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brain material, which they have evolved. Back of the minds of men stands the Great Reality, but it stands unexpressed to the human consciousness only so far as that consciousness is able to receive, apprehend or interpret. As it receives, apprehends and interprets more and more clearly the Great Reality of which I speak, it is seen to be the source of happiness and it is also seen to lay no penance, no suffering, no sickness, no poverty, no wretchedness upon any man. It does not even inflict present punishment as a means to future blessedness.

Whence come, then, the suffering, the sickness, the poverty and the wretchedness? They are incidents or attendants of growth and mark the soul's passage toward the light. I will venture to assert on the strength of a law running through all nature that every growing thing feels pain and lack and oppression in the earlier stages of its growth. The little seed says nothing of the weight of earth upon its bosom or of the darkness in which its life is enshrouded, but I know it feels them just as we do, only in lesser degree. It feels them as unhappy experiences in its growth, but they are happily all forgotten when it gains its freedom in the air and light above. Surely the apotheosis of a plant can not be more than that of a human soul, and by virtue of compensation a happiness awaits us all