In the ancient Book of the Dead which is, indeed, a Book of Resurrection-occur these words: "The soul to the heaven, the body to the earth;" and that first faith is our faith today.

Of course, faith in immortality was in nowise peculiar to Egypt, but was universal. It rests upon the consensus of the insight, experience, and aspirations of the race. From Egypt it spread to Tyre, Athens, Rome, and even to England. However high the faith of man, the collapse of the body was a fact; and it was to keep that daring faith alive and aglow that the Mysteries were instituted. Beginning, it may be, in incantation, they rose to heights of influence and beauty, giving a dramatic portrayal of the unconquerable faith of man.

Watching the sun rise from the tomb of night and the spring return in glory after the death of winter, the ordinary phenomena of vegetation, the death of the seed in giving birth to the plant, connecting the sublimest hopes with the plainest occurrences, was the simple yet beautiful formula assumed by the great Mystery in almost all religions, from the Zend Avesta to the Gospel.

Man reasoned from analogy-justifying a faith that held him as truly as he held it-that the race, sinking into the grave, would rise triumphant over death.

There were many variations of this theme as the drama of faith evolved and as it passed from land to land, but the motif was ever the same; it was everywhere a dramatic expression of the great human aspiration for triumph. over death and union with God, and the belief in the ultimate victory of good over evil. Not otherwise would this drama have held the hearts of men through long ages and won the eulogiums of the most enlightened men of antiquity of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Pindar, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others.

Some of these Mysteries, established centuries before our era, depicted the death of some noted character with stately ritual, which led the initiate from death into life and immortality.

They taught the unity of God, the immutable necessity of morality, and a life after death, investing the initiate with the signs and passwords by which they could know each other in the dark as well as in the light.

It was the single object of all the ancient rites and mysteries practiced in the bosom of pagan darkness, shining as a solitary beacon in all that surrounding gloom, cheering the philosopher in his weary pilgrimage of life to teach the immortality of the soul. This is still the great design of the third degree of Masonry. This is the scope and aim of its ritual. It beautifully illustrates this all-engrossing subject—that the life of man, regulated by morality, faith, and justice, will be rewarded at its closing hour by the prospect of eternal life. I will quote the opinions of only a few wise and great men, ancient and modern:

Socrates says he that pursues philosophy aright is studying how to die. Silenus says that death is far better than life; that real death belongs to those who on earth are immersed in the forgetfulness of its passions, and that true life commences when the soul is emancipated for its return.

Macrobius: The ancient philosophers regarded the soul of man as having its origin in heaven; they held it to be the only true wisdom for the soul while united with the body to look ever towards its source and strive to return to the place whence it came. The ancient Mysteries taught the great doctrine of the divine nature and longing after immortality of the soul, of the nobility of its origin, the grandeur of its destiny, its superiority over the animals who have no aspiration heavenward.

Cicero: I cannot agree with those who say that the soul dies with the body and that death destroys all. Rather am I of the opinion of those among the ancients who declare that the souls of men are divine, and when they leave the body they return to heaven. By the consent of all nations, we believe the soul exists for eternity. Whatever that principle is which feels, con

ceives, lives, exists, it is heavenly and divine, and therefore must be eternal.

Does death end all? asks the philosopher. Has all this work been done for nothing? Is it all ephemeral, all a bubble that bursts, a vision that fades? On such a view the riddle of the universe becomes a riddle without meaning. The more thoroughly we comprehend that process of evolution by which things have come to be what they are, the more we are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting persistence of the spiritual element in man is to rob the whole process of its meaning. For my part, therefore, I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work.

Seth, a professor of ethics of today, writes: "A belief in God is necessary. to a belief in immortality. Faithfulness to the true self means that we live as if we were immortal. In the moral life we constitute ourselves heirs of immortality by living the life of immortal beings.

"Man's true life is not like the animal's, a life in time; its law issues from a world beyond our bourne of "Time and Place,' from a sphere where time and space are not. In every moral act, therefore, man transcends the limits of the present life and becomes already a citizen of the eternal world. He has not to wait for his immortality; it broods over him even in the present; it is the very atmosphere of his life as a moral being."

This is an argument as old as Plato and Aristotle; it is the real argument for immortality. Our origin and our destiny are one; it is because we come from God that we must go to Him, and can only rest in fellowship with Him who is the Father of our spirits. That fellowship the fellowship of will with will-in the present is our best pledge of its continuance in the future. The fellowship with the eternal cannot but be eternal, and such fellowship is the very essence of moral life. God is the home of His childrens' spirits, and He would not be God if He banished any

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from His presence, nor would man be man if he could reconcile himself to the thought of such an exile.

But knowing that we shall live forever and that the Infinite God loves all of us, we can look on all the evils of the world and see that it is only the hour before sunrise, and that the light is coming; and so we also, even we, may light a little taper to illuminate the darkness while it lasts and help until the day spring come. Eternal morning follows the night; a rainbow scarfs the shoulders of every cloud that weeps its rain away to be flowers on land and pearls at sea. Life rises out of the grave; the soul cannot be held by fettering flesh.

Beautifully above the great, wide chaos of human errors shines the calm, clear light of natural religion, revealing to us God as the Infinite Parent of all, perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, and perfectly holy, too. Beautiful around stretches off every way the Universe, the Great Bible of God. Immortality stands waiting to give a recompense for every virtue not rewarded, for every tear not wiped away, for every sorrow undeserved, for every prayer, for every pure intention and emotion of the heart.

And thus we find that the final conclusions of the wisest men as to the meaning of life and the world are harmonious, if not identical. And here, too, is the clue to the striking resemblances between the faiths and philosophies of widely separated peoples, and it makes them intelligible while adding to their picturesqueness and philosophic interest. We do not infer that one people learned them from another, or that there existed a mystic. universal order which had them in their keeping. They simply betray the unity. of the human mind, and show how and why, at the same stage of culture, races far removed from each other came to the same conclusions and used the same symbols to body forth their thought.

Illustrations are innumerable, showing that in the end all seekers after truth follow a common path, comrades in one great quest. A persistent tradi

tion affirms that throughout the ages and in every land, behind the system of faith accepted by the masses an inner and deeper doctrine has been held by those able to grasp it. This hidden faith has undergone many changes of outward expression, using now one set of symbols, and now another; but its central tenets have remained the same, and necessarily so, since the ultimates of thought are ever immutable. By the same token, those who have eyes to see have no difficulty in penetrating the varying veils of expression and identifying the underlying truths, thus confirming in the hidden faith what was found to be true-the oneness of the human mind and the unity of truth.

While all these faiths assert their claim to the exclusive possession of the truth that God is One and One is Three; that His thought uttered in His Word created the universe and preserves it by those eternal laws which are the expression of that Thought; that the soul of man, breathed into him by God, is immortal as His Thoughts are; that he is free to do evil or choose good, responsible for his acts and pun

ishable for his sins; that all evil and wrong and suffering are but temporary, and that in His good time they will lead to the great harmonic chord and cadence of Truth, Love, Peace, and Happiness that will ring forever and

ever.

The final conclusion is that man is not indifferent as to the fate of his soul after its present life, as to its continued and eternal being, and the character of the scenes in which that being will be fully developed. fully developed. These are to him topics of profound interest, and the most ennobling and refining contemplation. They occupy much of his leisure. and as he becomes familiar with the sorrows and calamities of this life and his hopes are disappointed and his visions of happiness here fade away; when life has wearied him in its race of hours; when he is harassed and toilworn and the burden of his years weighs heavily upon him, and he clings to his lofty speculations with a tenacity of interest which needs no injunction and will listen to no prohibition-they are the consoling privilege of the aspiring, the way-worn and the bereaved.

Y

ESTERDAY we saw the Flag upon its sturdy staff, unruffled by a breeze! Today, a wind came over the summer sea and the Flag fluttered like a captive bird. So the circumstance reflects Peace and War! At peace, the qiuet color blends of nature seem to grow in even more quiet fashion. The world is at rest, except for here and there a branch or flower, seeking to exalt its head above the rest and shower blossoms round about. The more of nature in the striving, the more of beauty falls about her pathways! The rising of Creation in her might of Peace, yields a harvest greater far than all the fruits of War!

Note, if you will, an occasional war of the elements. They strive, as prisoners do, to break their bonds, striking terror to the heart, for the moment. After lashing their fury against the confines of her fastnesses, this prisoner of Peace lies down to rest. The waves recede from every shore, the birds cease their frightened cries, the winds abate and the Sun spreads her golden mantle over the picture.

Yet a few hours of sunshine and the storm is forgotten. The world con

tinues on her way with a seeming lighter heart. Storms are short moments only of unrest. Now Man crawls out as it were, into full view, and not satisfied with the sun and the refreshing rain, with the moon and stars, begins to roar with all the might of his invention made to kill his fellow, as sometimes nature tears down her most beautiful creation. His thunder rends the clouds and his thunderbolts plough the earth. Being of imperfect judgment, he seemingly has no regrets. He takes life because likely he deems it easier to rob the dead than the living. He forgets to read Nature's object lesson. The consequence appears that thousands die daily on account of war.

Were it possible, in man's fancied usurpation of Nature's prerogative, to scatter broadcast the seeds of humanity, pregnant with the increase in our species, we might stem the tide of dissolution now threatening the race. It may not be so. We seem to be poor imitators and invite the end, wherein there shall be no sun for those who, sitting idly by today, have not the moral courage to endeavor to stem the tides, that have for the moment engulfed all reason.