indistinguishable from moral degradation. Into the hearts of slaves who dared not lift their heads in the society of their fellows and know themselves men, brothers, sons of the same Father as their rich oppressors, was poured a strange sweet influence which awakened in them the power of self-pardon. It was as though the characters of their past had been obliterated and they had been born again, ushered into a new world. Place was found for them in communities where the rich and the poor, the high and the lowly, were equal, brethren, and all alike filled with adoring gratitude to the name which had wrought the miracle by which men had been redeemed from self-loathing and lifted into a plane where suffering and sacrifice were a joy, a name which for the subsequent centuries has been the idolized symbol of divine goodness and compassion and an image to which a large portion of humanity has most tenderly clung, its ideal of self-sacrifice, its apotheosis of grief.

The power to forgive sin, the Christ-power of self pardonthis was to be the gift of the spirit, the comforter which was to come, and its mission is evermore the healing of diseased souls, the healing of the disease of separateness. He who has received this gift, through the regenerating power of his own faith may absolve his brother, awakening in him his own divine power of self-absolution. Everywhere in the gospels may be seen the power of vicarious faith. It was through the faith of the four who brought him that Jesus spoke the words of healing to the paralytic. Whose was the faith in no case affected the result. Jesus healed the centurion's servant, the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the nobleman's son, in response to the faith of those who applied to him in their behalf. And all down the centuries in ever-widening circles has the world been healed and uplifted by the vitalizing force which flowed from the Master through His chosen vehicles of the power of self-pardon by which man's redemption was finally to be wrought out. The calling of the disciples of Jesus was quite other than that of formulating a creed. Fishers of men it was theirs to be. The miracle of Christianity was its regenerating power over the souls of men. The miracle of all

time was the power by which the lowliest and most degraded were lifted into the lofty and sublime heights of self-sacrifice; and this miracle of mental healing will not cease to operate until there shall be a new humanity upon a transfigured earth. No theological supposition of a god giving himself to death in expiation for sin could thus have wiped out the sense of it, which is separateness, and wrought the crowning miracle of self-pardon. The only redeemer is the grace of the spirit revealing the divine power within through which is salvation, be the instrumentality by which it works the magic efficacy of sacraments, or priestly absolution, or ritual, or worship, or the reciting of texts of Scripture. It is by reason of this same gift of the spirit that in this generation of ours, this generation of plutocracy and militarism which Carlyle said cares not whether God exists so the price of stocks does not fall, we yet see men with a tender sensitiveness to the debasement of their fellows, realizing the truth perhaps dreamed of by but one subject of the Roman Empire, that the vice of one is the vice of all, the degradation of one the degradation of all. There are men who desire with longing to break down the barriers of ugliness joylessness and squalor which, no less than guilt, shut off from the sense of human fellowship and sympathy. The editor of

London Truth says: "To better the lot of the 42,000,000 of the British Empire is my sole aim. I would exchange our whole empire for the knowledge that there will be fewer suffering from want in the British Isles, and that the toiling millions of which our population is mainly composed will find life better worth living. I would give up India for old-age pensions, Australia and Canada for a free breakfast table, and all our recent annexations in Africa for an adequate reduction in our present heavy taxation." Such men, who feel the responsibility that rests upon them of redeeming the soul of their debased and disinherited brother and awakening within him the power of self-pardon, which is the beginning of the Christ life, will eventually bring the answer to the prayer which for ninteen centuries has been uttered unceasingly in every language of Christendom: "Thy kingdom come."

VITAL RELIGION IS WITHIN.

BY J. WILLIAM LLOYD.

There is too much seeking in the old religions. These were vital in their day, but are superannuated now. The greatest soul of to-day is greater than any past soul, however god-like. We should stop looking backward for the inspiration of our religion and look within. This was what those great ancients, whom we worship, did. They cut themselves loose and free from the creeds behind them and found in the ideals of their own growing, advancing souls a new, purer and higher law.

The aggregate conscience of to-day is higher than anything of its kind in the past. Nobody, to-day, professes any past religion in its primitive and orthodox purity. It is recognized that we select the best and ignore the residue. This is as true of Christianity as of Judaism or Vedaism. All religions are being reformed by the silent and mostly unconscious evolution of the modern conscience. This is right and it points the true way which is for every man to be his own priest, build his own temple, write his own Bible, and find his own God. So shall he be a vital and growing part of the great life.

If you would believe in the best religion, turn fearlessly and honestly to your own highest imaginations of life, conduct, beauty and truth, to your own ideal of the god-like and great. Do this anew, every day, fearlessly, honestly changing and going on as new light comes to you. Do not be satisfied with anything that has been, or bind yourself to any past teacher's soul-expressions. Understand them, and appreciate them, and then find your own greatness beyond and above them.

Find a better way than that of Lao-Tsze, be wiser than Buddha, more Christ-filled than Jesus, braver than Socrates, more serene than Emerson, larger than Whitman.

Your salvation is in and through yourself, from and to your self, your ideal, God.

"It is the soul that makes us rich or poor."-Seneca.

A SONG OF UNITY.

BY ADELLE WILLIAMS WRIGHT.

Oh! where are the flowers that have faded;
Or the songs that were sung last year?
The hopes that have withered and perished
Or the dreams that we held so dear?

Where are the unwritten poems
That were kept in the heart alone?
The thoughts and the aspirations
That passed when the day was done.

The winter is brighter and better

For the flowers that bloomed but a day,

And the song that passed with the singer's breath

Shall live in the heart alway.

The hopes that we mourned as dying,

Live anew in a fairer form,

And shed on our glorified living

The peace that succeeds the storm.

The dream so fair and so fleeting,

Shall return to the soul some time

When we wake to find this dream of life

But one note in the whole great chime.

Each thought in the unsung poem

Lives on in the realm unseen,

Where the real and the true their vigils keep,

In the grandeur of silence serene.

"The indicative principle of each age is the idea of God prevalent among men."

ORDER OF MANIFESTATION.

BY FRANCES E. ALLEN.

Life manifests according to its stage of development. Life may exist without organization, but when independent existence is begun, organization of elements takes place. This independent existence is necessary for the development of individual consciousness. Energy exists independently of matter, but matter is not found except vivified by energy; it exists potentially, but not actually until energy vivifies it. The real man is spirit, but on the human plane this "spirit differentiated" functions through matter. Could man realize he is not body but spirit, he would develop more perfectly, for then would he yield allegiance to the true source of being. If spirit is the real being, should not spiritual development be first considered? But is this done? Our scheme of education of life itself-places small importance on spiritual development. The eye, the hand, the mind-all are trainedand this training is essential; but the spiritual nature of man is not given due consideration; its development is not placed above all other development.

We would not disparage physical development, nor mental development, but we would urge upon all the pre-eminence of spiritual development and the necessity of spiritual enlightenment, for with spiritual enlightment comes a control of energy which conduces to physical and mental well-being as well as to spiritual growth.

In the beginning spirit lies unmanifested-a condition outside mental comprehension-spirit differentiates; that which was one becomes many, each partaking of the nature of the one. Here occurs the great transformation, the incarnation of spirit.

Not as intelligence does manifestation first occur, but as life vivifying the etheric substance, transmuting it into a living substance capable of wielding an independent action-not an intelligent action, but an individual action. Now in long