veins; that an invisible force we call electricity, should move vast trains of cars with incredible speed, enable us to converse under the ocean from continent to continent, see and talk to each other thousands of miles apart, and even repeat human language perfectly. Yet these are now matters of daily and hourly occurrence, and excite no surprise. The same will soon be true with regard to the soul, and the sun as its future habitation, and the visible residence of Deity. They will be regarded as reasonable and natural; and the old fallacies of the excessive heat of the sun as a burning sphere will be regarded as the absurd delusions of superficial theories, and unpardonable folly.

Gravitation will be considered but a fortunate step toward the discovery of one of the dual forces of electricity; and electricity will be accepted as the creative, cosmic, upholding force of creation, and the invisible word of power of the Supreme Ruler of the universe. And it will soon be as natural and universal for mankind to look to the brilliant allglorious sun as the personal abode of Deity, and the future home of man, as to look to it for the elements of light and heat that make the earth inhabitable. Such is the transforming power and glory of the ever-widening vista of truth and knowledge.

CHAPTER XVI

MIND OR SOUL IS THE FIRST AND LAST REALITY. IT, AND NOT MATTER, IS THE REAL FACT OF LIFE

Mind is the starting-point of all motion, force, and power. The beginning of creation had its inception in the conscious volition of Deity. All the machinery of the universe was started by the intellectual impulse of an infinite power. Conscious, reasoning volition is the ultimate source of all force and all law, and the beginning point of all power. The intellectual will power of Deity and man is the supreme directing, governing force over all forms of matter in the physical universe. The refined spiritual and mental forces are the omnipotent potencies in all creating and created things. They stand back of all visible substances and organisms. They touch the secret springs of action that move and guide all visible expressions of force and power. They are swayed by the supreme majesty of reason, and in the dynamic potency of volition find their omnipotent sphere of energy and action.

God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God said, "Let us make man," and man was made. Thus, all created things are the products of creative volition; and all creative volition is an intellectual impulse, founded upon reasoning power and mental concept.

God had a spiritual or mental creation or ideal of the universe in His mind before He began the

work of creation. He had planned from the beginning the whole elaborate scheme and machinery of His creation; just as an architect has a previous concept or ideal of every building, the painter of every picture, the sculptor of every statue, and the poet of every poem before they are produced.

This shows the mind must first conceive before the hand can execute; that the mind must create an ideal thing before the real thing can have any existence. Therefore the ideal is the foundation of the real. The invisible is the starting-point of the visible, and the unseen mental creation must precede any visible material creation. No house was ever built, no temple erected, no picture painted, or poem written until there was first an ideal creation of the same in the mind of the builder, painter, or poet. The starting-point of all constructive force and creative energy is in the mental concept and conscious volition of an invisible, spiritual, or mental power. Therefore mind is the beginning of all things, and virtually the end of all things; the first and the last reality. It, and not matter, is the real fact of life.

Matter without mind to direct and mould it into visible substances and organic forms would be but a dead waste of useless material in the void of space, without directing force, consciousness, or utility. It is mind or soul that weaves around its invisible form the changing drapery of visible matter, that gives shape and functions to all organic forms, and permeates them with the electric and mental currents of sensate life and conscious being. In the earlier ages, this mental power was not known and recognized.

Man, from the earliest ages, has been climbing

from the simpler animal phases of life to the clearer atmosphere and loftier altitudes of knowledge and intellectuality. He began his terrestrial career in the warmth of a tropical climate, without a tent, or house, or fire, or any protection from the elements except the spreading branches of trees; without clothing or any garment to hide his nakedness. We are told that our first parents clothed themselves with an apron of fig leaves, and dwelt for a time in a beautiful garden called Paradise, from which they were driven for disobedience into a less congenial dwelling place, in the ordinary forests and wilds of the then uninhabited earth. This was the beginning of man's career on earth.

In the early dawn of the world's history, its scattered population followed a nomadic life. They dwelt in tents, and drove their grazing herds over trackless plains. Their wants were few and simple; their government patriarchal. When they encroached upon each other, they could say, like Abraham to Lot: "Is not the whole land before thee? If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right." Under such conditions life was slow and monotonous and without luxuries, and avarice could not grow nor oppression flourish, and knowledge and intellectual growth made little progress.

In time, however, mankind abode in rude villages, and obeyed the head men of the tribe. They built huts and houses, and claimed proprietorship in land. Gradually their villages swelled into cities, with temples and palaces; they studied the arts of peace and war, of commerce and agriculture. They had servants and fine linen, purple garments, ornaments of gold and silver, jewels of rubies, pearls, and diamonds.

Then came the more complex and stable forms of government and organized society, and man began to think of the necessities and luxuries of his physical life and to struggle for supremacy over nature. He then began to take account of nature's bounteous provisions for his comfort, and to delve in forests, and open up mines of gold and silver and precious stones. And as he had leisure he began to look up to the stars and wonder at their mysteries, and to study himself and the book of nature spread out before him. Then he began to think, to invent, and to utilize nature's beneficence, and gradually to throw off the galling superstitions of legends and mythology that bound and hampered his mental faculties. Until now, in the broad, clear light of the twentieth century, the emancipated souls of humanity can feel and respond to the refined and subtle intellectual forces which are the supreme controlling forces of human life. And these forces are now the dominant forces in modern society and human government, and will continue to grow in influence and dominating power through all the coming ages. For countless centuries of the past man was considered as a mere animal, and the gross forms of visible matter as all that existed. But that day "of the earth earthy" and man "the superb animal” has past forever.

A century ago materialism dominated France; today its greatest scientist, Flammarion, asks: "Where then is matter? Bodies are composed of millions of millions of mobile atoms, which do not even touch one another, and are in perpetual movement around each other. These infinitesimal atoms are now considered centres of force. Matter disappeared under dynamism." He says again: "Materialism is an