s
wings,--hope and faith are creative, and can both control and change the
trend of events. Circumstances are but the crude material, which is
subject to any degree of transformation by the alchemy of faith. "When a
god wishes to ride, every chip and stone will bud and shoot out winged
feet to carry him," and it is hope and faith that give the power of the
gods.

There is, perhaps, no adequate realization on the part of humanity of
the enormous extent to which the forces in the Unseen mingle with the
forces of the Seen, and thus complete the magnetic battery of action.
Life approaches perfection in just the degree to which it can
intelligently and reverently avail itself of this aid which is a divine
provision. It is not only after death that the soul "stands before God."
The soul that does not stand before God, now and here, in the ordinary
daily life, does not even live at all, in any true sense. "I am come
that ye might have _life_," said Jesus, "and have it more abundantly." It
is only as one holds himself receptive to the divine currents that he
has life, and it rests with himself to have it "more abundantly" every
day and hour.

This constant communion with Jesus, this living in constant receptivity
to the divine energy, includes, too, the living in telepathic communion
with those who have gone on into the Unseen world. The spirituality of
life is conditioned on so developing our own spiritual powers by faith
and prayer and communion with God, that one is sensitive to the presence
and responsive to the thought of friends who have been released from the
physical life. Shall Phillips Brooks, the friend and helper and wise
counsellor when here, be less so now that he has entered into the next
higher scale of being? Shall the friend whom we loved, and who was at
our side in visible presence yesterday, be less our friend because his
presence is not visible to us to-day? Why is it not visible? Simply
because the subtle spirit-body is in a state of far higher vibration
than the denser physical body, and the physical eye can only recognize
objects up to a certain vibratory degree. It is a scientific fact.
Musicians and scientists know well that above a certain pitch the ear
cannot recognize sound; it becomes silence. But as Saint Paul says,
"there is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," and the
spiritual body also has its organs of sight and hearing. Clairvoyance
and clairaudience are as natural, when the spi