Part 2

But with all, we are forced to realize how unfinished and unsatisfactory are nearly all of our experiences of earthly existence. It is, indeed, "a thing of shreds and patches." But we are caught in the web of material existence from which there can be no lawful escape, save by unpremeditated physical death. We are thrust into the seething cauldron of formative life. The entire race of man, forced forward by the resistless power of the law of progress, is on the everlasting journey to the heights of perfected being. To us, enmeshed in the ties of interest and affection, the various heredities and the worldly Karmas which hold us fast, the slow, unnumbered processes of evolution on this, our home world, as recorded in history seem unendurably long. But time is naught--eternity is unending--and "ten thousand years are but as a day with God," the great Maker and Moulder of our immortal souls.

THE WORK OF NATURE.

The planet itself is stirred to its very centre. On one side, the earth opens its horrible maw and swallows up uncounted numbers of her children, or spews out her molten interior in vast lava tides, overwhelming and destroying all within their reach. At the opposite side, great floods of gas and rock oil, set free by the operation of the drill, shoot up in the air and fall back upon the soil in a luminous spray, as like to liquid gold as aught not filled with the beloved auriferous metal could be. The waters loosed from their fastnesses over-reach their accustomed bounds, and great tidal waves are encountered in unexpected latitudes. Nature is rounding up her great circle, and making conditions for a new era.

A NEW SCIENCE.

A science of Spiritual evolution could be erected, based upon the teachings and ethics of Jesus Christ, that would put souls consciously in their true rank and grade, and make them known just as people are recognized by the college curriculums from which they have graduated.

WORLD MAKING.

The "fire-mist" and the mephitic vapors were finally swept away; another era was preparing. Incorporate in the world substance of which the planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life. Its crude material was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and the awful corresponding animal life. Birds and beasts and reptiles, each one more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earth and the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horrible creatures. Into this unaccountable menagerie came also the foreshadowing of man--a huge hairy creature possessing size and power to do battle with his animal compeers for supremacy in the seething, upgrowing land.

This was only the differentiation of the animal-man from the animal per se--the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs. From such rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot the human soul. This, after vast ages, grew into a state and condition through which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finally started on its endless earthly career.

With the birth of the soul came what we call the religious instinct, and man began to worship natural objects; animals and reptiles, the sun and finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods. The "phallic worship," worship of the human organs of creative power, gave the males great prominence. The female, woman, the mere matrix was considered, from the first, of far less importance. No one stopped to think, what is one without the other in the great world processes.

Nature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possible representation of her power, buried here and there specimens of her handiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even now being restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientists have been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, and the habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings of life on this earth.

Among these, too, have also been found the bones of huge human-like beings whose decadent progeny are still alive in limited number.

The gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the earth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends forth his note of warning, beating his great hairy breast, and all living things flee before him. Fancy what the awful first man--his progenitor--must have been! Science has never yet been able to discover the probable length of time it required for this crude age to endure in order to lay the foundation of the world; for time was not, and existence was recorded only by ages and aeons. But seven times their infernal progeny were nearly all swept off the planet by awful cataclysms and the whole affair had to be begun over again.

IMPERFECTIONS REVEALED.

The soul digs deep into the age-long deposits of knowledge, the results of countless experiences, and brings up the Real.

This has to be, the most successful egotist, the most deluded hypocrite must inevitably meet up with himself some day and begin to know the truth versus make-believe.

All souls are so veiled in the flesh, and held by the crowding necessities of their lives, that it is only on rare, unexpected occasions that the individual soul can throw down the barriers and show of what it is capable.

WORLD ORIGIN.

To be able to understand, even to our limited degree, something of our origin, and the purpose of our existence is most comforting and sustaining. In the beginning, the Creator sent to this planet a given number of beings intended for the exemplification of the law of evolution and soul growth. In the everlasting rounds of human life, no new souls are being created and sent here to work out their salvation through their experiences incident to the life of this young planet, earth. What appears to our limited perception to be the beginning of new lives is so only in relation to their present embodiment. All new souls now being born here are but returning from some other phase of existence. The whole human race is one family. Bound to the wheel of life, every individual soul must pass through all of the varied experiences that are set for its evolution. What they are not today, they have been, or must become. But not all people march over just the same highway to reach the soul's status. Details of experience do not count. It is the lesson learned, and practically applied that forwards the unfoldment of the individual in a comprehension and understanding of God's eternal truth. Only results in all things, temporal and spiritual, attest the unfoldment and growth of each and every soul.

It is only when man has evolved to the point of being more than a man, "a little lower than the angels," that the higher spheres of activity are necessary for his further progress. To expect to develop in the worlds of finer substance than that of earth before he has learned all that earthly experiences can teach him, is like "placing a child in the higher classes of a school before he has mastered the lessons of the lower."

SPIRIT INDIVIDUALIZED THROUGH MATTER.

As spirit per se has no entity, and only evolves individuality through its relationship with matter; and has no other conscious expression; the so long-talked-of "Fall of man" was not a fall downward, but it was a process upward, necessary to his being, to his existence as man.

WORLD SIGNS.

Our planet, true to her everlasting record, has put forth her potent reorganizing power to celebrate the ushering in of the new era.

Not less marvelous are the signs and indications of great changes taking place upon the visible planes of the lives of men. Hand in hand march the visible and the imponderable forces of this earthly life. Ignorance and vapid superstitions can no longer block the doorway of the living Christ.

God wills to know, and be known of his own, and to hold his love a free gift to all races of men.

The trump of recollection and of recognition has sounded. The dead have already risen, all along the lines, and no power can hale them back to their dreams.

Onward, ever upward points the finger of progress. Long hoarded wisdom and knowledge of the forces of nature are pouring into the minds of seers, and of wizards of science; and these long separated and divorced streams are evoluting to the unison of material and occult sciences, which is destined to bring in the reign of peace and prosperity to all the peoples of the earth, and to bring to light the relics of past ages, cunningly hidden away in the vast womb of nature that they might be preserved and brought forth to our knowledge in these later days. By the undeniable record yielded up from buried cities and storied crypts, and in the skeletons of mummies of both animals and men of those most ancient times, she is showing us where she began the present cycle, now closing in about the race, with great clattering of forces and profound portents in earth and sky.

The equilibrium of the universe is maintained by the transition of its forces. Atlantis, matured and ripened, sinks beneath the sea, and her accumulated wealth of wisdom and knowledge is transferred to other continents to arise at the appointed time to enrich and bless the land of their adoption; and all art and science is but shining today in the reflected, reawakened light of past ages.