judges.  Man-made laws which everywhere prevail tend always to segregate people into classes, producing results devoid of equity, favoring the materially superior.  It is quite common for people who know nothing whatever of the operations of occult and spiritual law to ignore all responsibility for their unhappy earthly experiences, and “blame it all” on God.  A child dies, the mother accuses God of making her the special subject of his unkindness in taking away from her the object of her love.  Everywhere, among all classes of people this is not at all an unusual experience.  The fact is, the prevailing ignorance of natural law—­moral, spiritual law—­is alone the cause of nearly all the misery of humanity.  God has nothing whatever to do with it.  There is this about it:  there are the “eternal verities,” the laws which speak ever to the consciousness of man, and whether they are broken in ignorance or willfully set aside, the results are nearly the same; the penalties exacted by beneficent justice are unalterable; only in one case, there must finally be regrets for ignorance; in the other, great remorse for wickedness and ill-doing.  But these results are not eternal, though the dreadfully cruel teachings of religion have made people believe so.  The faintest stirrings of desire to be better, the least aspiration toward the higher life is sure of a response from loving, compassionate beings in angelic ministrations.

The priests of different religions who have been most valiant and positive in preaching hell fire and eternal damnation have entirely lost sight of this fact.  Not the most strenuous of the whole lot has ever been able to follow one miserable wretch into the spirit world to find out whether his prognostications anent his hypnotized victims, have “come true.” “Au contraire,” great numbers of reputed sinners have come back in their real personality to report to their friends that there is no such fate for anyone, that it is one great lie.  But it must not be supposed that there are no sure enough hells.  There have to be places for the hellish to stay till they come of a better mind.  Nature provides for them other opportunities for their gradual redemption through re-embodiments in the flesh on this earth.  There is besides a constant outpouring from the dark abodes of estrayed and benighted souls, for the all-embracing love of our Father-Mother reaches even the horribly suffering lunatics, made so by their selfish, vicious lives here on earth.  There is, indeed, the greatest possible difference between an intended eternal punishment of sin, such as has been preached for ages for the purpose of scaring people out of their wits, and a recognized, just retribution for broken law.  Punishments such as have been believed in suggest a punisher, and our Father in heaven has been blasphemously represented as “angry with the wicked every day” and glad to have a chance to pour out his “bottles of wrath” on their elected heads.