to this principle of action and reaction, the greatest average happiness would probably be found among people of mature years, in normal health, for at that period they do not indulge in such extremes but attain nearer to a happy medium. Love is the fulfilling of the law and brings health, and happiness in its train. LaPlace said when dying that "science was mere trifling, that nothing was real but love." Therefore, love every object, animate or inanimate, for you are all derived from the same source and the tonic and moral effects of it will be surprising. So many have become downcast and counted themselves a failure, whereas, if they only knew, God with His infinite wisdom and love at the helm working along higher lines had steered their lives unknown to them to a successful termination.

Whatever ill betides you (and this is common to all humanity, you are not alone) never lose sight of the thought that it can be made beneficial to you. Judge every happening from the standpoint of character and it will be very pleasing to you to see your ideas of life gradually change, for the better, seeing good where before you saw evil, and this too will affect your health and disposition for the better. Do not be disappointed with the position you occupy here, however humble. Your opportunity, for spiritual advancement, which is all that counts, is just as good, if not better than the rich

man's for wealth counts for nought,* when you pass over, and too often proves a curse in more ways than one to its owner here. Remember the really valuable treasures are spiritual and are without price, within the reach of all, yet priceless to their possessor. Wealth only becomes a blessing through its wise distribution. Its pleasure is greatly enhanced by those who can enter into and enjoy the benefits that the recipient himself receives, making their pleasure his. This pleasure keeps on increasing with its healthy reaction, on soul and body as a by-product, as it were. On the other hand, many who were first here will be last there, and many who were last will be first there. The test will be, how did we occupy our time here, did it count for character or did we waste time in seeking an excess of wealth or pleasure? We are working up to a grand climax, that of a god, after ages of grovelling so let us not complain too much, if our lessons seem very hard at times, for the results will well repay us, and we have countless centuries to do it in. His knowledge is infinite as against our finite, who therefore can form the best judgment as to our course of education, the Creator who has a plan in view, or the object created with its limited vision.

* And too often takes man away from nature and natural living.

† And the part is a great one and takes cycles of preparation.

Every plane through the long cycles of evolution, has been a better one for us, a more elevated one. Remember it was only a short time ago, counting by centuries, when passion rode unbridled and might was accounted right; when the people were canaille, created for purposes of taxation only (so the rich thought), and a thousand perished that a courtezan might wear another bauble on her breast. Small wonder that for one hundred twenty-six years the French sang the Marseillaise, and yearly celebrate the fall of the Bastille. Have faith then that the law that has worked for countless ages in our favor, still applies (it is unreasonable to think otherwise) and that the next world is a most decided improvement over this, as God, Christ, the greatest minds, and our reasoning faculties assure us this is the case. The improvement in this world has been great, and it is pleasant to realize that the rate of progress will be still more marvelous, notwithstanding the dire prognostications of the pessimist. Civilization has made greater strides in the last fifty years than in a thousand years previously. Gladstone says that in the first half of the Nineteenth Century there was more wealth accumulated than in the previous Eighteen Centuries, and we know the accumulations of the last ten years, 19061916, have been simply marvelous, a far greater ratio of increase than previously. Our view points have been changing as well. Eighty years ago no

position of trust was offered to a man who was a Prohibitionist-now even the name saloon has been dropped, and a row of bottles is no longer displayed, to the outside looker-on, as a bait to lure him in.

The telegraph, the telephone, the wireless, and electricity in its various other uses, the pullman sleeper, the great tunnels, subways, bridges, the auto, the bicycle, aeroplane, the modern locomotive, and machinery in general (and others too numerous to mention) have all had their inception in the last half century, or thereabouts. Freedom of speech, of the press, of the pulpit, has been assured to us. Religious and social ostracism has passed away, together with slavery.* Diptheria which claimed eighty-five per cent as victims has reduced its toll to ten. Typhoid and yellow fever, black plague, small pox, etc., all in their time great scourages are now comparatively infrequent and in the large percentage of cases curable. War is becoming a thing abhorred and the time will not be long when the people will deprive the King or Emperor and his ministers of the right to embroil the nation. They will demand that it be put to the vote of the people. What is the exception now and classified as crime was then the law of the land. Murder and cannibalism were

✦ Buckle's Civilization in England, Vol. 1, part 1, pp. 137, 138 says that moral feelings have had no share at all in the decrease of war, it is all due to the increase of intellect, the less intellectual the people, the more warlike.

the proper thing, and long after man has established his own rights he conceded none to the woman, his former slave, whom he could kill at pleasure as he I could his children. Even after the old barons had relinquished their right to kill their servants or violate the chastity of their female retainers, they still reserved the right to practise summary vengeance on their wives. It is only of late years that women in many states have had any rights to speak of in the estate of their husbands', etc., and these even to-day are far more imperfect than the average reader thinks for, in some localities. It was only in the early part of the last century that there were two hundred twenty-three offenses punishable by death where to-day in some of our states there are no crimes so punishable. "It is only since the Eighteenth Century and the spread of the theory of equality that the father of a family has ceased to consider himself as a sort of irresponsible sovereign." *

When the French Revolutionists did away with the torturing of witnesses, many thought that justice would be unattainable thereafter. Imprisonment for debt and cannibalism among some of our Indians existed here in America, as well as the burning and hanging of men and women for witchcraft, for continued non-attendance at church and other trivial things. But every vestige of these

The Non-Religion of the Future, Guyau, p. 207,