f
rest from all pain and sorrow of earthly existence is really Heaven
enough for the average human mind. A place of beautiful surroundings,
where everything necessary for their comfort is furnished them, without
money and without price and, best of all, where they no longer fear
being grabbed up and punished by the devil for their sins of ignorance
committed when in the body. It is not possible for us, plunged, as we
all are, into the vortex of this difficult existence, to realize what
all this means to the world-weary. If one shall halt by the way, or
fall aside from the great unending procession nothing stops. The
terrible, tumultuous waves of humanity roll on, and the lost are not
missed or mourned for, save by the few that were responsible for their
coming, or for the awful lack of help and tendance that made them
failures in the battle of life.

The great army of the commonplace, the neither positively good nor the
very bad, is the largest class of all humanity. The most pestiferous
and difficult to adjust to the law of progress and advancement. Hold
one of them out of hell by the hair of the head, and when he is let go
he only drops further in, and nothing teaches him but the "slings and
arrows" of misfortune, and every dreadful experience that can be handed
out to him. Much of this almost universally deplorable condition--it
may be the whole of it--has been induced by false, unreasonable
religious teachings. The human mind needs every inducement to effort
to overcome its natural inertia instead of being put to sleep by
promises of being exempt from all responsibility connected with its
final redemption.

NATURE SPIRITS.

The "dwellers at the threshold" are the individualized entities of the
elements of nature. Air, fire, earth depths, and seas. These belong
to the domain of nature, pure and simple, and are met and controlled by
the affinities of the chemicals of the material, physical organization
of the individual. The most potent of these leading in the degree of
material success to be achieved in dealing with material life.

Money getting in the mines, earth depths. All manufactories that
require raging and continuous flame; ships to sail, and conquer water
spirits; electrical and etherial forces that move in the air currents.
These are the soulless, irresponsible "goblins" and "gnomes," "Fire
spirits" and "_ignes fatui_" of the nether world. All human beings who
progress at all have to