is this that we are here to discover.

SURPLUS.

Human beings slaughtered on battle fields, or carried off by pestilence
and famine by thousands, or perishing by accidents by sea or by land by
hundreds, are individually dear and useful, and are mourned; but in the
great aggregate of moving life on this planet, they count as surplus.

ANALYSIS OF THE "LORD'S PRAYER."

How shall we pray? To whom shall we pray? Shall we pray at all?
These are unsettled questions in the minds of many good persons who are
striving to perceive the highest truth and to be guided thereby. The
tests that have been applied to the usefulness of prayer by a large
class of religious people have been, for ages, purely materialistic.
The Lord has been importuned for the bestowal of personal favors, from
the manufacturing of the right kind of weather to the slaying of
enemies, and from the righteous putting down of infidels, to the
spending of dollars with which to build high steeples. Then, too, God
has had the benefit of the very best advice concerning the way He ought
to deal with the heathen, how He should treat sinners of every sort, so
as to show himself equal to managing his fractious subjects, and,
finally, how to carry things along generally after such a fashion as
should win and hold the respect of his earthly advisers.

This utter misunderstanding of the true function of prayer has caused
many earnest souls to sorrow over lost faith in what should have been
to them a source of strength and uplifting. Jesus said: "Ask, and ye
shall receive," and as all his teachings referred to things of the
spirit, he must have meant to indicate to his followers that whatever
was sought for in the line of true spiritual enlightenment would surely
be given. No one prays for houses and lands, for gold and other forms
of material wealth, "for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

All through the teachings of Jesus run the mention of his and our
Heavenly Parent, "Our Father," and since much of our knowledge of
spiritual things comes through our perception of the law of
correspondences, we naturally feel and believe that we have not only a
Father but also a Mother in heaven. The recognition of the mother
element--the Divine Mother--has always been a most potent factor in the
power of the Roman Catholic Church to retain the unchanging devotion of
its faithful adherents.

The reaction from a bigoted belief in, and a blind reliance upon a
jealous