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INTRODUCTION.

I Do not deem it wise for an author to anticipate too much the plan and contents of a book in the introduction to it. The volume should speak for itself, and reveal itself step by step. For this reason I shall have little to say in this preface. I ought to say that I have not written the book as a systematic treatise based on any special theory as to the subject-matters involved, nor have I strained and warped my thought to make it fit any theory. The book is a growth; or I might say, it was impelled out of my mind, or through my mind, into forms of expression, by some impulse, power or incentive I could not resist. It was born out of heart-yearnings and soul-longings. My thought seemed to have reached a stage where it had to demand more light, or give in to the despair of intellectual death. I have attempted to reflect herein such light as I feel I have focused in my own mind, illuminating in a rational and optimistic manner the Purpose, Dignity and Destiny of that wondrous entity termed Human Life, and the processes of its unfoldment and elevation towards that Ideal, our reason teaches us was designed for it. I use the word “Life” as a term inclusive of the whole human entity.

To believe that this wondrous Life with all its powers and attributes will be at last a waste, a final dust-heap, and that there is no conservation of that vast energy known as Personality, is to my reason not only absurd but horrible.-Such a conception mars, yea condemns, the economy of the Uni

verse.

Again, to believe that the Power and Purpose back of and

shaping human Life will not finally, through the processes inherent in and evolving Personality and Selfhood, emancipate it from all the limitations and negations of what we term Sin" or "Evil" is to proclaim a libel on "the power that makes for righteousness."

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Having been warned by others' experience that learning is accounted a weariness to the flesh, I have sought to avoid as much as possible the didactic and analytic style, by casting the book in the form somewhat of a celestial romance or narrative, in which not only the experiences and environments, but the very personality, of the characters promulgate the truths sought to be taught.

While I have avoided adopting any theory or constructive system in writing this book, there is one great basal truth upon which it rests as the foundation and which as a cap-stone binds all together into a unity, and that is the truth of a higher spiritualism, which necessarily classes man as a spiritual entity with spiritual powers and attributes of being, and a spiritual destiny resulting therefrom that links him with the Infinite Spirit, and eventually places him in perfect spiritual environments and conditions consonant with his nature.

The purpose underlying this book, and which guided its production, is the highest and most sacred that can enter into human thought, aspiration or imagination; and (without mentioning certain occurrences connected with the conception and inception of this book) I feel constrained to say that this high purpose enters into, impulses, inspires and consecrates every line and sentence and page and character and emotion and thought written, portrayed, and delineated therein.

As pertinent to that all-absorbing purpose which I have followed in the undertaking of this volume, I am reminded of, and cheered by, the words of that author, scientist and thinker, John Tyndall, who said, “That science (the investigation of the phenomena and environments of the mere

material world) had no exclusive claim on the human intellect. The inexorable advance of man's understanding in the path of knowledge, and those unquenchable claims of his moral and emotional nature are imperative." And these words: "The world embraces not only a Newton, but a Shakspeare-not only a Boyle, but a Raphael-not only a Kant, but a Beethoven-not only a Darwin, but a Carlyle. Not in each, but in all, of these is human nature whole.And if unsatisfied with them all, the human mind, with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will still turn to the mystery from which it has emerged, seeking to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith, **** then casting aside all restrictions of materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for the noblest exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may be called the creative faculties of man."

So I would say to all who read this book, that if they wish to properly appreciate that purpose, and the thoughts, truths, sentiments and experiences recorded herein, they must, "with the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home," imagine themselves amid the conditions, scenes and transcendent beauties of that ideal realm and state unfolded herein; they must "cast aside all the restrictions of materialism," and mentally transport themselves out of these enveloping limitations; they must, in imagination, snap the cords of gravity, feel themselves without the boundary and horizon of this time and space, and behold the workings of their supreme will accomplishing through its innate power the dictates of its own volitions. They must consider truth, and behold the drama acted upon the stage of this material sphere's theater and man's Life and Dignity and Destiny as unfolded in this plot and play of the Almighty's conceiving from the high vantage ground of the Divine Love, Purpose and Reason, from which point of view we have tried to cast our longing vision. We must look across this time-world-scene from that

glowing promontory of light, which juts out from the auditory of the eternal.

He, who in the material looks only at the material, can ne'er see aught but the material.

"Unless above himself he can erect himself, how small a thing is man."

If, as the yearnings of faith and of the human heart teach us, as the inspirations of rational life imply, as the bases of all religions recognize, and as the conclusions of all philosophic truth tend to affirm, there be that Perfected Life and that "Home of Psyche" into which the unbound soul flieth at death as the sparks into the star-lit canopy, then why may we not with joy, "casting aside all the restrictions of materialism," seek to fashion that Life and Home so “as to give (verity, form and) unity to thought and faith?"

Why should that state which is far higher than this materialtemporality, and which should be to us the most transcendent, the grandest, the most important and the most real of all things in the universe, remain to us an undefined abstraction, an unimagined futurity and an unfelt and unreal reality? Why should we so live and act as to belie our faith and hope in our Eternal Life? Do we not by our manner of life proclaim that we live but for death?

If in writing this book I can make Real and Life-like what is beyond the end; if I can in clearer vision bring immortality to light, and portray that Home of our Life as real and intense, impulsed with love and varied joy, and teeming with all sweet companionships; if I can demolish in any mind the foul domination of gross materialism, which is subjugating the generations of men, and debasing their aspirations and psychic powers into beastly instincts of greed, avarice and fleshly satiety,-degrading the mind and intelligence into mere material service and physical gratification ; if I can rout from any heart and life the blighting phantoms