution go on, and ever onward toward perfection.\n\nAll the pains of this human life come in consequence of the resistance\nof the souls of men to the law of progress which is always, and\neverywhere, laying hold of them to force them from the sod up to God.\nThey squirm, and wriggle, and howl, and make no end of fuss, because\nthe Lord calls upon them to awake from their animalism, and sloth, and\narise, and seek the kingdom.\n\n\"He knoweth our frame,\" no more comforting, or encouraging words than\nthese have ever been spoken.  \"He,\" the great soul-Father, knoweth us\nas we are.  He knows how to inspire with hope, and courage the most\nsorrowing and lost.  The felon in his cell, the outcast from all that\nmen call good, are, with those of superior spiritual attainments,\nsubjects of this beneficence.  Nearly every soul feels, at some period\nof existence, its subtle relationship to a something, a power outside\nof its material life and surroundings.  The experiences of this life\nare calculated to strengthen and perfect that relationship.  Jesus\nChrist is credited with saying, \"Be ye lifted up even as I am lifted\nup.\"  That is, in spirit, to a perception of the relationship of your\nsouls to the great \"Over soul.\"\n\nBe ye, then, patient with yourselves, and with each other.  Be sure\nthat you are being taught, \"lifted up\" to a perception and knowledge of\nthese things, as fast as it is lawful for you to be.\n\nIn God's good time ye shall blossom and bear a goodly fruitage.\n\n\n\n\n\"THOUGHTS ARE THINGS.\"\n\nBut thoughts, as potent entities, must pass from the formative,\nnebulous condition into a crystallized state by, and through some form\nof externalization of language, spoken or written.\n\nThoughts must be created--born--through the absolute form-creation of\nthe human brain, in order to secure to them potentiality, and\nimmortality.\n\nThe status of the individual brain, decides its products, the character\nof its brain children.  Thoughts that are not caught, clung to, and\ncrystallized, through the action of the external brain can have no\nplace in the external life of this world, although they do have their\npower and influence in the incorporate, silent, ever-working world of\ncause.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe mind digs deep to bring forth the real.\n\nThe soul dreads the edicts of its ignorant prototypes.  The ego comes\nforward with its battle-axe, and the spirit rejoices and exults.  Body,\nSoul, and Spirit; Nature's trinity.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nAs spirit _per se_, has no entity, and only evolves individuality\nthrough its relationship with matter, and has no other conscious\nexpression, the so-long-talked-of \"fall of man\" was not a fall\ndownward, but a process upward, necessary to his being, to his\nexistence as man.\n\n\n\n\nUNFOLDMENT.\n\nThe persistence of the human soul after physical death proves only that\nit is a candidate for immortality.  The race is just begun.  The path\nthat leads onward to the eternal heights is so long, so beset with\ndifficulties, with pains and penalties, losses and crosses, and all the\nparaphernalia of evolution and growth that the stoutest heart, the\nstrongest will would fail to respond to the call to \"come up higher,\"\nwere one to at once become aware of what inevitably lay before him.\nWhen any individual soul has dwelt long enough in the spirit realm to\nbegin to feel the unrest of the law of eternal progress, he senses the\nlaw of reincarnation, and his earthly home draws him by attraction.  He\nis preferred the cup of \"renunciation,\" and forgetfulness, and is shown\nthe way to his next embodiment.\n\n\n\n\nINVENTIONS.\n\nThe inspired thinker sends out a thought to the world, it is taken up\nand passed through other brains, it becomes distorted or is recognized\nby them in its integrity according to the caliber of mind, or the\nidiosyncrasies of the one representing it.  A thought or idea, once\ngiven to the world, becomes common property.  It is not possible to put\non mortgages or limit the use that may be made of it, or how it may be\nmade to bring in returns to commercially-inspired minds.  A woman\ndevised a style of dress which she wore for her comfort at her own\nconvenience.  Another woman gave exactly the same pattern and details\nto the public, and is now living in elegance on the income derived from\nanother.  A man--a worker--invents an improvement, or a better method\nof doing things.  The firm adopts and makes money out of it, and its\noriginator is forgotten.  There are, however, clever people who know\nhow to protect their inspirations, and get the benefit themselves.  The\ngreatest  disappointment comes to the originator when the thought is\nintended to indicate and outline action.  So few people can achieve the\nsame point of view, so few can be depended upon for united, harmonious\naction that the best organizing power is at times fetched up with a\n\"round turn,\" and the progress of the good work intended becomes\ngreatly impeded, or virtually lost.\n\n\n\n\nDIVINE HEALING.\n\nThere are today many cults professing to have healing powers; but\nwhether they are named \"Christian,\" or \"Mental,\" or \"Spiritual,\" or\n\"Divine Science,\" or whether the place of healing be in some shrine\nsacred to an accredited saint, or only in the presence of the patient\nreceiving the benediction; they all operate under the same law; there\nis no other.\n\nJesus was the great transmitter to humanity of a knowledge of the power\nof divine healing; he never specialized.  He never said: \"I have cured\nyour liver complaint, or your lungs are healed,\" etc., according to the\nailment of the person seeking his aid.  He only told them: \"Thy [own]\nfaith hath made thee whole.\"  It was spoken of God long ago: \"He\nhealeth all our infirmities.\"  The quality and the amount of personal\nmagnetism possessed by the healer--the transmitter of the divine\nhealing--does make a vast difference in the results of such efforts.\nThe \"Nazarene\" was devoid of egotism, and selfishness, and his desire\nto heal and bless humanity was with him an overwhelming passion.\n\nThat Jesus knew the value of right physical habits is evidenced by the\nway he had of admonishing his patients to \"go and sin no more,\" that\nis, stop breaking nature's hygienic laws.  He had all along told them\nthat right thinking was necessary to right doing.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe transcendentalism of one age, shorn of the peculiar shading given\nto it by the individuality of the mind through which it first manifests\nitself, becomes the hard \"common sense\" of the next.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nWhat is Truth?  Truth is God.  God is Truth.  Nothing in the universe\ncould exist for one instant unless it had in it some faint intuition of\ntruth, and it is this that we are here to discover.\n\n\n\n\nSURPLUS.\n\nHuman beings slaughtered on battle fields, or carried off by pestilence\nand famine by thousands, or perishing by accidents by sea or by land by\nhundreds, are individually dear and useful, and are mourned; but in the\ngreat aggregate of moving life on this planet, they count as surplus.\n\n\n\n\nANALYSIS OF THE \"LORD'S PRAYER.\"\n\nHow shall we pray?  To whom shall we pray?  Shall we pray at all?\nThese are unsettled questions in the minds of many good persons who are\nstriving to perceive the highest truth and to be guided thereby.  The\ntests that have been applied to the usefulness of prayer by a large\nclass of religious people have been, for ages, purely materialistic.\nThe Lord has been importuned for the bestowal of personal favors, from\nthe manufacturing of the right kind of weather to the slaying of\nenemies, and from the righteous putting down of infidels, to the\nspending of dollars with which to build high steeples.  Then, too, God\nhas had the benefit of the very best advice concerning the way He ought\nto deal with the heathen, how He should treat sinners of every sort, so\nas to show himself equal to managing his fractious subjects, and,\nfinally, how to carry things along generally after such a fashion as\nshould win and hold the respect of his earthly advisers.\n\nThis utter misunderstanding of the true function of prayer has caused\nmany earnest souls to sorrow over lost faith in what should have been\nto them a source of strength and uplifting.  Jesus said: \"Ask, and ye\nshall receive,\" and as all his teachings referred to things of the\nspirit, he must have meant to indicate to his followers that whatever\nwas sought for in the line of true spiritual enlightenment would surely\nbe given.  No one prays for houses and lands, for gold and other forms\nof material wealth, \"for Jesus Christ's sake.  Amen.\"\n\nAll through the teachings of Jesus run the mention of his and our\nHeavenly Parent, \"Our Father,\" and since much of our knowledge of\nspiritual things comes through our perception of the law of\ncorrespondences, we naturally feel and believe that we have not only a\nFather but also a Mother in heaven.  The recognition of the mother\nelement--the Divine Mother--has always been a most potent factor in the\npower of the Roman Catholic Church to retain the unchanging devotion of\nits faithful adherents.\n\nThe reaction from a bigoted belief in, and a blind reliance upon a\njealous and tyrannical Overseer sitting in state to judge and condemn\nto everlasting torment all but a few of earth's children--a\nterror-inspiring God--has naturally turned the minds of many from\nrecognition of any sort of relationship between humanity and a\nsuperior, divine and beneficent Power.  The atheist glories in his\ndisbelief, and calls exultingly upon those whose faith has become the\nstepping-stone to knowledge for proofs that he is not right in assuming\nto occupy the superior attitude of mind.  Suppose for a moment, that\nall the world were brought to coincide with him.  How would it benefit\nthe race to prove it to be wholly orphaned--utterly left out of all\nconsideration for its future care and happiness?\n\n\"Like as an earthly father pitieth his children,\" Jesus affirmed, is\nthe love of our Father, God, for the human-race.  \"I and my Father are\none.\"  \"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.\"  These are some of the\nreferences made by Jesus to the relationship that he constantly\nasserted was established between his own soul and that of his Father,\nin the supernal world, and thus he taught his followers to pray:\n\n\"Our Father which art in Heaven.\"  This is the first recorded utterance\nof the modern shibboleth: \"The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of\nMan.\"  In this now universally employed invocation, Jesus claimed for\nhimself no other mention than that in which he instructed all of\nearth's children to join.\n\n\"Hallowed be thy name.\"  In a sacred name there is power to hold the\nwavering thought; so may thy name be hallowed! _i. e._, held sacred.\nIt is affirmed that every created thing has a real appellation, a name\ngiven to it by its Creator.  We pass through this rudimentary state of\nexistence known as John or Mary, or by some other of the thousand or\nmore titles in vogue that are indicative of different personalities;\nbut it was long ago shown to an inspired teacher that, at a given point\nof development, each soul should be given its true name, a new one that\nshould be \"written in the forehead.\"  Our Puritan progenitors had a dim\nperception of a higher and inner meaning to names.  By calling their\nchildren Grace, Mercy, Patience, Charity, etc., they sought to embody\nspiritual principles.\n\n\"Thy kingdom come.\"  No heavenly kingdom can ever be \"let down\" to the\nearth.  The earthly must become developed and interpenetrated by the\nspiritual, and thus be lifted up into an harmonious co-relationship\nwith the Divine.\n\n\"Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.\"  There is but one\nwill; so make it known to us that we may realize out [Transcriber's\nnote: our?] at-one-ment with the Divine, even as do the \"angels in\nheaven.\"\n\n\"Give us this day our daily bread.\"  \"The earth is the Lord's and the\nfulness thereof.\"  (Make us partakers of thy bounty, that our bodies\nmay have needed nourishment.  Illuminate our spiritual understanding\nthat we may take to ourselves each day such spiritual food as we are\nbest fitted to appropriate and use.)\n\n\"And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.\"  Up to this\npoint there is simply suggested the personal relationship between the\npetitioner and the Being to whom he prays; but into this phrase quite\nanother element is introduced--a new factor; forgive us, as we in turn\nforgive our enemies.  This puts upon one who utters these words the\nresponsibility of answering his own prayer, or of making the conditions\nwhereby he shall be forgiven and accepted, that thus may be established\nthe eternal vibrations that bind the very lowest to the Highest.\n\n\"And lead us not into temptation;\" _i. e._, graciously protect us from\nfollowing the devices of our own ignorance; but if we willfully go our\nown way, and are overcome with grief and disappointment because of our\nmisdoing, \"deliver us from [the] evil\" consequences thereof, by\ninspiring our minds with courage to bear our pains and penalties with\ntrue heroism, and teach us through our experiences wherein lie our\nhighest growth and wisdom for all our future lives.  \"For thine is the\nkingdom, and the power\" to create and destroy, \"and the glory.\"  (All\nthings begin and end in God.)  \"Forever and ever.  Amen.\"\n\nJesus had undoubtedly learned the pure ethics of this all-embracing\nappeal.  Principles are unchanging; but, as the law of evolution\ncarries each succeeding representation of the underlying facts of\nspiritual science ever higher in the ascending series, on the spiral\npathway that leads to the kingdom of God, so in each is embodied a more\nadvanced phase or externalization of such facts.  The revelations\nvouchsafed to the world through the teachings of Confucius, Buddha, and\nother saviors of men appealed only to the intellect.  Jesus was the\nfirst to announce to the heart-hungry that \"God so loved the world\"\nthat he sent one of his best beloved sons to bear witness to his own\neternal love, and to show how all may become participators in its\nboundlessness.\n\nThe potency of prayer corresponds to the power of the thought or to the\nexalted aspiration of the soul projecting it.  There are some who,\nseeking divine aid, are too weak in this respect to realize any special\nresults, while the prayers of others ascend as on the wings of eagles.\nThis attitude of the soul is not to be confounded with the \"communion\nof saints.\"  Communion indicates the existence of a degree of equality\nwhich, in the relation of finite man with his Maker, cannot be.\n\nAn occult wave has swept round the world.  The seals are being broken,\nand the sphinxes are speaking wherever they find ears to hear and minds\nto comprehend.  The heart of the mystery is this; there is no new thing\nto be proclaimed.  \"Spiritual things are spiritually discerned,\" and,\nwith the divine illumination vouchsafed to all, \"a wayfaring man,\nthough a fool,\" may see and know the deep things of God.  But no door\nwill be opened, no angel or \"minister of grace\" or \"spirit friend\" will\ndescend the ladder of light that leads to the realms supernal, no\ninspiration of God will ever come to any soul on earth without\nprayer--in response to either conscious supplication or unconscious\naspiration toward the Giver of every good and perfect gift.  The\nultimate function and use of prayer is simply to establish our\nrelationship with the divine and ever-lasting forces that rule and\nguide our lives.  These are ever operating to help us to live above the\npurely personal relationships that limit our growth and advancement\nalong the lines of spiritual unfoldment, and to open to our souls\nvistas of perfectness on the higher planes of wisdom and understanding\nof the mysteries of immortal life.\n\n\n\n\nABSURD BELIEFS.\n\nThe supreme egotism of man has been largely corrected through the\ninfluence of education and experience which have made him conscious of\nthe ridiculousness of his demands for recognition of his supremacy.\nEach one of those high, old eastern Emperors had to have his pedestal,\nand his title of god, without reference to his real character.  Modern\nmen do not expect to be real head-up gods.  They know too much to be so\nridiculous.  But there are those who seem to feel that they are at\nleast \"little tin gods on wheels.\"\n\nWhen the Nazarene appeared among men possessing godlike qualities, it\nwas entirely in line with the custom of the time to call him a god.\nThere was neither logic nor common sense in the role Jesus was to play.\nHe was God of all gods.  He was, at the same time, the Only Begotten\nSon of God, and, as the idea of sacrifice to the numerous gods was an\nimportant part of the religious orgies of the time, they could only\nbring that into their new scheme for entrapping souls by making the\nSon--who was really God--a sacrifice to himself, to propitiate himself,\nand keep himself from utterly destroying and damning the folks He\nhimself had created.  So they made it out that this good man should be\na propitiation for the \"sins of the race.\"  Silly; improbable;\nunlawful; incredible; impossible.  The more useless and undeveloped\npeople were, the more they believed that the sacrifice of a very\nGod--to their egotistical minds--was not too much for the salvation of\ntheir infinitesimal, pinhead souls.\n\n\n\n\nTHE RESURRECTION.\n\nIt has been believed that dead folks stayed boxed up under ground\nwaiting--ages perhaps--for the last trumpet to sound to call up the\nsleeping billions to the surface of the earth to the final \"day of\njudgment,\" when they should all swarm up out of their graves to be let\nto know by the great Judge of all to which class they belong, the\n\"sheep\" or the \"goats\"--there was to be only those two kinds--sheep to\ngo straight to heaven, all the others to be cast into hell fire to burn\nforever.  The air would be full of toes and fingers and legs and heads\ncoming from all directions to join themselves to the bodies from which\nthey had been detached in their physical life; it was understood that\nin every case there would be no mistakes made, no white person, minus a\nmember of his body in life, would find himself persistently chased up\nby arms or legs--especially by heads--of a different color, and form,\nfrom what he would know were his own; but, by some unaccountable magic,\nsome divine law of attraction each dissevered member would instantly\nrecognize its true belonging and fly to its former familiar location.\nWhere this great final \"round up\" is to be held has not yet been made\nknown to the \"true believers.\"  \"Chautauqua\" has been suggested, and\nalso the lot back of the \"White House\" in Washington, D. C.  There are\nobjections, however, to these and some other places because of the\nlimited area, but as \"with God all things are possible\" either spot\nmight be made to answer.  The great open-air university at Chautauqua\nis known everywhere on earth--and possibly beyond--and certainly would\nbe a good point for the saints to hail from, in their upward journey,\nand the \"White Lot\" in Washington would shorten the journey for those\nwho are booked for the trip in the other direction.\n\nOut of this belief has grown quite a little sect which takes it upon\nitself to decide upon the fate of all the world outside of its very\nlimited number.  It is hard upon the Methodists and Presbyterians and\nall the other cults and sects scattered about over the whole earth that\nthey should all be doomed to everlasting hell fires because of a little\ndifference of opinion with these self-elected judges!  The more insane\nof them have ignored all the claims of citizenship, have burned their\nfences and their barns, and given away all their earthly belongings,\nand refusing to be taught by the repeated failures of the many times\nset for the final ending of the planet, have donned their unbleached\ncotton \"ascension robes,\" and have sat around on the hill-tops and\nwaited long for the end of all things earthly, and the fun of seeing\nall the people who did not agree with them switched off into hell.\n\nThe real beginning of this came from two sayings purported to have been\nthe words of Christ.  While hanging upon the cross a man nailed to\nanother cross, begged Jesus to save him.  Jesus was an adept, highly\nclairvoyant.  He saw that the man was good--probably better than the\npeople who had hung him there to die--and that if he was a thief, as\nthey said, he had stolen things for the benefit of his people for food\nand for sandals and things for the family.  So he said: \"This day you\nshall be with me in the spirit world.\"  Some clever person caught on to\nthis and said to himself: \"That settles it, if one man can go straight\nthrough without being laid up in the ground after death, all can.\"\nThis view furnished an altogether different outlook and gave people a\nnew idea of the law.  Jesus assured his disciples that the kingdom of\nheaven would come on earth very soon, in fact, while they were yet\nalive.  Well, he knew a lot about the soul, and immortality and all\nthat, but nothing at all about evolution, or electricity, or what\nwonderful unfoldment of brain and magnificent works man should achieve.\nThe Nazarene, like all seers and prophets, was simply mistaken in point\nof time.  He did not give the Creator time enough to bring all things\nto pass, and if the people who think this world is actually coming to\nan end pretty soon would just think once that the Creator does not set\nthings agoing solely for the purpose of destroying his work, and let\nhim have his own way and time, they would save themselves much trouble.\n\n\n\n\nTHE CREATOR.\n\nGod--the all-creative Spirit--is the most positive element, or force in\nnature, and nothing is or can have existence in the external world that\nis not conceived and formed first in the matrix of the spirit.  So it\nis in the realm of the invisible that the law of progress, of unending\nevolution takes its rise and becomes operative.  Still, however clearly\ndefined may be a truth, a law in the mentality of the higher powers, it\ncan only be externalized to the degree comprehended by the mind through\nwhich it is given to the world.  All that saves this world from being\nin a state of utter darkness is the fact that from its very beginning\nthere have been souls capable of being illuminated by the light from\nthe higher life, spirits so grounded in a faith in its certainties that\nthey have shone out upon the stern and awful path trod by the human\nrace like beacon lights above a stormy sea, or beaming stars shedding a\ncalm radiance upon a trackless waste.\n\n\n\n\nRETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.\n\nWe know so little of the mysteries of occult, divine law, and yet\ntaking thought of the entire history of the human race, such as we\nhave, and our own personal experience and observation, we must\nrecognize that there are certain fixed principles, certain laws,\nindicating the undying value of right living.  To understand and apply\nthese laws to the all around conduct of life, to the practical affairs\nof human effort, is in its highest, its spiritual sense the real\nbusiness of earthly existence.  Those religious teachers who have had a\ndegree of spiritual enlightenment have wrapped up their perceptions of\nmoral law, and disguised them with creeds and dogmas, and have used\nthem to further their personal ambitions, and to hold their power over\nsuch people as they have been able to hypnotize into believing in them\nas the vice-gerents of the Most High.  All this has been going on for\nlong, and has been handed down through unnumbered generations until it\nhas crystallized into forms and ceremonies, and unmoral\nconventionalities which stultify the race.  \"Dead loads\" of good people\nbelieve they are doing God's service in trying to live up to these,\nnever knowing how much they are the result of fanaticism and ignorance,\nand the concentrated intention of every sort of priests to keep their\npower over unthinking minds.  Here and there, scattered along\nthroughout the realms of intelligent being, there have always been\nnoble and true men and women who have brought a sufficient\ncomprehension of the out-working of the eternal principles of\nunswerving moral law to make their conduct of life here wise and\ndependable, and to give to them the assurance of a successful\ncontinuance of individual life in other spheres of being, beyond\nearthly limitations.  Those untrammelled souls who thus unfold grow up\ninto an at-one-ment with the divine, all-pervading principle we call\nGod.  They have been, and are light bringers, and saviors of humanity.\n\nThe perfection of individual character can only be achieved by\ndetermined effort, by unshrinking, concentrated labor.  This simply\nmeans an acceptance of all the inevitable experiences incident to this\nlife, coupled with a brave determination to wring from each and every\none of them, good, or seemingly bad and unfortunate, all the lessons it\ncan teach, and all the truth it can possibly reveal.  This evolution of\nthe soul is from the innermost sacred precincts of the personality, and\nit is often unrecognized by those who have the most inclusive\ndevelopment of the attributes and innate resources of their own souls.\n\nThose people who are thus intent upon their souls' growth do not flaunt\nthemselves in forms and ceremonies.  Life is too short.  The chief, the\nmost important moral law is the law of justice, absolute unerring\njustice.  This law is the very least comprehended of men, because its\nmajesty, its even-handedness has been so misinterpreted, so travestied\nby various kinds of religious teachers, rulers, and self-appointed\njudges.  Man-made laws which everywhere prevail tend always to\nsegregate people into classes, producing results devoid of equity,\nfavoring the materially superior.  It is quite common for people who\nknow nothing whatever of the operations of occult and spiritual law to\nignore all responsibility for their unhappy earthly experiences, and\n\"blame it all\" on God.  A child dies, the mother accuses God of making\nher the special subject of his unkindness in taking away from her the\nobject of her love.  Everywhere, among all classes of people this is\nnot at all an unusual experience.  The fact is, the prevailing\nignorance of natural law--moral, spiritual law--is alone the cause of\nnearly all the misery of humanity.  God has nothing whatever to do with\nit.  There is this about it: there are the \"eternal verities,\" the laws\nwhich speak ever to the consciousness of man, and whether they are\nbroken in ignorance or willfully set aside, the results are nearly the\nsame; the penalties exacted by beneficent justice are unalterable; only\nin one case, there must finally be regrets for ignorance; in the other,\ngreat remorse for wickedness and ill-doing.  But these results are not\neternal, though the dreadfully cruel teachings of religion have made\npeople believe so.  The faintest stirrings of desire to be better, the\nleast aspiration toward the higher life is sure of a response from\nloving, compassionate beings in angelic ministrations.\n\nThe priests of different religions who have been most valiant and\npositive in preaching hell fire and eternal damnation have entirely\nlost sight of this fact.  Not the most strenuous of the whole lot has\never been able to follow one miserable wretch into the spirit world to\nfind out whether his prognostications anent his hypnotized victims,\nhave \"come true.\"  \"_Au contraire_,\" great numbers of reputed sinners\nhave come back in their real personality to report to their friends\nthat there is no such fate for anyone, that it is one great lie.  But\nit must not be supposed that there are no sure enough hells.  There\nhave to be places for the hellish to stay till they come of a better\nmind.  Nature provides for them other opportunities for their gradual\nredemption through re-embodiments in the flesh on this earth.  There is\nbesides a constant outpouring from the dark abodes of estrayed and\nbenighted souls, for the all-embracing love of our Father-Mother\nreaches even the horribly suffering lunatics, made so by their selfish,\nvicious lives here on earth.  There is, indeed, the greatest possible\ndifference between an intended eternal punishment of sin, such as has\nbeen preached for ages for the purpose of scaring people out of their\nwits, and a recognized, just retribution for broken law.  Punishments\nsuch as have been believed in suggest a punisher, and our Father in\nheaven has been blasphemously represented as \"angry with the wicked\nevery day\" and glad to have a chance to pour out his \"bottles of wrath\"\non their elected heads.\n\nThe torturing remorse of the slowly awakening consciousness of those\nwho have lived selfishly and viciously is far beyond the pains of the\nburning, material fires.  Every human being that has in it a living\ngerm of spirit shall be liberated and helped toward the light, not by\nany so-called personal redeemer--that is not possible--but by the power\nof its own aspiring soul, and even moderately decent folk shall come to\nenjoy all that they have imagined and longed for, and all great souls\nshall find the peace they have dreamed of.  All souls everywhere in the\nspirit world will have all they have truly earned in their earthly\nlives.\n\nWhile we stay here we are hardly protected from the envious thoughts\nand deeds of evilly disposed and vengeful people.  Once safely landed\nin that superior and satisfactory realm no such invasions can reach us\never.\n\n\n\n\nTHE SOUL.\n\nThe soul is the vehicle of the spirit.  It passes from the earthly life\nalong with physical death, its uses ended.  Developed by earthly\nexperiences, it grows and has the power to detach itself and represent\nthe personality of the individual to which it belongs, but only while\non earth; it is not employed thus after the spirit leaves the body.  It\nis the \"similacrum\" of the body, and is often mistaken for the immortal\npart, the enfranchised spirit.  But the spirit is generally unawakened\nand can only grow with the pabulum of spiritual influence, in harmony\nwith spiritual law.  It is this that complicates this life and retards\nthe at-one-ment of the greatest of all trinities; body, soul and\nspirit, the natural three in one.  The soul element is the bequest of\nthe parents--especially of the mother--to their progeny.  If the\nconditions are at all in harmony with divine law, the mother pours out\nall her soul's influence upon the forming body of her child in the\ndivinest love ever manifested on earth.  Its birth and manifestation\nare of the immortal spirit, and create in her offspring some\nconsciousness of, some desire for immortality.  Of all earthly\nphenomena this of motherhood is the most marvelous, and naturally the\nleast understood, and the most slightingly regarded.  Its universality\nreduces it to the commonplace.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe conventionalities are not intended to keep people apart who really\n\"belong\" together and who ought to meet, but to protect those who wish\nto live good lives from the invasions of envious curiosity.\n\n\n\n\nWOMAN.\n\nWoman is the constructive, the upbuilding force.  With what patient\nendurance she awaits the slow growth of the bodies she shelters beneath\nher heart that are to hold souls here and give them human instruments\nwith which to do their work on the material plane of life.  In this\nsphere, the destructive jealousy of man of the power of woman does not\navail, her kingdom is everlasting.  Crushed and enslaved she is, and\nalways has been, but only to gather to herself greater power.  She is\nthe natural lawgiver, the supreme ruler.  Man, the intimate holder of\nthe material forces, dreads the power of woman, and fears her invasions\nof his long-established rights in his chosen domain.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *      *\n\nUnwilling motherhood has filled the world with vice and crime.\n\nWhen men, women and children began to return to earth after physical\ndeath and give their recognized testimony to the fact of their\nspiritual resurrection, and of their continued real life with all its\npersonal endowments exactly as they were here, the crude ideas of\nignorant minds were forever set aside by millions who can now testify\nto the absolute truth of spirit return, instead of being buried in the\nearth waiting for an impossible time of reckoning and judgment.  Do you\ncall all this blasphemous?  Open your eyes.  Look!  Listen!\nDiscriminate!  Know where is the real, high blasphemy.  \"God bless us\nevery one.\"\n\n\nADIEU.","title":"Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":38898}