eye; absolutely contradistinguished from any other known activity in nature.

"In short, the living substance we call bioplasm is a direct natural product of the pre-existing spiritual energy we call the soul. As bioplasm is invisible, transparent, and structureless, it abides with the physical body and develops it; but it does not dissolve with the body, but continues to exist after the outer body dies, and is the vital directing force that is a scientific expression for the soul."

This is something like Joseph Cook's theory that the soul is the invisible, vital force back of the bioplasts, which weaves the visible, bodily flesh and structure into a harmonious human organism. This is not unreasonable, and this deft weaver, the human soul, that weaves the warp and woof of human flesh and blood and bone, will some day be revealed to the microscopic eye of man.

The authors of "The Unseen Universe" claim there is a second ether that fashions the spiritual body. They say: "The world, as we know it, is made up of material molecules and of ether; no room being here found for either ghosts or bogies." Then they take an hypothesis of Lord Kelvin's about the ultimate form of atoms and their relation to ether, and they claim to find in a second ether the material wherewith to refashion the marvels of man's immortal existence in the borderland between the known and the unknown in physical science. Thus they treat invisible ether as in the domain of physics, and make man's soul the product of this second ether.

They say: "Far greater is the work which the second ether has to perform, being nothing less than the fashioning of a spiritual body. While our

consciousness proceeds pari passu with molecular disturbance in our brains, the molecular disturbance agitates the first ether, which transfers a part of its energy to the second." Thus is gradually elaborated, they say, an organism in that second or unseen universe with whose motions our consciousness is as much connected as it is with our material bodies. They say, again, with much force and reason, that: "When the marvellous structure of the brain decays, and it can no more receive or send messages, then the spiritual body is replete with energy, and starts off through the unseen, taking consciousness with it, but leaving its molecules or material, bodily atoms behind." This is a true scientific statement which I approve, whether it is attributed to the ether or not. I hold man's soul is self-existent, and needs no aid to immortality. They add further: "Having grown with the growth of our mortal frame, and preserving in its structure a record of all that has befallen us, it becomes an organ of memory, linking the future with the past, and securing a personal immortality. Thus another body, a spiritual, ethereal, or astral body, avails to stay the hand of death, and the second or spiritual body escapes free from the ruin and dissolution of the first or physical and visible body."

Here we have a concise statement by two logical scientific minds, of the escape or delivery of the invisible, incorruptible spiritual body from its transient tenement of clay. I accept their logic and their clear statement of a psychological fact, but I do not rely on any abstruse and complicated theory as to a second ether existing, or being the cause of the escape and survival of the spiritual body. I put it on a higher and broader ground, holding that

the survival and consciousness of the spiritual body are inherent in itself, and it needs no second ether or aid to escape from the fast dissolving material body. The material body, all through life, is dissolving and changing in atoms and pounds daily and hourly; it is reduced in sickness to a skeleton; it often has its arms and limbs amputated, and twothirds of itself decayed or destroyed. The body also changes all its atoms every seven years, so that the body is entirely changed ten times in an ordinary life. Yet the spiritual body retains its life, reason, and integrity. Therefore it needs no helping hand to keep it from destruction. It is a part of Deity, and as indestructible as Deity Himself. If atoms are invisible and indestructible, as all scientists agree, surely there can be no question of the indestructibility of the invisible, spiritual body. If atoms came from and return to the sun, surely the human, spiritual body which God breathed into the first man came from God, and from the sun, which is God's headquarters; and "will return to the God who gave it," in His heavenly abode.

It does not matter whether it goes by electric energy or its own innate force, the fact is, it goes, and no force can restrain it from going. It knows its course and its destiny as the needle knows the pole, as the earth knows its orbit. The conscious soul, when it drops its habiliments of dust, is selfpoised and free from the limitations of time and space. Would it stop on this earth and float in air and cloud and mist, and hover around earth's sorrowing loved ones? I think it would find no pleasure in floating in the storm clouds of earth, or hovering around those it could not help; neither would it come and go at the beck and call of self-constituted

mediums. It may have done many foolish things in this life, but in another life it would know better, and do no such unsatisfactory and nugatory things.

If there is a better place to go anywhere in the universe than this earth, it would go there. I think the sun is a better place; and all scientists must admit that if it is not too hot, it is more prolific in life and power, and should be far superior to the earth or planets. And as there is nowhere else to go but to the sun or the planets, it would naturally go to the sun, especially as the sun is the headquarters of all physical and electric power, and must be the residence of its spiritual Father, the creative and ruling Deity. And if the human soul started on its journey to the sun it would go with the speed of light, which takes eight minutes, or the speed of pure electricity, which would take only five minutes to reach the sun. So that before the body could possibly get cold the spirit would pass through the rainbow-tinted corona of the sun and be welcomed into the perennial glory of its Father's house.

Cyrano de Bergerac believed he would go to the moon after death. Others have selected Venus, the beautiful morning and evening star, and others Saturn, because of its wonderful rings, but none of these are likely to be as desirable as our earth, and are not suited for a perennial abode; nor are they self-luminous nor even self-existent without the sun. No spirit would want to dwell in the darkness of space, or in the planets, moons, or asteroids, and only the sun seems suitable or desirable, and fulfils the Bible requirements and those of the soul.

CHAPTER X

MANY THEORIES OF LIFE AND CREATION, BUT CHRISTIANITY SUPERIOR TO ALL. NOTHING UNKNOW

ABLE OR UNTHINKABLE

A scientific writer asserts that matter is retarded motion, and that man exists on the roof of the earth as a creeping parasite does on a rind of fruit, exposed to the fury of ever-present earth storms; that he is affected by grievous atmospheric changes and restless physical conditions; that in order to exist he must fortify himself against these at the expense of bodily and mental energy, which encourages the animal at the expense of the spiritual. That the rays of the sun produce aerial convulsions, and the heat of summer and cold of winter follow each other unceasingly, generating winds and storms, while amid such exposures and changes man toils, suffers, and comes to believe that the end, if not the object of life on earth, is the preservation of the earthly body. Thus it is asserted that the fleeting life of man has become a deplorable struggle for physical existence from the cradle to the grave.

But this distressful view of life, emphasizing the purely material, is not so bad as that which makes life a mere delusion.

It is said by a certain class of scientists that existence is a theory, and that man is incapable of demonstrating that he has a being; that all evi