and we may say, continually out of gear. It is essential to a
correct understanding, and therefore for any adequate use of the
potential powers and forces of the inner life, to realise this.

It is the physical body that relates us to the physical universe about
us, that in which we find ourselves in this present form of existence.
But the body, wondrous as it is in its functions and its mechanism, is
not the life. It has no life and no power in itself. It is of the earth,
earthy. Every particle of it has come from the earth through the food we
eat in combination with the air we breathe and the water we drink, and
every part of it in time will go back to the earth. It is the house we
inhabit while here.

We can make it a hovel or a mansion; we can make it even a pig-sty or a
temple, according as the soul, the real self, chooses to function
through it. We should make it servant, but through ignorance of the real
powers within, we can permit it to become master. "Know ye not," said
the Great Apostle to the Gentiles, "that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your
own?"

The soul is the self, the soul made in the image of Eternal Divine Life,
which, as Jesus said, is Spirit. The essential reality of the soul is
Spirit. Spirit--Being--is one and indivisible, manifesting itself,
however, in individual forms in existence. Divine Being and the human
soul are therefore in essence the same, the same in quality. Their
difference, which, however, is very great--though less in some cases
than in others--is a difference _in degree_.

Divine Being is the cosmic force, the essential essence, the Life
therefore of all there is in existence. The soul is individual personal
existence. The soul while in this form of existence manifests, functions
through the channel of a material body. _It is the mind that relates the
two._ It is through the medium of the mind that the two must be
coordinated. The soul, the self, while in this form of existence, must
have a body through which to function. The body, on the other hand, to
reach and to maintain its highest state, must be continually infused
with the life force of the soul. The life force of the soul is Spirit.
If spirit, then _essentially one_ with Infinite Divine Spirit, for
spirit, Being, is one.

The embodied soul finds itself the tenant of a material body in a
material universe, and according to a plan as yet, at least, beyo