ideals of what may be best for your own enjoyment and advancement fall far short of your dreams,—­your amusements pall on your over-wearied senses,—­your youth hurries away like a puff of thistledown on the wind,—­and you spend all your time feverishly in trying to live without understanding Life.  Life, the first of all things, the essence of all things,—­Life which is yours to hold and to keep, and to re-create over and over again in your own persons,—­this precious jewel you throw away, and when it falls out of your possession by your own act, you think such an end was necessary and inevitable.  Poor unhappy mortals!  So self-sufficient, so proud, so ignorant!  Like some foolish rustic, who, finding a diamond, sees no difference between it and a bit of glass, you, with the whole Universe sweeping around you in mighty beneficent circles of defensive, protective and ever re-creative power,—­power which is yours to use and to control--imagine that the entire Cosmos is the design of mere blind unintelligent Chance, and that the Divine Life which thrills within you serves no purpose save to lead you to Death!  Most wonderful and most pitiful it is that such folly, such blasphemy should still prevail,—­and that humanity should still ascribe to the Almighty Creator less wisdom and less love than that with which He has endowed His creatures.  For the very first lesson in the beginning of knowledge is that Life is the essential Being of God, and that each individual intelligent outcome of Life is deathless as God Himself.

The ‘Wilderness’ is wide,—­and within it we all find ourselves,—­ some wandering far astray—­some crouching listlessly among shadows, too weary to move at all—­others, sauntering along in idle indifference, now and then vaguely questioning how soon and where the journey will end,—­and few ever discovering that it is not a ‘Wilderness’ at all, but a garden of sweet sights and sounds, where every day should be a glory and every night a benediction.  For when the veil of mere Appearances has been lifted we are no longer deceived into accepting what Seems for what Is.  The Reality of Life is Happiness;—­the Delusion of Life, which we ourselves create by improper balance and imperfect comprehension of our own powers, must needs cause Sorrow, because in such self-deception we only dimly see the truth, just as a person born blind may vaguely guess at the beauty of bright day.  But for the Soul that has found Itself, there are no more misleading lights or shadows between its own everlastingness and the everlastingness of God.

All the world over there are religions of various kinds, more or less suited to the various types and races of humanity.  Most of these forms of faith have been evolved from the brooding brain of Man himself, and have nothing ‘divine,’ in them.  In the very early ages nearly all the religious creeds were mere methods for terrorising the ignorant and the weak—­and some of them were so revolting,