Chapter IV: Part 4

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

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

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

ANIMAL LIKENESS.

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

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

NATURAL SUPERSTITION.

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

ADAPTIVENESS OF MAN.

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

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

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

DEVIL WORSHIP.

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

FANATICISM.

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

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

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

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

TRUTH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHRISTS.

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

HERO WORSHIP.

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

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

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

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

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

REASON.

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

SYMPATHY.

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

NEW RELIGIONS.

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

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

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

THE GROWTH PROCESSES OF THE HUMAN SOUL.

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

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

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

NECESSITY FOR PHENOMENA.

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

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

WILL.

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

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

CHANGE OF ATOMS.

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

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

OUR LIMITATIONS.

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

FINAL RACE EXPERIENCE.

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

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

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

RELIGIOUS PERFORMANCES.

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

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

OF TEACHERS.

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

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

WISE USE OF MONEY.

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

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

GENIUS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"THOUGHTS ARE THINGS."

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

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

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

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The mind digs deep to bring forth the real.

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

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

UNFOLDMENT.

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

INVENTIONS.

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

DIVINE HEALING.

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

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

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

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

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

SURPLUS.

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

ANALYSIS OF THE "LORD'S PRAYER."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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