gion, to help a troubled world, in this day
of its necessity, "to look out over the wall."

[1] John iii. 2.

PART I

The Near Hereafter

CHAPTER I

"I"

The title of this chapter is a very short one. It consists of but a
single word, and that the shortest word in the whole English language.
And though it is the shortest word, yet it is the most wonderful and
mysterious word. Though it is a word that every one of us has on his
lips every moment of the day, yet no one who reads this book--no one in
the whole world--has ever been able to understand what it means.

Just the letter "I."--All day long, from morning till night, we are
using it:--I did this. I mean to do that. I ought. I shall. I will.
I think. I wish. I love. I hate. I remember. I forget. And so on
and on--ever ringing the changes on this little word in all its cases
"I" and "my" and "mine" and "me." I want to set you thinking. Who or
what is this "I," this "me"?

Perhaps you will say, "Oh, there is nothing mysterious about it--I know
very well what I mean by it. 'I' means myself."

But what do I mean by Myself? Of course there is a rough work-day
meaning in which it means my whole being as I stand--clothes, body,
brains, thoughts, feelings, general appearance, everything. But every
thinking man knows that this is not the real "I," that when he says I
can, I do, I will, I ought, I remember, the "I" means to him something
much deeper and more mysterious than that. Ask yourself, each one,
what do you mean by "I"?

Section 1

IS IT MY BODY? Nay, surely not. I know that my body is only my
outward garment woven by "me" out of certain chemical substances. In a
scientific museum I can stand before a glass case and see neatly
labelled the exact portions of lime and silica and iron and water and
other elements which compose my body. I know that this body is
continually changing its substance like the rainbow in the sky, like
the eddy round a stone in the river. The body I have to-day is no more
the body of last year than the fire on my hearth to-night is the fire
that was there this morning. I have had a dozen different bodies since
I was born, but I am the same still. Every thinking man knows that the
"I," the real self, stands behind the body looking out through the
windows of the eyes, receiving messages through the portals of the
ears. It rules the body, it possesses the body. It says, "I have a
body." "T