There are only two paths in life, and we must choose between them. The eternal law is ever seeking to bring about perfect expression of life. If we understand the law and conform to it, then peace and rest result. Oppose the law, and purification can come only through bitter experience. There is no going back; there is no standing still. In the evolution of life we must unfold to that which tends toward the perfect likeness of God. In some lives this comes gradually. while in others the development is more rapid. There is no escaping from the purifying process. It may come "as by fire," or by obedience to the eternal law of God; but in either case "all things are working together for good." Everything is seeking adjustment. The inner adjustment of law is written on the tablet of every soul. By "law" I do not mean the law of hygiene or that of physics, or of anything that operates upon the external; for if the mind is right within it will express itself outwardly in perfect wholesomeness. It is impossible for a man that is clean in mind to be unclean in body. It is the inner cleanliness that expresses itself in the outer. Our thoughts being right, every word and every deed will be so expressed that nothing but good will result.

I am not asking the reader to believe in any creed or any dogma. All I claim is that law and order regulate life. From their observance good results come here and now. From disobedience comes the reverse. In one case we get the good, the strength, the perfection of life; in the other we get the pain, the distress, and the disease. It is a condition of mind to be actualized. Obedience to the inner law will bring about a perfect demonstration. If we put heaven off for a future realization, it will always be postponed. "The kingdom of God is within you." We must realize God's kingdom here and now. By realizing that inner realm of life we will find that the outer expression is good and beautiful, and that in so doing we are working together for the good of all.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

BY J. A. PLUMMER.

For nineteen centuries Pilate's question has puzzled the soul. The answer has differed almost with each succeeding hour. The thinking mind never stands still, and every moment of time, affording additional opportunity for thought, has carried us along to broader planes of observation-and the oft-repeated question is again and again answered anew.

Truth is absolute, but our changing point of vision gives it always relative application. It is ours only as we assimilate it. To the wise man, that is folly which to the fool may seem supremest wisdom. He that is learned in the history of our race feels the glow of truth where the unillumined soul knows nothing but inky darkness.

Moses thought he argued with God, and convinced Him of the error of His ways. In the dawn of the twentieth century we find this to have been a psychical illusion. But Moses was thereby led up to a higher level of living. He saw more of real goodness and felt perchance that heaven was nearer home; yet, what was truth to him is now to us simply an interesting study.

Joshua supposed that the sun stood still a while, that he might make his work of carnage more complete. How many people are there now who think that killing men is worshiping God?

The world moves, and as the shadows disappear the error and the folly of attributing brutal instincts and motives to a natural origin becomes more and more evident. The language of the soul wherever voiced is Truth, be it found in Christian Bible, Hindu philosophy, or the cruder Alkoran. "It is the Christ within."

Is it supposable that the warped and narrow souls who

taught that the world was flat, and that the sun went around the earth, knew all the truth when sitting in judgment on our canonical writings? Is it true that our salvation depends on faith in their inerrancy? Is it also true that character alone counts for nothing in the life to come? Must we accept against our reason some priestly doctrine, or forever wander through a realm of blackest darkness? Must we believe in

hell in order to reach heaven? Did the loving Father of us all create a Devil, and then our race for him to capture and confine in endless torments? Is it possible that Infinite Life is such a failure? Must nobility of soul end only in ultimate ruin unless the faith is also cherished that untold millions are destined to eternal gloom? Was the book of Revelation closed ere science had had its birth? Was all spiritual truth disclosed in the morning of civilization? Did not our fathers simply teach up to the level of their development? Was inspiration theirs, and theirs alone?

"From out the wilderness" there comes no answering voice; but deep within the soul we feel the strenuous "No!"

If God is omnipresent and Omnipresence, all knowing and all Knowledge, all loving and all Love, He accompanies the life current in our veins and throbs in our pulse just as much to-day as ever in the history of man. There is no personality to the Infinite. "God is Life." "God is Spirit"-not a Spirit. Paul caught this glimpse of truth and thereafter he spoke as one with soul illumined.

From the infancy of man to his present state is a long line of thinking. What we are pleased to call goodness is the slow accretion of the centuries. The study of life has brought us into closer relationship, and we are becoming more and more willing to sit down and reason together. The charm of the supernatural has given us many strange fancies. The incoming of the natural dispels them one by one.

Heaven is no fiddler's court. It is a condition into which we can enter here as well as hereafter, and, if "God is every

where," the conclusion is unavoidable that we are as near to him on earth as we will ever be.

My way to everlasting bliss and your way to endless woe find little lodgment now among the world's accepted truths. Virtue is the growth of the ages; perfection did not mark man's inception. Adam would be a barbarian to-day.

The tides of destiny wait not on mere beliefs. Doing and being and taking part in the general uplifting of humanity constitute the largest expression of Truth.

Immunity from future "fire" is not the great desideratum of present life. The conflagration in the soul that burns out thoughts of kindness and takes away compassion for the weakness of man is the deepest hell we'll ever find, and its entrance is through the door of personal selfishness.

To me, agnosticism is unsatisfying. It does not answer the requirements of a mind that seeks to know. Intuitively, we believe that what we see is not all there is in life. Something back of it all, back of the thought that thinks, back of the feeling that feels, speaks in its own peculiar language and tells us of an existing soul. He that possesses most of this indefinable element is always the master spirit of his age. It did not spring into being at birth, else it would pass into nothingness at death. A beginning presupposes an ending. Is not life, then, but a part of the Infinite manifested in man? If God is "All in all," what are creeds and doctrines? Mere flesh barriers, not soul cleavages; simply shadows cast by a central

sun.

Spiritual truth admits of no "trust." There is no "cornering" of eternity. The gates of Paradise are opened and closed by our own lives here and now; not by some white-winged angel in a distant, far-off land, on our profession of faith in another's scheme of salvation.

Truth lies next the heart, and the nearer we reach the soul the nearer we reach the well-watered land where grow no noxious weeds. It is there we find the alembic in which error

is dissolved. It is there that doctrinal distinctions are consumed. It is there that names by which we conjure become meaningless unless the spirit gives them life. It is there that we no longer "see as through a glass darkly," but know Him face to face. It is there that the Infinite and the finite unite in life's continuous flow. It is there that God and man are

one.

The amelioration of man, not the adulation of Deity, is the crying mission of the hour. Service to our kind is noblest worship. We must live our prayers. And what is prayer? The holiest of thoughts and aspirations. 'Tis the awakening within us of our better selves; the communion of the soul with eternal Good, not the imploring of some Deity for personal favors to revoke the law of cause and effect, and thereby open an avenue of escape from the consequences of our wicked deeds. That seems to me like selfishness or cowardice. The good within, not the good besought from without, measures the depth of the soul; and there, in the silence, alone, the spirit of man feels Truth. To paraphrase the words of Father Ryan

"We must walk in the valley of silence,

Down the dim, voiceless valley alone;
And we'll hear not the sound of a footstep
Around us, but God's and our own."

No "miserable worm of the dust" man is here. He is the highest manifestation of the God-life. The rocks, the hills, the universe of stars above, give back no answering thought. Man thinks, and knows he thinks; and 'tis the God within that is the soul. His or its greatness is not augmented by any words of ours. The Creator of the Universe needs no commendation from our lips. All that we can hope for is the calling forth of his reflected glory from within, and to reach a higher level—a richer, better, nobler estate-by contemplating the wondrous prevision that hedges all Nature round.

We climb affection's fairest heights in times of silent, wordless adoration. The love of the Divine is the profoundest