ight all along the way of human life--to begin to test
the value of the ideas and principles with which the soul has been
furnished to meet all the exigencies incident to the pilgrimage from
birth to the final exit from this state of being. It has taken
uncounted ages to produce the perfected types of physical humanity we
see on earth today. Here Nature calls a halt, saying: "As the
handmaid, the co-worker with your Creator, I have brought you along to
the point where you look and seem almost as gods. There is in each of
you a divine ego--a thought of your Creator--a sure guide to
perfection. To reach this goal must be now your constant endeavor.
There is a spiritual body, the outgrowth of the physical."

Thousands of children, too young to choose for themselves, are being
fettered in spirit by the chains of old, effete superstitions; their
intellects are being stultified by the absorption of narrowing creeds
and vulgarizing ideas of God and his universe. There are numbers of
Spiritualists and "liberal" men and women who expose the tender minds
of their children to these same influences for society's sake, knowing
though they do, from hard experience, what an effort it costs to free
the mind of such serious bias, and re-educate it aright.

* * * * * *

The noblest teaching is that which puts us _en rapport_ with our own
inner, unspoken and unrecognized perceptions. No truth, however
manifested, can adjust itself to our soul's needs, save as it finds in
us a response through that preparation which comes from a certain
degree of previous knowledge.

EGOTISM.

Egotism is the perception, and recognition by individuals of the rights
and the possibilities of their real selves, their ego. Without it
human beings would not stand up on their hind legs, they would crawl.
It is at the same time a necessity and a danger. It has never been
settled which is cause and which effect, whether insanity creates the
awful manifestations of egotism or the unbalanced egotism induces
insanity. "Keep us sane" is the wisest of all prayers, the greatest
demand one can make upon his consciousness.

People pass into the spirit world in the full bloom of their egotism;
hordes of them return to tell their friends things they know absolutely
nothing about, and the folks on this side believe all they say, and so
fool ignorance is passed along and stays in the minds of those who
listen to the "message