CHAPTER I.

THE DIVINITY OF ENERGY.
The human mind is bounded by itself. It can- not transcend itself, or work outside its own en- ergies.
The continually changing forms of things gives rise in the mind to ideas of a beginning, and in speculating on nature's activities, a beginning is always predicated of her work.
As all works of man have a maker, we childlike predicate a maker for this wonderful timepiece, the universe, in which intelligence is so manifest and in which we appear, to ourselves, to be an important factor.
It is folly to assume an external or foreign power as creative, when there is everywhere man- ifest in nature a living force which permeates all
9
IO EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY,
things, being within and of them instead of out- side of them.
The existence of energy is self-evident, and its duration is eternal, " from everlasting to ever- lasting," for in its fullness it is the Great God him- self. It is complete, and contains within itself all qualities, powers, parts, and attributes of things, aye, even the whole of things.
We do not say a wise or good energy as we say a wise or good man, but man without energy can be neither wise nor good. It is self-existent and omnipresent, and no conception of inactivity exists or can exist in relation to it.
The vast, boundless, fathomless expanse of space is pervaded by this incomprehensible and formless spirit, or energy. Although incompre- hensible, we live by contact with it and partake of it in all living functions, as in breathing, eating and drinking, thinking and speaking, sleeping and waking, living or dying, we are one with it. We can only know of its methods of action, of its creative processes by careful study of the only