These exalted Beings, though
unseen to the physical eyes, are nevertheless potent factors in all
affairs of life, and give to the various groups of humanity lessons which
will most efficiently promote the growth of their spiritual powers. In
fact, the earth may be likened to a vast training school in which there
are pupils of varying age and ability as we find it in one of our own
schools. There are the savages, living and worshipping under most
primitive conditions, seeing in stick or stone a God. Then, as man
progresses onwards and upwards in the scale of civilization, we find a
higher and higher conception of Deity, which has flowered here in our
Western World in the beautiful Christian religion that now furnishes our
spiritual inspiration and incentive to improve.

These various religions have been given to each group of humanity by the
exalted beings whom we know in the Christian religion as the Recording
Angels, whose wonderful prevision enable them to view the trend of even so
unstable a quantity as the human mind, and thus they are enabled to
determine what steps are necessary to lead our enfoldment along the lines
congruous to the highest universal good.

When we study the history of the ancient nations we shall find that at
about six hundred years B. C. a great spiritual wave had its inception on
the Eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean where the great Confucian Religion
accelerated the progress of the Chinese nation, then also the Religion of
the Buddha commenced to win its millions of adherents in India, and still
further West we have the lofty philosophy of Pythagoras. Each system was
suited to the needs of the particular people to whom it was sent. Then
came the period of the Sceptics, in Greece, and later, traveling westward
the same spiritual wave is manifested as the Christian religion of the
so-called "Dark Ages" when the dogma of a dominant church compelled belief
from the whole of Western Europe.

It is a law in the universe that a wave of spiritual awakening is always
followed by a period of doubting materialism, each phase is necessary in
order that the spirit may receive equal development of heart and intellect
without being carried too far in either direction. The Great Beings
aforementioned, Who care for our progress, always take steps to safeguard
humanity against that danger, and when they foresaw the wave of
materialism which commenced in the sixteenth century with the birth of our
modern S