book it has given us, — the Word, the voice of

nature.
Time was forever. It has no beginning and
THE DIVINITY OF ENERGY. II
no end ; and while it may divide into past, present, and future, it still remains the present one and now. The present has no beginning nor end; the past is not lost ; and the future is never here, although continually beginning. The eternal now is always here for contemplation and criticism.
Observation of the working of nature shows a division of powers, principles, and forces, demon- strating that a great law of existence is dependent on division, or the separation of the concrete into the individual. It is not a division of time when things were not, for such a state is inconceivable. The past is as inconceivable as the future ; it is brought forward and objectified in the living present, and we are in and of it.
Energy was never inactive ; there was never a place nor time where and when things were not. It divides itself into life and death, but life is first in order of appearance, since things must live be- fore they can die. Energy abounds more in the former than in the latter condition, demonstrating that the first principle in any division is fuller of energy than those that come later. For example, the manifestation of life is due to the attraction and repulsion of energy, but attraction is first and
12 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
the principal force in its development. To attrac- tion is due the mating of the sexes and the growth of the foetus in the womb, nor does repulsion man- ifest until the child is fully matured. The infer- ence is logical that the first manifestation of energy is a drawing together, a suction, the concentrative and accumulative force, the female principle of life. To that negative female principle is due the contraction of diffusive energy into centers, as worlds, suns, stars, and souls of all animate life.
The formless and apparently lifeless space in which worlds float like atoms in a sunbeam, which surrounds all worlds and all atoms, holding them tenderly but firmly in place, is an infinite womb, in which the powers of energy are divided into the opposing elements of life and death, day and night, body and mind, male and female, and all opposites. Between them, enthroned in unap- proachable mystery and glory of conscious living fire, sits the Energy, which says, " I am that I am."
This division of energy must not be considered as absolute, but more in the nature of differentia- tion, since absolute division would admit of only the two opposing principles, which would instantly fuse and become one, if some balancing force
THE DIVINITY OF ENERGY. 1 3
were not between them. Water may be used in illustration. If divided it must be held apart by some other substance than itself, although all sub- stance has water in itself as a component element. But there is another kind of division, qualified, impermanent, as when the waters of the ocean are divided into waves by the wind. The waves are still water in the form of waves. It is thus with energy. Divided into motion and inertia it is still energy, although not the great unfathomable deep where motion is unknown.
Out of the bosom of energy comes the spirit which moves on the face of the waters, as the breath of life, foreshadowed in the story of creation. All known forms of life gestate in water, and the waters referred to in Genesis on the face of which the spirit moved are that incomprehensible energy out of which odic force emanated, a magnetic current instinct with life.
The soul in man is his firmament dividing the upper waters of intelligence from the lower waters of impulse, passion, and lust, a center in being from which is derived the sense of above and be- low, or of the opposing elements in all nature. Without the soul, standing between good and
14
EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
evil, or opposing forces, man could not be a pro- gressive being. It is through the soul that energy enters, and from it exhales the spirit which reveals the quality of the man. This firmament, this soul, declared to be the " heavens," is not in the skies, but is where the great Master located it when he affirmed that "the kingdom of heaven is within you.
Truth, the soul of action, lies hidden beneath the rubbish of all human life. Around it clusters the best thought of the race and toward it all life tends as to " the Father's house/' when it shall have " shuffled off this mortal coil."
What more beautiful symbol of love than " the Father's house " ; the beginning of family ; a cen- ter in which the Father dwells ; an object lesson in creation ; a center of love from which go forth the inhabitants of worlds, and the truth of love and its demonstrations of power? It is in the Father's house that the human soul finds rest, if there is any for it on earth. In this incubator of life, warmed by the fires of parental love, truth is born, the light of intelligence is kindled and fanned to a blaze which may become the light of the world.
THE DIVINITY OF ENERGY. 15
The Father's house is the soul of civilization, the nerve center of the body politic. From it radiates society, nations, governments, literature, art, and religion.
All power draws to centers. Wealth seeks cities and banks ; governments center in kings or par- liaments ; parties have their conventions and man- agers ; religion its head center in an idea and its nerve centers in its clergy. These centers are all souls from which radiate life and the energy to fashion, to mold, to bind together, and to break in sunder. There is no power which does not develop a center of influence, and such centers are souls of the elements so drawn to a focus. To put it briefly : the concentrated energies that combine to form an organization is its soul. The soul of a manufactory is the executive genius who works only through thought. He sits in his office while the agents of his intelligence rush here and there, rays of his thought, and the roaring ma- chinery is instinct with the music he makes. The force of the entire plant centers in him ; the effort of toil, steam, and machinery centers in the un- known and incomprehensible mind of the execu- tive, which silently stands between and controls
1 6 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
the play of forces, and the inertia born of silence and rest. There is a point in the soul which moves not, a point out of which a fire rises whose light is intellect and whose heat is love. From this central point all soul activities rise, irradiating the mind and manifesting power through all the machinery of life.
The soul is but a bubble on the ocean of en- ergy, " the waters " of Genesis, and out of this bubble the spirit, heat (love), issues and moves upon the waters, but this heat does not immedi- ately evolve fire, or the light of mind. Love and the involuntary powers precede the evolution of intellect and the voluntary powers. Thus man is by nature a feeling and impulsive being before he is an emotional and reasoning soul ; but he is neither body, soul, nor mind, but an undying energy which stands between and manifests as the third element in all dual relations, or what to the senses seem so.
The senses of the soul form a sort of timepiece which registers the effects which follow the pass- ing to and fro of the pendulum of energy, from life to death, from consciousness to unconsciousness. Consciousness may be regarded as a wheel in this
THE DIVINITY OF ENERGY. I J
timepiece which man must adjust from time to time as he adjusts the alarm in a clock, that the report of time may be accurate and compel atten- tion. Unconsciousness may be likened to a dark closet below the clock into which the soul de- scends, and, closing the door, shuts out all sensa- tion as one excludes the light, leaving a room in darkness.
Man is aware of himself and of all things exter- nal through the mind ; and as mind is dependent on energy for existence and consciousness, the way to life and immortality must lie along the develop- ment of fuller power to receive and radiate en- ergy. The power to radiate energy is as neces- sary as the capacity to receive, for the man who holds within himself all that he receives of life, love, and power can have little consciousness of anything but himself. To such persons much suffering and countless crucifixions are necessary to enlarge their sympathy with suffering and bring to flower the seeds of love planted in every soul. The soul is feeling, emotion ; the mind is thought and the storehouse of knowledge. The small soul and mind cannot contain much and they attract little, for attraction is in proportion to re- ceptivity.
1 8 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
The ancients worshiped the stars as gods, ascribing certain qualities to them and the control of certain human activities. The idea had its in- ception in a great truth, viz., that man has within himself the greatest potency, the fullest degree of energy of any creation, and thus they naturally associated him with the most perfect forms, and embodied him in the stars. Have we any loftier conceptions of deity than the ancients ? Which is preferable, an infinitude of gods, or two, one of which is good and the other evil, as the Persians conceived, or our own one God, always at war with the universe he has created ? The ancients taught that the stars were once human souls which had so far evolved and perfected themselves as to have attained oneness of energy wherein all power may be exercised by the will. They taught that to reach this condition man must pass the gate open only to pairs ; the divided energy, in male and female, must become again one. Antago- nisms of thought must be indrawn so that the mind might become a receptacle of spirit, the mind being the male principle, while form, the fe- male principle, must lose its angularities and be rounded to a sphere. Energy, no longer divided,
THE DIVINITY OF ENERGY.
19
became one in mind and form, blended with truth as a creative force, never to be sundered.
Marriage is only a symbol of this perfect blend- ing of form and mind, when each shall have reached the acme of dual progression.
Energy contains within itself every conceivable object, emotion, and thought. The process of creation is simply projection into time and space of that which is indrawn. Thus man in a spiritual state of being can take any form he desires, from that of a worm to that of a star. The two, which have become one, may draw forms, souls, minds, ideas, circumstances, and events from that infinite storehouse of energy which our angular, harsh word God but feebly symbolizes.
The earth is a soul in which the male and fe- male principles have combined or flowed together as the waves subside into the still waters of the great deep. This perfect union attracts and re- ceives the infinite energy in a continuous flowing current of force.
When the perfected soul whose earth name was Jesus came to humanity out of the soul world, he declared that he was the Light of Life and the Way to immortality. Why? Because he could
20 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
affirm from positive knowledge, " I and the Father
are one!'
Mastery over bodily sensations is gained by union of mind and soul in one positive will. Sensation may be drawn from one part and con- centrated in another, or it may be entirely sus- pended. Between every two principles there is a third, the point where action and reaction touch, and that third factor, without which the two could not manifest, is energy. There is no absolute duality; the triune is the form of all manifestation ; although the third factor may elude investigation, it is always present.
When soul and mind are perfectly blended man becomes the arbiter of his own destiny in a con- scious and voluntary exercise of his powers. The present physical body is corruptible and the with- drawal of the astral body leaves it to disintegrate ; but in the higher stages of progress when man has become one, by the union of the perfected spiritual nature with his feminine counterpart, thus completing the quarternary -f- of existence, the blending of two perfected souls into one elongated sphere or fire body, it is not subject to decay or corrupting change. This fire body may take to
THE DIVINITY OF ENERGY. 21
itself any form the soul chooses to superinduce about it, and in appearance may walk the earth in the form of ordinary manhood ; but as this body is projected from the real self of being it may at anytime be again indrawn and never "see corruption." This is the body in which Jesus dwelt on the earth, which could die in appearance but could not see corruption.
There is no impossibility to the being filled with divine energy and at one with its spirit and power. Jesus is " the Way, the Truth and the Life," not so much by what he is reported to have said as by the testimony of his life, death, and resurrection. It was no phantom body which he subjected to the test of taking food and being touched and handled, but that which by virtue of his spiritual advance beyond the ordinary man he could project or indraw at will.
22 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.