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of soul-haunting superstitions, which like broods of vaporous darkness have been let in upon the too-much deluded inhabitants of earth, chasing away and obscuring that convoy of light and love from the bosom of the blessed Father of us all; if I can dispel any shadows from the mind, and cast any burdens off of the heart, and drive away any sorrow and despair from the life; if wise Ariel can illumine your mind with his glow of light and knowledge, and make plain to you the Divine Mind unfolding Itself in us, and working through us ever upward towards Itself-and if he can teach you the divine purpose of our dual existence in matter; if Meoön's deep emotions can inspire you with calm and holy reverence; if Benedictus can unfold to you the final, all-conquering and all-saving power of the Good and incite you to some noble activity; if Ristos' example can teach you that fearful, though sublime purpose and necessity, that Personality and Selfhood can be wrought out and attained only through sin and its struggles, and so impress upon you the ineffable glory and dignity of those, who, travailing up therefrom, have been sealed unto the Good, and so rendered impregnable to evil and its negations; if Clareese's sweet passion can portray to you the spotless sanctity and purity of love, and banish from your heart and life all foul and blemished emotions of a debased and depraved sensuality; if Assurance's life and exaltation can unfold to your perception the sublime vistas and abodes of conscious-Personal-Being disenthralled of the clogs and limitations of matter and material environments-and by his experience in Plutone's realm teach you man's supreme duty to so overcome the limitations, powers, perversions and tendencies of evil in his nature that its allurements cannot even so much as tempt or influence him ;—and finally and greatest of all: If the pure "Thought-Forms" of our real, living, loving Christ, which were addressed to the beatific minds in the "sphere of the Temple," can inspire us to the attainment of that Eternal Perfect Life which was declared

to be the portion, privilege and consummation of each pure and loving soul,—and which He taught was His pure, sweet, simple gospel proclaimed aforetime to the children of men ; --if these or some of these ends can be accomplished, then this book will not have been written in vain!

PROLOGUE.

I know an old chair that four generations have handed down.

The great-grandsire made that chair.

The worker sat in that chair.

The chair never worked.

The worker is gone!

worker die?

The old chair remains. Did the

I know a spreading evergreen. Under this evergreen long ago lovers made love. The evergreen never loved. The lovers are gone!

The evergreen remains.
Did the lovers die?

I know an old stone that lies within a churchyard's green. For long years the echoes of worshippers have rolled back from this stone.

The stone never worshipped.

The worshippers are gone!

The old stone remains.

Did the worshippers die?

I know a gnarled oak within the college grounds.
Thousands of thinkers thought under that oak.

The oak never thought.

The thinkers are gone!

The oak remains.

Did the thinkers die?

If the worker and the lovers and the worshippers and the thinkers are dead, then the chair and the evergreen and the stone and the oak are greater than they.

After a while the chair and the evergreen and the stone and the oak will dissolve, and each will go back into the ash and the acids and the gases and the energy from which they first came-and nothing will be lost!

For it is eternally established in the natural order that nothing should be lost.

But the worker and his power, the lovers and their love, the worshippers and their worship, the thinkers and their thought (if they and these are dead), had no ash, nor acids, nor gases, nor material energy into which they could be resolved and conserved so that nothing should be lost.

The worker and his power, the lover and his love, the worshipper and his worship, the thinker and his thought, are personal, and even if there were the ash and acids and gases of power and love and worship and thought, as impersonal elements and energies, into which the worker and lover and worshipper and thinker could be resolved, they would become impersonal and so be lost, for the impersonal is the negation and annihilation of the personal.

So if the worker who planned, and the lover who loved, and the worshipper who worshipped, and the thinker who thought, each died with the dissolution of the material body they are annihilated, for they have no correlatives in material nature in which they could be conserved, as are the elements and compounds of their material bodies, so that nothing should be lost.

Therefore, the chair and the evergreen and the stone and the oak which nature conserves are greater than the worker and the lover and the worshipper and the thinker.

This is a lie! And to show this was this book written. Herein behold the destiny, the dignity and the divinity of man's true estate revealed in

AN APOCALYPSE OF LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT AND WHERE?

"HAST thou come to remain with us, or wilt thou soon depart to other realms?"

Thus spoke, or communicated to me a voice, which roused me to a conscious perception of a realm, state, or sphere, which I can never fully depict in written or spoken thought.

I say a "voice spoke" to me, but it was not a voice speaking in the sense of a material phenomenon of speech. It was a communication of thought, a communing of intelligence, but I perceived it was not by media of material means or organs.

The intelligence that addressed itself to my mind communicated more like a flash of light, or as by impingement on the mind's perception of some clear vision or percept, than as by a continuity of articulate sounds.

In turn, I was conscious that my intelligence instantaneously received the impingement of the thought addressed to me, in a similar manner as the eye would perceive the zig-zag lightning darting athwart the clouds in dark

ness.

The experience of this Faculty of Mind, to perceive

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