and claims to be the ego, it invites destruction; for it is death, and death must be destroyed. If one is trying to identify himself with his spiritual ego and has not yet brought the lower self into subjection, he will not fear the " consuming fire," for only by it can he leave behind those things which are combustible. The burning, to him, will not be burning, for looking beneath the surface he will see that its mission is beneficent. The lurid flame of Love will appall the "old man," for to his distorted vision it will reduce him to ashes; but, like pure gold tried by fire, the divine man will behold God in the furnace with him. The stronger the false claimant clings to his seeming life, the deeper the flame will penetrate. It burns him because it is his true friend. When in a paroxysm of terror in the desperation of the life-and-death contest he feels his life ebbing away, he suddenly awakes to the startling revelation that he is saved, "so as by fire." Divine love will not and cannot be baffled. It will threaten and burn until the last vestige of death and corruption shall have been consumed, when the divine unshaken man

will be found intact. The blazing flames of Love will spread and burn until they possess and purify every soul, whether that soul be upon the plane of sense or within the confines of Hades.

IX.

THE UNSEEN REALM.

seen.

THE world is bound in the fetters of the A sensuous and pessimistic cloud darkens and benumbs racial progress and aspiration. Human thought and action are conformed to traditional standards and gauged by external models and maxims.

Life, which is intangible and invisible, expresses itself through organisms, though it is not the result but the cause of organization. All the potency of the universe is resident in spirit, which through orderly energy builds up symmetrical forms. The things around us that seem so solid and enduring are thin shadows cast by that subtle spiritual energy which forms their only basis. The earth itself is one grand cemetery, made up of disintegrated forms, while the great current of life which formerly vitalized them still flows on unspent

and undiminished. That which at present is in manifestation, and which our eyes behold, is but an infinitesimal part of the grand Whole. Where is the dust that has not some time been moulded and fashioned by living energy, and that in different shapes repeated,

"All that tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom "?

Says Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians, "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."

All physical organisms are built by their invisible residents and not for them. Materialistic science, after much assumption and persistent experiment, has been forced to utterly abandon the theory of spontaneous generation, the attempt to evolve life out of dead or inorganic matter. The doctrine of Biogenesis, which teaches that life originates only in previous life, is abundantly established. Still further, every kind and quality of life organizes itself in that special form of embodiment

which exactly corresponds to its nature. The form of a tiger, in every detail, perfectly expresses the tiger life and disposition, and that of a lamb is fashioned by its lamb-like characteristics. Life - animal, human, or divineis ever carving its own animated statues, and through immutable law sets them up with perfect correspondence and adaptability. The human mind rears its own noble form, moulded and polished in every feature by the unconscious constructive thought and specification of its resident architect. Its outline, vigor, and utility are developed or impaired by the favoring or disfavoring mental states of its owner. The general recognition of the fact that all primary causation is mental or spiritual, would be of untold value to humanity; but even the church has been so materialistic that it has mistakenly located an important part of the causal realm in matter. Physical philosophy has thereby logically concluded that molecular changes in the gray matter of the brain were the causes of variations in mental conditions; a remarkable instance of the confusing of cause and effect. Immortal mind subservient to the