opeless, for life is
infinite, and new factors can be evolved whose working out will create
the new heaven and the new earth.

* * * * *

Here, in the earth life, we have it in our power to seize our
future destination.--FICHTE.

[Sidenote: The Weight of the Past.]

One of the most inspiring injunctions of Saint Paul is that in which he
bids us to "lay aside every weight." Poet and prophet have always
recognized the weight of the past as a serious problem. One has made all
sorts of mistakes; he is entangled in the consequences of his "errors
and ignorances," if not in his sins, and how can he enter on a Life
Radiant with this burden? Well does Sidney Lanier express this feeling
in the stanzas:--

"My soul is sailing through the sea,
But the Past is heavy and hindereth me,
The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells
That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
About my soul.
The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole,
And hindereth me from sailing!

"Old Past, let go and drop i' the sea
Till fathomless waters cover thee!
For I am living, but thou art dead;
Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
The day to find.
Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind,
I needs must hurry with the wind
And trim me best for sailing."

There is no question but that the past is heavy and hindereth every one.
Its "cumbrous shells" cling like dead weights around man, and keep him
from the larger, freer life. "Man is not by any means convinced as yet
of his immortality," says Sir Edwin Arnold; "all the great religions
have in concert more or less positively affirmed it to him; but no safe
logic proves it, and no entirely accepted voice from some farther world
proclaims it."

The one proof, of course, so far as absolute evidential demonstration
goes, lies in the communication from those who have passed through
death. There unfolds an increasingly impressive mass of logical
probabilities that point to but one conclusion to every student of
science and of spiritual laws. Biology offers its important testimony.
The law of the conservation of forces,--of motion and matter,--which is
definitely proven by actual demonstration, suggests with a potency which
no one can evade that intellect, emotion, and will--the most intense and
resistless forces of the universe--can hardly be extinguished when the
forces of matter persist. The study of t