one alone is real and divine, although it contains principles
taken from all the rest and blended with its own. There is no
salvation by foregone election; for that would dethrone the moral
laws and deify caprice. There is no salvation by dogmatic faith;
because faith is not a matter of will, but of evidence, not within
man's own power, and a thousand varieties of faith are
necessitated among men. There is no salvation by determinate
works; for works are measurable quantities, whose rewards and
punishments are meted and finally spent, but salvation is
qualitative and infinite. There is no salvation by intellectual
knowledge; for knowledge is sight, not being, an accident, not an
essence, an attribute of one faculty, not a right state and ruling
force in all. The true salvation is by harmony; for harmony of all
the forces of the soul with themselves and with all related forces
beyond, harmony of the individual will with the Divine will,
harmony of personal action with the universal activity, what other
negation of perdition is possible? what other definition and
affirmation of salvation conceivable? By the Creator's fiat, man
is first elected to be. By the guiding stimulus of faith, he is
next animated to spiritual exertion. By the performance of good
works, he then brings his moral nature into beautiful form and
attitude. By knowledge of truth, he furthermore sees how to
direct, govern, and attune himself. And finally, by the
accomplishment of all this in the organized harmony of a wise and
holy soul, there results that state of being whose passive
conditions constitute salvation, and whose active experience is
eternal life.

CHAPTER VI.

RECOGNITION OF FRIENDS IN A FUTURE LIFE.

OF all the sorrows incident to human life, none is so penetrating
to gentle hearts as that which fills them with aching regrets,
and, for a time, writes hollowness and vanity on their dearest
treasures, when death robs them of those they love. And so, of all
the questions that haunt the soul, wringing its faculties for a
solution, beseeching the oracles of the universe for a response,
none can have a more intense interest than gathers about the
irrepressible inquiry, "Shall we ever meet again, and know, the
friends we have lost? somewhere in the ample creation and in the
boundless ages, join, with the old familiar love, our long parted,
fondly cherished, never forgotten dead?" The grief of bereavement
and the desire of reunion are exper