the benighted children of earth.  Again was heard “the voice as of one crying in the wilderness” of this world’s marts for barter, and selfish gain; “Let him who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”  “The grave has lost its victory” and death is but a halt called in mercy and loving tenderness, that your weary souls may be refreshed by a draught from nature’s founts and bountiful resources that you may mount upward as on the mighty wings of eagles; or discover for your wandering feet the path of rectitude and safety.

PHENOMENA.

All expressions of nature are phenomenal.  Man is of all the most wonderful.  A tiny spark of spirit encased in matter, by the irresistible law of progress evolving powers of brain, thought, consciousness, reason, intuition; unfolding, expanding; realizing finally his at-one-ment with his source, the cause of him—­God—­man immortal, illimitable.  At certain points of unfoldment seemingly lost, great hue and cry from many—­pin heads—­who think they have discovered God, a failure.  Watch out and see.  Give the Lord a chance.  Nothing is done with yet.  In a very old hook of Hebrew history, there are recorded well-attested accounts of phenomena, which are so distinctly outside of the ordinary happenings of this material existence, that they were always recognized as being of a purely spiritual origin, method and purpose.  Within the last century the same experiences have been vouchsafed to present humanity.  Millions of people have attested the truth of a continuance of these same phenomena; they having taken place within the range of their own personal experience.  And why not?  The Creator knows what his children need in this, as well as in other ages.  That human souls, the lives of human beings, persist after physical death, does not prove their eternal existence along the lines of highest soul evolution.  The greatest possible unfoldment is not a gift of God.  It is held only by the individual soul as the result of age-long study, and toil, through manifold embodiments, long-continued self renunciation, and sacrifices not yet known or understood.  Its initiations are endless; its revelations of the infinite law are, at times, too seemingly trifling for recognition; but as the lapidary leaves no facet of the jewel uncut and unpolished, so the guardians—­the guides and teachers of the candidates for spiritual unfoldment—­omit no least lesson or discipline that can aid in perfecting the individual soul.

It is the meanest kind of bosh teaching people that there will be eternal punishment for ignorant wrong-doings in this short kindergarten experience of life, making them believe their last chance for anything better is gone forever.  Half the sins that are committed here anyway are either sins against the conventionalities, or they have been hatched up by some unsext priests and have nothing to do with the case.  Besides, the sins of the body in many a poor mortal are left with the body in the grave.