e which passes
understanding and the false glamour of sensual passion and sensuous
self-indulgence, so long it is dangerous for them to know, with absolute
certainty, the real facts of the case.

Even the terrible and abhorrent pictures of an Eternal Hell, of endless
flames and of undying worms, have had their uses.

In this form alone could the thoroughly immature mind be made to realise
the discomfort and misery that would inevitably attend wrong-doing. It
_was_ a truth, although not a literal truth. Many literal truths convey
a false impression to the immature mind, whilst a symbolic truth may
convey as true an impression as such a mind is capable of receiving.

The old ideas of Heaven and Hell are already doomed; but other ideas,
equally untrue from the literal point of view, still hold their own, and
will be more slowly eradicated. It is well this should be so. The world
at large is not prepared yet to take this further step.

Frequent examinations have been found useful and inevitable in school
training, both as a test of progress and still more as an encouragement.

If you tell a school of boys and girls in January that a grand
examination will be held the following December, do you suppose they
will work as well and as diligently as if they knew there will be short
examinations at Easter and more important ones at midsummer?

Again, if you tell boys of ten years old, who are learning a little
history, geography, and arithmetic, just in the Rule of Three and simple
fractions, with perhaps a little Latin; of the Algebra and Euclid and
Conic sections and higher Mathematics, and Latin and Greek verse and
Hebrew and Philosophy, which they must some day confront, you will
puzzle and paralyse their brains, and leave only a sense of misery and
revolt and helplessness, which will quickly show forth in reckless
despair, even concerning the tasks which are well within their present
capacity.

God, in His Infinite Wisdom (of which ours is the feeblest reflection),
acts in precisely the same way as wise fathers and wise teachers.

Your earth is more or less of an infant school, but before leaving it,
some of you must prepare for the higher classes and learn to take your
own spiritual responsibilities.

It is seen that in these days of reaction and readjustment, many minds
are puzzled and perplexed by the old doctrines, which they have
outgrown, and which were never more than the outer husk and protection
for the in