ness, know the future? or am I told of coming events by Angel Guardians that "bear me up in their hands lest I dash my foot against a stone"-as the ancients believed. There are too many evidences of spirit guardianship to be gainsaid by truth-lovers. If all persons would be frank today as in old times, few would not certify to this truth. Xenophon, when retreating with his ten thousand Greeks, was told in a dream that he would succeed in crossing, what all believed an impassable river. He did pass it, and his army was thus saved from destruction. All ancient history is full of testimonials of this kind that the true scientist may not disregard; and most men and most women have had like experiences, that make the intuition of an after life a confirmed certainty to them. Yes, science has about demonstrated (I think it has fully done so) that man has a life beyond this present earth-life-a life of infinite freedom and infinite knowledge of the past, the present and the future.

YE 120TH LESSON.

Mind and Matter.

The origin of varieties is not accounted for in any theory of evolution or how incipient organs-as fins for instance, had their start. But. if true that the moneron extemporizes arms to reach after foodparticles by extending a portion of its jell-body to embrace them, does not this intelligent action account for the origin of varieties; that is to say, by mind-force?-assuming that mind is the being and matter its working capital subject to mind-control, as the mind of the moneron controls its jell-body to extemporize arms, fins, etc. Who can measure the possible potency of mind-force? It is found that in man there is "sub-consciousness" or mind within mind-the power and extent of its action as yet unmeasured and not understood fully. The author of the volume entitled "Evolution, Its Nature, Evidences," etc. (Professor LeConte of the University of California), suggests that there may be "still other and perhaps greater factors of evolution than are yet dreamed of in our philosophy."

What more than the power of fixing permanently improvised arms, fins, etc., is wanted to give rise to varieties? We know that the body inside the shell of the mollusk is soft, and that the mollusk has mind. This mind-force or will-power, operative as in the moneron may have been sufficient to produce incipient fins, useful in the start, in the primitive creature without a shell that became a fish as are the arms of the moneron. Let me transcribe the paragraph referred to from Professor LeConte's book (Evolution, page 270). He says: "Mivart

has drawn attention to another difficulty in the way of natural selection as an explanation of even useful organs. Darwin does not, of course, attempt to account for the origin of varieties. As we have already seen, he assumes divergent variation of offspring as the necessary material on which natural selection operates. He who shall explain the origin of varieties will have made another step in completing the theory of evolution. But not only does not natural selection explain the origin of varieties, but neither can it explain the first steps of advance toward usefulness. An organ must be already useful before natural selection can take hold of it to improve it. It cannot make it useful, but only more useful. For example, if fins commenced as buds from the trunk, it is difficult to see how they could be emproved by natural selection until they were of considerable size and, especially until muscles were developed to move them. Until that time they would seem to be a hindrance to be removed by natural selection, instead of a use to be preserved and improved. It would seem that many organs must have passed through this incipient stage in which their use was prospective. These are not objec

*

tions to evolution. They only show that we do not yet fully understand the process; but that there are still other and perhaps greater factors of evolution than are yet dreamed of in our philosophy."

Ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time hesitatingly offers the theory of the potency of mind-force over matter, as in the moneron, as a factor of evolution to account for the origin of varieties. Now, if what the materialist, Haeckel, admits to be the nature of monera-the beginning of sentient being-be true, it seems to ye mind of ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time that not only is thus the problem solved of the origin of varieties of living creatures, but also of the superiority of mind over matter and the materialistic doctrines that mind is a force produced by "chemical combinations of matter" is set forever at rest as false.

So does God stand outside of nature (so-called i. e. the material universe)-determining its course and animating matter, for He is the All of Intelligence. Think how mind-force has made man-his material body-of the "dust of the earth"-built up his being from the single cell in the womb of Nature, through a gestative period of millions of years, to the measure of a Shakespeare or a Washington or a Lincoln! That omnipotent force is evolving the men of the future, when "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" and all shall have reached the "measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Man, as when he was only the single-celled moneron-still reaches out extemporized arms to grasp not just food particles, but the ideal of perfection-the setting up of God's Kingdom of love and universal harmony and peace on earth. Not before that end is reached has the tree of life got its growth has the end of evolution on this planet been fully reached.

YE 121ST LESSON.

The Unreal and the Real.

I write for the one and not for the many. The one is he or she who in the morning of life with the untried future in view, like the sun rising, now reads the words imprinted on this page. Do you ask, dear reader, what will your life destiny be? God and His good angels "that bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone" only know. And they do know. I have had proof of this satisfactory to my mind. When a boy eight or nine years old, gathering hazelnuts on the peninsula where beautiful Syracuse, Indiana, has her lovely seat by the lake, I looked at my hands and, the words: "Those fingers write books," came involuntarily from my lips. This is a psychological fact that scientists may account for as they will. I can only account for it by saying that the Bible is not to be disbelieved in its presentation of the ancient belief of angel guardianship, as when Jacob saw the heavenly visitants as his body lay incumbent on the desert sands and his head pillowed on stones. "And he dreamed and, behold, a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven, and, behold, the angels of the Lord ascending and descending on it." A true message from God the angels communicated to him, unfolding before him all the future for thousands of years for him and his race. "And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." While it is true that our future is no secret to our spirit-friends, it is unknown to us unless those heavenly guardians reveal it to us as they did mine to me.

What is the real and what the unreal? A statue exists first in idea. So, too, does the grand temple, though it require many years

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to complete the edifice. The temple of Karnac, in upper Egypt, was, it is written, fifteen hundred years in building and it took the Persian conquerers three hundred years to tear it down. Boy! Girl! You will never do or be beyond what you aspire to do or be! Columbus set out to find a new land, and he found it; but not without strenuous effort. He had been told by his angel guardian that he would discover an Eldorado. I tell you, young reader, that you may do a great amount of good, so that thousands will place flowers on your grave. But this must be the fruit of aspiration. We admire a bed of lovely roses. They are beautiful. There is a beauty that shone from the faces of Lincoln and Socrates-a subtile beauty. Mindbeauty exceeds all other beauty and mind-force is the mightiest of all forces, and it is the most subtile of all-electricity is more intense than any power less subtile-as water, steam, or air. The more subtile the force the more intense. The mind is the real ego and not the perishable body. Our personality is imperishable. It lives positively and really on and on, beyond the earth-life. The dead live in their works as well which "do follow them," keeping remembrances of them alive for evermore, whether their names are forgotten or not-remembrances of the good done by them.

A Hymn to the Dead.

We see the dead; we know them-touch their hands;
While they enfold us in their loving arms-
Obey their voices; list to their commands;
It is their fire our freezing bodies warms;
'Tis theirs all that we have; whatever stands,
Endures, is valued, benefits or charms,
The dead bestowed upon us in their lives;
Lay earth to earth, what is it still survives?

The good that they have done this, this is ours;

It stands eternal and will not fall down;

But name the good they've done-built Babel towers?
Acquired on fields of blood the conqueror's crown?
Wrenched states from states and added powers to powers?
And filled the world with woe and their renown?
Not so, not so a grander work they did,

More lasting than the firmest Pyramid.

'Tis to the dead we owe all that we have!
Our institutions and inventions all;

Without their work none would be living save
The acorn-eating savages. The wall,
Betwixt the living and the dead-the grave,
Hides nothing from us that we would recall;
The living are afar-the dead are near;
The living are unseen; the dead appear.

All that have fallen for their country's sake,
They stand before us in our glorious laws;
The saints that graced the scaffold and the stake,
They live immortal in the people's cause; -

'Tis only by self-sacrifice we break

The power of Evil and win God's applause;-
His workers toil and suffer and expire-

And they alone are bidden: "Come up higher.".

YE 122ND LESSON.

The Ideal and the Real.

What books are read? Not history, not biography, not works of science or philosophy, except by the few. The city librarian will tell you that fiction is read and that there is demand for little else. Some one says to you "Pilgrim's Progress is a lie, because there never were those people-Christian, Giant Despair, Greatheart, etc., and hence the work ought to be regarded a fraud, a deception." Another says "I do not believe that Socrates ever spoke as Plato reports he did. Plato did not begin writing his dialogues before nineteen years after the death of Socrates and he has not said that any shorthand notes of the sayings of the philosopher were taken, while Socrates himself wrote not a word. What a lie, then, is it all!" And a champion of the "later criticism" says: "Yes, and Jesus had been put to death forty years before any of his words were reduced to writing."

Now, I ask is Pilgrim's Progress less true, or the dialogues of Plato, or the New Testament and the Old, in their teachings fundamentally, of ethics, of philosophy, or of religion, if there never was a Giant Despair or a Socrates or a Jesus or a Moses or a Joshua or a Jonah and mediaeval theology, by science, is rendered nil, the doctrine of evolution proven true and the story of Adam and Eve a myth? In the light of the sane present it is indifferent whether they ever lived or not. The lessons are the same. Who will say that the ideal is less true than the real-Uncle Tom's Cabin than John Brown's raid? Both had the same influence and direct purpose in view, the preparation of the public mind for slavery's abolishment. And did not Mrs. Stowe do as great a work as did John Brown?

And as to the Christian religion, that of the thirteenth century and of the twentieth are not at all the same, nor the religion of today and of even fifty years ago. But the Christianity of the first century of the Christian era and of the present day are the same; for the two periods are alike in learning,-in the Augustine age of Rome, Grecian enlightenment being at its maximum. Alexandria was then the metropolis of learning, eclipsing both Athens and Rome, and the Neo-Platonists revolutionized the religious opinions of mankind.

The real and the ideal are one. We accept only reality. Dickens, Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott and hundreds of other romance authors have prepared substantial food for all minds. All true ideals are real. And all greatness is ideal. Grant, to the world, is the ideal Grant; the real Grant is non-existent. "There was a real Grant, was there not?" do you ask? He was, but he is not. There were a real Washington and a real Lincoln; but only the ideal persists. Few of the billions of the dead are ever remembered.

Hero worship is worship of the ideal and so is all worship. The Pagan gods were all ideal. No one denies this, and no knowing one ever did deny it. Of course, the ignorant held the gods to be real. I do not say our God is ideal. Who has defined the Infinite whom the finite mind cannot comprehend? "Who by searching can find out God?" Yet, "the fool hath said in his heart there is no God." The scientist says: "He is the Unknowable." But God exists, undefined and incomprehensible, in the minds of most men and, I confess, in mine. The New Testament says: "God dwelleth in you." "I will dwell in them and walk in them," "Ye are the temple of the living God." "God is Truth." How indefinite, then, is our idea of God! No less than of infinite space.

There is a real Jesus "at the right hand of God." But our Jesusif we be Christian-where is he? We have in us the "mind that was in Christ." This is a figure of speech, of course. Take it as literal and we are Christ, for the mind is the being. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." (St. Paul.)

Now, this is my contention: that if we have in us the mind of

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the Master we are his disciples, and that "religion, like virtue, must be manifested in acts and character and not by words; by a simple mode of life and the reduction of wants to the minimum with perfect indifference to the enjoyment of wealth and position." (Plato.) Such is the life and character imputed to Jesus in the New Testament.

YE 123RD LESSON.

Religion and Truth.

Of the many religions that have come down to the modern world from the past, what may, without question, be placed to their creditaccount in Truth's record-book? So much of ethics as the long experience of mankind has verified as helpful; so much of their teachings in regard to the after-life as psychic facts have revealed in the past and verified in the present. There is no truth of mind or matter that has not been a revelation from God. The question awaits answer, however: "How much by facts weighed and measured inductively by the most capable minds? And is there truth recorded in any book, or ever will be or ever has been or can be not so revealed?" The modern scientist answers to this last interrogatory, "No." But believers in the old cosmology answer "yes." Be this as it may, "yes" or "no," now that all peoples are brought under one roof-united in one family, the diversity of beliefs will pass away and one way of thinking religiously, philosophically, ethically and scientifically will come in, a unity of thought universally arise and all human beings be "of one mind and one heart," as were the primitive Christian disciples. We talk familiarly of religion as though knowing intimately the nature of it; and, yet, who can define it? What is religion? In all countries there are religions, we say. Yes; but who is able to tell us just what the thing is we term religion? This man has religion, it is said; another is irreligious. What is the difference of the one from the other? If you say the one is good and the other bad, do we know wherein they differ religiously? It is said that the Duke of Alva and Oliver Cromwell were religious and that Thomas Paine and Robert G. Ingersoll were irreligious. Were Alva and Cromwell only good and Paine and Ingersoll only bad? Many regard him religious who gives up his mind and actions, to be controlled by the mandates of priests, and ceasing to be dominated by his own individuality he performs, or joins in adherence to, ceremonies ostensibly to please invisible spirits, but really as marks of the enslavement of his mind to superstition. If this defines religion correctly, then I dare say religion will be outgrown and pass to the eternal shades with the passing of barbarism and the incoming of enlightenment and civilization.

There is, however, an opinion extant (and that opinion is shared by ye old schoolmaster of ye olden time) that religion is a divine earnestness-devotion to right doing as one sees the right-a complete emancipation of its possessor from all selfishness and his devotedness to pursuits for the amelioration of suffering, the destruction of poverty and wrong and the bringing in of a condition of universal love and brotherhood among men. That was and is pre-eminently Christianity as practiced in the first place by Jesus himself and his immediate followers, as we learn from the New Testament and as is practiced by his true disciples ever. Now, this religion knows nothing of "doctrines." It has no creed that one word does not define and no God that the same one word does not also define. And that one word is love. "He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love." (I John iv:5.)

And this transcendental religion is the only religion that will or