e should rather
endeavor to learn the lessons which are contained therein, that we may
live a long and useful life. Some one may object, and say: You are
inconsistent in your teachings. You say there is really no death, that we
go into a brighter existence, and that we have to learn other lessons
there in a different sphere of usefulness! Why then aim to live a long
life here?

It is very true that we make these claims, and they are perfectly
consistent with the other assertions just mentioned, but there are lessons
to be learned _here_ which cannot be learned in the other worlds, and we
have to bring up this physical body through the useless years of
childhood, through hot and impulsive youth, to the ripeness of manhood or
womanhood, before it becomes of true spiritual use. The longer we live
after maturity has been attained, when we have commenced to look upon the
serious side of life and started to truly learn lessons which make for
soulgrowth, the more experience we shall gather and the richer our harvest
will be. Then, in a later existence, we shall be so much more advanced,
and capable of taking up tasks that would be impossible with less length
of life and breadth of activity. Besides, it is hard to die for the man in
the prime of life with a wife and growing family whom he loves; with
ambitions of greatness unfulfilled; with hosts of friends about him, and
with interests all centered upon the material plane of existence. It is
sad for the woman whose heart is bound up in home and the little ones she
has reared, to leave them, perhaps without anyone to care for them; to
know that they have to fight their way alone through the early years when
her tender care is needed, and perhaps to see those little ones abused,
and she unable to lift a hand, though her heart may bleed as freely as it
would in earth life. All these things are sad, and _they bind the spirit
to earth_ for a much longer time than ordinarily, they hinder it from
reaping the experiences it should reap upon the other side of death, and
they make it desirable along with other reasons already mentioned to live
a long life before passing onwards.

The difference between those who pass out at a ripe old age, and one who
leaves this earth in the prime of life, may be illustrated by the manner
in which the seed clings to a fruit in an unripe state. A great deal of
force is necessary to tear the stone from a green peach; it has such a
tenacious hold upon th