spread over the earth.  Whoever understands this, and penetrating to the great heart beneath, recognizes the same original life in them all, will possess the secret of salvation; whatever nation first casts aside the filthy rags of its own self-righteousness and the defiling and sordid garment of mercenary gain, and accepts the others frankly as its brother and sister nations, all of one family—­that nation will become the Healer and Redeemer of the World.

It is interesting to find that, according to the Book of Revelation, the tree of which we have been speaking grows with its roots “in the pure river of the water of Life, which proceeds from the throne of God and the Lamb.”  What exactly the author of the book meant by this passage has been much debated.  It is clear that there is here a veiled allusion to the Zodiac—­that mysterious belt of constellations which runs like a river round the whole starry heavens, and rises in the constellation of the Ram or He-lamb—­but to debate that question now would be unprofitable, even were one fully competent to do so.  More to the point is it to see that this remarkable simile has an inner sense applicable to mankind, and so far independent of any allusion to the Zodiac.  This Tree that is for the healing of the nations has its roots in the pure water of Life which flows from the great Throne.  We have seen in an early chapter where the roots of Strife between the nations are to be sought for, and whence they draw their nourishment.  They are to be found in the very muddy waters of domination and selfishness and greed.  But the roots of the Tree of Healing are in the pure waters of Life.  Right down below all the folly and meanness which clouds men’s souls flows the universal Life pure from its original source.  The longer you live, the more clearly and certainly you will perceive it.  In the eyes of the men and women around you you will perceive it, and in the eyes of the children—­aye, and even of the animals.  Unclean, no doubt, will the surface be—­muddied with meannesses and self-motives; and among those classes and currents of people who chiefly delight to dwell in the midst of such things (who dwell in the floating mire of malice and envy and self-assertion and avarice and conceit and deceit and domination and other such refuse), the waters will be foul indeed; but below these classes, among the simple, comparatively unselfconscious types of humanity who everywhere represent the universal life (without, in a sense, being aware of it), and again, above them, among those whose spirits have passed “in compassion and determination around the whole earth and found only equals and lovers,” the water flows pure and free.  These two groups—­between them forming far the largest and most important mass of human kind—­are those whose influence and tendency is toward peace and amity.  It is only the scurrying, avaricious, fever-stricken, and, for all their wealth, poverty-stricken classes and cliques of the civilization-period who are the sources of discord and strife—­and they only for a time.  In the end it will be found that by every river and stream and tiny brook over the whole earth grows the invincible Tree of Life, whose roots are deep in the human heart, and whose leaves are for the healing of the Nations.