All war is horrible.  Through what agonies of loss, and orgies of death, and tortures of the weak driven to the wall by unscrupulous men the war against material darkness on this planet has been carried on is utterly unimaginable and impossible ever to be known.  The end has been reached, the great needs of humanity at large have been and are being served, and while superior sources of light have largely taken the place of the oil lamp, it still shines calmly on in the homes of the poor, and will, for ages yet to come.

* * * * * *

“As a man thinketh, so is he.”  This may be only measurably true, in consequence of the stress of circumstances; but sooner or later, the thought moulds the individual beyond the power of disguising the real character.

LAW.

It was all in order for Yahweh, the guardian spirit of the Hebrew race, to “hetchel” the Jews—­and from all accounts they needed it—­but the most anomalous phase of this whole affair consists in the fact that after having set forth to the world that the church, and all were to come under the rule of the “new dispensation,” and represent the teachings of the Master, they should turn back to the old, old history of the Jews, and incorporate bodily into the so-called Christian religion, and into the political life and jurisprudence of nations, the restrictions, the penalties, and, in a word, the Hebraic law in its entirety.  Law, as it is applied in America, is a process lacking in equity and justice.  It is circumvented by $-s for the benefit of the rich, a menace to the poor man, binding on the needy burdens that kill, or lead to despair.  Jesus Christ did not make law; he only indicated the presence of the higher law—­the scientific law—­that must rule all life on this planet ere justice to all can ever prevail.

The gospel of Jesus—­the Nazarene—­was the first that ever brought hope or promise of any possible good to the outcast, and the children of poverty.

COMMUNISM.

Communism is the beginning, and not the culminating state of societies and peoples.  All efforts on this line fail, because they are based upon the false and impossible premise of the absolute equality of all men.  There never has been, there never can be any such adjustment of the forces of nature on this planet; because no two souls are alike and there can only be equality in alikeness.  Spirits come here in groups.  They start simultaneously on their pilgrimage across the “sands of time”; but at the very outset there are obstacles and handicaps innumerable.  At once there is heredity.  There is no equality in heredity.  It is good, bad or indifferent as the case may be.  But the great divergence is in the soul itself; it grovels or aspires, and unfolds its powers according to the laws of its own individual being, and all men, and