and all human
associations, and reveals the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in the
building of character, and the adornment of the Temple of the Human Soul.

This is indeed----

"Eternal Progress moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks."

Death is neither the end nor the beginning. It is only a change in pitch,
a shifting of keys, and the same old Song of Life goes on, if we have but
learned the score, and caught the harmony.

Salvation is not a thing accomplished once for all. We have only to
consider the monotony, the poverty of invention, and imagination, of those
who have tried to portray the joy of the Redeemed in heaven, in order to
realize what a bore it would soon become, if that were all.

Inspiration, achievement, and eternal progress, with more and more
helpfulness to others, with plane after plane achieved, revealing plane
after plane beyond--does not this appeal far more strongly to the highest
and best in us all?

And pray, what is this, but the _Great Work_, that I have tried herein to
outline, and as taught and lived by Jesus, and every great Master the
world has ever known? Each has achieved in his own degree, worded it in
his own way, and "stepped out of sunlight into shade, to make more room
for others."

Long before the birth of Jesus, it was said, "The wise and peaceful ones
live, renewing the earth like the coming of Spring." And having themselves
crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help all those who try to do the
same thing, without personal motive.

I have endeavored to give a general outline of the Great Work, drawn from
history, tradition, philosophy, and symbolism, down to the present year of
grace. I find many corroborations, many things pointing in the same
general direction. But I find but one concise and definite _formulation_
of the _scientific theorem_, in which the outline is clear, and the
analogy complete, and thereby made accessible and apprehensible to the
open-minded and intelligent student.

Such students need experience no real difficulty in finding a clew to the
labyrinth of life, or, as our ancient brothers put it in regard to the
_Magnum Opus_--"a key to the closed palace of the king."

This is the purpose of the "Harmonic Series" of books. They need rest upon
no authority beyond the intrinsic evidence of truth, on every page. If
they are not consistent in themselves, then they must fall in pieces. The
only appeal