"It is the electrical discovery of the age, and so simple in application that the marvel is that it has escaped us so long. The lightening power of magnetism has been known for years, the greatest saving power to overcome gravity, but it seems it had to wait for Doctor Albertson to discover it."

The air-ship promises, however, to eclipse the greatest and swiftest of latter-day steamers. The air, rather than the ocean, is to be navigated.

All these marvellous developments in scientific activity correspond to the developments of man's mental and spiritual powers. Telepathy establishes its communication from spirit to spirit, as wireless telegraphy establishes its sending of messages without visible means. On both planes,—the physical and the psychical,—the subtle and finer forces are being utilized, and the horizon line of the unknown continually recedes before the progress of man.

Sir Oliver Lodge, LL.D., presented a new phase of the problem of personality in an address in London, in the following statement of a speculative belief:—

"To tell the truth, I do not myself hold that the whole of any one of us is incarnated in these terrestrial bodies; certainly not in childhood; more, but perhaps not so very much more, in adult life. What is manifested in this body is, I venture to think likely, only a portion—an individualized, a definite portion—of a much larger whole. What the rest of me may be doing, for these few years while I am here, I do not know, perhaps it is asleep; but probably it is not so entirely asleep with men of genius; nor, perhaps, is it all completely inactive with the people called 'mediums.'

"Imagination in science is permissible, provided one's imaginations are not treated as fact, or even theory, but only as working hypotheses,—a kind of hypotheses which, properly treated, is essential to the progress of every scientific man. Let us imagine, then, as a working hypothesis, that our subliminal self—the other, the greater part of us—is in touch with another order of existence, and that it is occasionally able to communicate, or somehow, perhaps unconsciously, transmit to the fragment in the body something of the information accessible to it. This guess, if permissible, would contain a clue to a possible explanation of clairvoyance. We should then be like icebergs floating in an ocean, with only a fraction exposed to sun and air and observation: the rest—by far the greater bulk—submerged and occasionally in subliminal contact, while still their peaks, their visible peaks, were far separate."

That which Doctor Lodge expresses in the form of a speculative theory is by many realized as an actual experience; an absolute consciousness that over and above and outside of the ordinary intelligent consciousness is another being more one's self than is his conscious self; with whom he is in a very varied degree of communion; clearer and more immediate at times; clouded, confused, even shut off by some dense state at others; intermittent always, yet often sufficiently clear and impressive to compel his attention to the phenomena and compel recognition of the truth. In fact, as one comes into still clearer recognition of this "other" self,—which is far more the true self than is the lower and lesser manifestation,—one comes to absolutely realize that his larger, higher, more comprehensive life is being lived in this higher realm, or condition, and that his entire being on the plane of the lower consciousness is a series of effects of which the causes lie in this other larger and more real life. That is, the individual has two lives not precisely corresponding in chronological sequence. The experiences of the day are his because, before the day has dawned, they have been the experiences of the higher life lived in the larger realm. The spiritual self has realized that train of experiences in the spiritual realm; therefore, and as a result inevitable, these experiences precipitate themselves into the physical life, and are manifested on the physical plane of being. One does a given thing to-day, or meets a given event, because his spiritual or subliminal or even real self has already done that thing or met that event on the higher plane. The real being is all the time dwelling in the more real world. As all planes of life are spiritual planes,—even that which we call the physical, being but the cruder and denser quality of the spiritual,—it makes the theory clearer to designate the realm just above our present one as the ethereal. In this ethereal realm dwells the ethereal body. A certain portion of its consciousness animates the physical structure and works through the physical brain. It lies with ourselves as to how closely we may establish the relation between the higher and the lower self. This relation may constantly be increased in the degree of receptivity of the lower to the higher self by living the life of the spirit. And what is the life of the spirit? The life of joy and peace; and the life of study, thought, and endeavor; the life of both intellectual and spiritual culture; the life in which the physical body is subordinated to its true place as a mechanism, an instrument for carrying out the will of the spiritual self.

Thus, by study, thought, and prayer, may one more and more consciously and entirely control and determine his active life, and constantly refine and exalt it in quality. As this is done its potency increases, for spirit alone is power.

Of telepathy Doctor Lodge says:—

"Telepathy itself, however, is in need of explanation. An idea or thought in the mind of one person reverberates, and dimly appears in the mind of another. How does this occur? Is it a physical process going on in some physical medium or ether connecting the two brains? Is it a primary physiological function of the brain, or is it primarily psychological? If psychological only, what does that mean? Perhaps it may not be a direct immediate action between the two minds at all; perhaps a third intelligence is in communication with both."

Will this theory furnish the basis for a true interpretation of telepathy?

The relations between the individual and the forces of the ethereal realm are also determining as regards health.

Health and Happiness.

For health and illness are by no means the mere and exclusive consideration of the physical life. Health, in its complete significance, is mental and even moral, and involves, in its higher aspects, the entire question of the spiritual life. Health, successful achievement, and happiness are an indissoluble trinity, when interpreted in their full integrity and in their inter-relations. Ideally considered, they are in closest interpenetration. As a matter of actual fact each is often partially manifest,—good physical health without any special achievement; or a high degree of achievement with defective health; or both, without much resultant happiness; or happiness even, without outward success or physical health, resulting only from a deeper spiritual insight and recognition of eternal laws. Still, ideally considered, as this world goes, health should be the basis of successful achievement, and this achievement should rest on health; and the union of both should produce the inflorescence of happiness; for the true sense of all successful achievement is in that it makes for the forces of righteousness, and a successful swindler or criminal could hardly be included under these general definitions. And so, to have good health, and to achieve good and noble work, must produce a good degree of personal happiness as inevitably as that certain numerical combinations produce certain numerical results. So much we may concede. The question is then before us: How can we secure and hold unvarying, from day to day, from year to year, this basis of physical health on which the superstructure of all endeavor and realization must rest? Just how shall one be well and keep well?

It is certainly a question not restricted to the physician nor yet to the metaphysician. For health is not merely a physical condition. It is the question of the poise, the harmony of the entire psychical being.

Professor John D. Quackenbos has recently said of Hypnotism:—

"Investigations extending over many years have led me to a belief in the dual personality of man—that is, each human unit exists in two distinct states of superior consciousness. One of these states is called the primary or superliminal consciousness,—the personality by which a man is known to his objective associates, which takes cognizance through the senses of the outside world, and carries on the ordinary business of every-day life. The second or subliminal personality is the superior spiritual self, the man's own oversoul, which automatically superintends all physical functions and procedures, and influences mental and moral attitudes.

"It happens to be a fact of mind that in sleep—natural or induced—this subliminal or submerged self may be brought into active control of the objective life. My experiments have forced me to the conclusion that there is no difference as regards suggestibility between natural sleep and the so-called hypnotic trance. In the induced sleep the subject is in rapport exclusively with the operator; in natural sleep only with his own objective self, perhaps with a multitude of discarnate personalities, who think and feel in common with him, and, in case he be of superior parts, possibly with all well-wishing extra-human intelligences."

Here we have the basis of truth. That condition of vigor, poise, vitality, and harmony which we call good health depends on the degree of control exercised over the physical body by that "second or subliminal personality, the superior spiritual self, the man's own oversoul, which," as Doctor Quackenbos so truly observes, "superintends all physical functions and procedures, and influences mental and moral attitudes."

The problem, then, becomes that of bringing the psychical body into this receptive relation to the physical self? How shall the perfect spiritual supremacy be established? This question reveals, of itself, to how great a degree health is a mental and moral as well as a physical affair.

Perhaps the initial step is that of clearly realizing—of holding the luminous conception—of one's self as a spiritual being in the psychical body, temporarily inhabiting a physical body,—a spiritual being using as its instrument a physical body so long as it is at work in the physical world, or on the physical plane. One may thus conceive of his physical body as being really as objective as is the pen of the writer; the palette and brushes of the painter; the machine, or mechanism, or instrument used by any one. And the moment one learns to thus hold the physical instrument objectively, he thus brings it under the control of thought. He is no longer so a part of it; so entangled and involved in it that he cannot control it. The moment he holds this clear, vivid mental realization of it as his instrument, he is in command. This may be illustrated by an electric car and a motor-man. If the man were bound up and entangled among the cogs and wheels he could not guide and control the car; but in his place, free from all its mechanism, his hand on the motor, the course and the degree of speed obeys his mental direction applied through his control.

This realization of the true relation of the spiritual man to his body is the initial condition of health, and this involves as a matter of course the spiritual relations with the Divine Power, and receptivity to the infinite energy.

It also involves an intelligent care of the physical mechanism. A clogged pen would repress the recording of the noblest sonnet or epic; a defective brush, or pigment, would ruin the picture of the greatest artist; a broken wire would prevent the transmission of the most important telegraphic or cable message. And so, however intelligently and completely one holds the faith of supremacy of the spiritual over the physical, he must realize the absolute necessity of fidelity to hygienic laws. Food, in its quantity and quality; bathing, exercise, fresh air, sleep,—these are the conditions on which the state of the physical mechanism depends, and which involve that perfection of health which determines exhilaration, power, achievement, and happiness.

Canon Scott Holland of St. Paul's Cathedral has ably discussed these new problems of the finer forces in the ethereal realm; and in a discourse entitled "Other World Activities" he drew the following analogy:—

"The text is from the Book of Daniel, a Book which takes us into a world of visions and trances and mystical imagery. There is a world within the world; a life beyond life. That world is not only the sphere of God, but of recognizable beings, meditating presences subject to rule, with organization and degrees, activities and authorities. It is a host, a kingdom, swayed by law and purpose. In the Bible there is much of this, learnt probably by the Hebrews from their captors. They had gone far afield: their horizon had been widened: they had been taught how to enter largely into this mysterious region. But, fortunately, they dealt soberly with this weltering flood of occult knowledge. These hosts of unseen presences are marshalled into order: they are not mere genii, fantastic and magical; they pass under the control of the sole directive will of the Most High. They are solemn instruments of spiritual destiny: they are semi-human, and the record is, 'one like unto a man touched me.'"

Canon Holland proceeds to arraign modern teachings. "We have drifted from this tremendous reality," he says. "We have tried to isolate the field of known experience, and to cut it off from disturbing supernatural imaginings. We have set ourselves to purge out from our scheme of things anything that seemed to interfere with it. The unseen was the unknown and the unknowable. But our agnostic programme has broken down. Facts have been too much for it. The isolation desired by it is impossible. In and out of the life that we can cover with our rationalized experiences, there are influences, forces, powers which are forever at work, and belong to a world beyond our scientific methods. We float in a mysterious ether to which no physical limitations apply. Sounds, motions, transmit themselves through this medium, under conditions which transform our whole idea of what space or time they mean. Through and beyond the semi-physical mystery, a world of spiritual activity opens upon us. It has capacities of which we have never dreamed. It allows of apparent contact of spirit with spirit, in spite of material distance and physical obstruction. There are modes of communication which are utterly unintelligible to our ordinary scientific assumptions, yet which actual experience tends more and more to verify."

Yes, as Canon Holland well says, "Facts have been too much" for those who would cling to the old and the less intelligent ideas of the future life. The ethereal world will even cease to be mysterious before advancing scientific investigation and knowledge. Through the ether, as Canon Holland notes, sounds and motions transmit themselves "under conditions which transform our whole idea of what space or time may mean." In the realm of present life the same assertion may be made. Who can contemplate wireless telegraphy without having opened to him a range of activities and conditions undreamed of heretofore? "We become sure," continues Canon Holland, "that both above and below our normal consciousness we are in touch with mysteries that travel far, and that we lie open to spiritual acts done unto us from a far distance, that we assimilate intimations and intuitions that reach us by inexplicable channels.

"This world of spirit powers and activities has been opened afresh; and now even physical science is compelled to recognize the evidence for it, and a new psychological language is coming into being to describe its phenomena. We are only slowly recovering our hold upon this life of mystic intuition, of exalted spiritual communications; we are only beginning to recognize the abnormal and exceptional spiritual condition with which Saint Paul was familiar, when, whether in the body or out of it, he could not say,—God only knows,—he was transported to the third Heaven and heard unutterable things."

This remarkable sermon is an initiation of a new era of religious teaching. The light is breaking and the full illumination is only a question of time.

Life is exalted in its purpose and refined in its quality by holding the perpetual consciousness of the two worlds in which we dwell; by the constant realization that

"The spirit world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere...."

This atmosphere is all peopled, and it is magnetic with intelligence. Every spirit-call for aid, for guidance, for support, is answered. If a man fall on a crowded street in the city, how instantaneous is the aid that cares for him. He is lifted and conveyed tenderly to his home, or to a hospital, or to some temporary resting-place if the ill be but a slight one. Strangers or friends, it matters not, rush to his rescue. This, which occurs in the tangible and visible world, is but a feeble illustration of the more profound tenderness, the clearer understanding, the more potent aid that is given instantly to man from the unseen helpers and friends in this spirit world which floats like an atmosphere around this world of sense. It is all and equally the help of God; it is the Divine answer to the call; but the Heavenly Father works through ways and means. If a man fall on the street God does not cause a miracle to be wrought and a bed to descend from the clouds, but He works through the sympathies of the bystanders. Is it not equally conceivable that the appeal for leading and for light sent into spirit spheres meets the response of spirit-aid; that it awakens the interest and the infinite tenderness and care of those who have passed from this life into that of the next stage beyond, and that they are, according to their development and powers, co-workers with God, even as we who are yet on earth aim and pray to be?

Now it is just this faith that is so largely pervading the religious world to-day. Spirituality includes all the convictions that constitute ethics. Spirituality is the unchanging quality in all forms of organized religion. And it is found, in greater or in less degree, in every sect and every creed. Outward forms come and go; they multiply, or they decrease, and the change in the expression of religious faith is a matter largely determined by the trend of general progress; but the essentials of religion, under all organized forms, remain the same, for the essential element is spirituality. In and around Copley Square in Boston, within the radius of one block, are several denominations whose order of worship varies, the one from another. The Baptist believes in immersion as the outer sign of the inner newness of life; the Episcopalian holds dear his ritual; the Unitarian and the Presbyterian, and perhaps a half-dozen other sects in close proximity (which express the various forms of what they call "new thought"), each and all exist and have their being by virtue of the one essential faith held in common by all,—the one aim to which all are tending,—that of the spiritualization of life. The larger recognition of the spiritual universe includes the recognition of this interpenetration of the life in the Seen and the Unseen. Every thought and decision is like an action on the spiritual side. A thought has the force of a deed, and there is a literal truth in the line,—

"The good, though only thought, has life and breath;"

and in Lowell's words:—

"Ah! let us hope that to our praise
Good God not only reckons
The moments when we tread His ways,
But when the spirit beckons."

The thought-life is, indeed, the most real of the two lives, and dominates the other. The events and achievements, held in thought and will, precipitate themselves into outer circumstance and action.

To live in this perfect sympathy of companionship with the forces and the powers of the unseen world is to dwell amid perpetual reinforcement of energy, solace, and sustaining aid, and with faith vitalized by spiritual perception.

All scientific problems are ethical, and even spiritual, problems. They are discoveries in the divine laws. "Can man by searching find out God?" Apparently he approaches constantly to this possibility, and finds that

"—through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."

Every succeeding century brings humanity to a somewhat clearer perception of the nature of the Divine Creation. However slowly, yet none the less surely, does the comprehension of man and his place in the universe and his oneness with the Divine life increase with every century. Jonathan Edwards taught that while Nature might reflect the Divine image, man could not, as he was in a "fallen" state, until he was regenerated. Putting aside the mere dogma involved in the "fall" of man, the other matter—that of regeneration, of redemption—is undeniable, even though we may interpret this process in a different manner from that of the great eighteenth-century theologian. The redemption, the regeneration of man, lies in faith. In that is the substance through which and by means of which man comes into conscious communion with God. It is by the intense activity possible to this mental attitude that he conquers the problems of the universe, that he advances in knowledge, and advances in the increasing capacity to receive the Divine messages and to follow the Divine leadings.


A New Force.

Of late years a new force has been discovered in the line of ethico-spiritual aid in the higher order of hypnotism, as discovered and practiced by Doctor Quackenbos, who may, indeed, without exaggeration, be called the discoverer of this higher phase of applied suggestion. "I have been brought," he says, "into closest touch with the human soul. First objectively; subsequently in the realm of subliminal life, where, practically liberated in the hypnotic slumber from its entanglement with a perishable body, it has been open to approach by the objective mind in which it elected to confide, dynamically absorptive of creative stimulation by that mind, and lavish in dispensing to the personality in rapport the suddenly apprehended riches of its own higher spiritual nature."

Of the nature of this power, we again find Doctor Quackenbos saying: "Hypnotic suggestion is a summoning into ascendancy of the true man; an accentuation of insight into life and its procedures; a revealing, in all its beauty and strength and significance, of absolute, universal, and necessary truth; and a portraiture of happiness as the assured outcome of living in consonance with this truth." The learned doctor regards hypnotism, indeed, as "a transfusion of personality."

The truth is that there lies in every nature forces which, if recognized and developed, would lift one to higher planes and induce in him such an accession of activities and energies as to fairly transform his entire being and achievement. This would be effected, too, on an absolutely normal plane. The development of the spiritual faculties is just as normal as is that of the intellectual. And it is to this development that we must look for the true communion with those who have passed into the Unseen. The objective life must be spiritualized. The soul can come into a deeper realization of its own dignity and the worth of its higher nature; can discern the spiritual efficiency, the energy commensurate to every draft upon it.

All, however, that is done by the highest phase of hypnotism, as exerted by Doctor Quackenbos, can be done by auto-suggestion. The soul has only to call upon its own higher forces. It has only to act from love and compassion,—from sympathy and generous aims, and all the infinite power of the Divine world is at its service.


The Service of the Gods.

"We had letters to send; couriers could not go fast enough, not far enough; broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring, snowdrifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a walk.

"But we found out that the air and earth were full of Electricity, and always going our way—just the way we wanted to send. Would he take a message? Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in no time. Only one doubt occurred one staggering objection—he had no carpet bag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible, compact form as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by needle and thread—and it went like a charm.

"Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chores done by the gods themselves. That is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us day by day, and cost us nothing."

With his wonderful insight into conditions, Emerson thus expresses a provision of conditions that are now being realized to an even greater degree than he consciously knew, although he unconsciously foretold them. Now it is wireless telegraphy that is the ultimate fulfilment of what he saw,—the method that will reduce to practical realization his counsel to hitch one's wagon to a star, and "see his chores done by the gods themselves."

It is not only humanity—civilization—the onward sweep and march by the progress of the world, but the individual life also that can take advantage of "the might of the elements." The one irresistible element is the power of will, the power that results from the perfect uniting of the human will with the divine will. People talk of fate, and conditions, and burdens, and limitations. They are all merely negative, and are easily and instantly subject to the infinite and irresistible potency of the will brought to bear upon them.

On the threshold of any endeavor when one takes account of his possessions and conditions,—material and immaterial; when he again, from a new vantage ground, surveys his future, it is his salvation and success to realize the depth and height of his own personal power over his own life.

"There are points from which we may command our life,
When the soul sweeps the future like a glass,
And coming things, full freighted with our fate,
Jut out on the dark offing of the mind."

But when these points appear they must be taken advantage of at the moment. They are the result of an occultation of events that may never occur again within the limits of a lifetime. The swift intuition that leaps over all conceivable processes is the heaven-appointed monitor. It is the divine voice speaking. It is the word which must be obeyed. When one

"... by the Vision splendid
Is on his way attended,"

he must give heed to the vision or it vanishes and returns no more.

We need a new, a deeper, a far more practical realization that the ideals and visions which flash before us are the real mechanism of life; that they are the working model by which one is to pattern his experience, in outward selection and in grouping by means of his own force of will. Somewhere has Emerson said,—

"All is waste and worthless till
Arrives the wise selecting will,"

which is, to the potential circumstances, like a magnet introduced among filings that suddenly attracts to itself and draws all into related and orderly groups. Circumstances are thus amenable to the power of will brought to bear that selects, arranges, combines, after the pattern of the revealed ideal held in view.

Each individual life may "borrow the might of the elements." Man is created, not only in the image of God, but with God-like faculties and potency, which, if he but truly relate them to the divine potency, if he unite his will with God's will, there is then no limit, no bound to that which he may achieve.

In one of the most wonderful creations of Vedder, the artist shows us the figure of a woman whose eyes are closed, and whose hands, lying in her lap, are inextricably entangled amid crewels and threads that bind and hold them. But one sees, also, that she has but to open her eyes, and lift her hands, and all the entanglement would fall off of itself. The picture offers the most typical lesson of life. All imprisonment of conditions is dissolved into thin air the instant one impresses his own will-power on the affairs and circumstances of his life. He can do that which he desires to do. The desire has only to be intensified into conscious, intelligent choice, into absolute will,—and all the minor barriers melt away and are no more. Every life may hitch its wagon to a star. It may borrow the might of the elements. It has but to resolve to hold its ideal firmly and clearly in mind, and it will then be realized as the sculptor's dream in clay is realized in the marble. "All things are yours," said Saint Paul. One has but to take his own; to wisely and clearly select the elements and combine them by that irresistible potency of mental magnetism and energy.


THE POWER OF THE EXALTED MOMENT.

"The salvation of Christ is the complete occupation of the human life by the divine life."

It is in our best moments, not in our worst moments, that we are most truly ourselves. Oh believe in your noblest impulses, in your purest instincts, in your most unworldly and spiritual thoughts! You see man most truly when he seems to you to be made for the best things. You see your true self when you believe that the best and purest and devoutest moment which ever came to you is only the suggestion of what you were meant to be and might be all the time. Believe that, O children of God! This is the way in which a soul lives forever in the light which first began to burn around it when it was with Jesus in the Holy Mount.Phillips Brooks.

The power of the exalted moment is the very motor of human life. The exalted moment is the dynamo that generates the working energy. The moment itself fades; it passes into the region of memory where its true service is to shine, with the unfailing continuance of radium, as a perpetual illumination of life. It is the greatest, the saddest, the most hopelessly fatal error that can be made,—to cast away from one the exalted moment because it has not fulfilled itself in outer condition and circumstance. Vision and prophecy are given by God for a working model, which the long patient days—days of monotony, of trial, of commonplace work under commonplace conditions, amid commonplace people and events—are yet to fashion and fulfil. These are the material,—the ordinary events, the commonplace daily duty. The perplexity of problems rather than the clear grasping of their significance; the misunderstanding and the misconstruction of motive that make the tragedy of life; the interpretation of evil where one only meant all that was true, and sympathetic, and appreciative, and holy; the torture and trial, where should be only sweetness of spirit and true recognition,—of all these are the days made; all these are a part of "the flowing conditions of life," which it is the business, the responsibility, the personal duty, to transmute into noble living, into poetry and ecstasy and exaltation, and into that perfect faith in God that can truly say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Though He slay all that made life seem worth the living; the enchantment, the response of sympathy; recognition rather than misconstruction,—though all these be obscured in what may seem a total eclipse,—still let one not forget "The Gleam;" still let one keep faith with the power of the exalted moment. It came from God and held its deep significance. It laid upon its beholder consecration of divinest aspiration and unfaltering effort. "If I could uncover the hearts of you who are listening to me this morning," said Phillips Brooks, in a memorable sermon, "I should find in almost all—perhaps in all—of them a sacred chamber where burns the bright memory of some loftiest moment, some supreme experience, which is your transfiguration time. Once on a certain morning you felt the glory of living, and the misery of life has never since that been able quite to take possession of your soul. Once for a few days you knew the delight of a perfect friendship. Once you saw for an inspired instant the idea of your profession blaze out of the midst of its dull drudgery. Once, just for a glorious moment, you saw the very truth, and believed it, without the shadow of a cloud. And so the question comes,—What do they mean? What value shall I give to those transformation experiences?"

On the personal answer to that question depends all the success or the failure; all the nobleness or the unworthiness of the individual life. No one can estimate too ardently, or too earnestly, the spiritual salvation of keeping faith with the exalted moment,

"Delayed, it may be, for more lives yet,
Through worlds I shall traverse—not a few,
With much to learn and much to forget"—

ere the golden hour of fulfilment shall come; but faith in the exalted moment is but another name for faith in God.

The great truth of life—that which we may well hold as its central and controlling and dominating truth—is that "our best moments are not departures from ourselves, but are really the only moments in which we have truly been ourselves." These moments flash upon the horizon of the soul and vanish; they image themselves before us as in vision, and fade; but the fact of their appearance is its own proof of their deep reality. They are the substance compared with which all the lower and lesser experiences are mere phantasmagoria.

And this fulfilment is not found, but made. It is a spiritual achievement. So let one not reject, or ignore, or be despairing before undreamed-of, unexplained, and incomprehensible forms of trial, but know that it is trial that worketh patience; know that "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby."

"It was given unto me," wrote Dante in the Vita Nuova, "to behold a very wonderful vision; wherein I saw things that determined me."

It may be given to any one at any time to behold the vision. Circumstances are fluidic and impressionable, and take on any form that the mental power has achieved sufficient strength to stamp, and because of this—which is the explanation of the outward phenomena whose significance, on the spiritual side, is all condensed in prayer—one need never despond or despair. At any instant he can so unite his own will with the divine will that new combinations of event and circumstance will appear in his life. A writer on this line of thought has recently said:—

"There is an elemental essence—a strange living essence—which surrounds us on every side, and which is singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought.

"This essence responds with the most wonderful delicacy to the faintest action of our minds or desires, and this being so, it is interesting to note how it is affected when the human mind formulates a definite, purposeful thought or wish."

There is a phase of occult thought represented at its best by Mr. C. W. Leadbeater of London, and at its worst by a host of miscellaneous writers, whose speculations are more or less grotesque and devoid of every claim to attention, who materialize thought and purpose, and invest it with an organism which they name "an elemental," and one finds Mr. Leadbeater saying things like this, of the results of an intensely held thought:—

"The effect produced is of the most striking nature. The thought seizes upon the plastic essence, and moulds it instantly into a living being of appropriate form,—a being which when once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives out a life of its own, the length of which is proportionate to the intensity of the thought or wish which called it into existence. It lasts, in fact, just as long as the thought force holds it together."

Mr. Leadbeater continues:—

"Still more pregnant of results for good or evil are a man's thought about other people, for in that case they hover not about the thinker, but about the object of the thought. A kindly thought about any person or any earnest wish for his good will form and project toward him a friendly artificial elemental; if the wish be a definite one, as, for example, that he may recover from some sickness, then the elemental will be a force ever hovering over him to promote his recovery, or to ward off any influence that might tend to hinder it, and in doing this it will display what appears like a very considerable amount of intelligence and adaptability, though really it is simply a force acting along the line of the least resistance—pressing steadily in one direction all the time, and taking advantage of any channel that it can find, just as the water in a cistern would in a moment find the one open pipe among a dozen closed ones, and proceed to empty itself through that."

This train of speculation, which if one is to reject he must first confront, is demoralizing. It leads nowhere save into mental quagmires and quicksands. It leads into materiality and not into spirituality. Of course with all this the one question is as to whether such conceptions are true; but judged by intuition, which is the Roentgen-ray of spirit—judged by the data reached by scholars and thinkers, by psychologists and scientists—it has no claim to recognition. That thought is the most intense form of energy, its potency far exceeding that of even electricity, is certainly true, and that one can think himself—or another person—into new and different outward phases and circumstances is most true.

Tesla, in a paper discussing the problem of how to increase the sum of human energy, considers the possibility of the existence of organized beings under conditions impossible for us. "We cannot even positively assert that some are not present in this, our world, in the very midst of us," he says, "for their constitution and life manifestation may be such that we are unable to perceive them."

This speculative possibility opens the gate to the scientific recognition of the truth that "all the company of heaven" may companion us, here and now, in the terrestrial life, invisible, intangible, inaudible to the perceptions of sense. It may largely be through their ministry and mediation that the unforeseen and unexpected opportunities, privileges, gifts fall upon man,—gifts that the gods provide.

Dreams, visions, and ideals are given that they may be realized. The vision is projected from the higher spiritual realm as the working model, the pattern of the life here. A dream is something to be carried out; not put aside and neglected and lost in over-lying and ever-accumulating stratas of experience. The dream, once clearly recognized, becomes a personal responsibility. It has been revealed for a purpose. It is the Divine revelation to the individual life, and these visions are given to the individual as well as to humanity, and they are the most significant occurrences in the entire experience of life. To once clearly recognize this divine ideal, this glorious vision of possibilities that shines once and for all upon the individual, and then to turn away from it and leave it unrealized in the outward life: to put it by, because the effort to transform the vision into external and visible conditions is surrounded with difficulties and invested with perplexities, is to wander into the maze of confusion. Difficulties are merely incidental. They are neither here nor there. If God give the dream He will lead the way. If He gives it, He means something by it, and its significance should be appreciated and taken into life as a working energy. It is the will of the Lord, and to pray sincerely that the Divine will be done, is also to accept the obligation of entering into the doing of it. Indeed, difficulties and perplexities in the way do not count and should not. Briars and brambles there will always be, but one's path lies onward all the same. Who would relinquish a right purpose because its achievement were hard? All the more should he press on and gain the strength of the obstacles that he overcomes.

Doctor William T. Harris says, "Realize your ideals quickly." That is, an ideal is a responsibility; it is the working model that God has set before the individual; the pattern after which and by which he shall shape his life. If he accept and follow it with fidelity and energy; with that energy born of absolute faith in the Divine leading,—he will find himself miraculously led; he will find that the obstacle which appears so insurmountable in perspective vanishes as he comes near; that a way is made, a path appears.

It chanced to the writer of these papers to take a long day's stage drive one summer through the Colorado mountain region. For a distance of forty-five miles the solitary road wound on and on, ever ascending through the dreamy, purple mountains. The entire route was a series of vistas that apparently came to an abrupt end at the base of an insurmountable height. The mountain wall seemed to utterly arrest progress, as it rose across the ascending valley through which the driver urged his "four-in-hand," and no way to pass beyond the next mountain ahead could possibly be discerned. But as the stage drew near, a way, unseen before, revealed itself, and the winding road found its outlet and onward course in another valley opening by a natural pass between the hills, and one that apparently in its turn was as inevitably blocked at its end by another mountain range. It was a constant interest to watch the changing landscape and discover the new ways that constantly came in sight as fast as the need for them came. That day amid the dreamy purple of the Colorado mountains was one to translate itself into renewed trust in the Divine guidance on the journey of life. Some wonderful words of Phillips Brooks seemed to write themselves on the air:—