prevent the
interposition of any barrier between his phenomenal and substantial
self; and by steadfastly cultivating harmonious relations between
these two,--by substantiating the whole of his system to the Divine
Central Will, whose seat is in the soul,--the man gains full access
to the stores of knowledge laid up in his soul, and attains to the
cognition of God and the universe."

Among the "devastators of a day" there is encountered, however, a vast
army of persons who advertise themselves vociferously as being
wonder-workers of human life. According to their insistent
proclamations, poverty is a "disease," and is to be cured by a course
of correspondence lessons; beauty, address, gifts and graces and power,
are secrets of which they hold the key; even death, too, is but another
mental malady and is easily to be overcome by their recipes. All these
fraudulent representations--as absurd as they are false--are but the
gross distortion of the underlying truth that thought creates conditions
and controls results. Thought cannot transform poverty into wealth by
means of six lessons; but the right quality of thought can set in motion
the causes which, carried on to fulfilment, result in an increasing
prosperity and welfare. One may thus achieve the top of his condition
through serenity and poise of spirit, and thus be enabled to see events
and combinations in their true perspective. He is not overwhelmed and
swept into abysses of despair because some momentary disaster has
occurred, but he regards it in its relative significance to the general
trend of matters, and thus remains master of the situation.

Still, if there are spurious claims to the power of the magician, and if
these claims, paraded by the idle, invade disastrously the realms of
the industrious in a continual procession of interruptions, there is
something, too, to be said on the side of another--and a very genuine
sort of wonder-working,--to transmute these interruptions into
opportunities.

Individuality is the incalculable factor in life, and it is one, too,
that must be fully allowed for, if one would proceed as harmoniously as
possible among the unseen brambles and pitfalls that may beset his
onward pathway. A very large proportion of the discords of life arise
from the failure to take into consideration the special qualities in
their special grouping that determine the person with whom one has to
do,--qualities which are