BY MAIA PRATT STANTON.

A hungry spirit walked the ways of earth-
A woman, burdened sore with sense of blight-
A soul which keenly felt its daily dearth.

Of that which stands for joy, uplift, and light. No weakling's discontent was hers-in sooth,

Unrest divine goaded to'ard Heaven her looks. She thirsted deep for progress, beauty, truth

For freedom, friendship, knowledge, travel, books. But her starved days seemed fixed in barren mold. So in despair she dumbly crushed desire Until she felt all forceless, numb and coldInsensible to former craving fire.

One day, as in a last expiring flame,

Her spirit blazed in anguished, sharp command.
"O God!" she cried, "I call once more Thy name;
I want my own-demand it at Thy hand!
Long have I prayed and plead for soul delight—
No longer do I beg on bended knee!

It is not alms I ask, but my birthright
As child of Universal Potency.
Man is not born a pauper, but a prince,

The rightful heir to all that mortals crave.
I do not at annihilation wince;

I would be nothing rather than a slave." From out the Silence flashed the answer grand: "Well hast thou spoken-well fulfilled the Law. Good waits forever on the soul's demand,

And of its children asks not tears nor awe. The heir of wealth must boldly state his claim, Assert his birthright, realize his power.

This thou at last hast done in the One Name.

Go forth, and rule thy kingdom from this hour."

UNIVERSALITY IN RELIGION.

BY HESSAY W. GRAVES.

Wherever sense can reach or mind imagine, we find action and reaction-the constant interplay of opposed forces: in physical matter attraction and repulsion; in the internal world, love and hate, good and evil. The higher the field of action, the more potent and the more remarkable is the action of these forces.

Religion is the highest plane. The intensest love and the cruelest hate mankind has shown have been associated with religion.

Out of the turmoil will harmony ever come? Many are the panaceas—social, political, religious—that are vaunted as the only hope of humanity. How many of these will bear the test of inwardness; how many touch the springs of action; how many promise beneficence in direct measure of their universal application? If they are local, partial, symptom-regarding, they are condemned already.

Can we not recognize at once the essentially mental nature of our problems and our maladies, and, penetrating to the center, feel assurance that outward phases of pain and strife shall surely disappear when that center is made pure and calm? The method of inwardness must ever appeal most powerfully to those who have sought deeply in human nature for the solution of life's problems. And if a man have found there any clue he will not add to the existing discord by denouncing those who follow their convictions. Socialism, the single tax, asceticism, colonization, anarchism-all contribute after their kind to the new order whose evolution the new century must witness. All prepare the way for religious thought that shall be universal, positive, pacific; that shall be as lofty as Emerson, as broad as Walt Whitman. One may either hasten or retard

such a consummation-hasten by following manfully individual convictions, whatever they may be, and retard by criticizing and denouncing others because forsooth they are not weak echoes of ourselves.

The social fabric is seething with the forces that shall mold the future; and in that ferment the forces of so-called evil must inevitably contribute their quota to the grand result. But Harmony-that may be made the watchword of all. Whether one shall seek to better environment by external agencies, or to conquer the world of mind through an understanding of eternal laws and principles, he shall be welcomed by Nature-ever universal, ever non-partizan, ever the friend of all.

The great lesson, it would seem, that is plowed by the present state of society into the consciousness of man is the stupendous waste of energy resulting from the antagonism between workers in the various fields of effort. Yet might our work, whatever it is, be conceived in a spirit too high for jealousy and too earnest for sloth.

Can we find a better watchword than Harmony? No; and it shall be realized just in proportion as the sacred, the central, fact of Individuality is vindicated by the universality of our aims. Every investigation of the internal nature of man bears witness to this truth. It were futile to seek harmony through attempted elimination of differences-that were to blaspheme individuality. Each must be himself: true to the pole-star of right as seen through conscience; no man judging another or daring to make him afraid.

Evidently the real warfare to which the future invites must be interior to the man-the mind the armory. We shall yet turn with reverent steps to the teachers of the laws of mind, even with reverence such as no monarch ever knew. Here surely is the crowning work of an age of marvel. Hail to the pioneers! And as touching this work, one is fain to believe that America is the most favored nation.

To control the mind, to cast out selfishness, to receive consciously the Light from within-what a task! The solution of all problems lies capsulate here. And yet the Masters in such lore exist. Their message is with us. To quote from a little work issued from the New York press only this year:

"Thy right is only to the work, never to its fruit. Let not the fruit of the work be thy motive; yet desire not to abstain from work.

"Perform works standing in union, putting desire away; be equal in success or failure, for equal-mindedness is union.

"Work is far lower than union in wisdom; seek refuge in wisdom, for pitiful are those whose motive is the fruit.

"He who has reached union in wisdom gives up even here all things done well or ill; strive, therefore, after union. Union is well-being in works.

"For the wise who have found union in wisdom, giving up the fruit born of works, set quite free from the bond of birth, go to the goal where no sorrow dwells."

THIS is the preparation for a good old age: duty well done, for its own sake, for God's sake, and for the sake of the commonwealth of man. When a man works only for himself, he gets neither rest here nor reward hereafter.-Robert Collyer.

WHETHER any particular day shall bring to you more of happiness or of suffering is largely beyond your power to determine. Whether each day of your life shall give happiness or suffering rests with yourself.-George S. Merriam.

CALL it happiness or call it blessedness, the life whose end is righteousness is a life which satisfies, and which one is not willing, but glad, to live; its ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace.-Rufus Ellis.

WHEN everything is in its right place within us, we ourselves are in equilibrium with the whole work of God.-Amiel's Journal.

BY W. H. PHILLIPS.

Is Liberty in the United States a fact or a superstition? We American citizens are wont to boast of our Liberty and to glorify our country above all others, as if Freedom were unknown elsewhere. Let us see upon what we base our claims to superiority and what this boasted Liberty of ours amounts to.

The immortal Declaration of Independence asserts that "all men are born free and equal." Is this a truth or a mere metaphor? All men are certainly born utterly helpless; but what freedom has the babe in arms-the slave of its parents or nurse, unable to feed itself or to procure food by itself, or to direct any of its conscious actions contrary to the will of its guardians? Who has any choice as to his father or mother; as to the circumstances or surroundings of his birth, breeding, or rearing; as to whether he shall be born an Israelite, Catholic, Protestant, or Buddhist-an American, German, Frenchman, Englishman, or Arab; or as to whether he shall be born with a brain capable of development, or with some rare and special gift, or with only an average intellect, or an idiot; or handsome or homely, sound in body or deformed, healthy or sickly? Over not one of the conditions essential to success in life has man at his birth the slightest control or choice. When, then, and how, is he born "free"?

And "equal"? Is a born idiot equal to a child with normal faculties? Is the babe beginning its existence in a hovel and amidst poverty and the dregs and scum of society born equal with its brother who comes into the world "with a silver spoon in his mouth?" Is the mentally deformed or lacking born equal with the genius? One might ask a hundred such questions, to all of which there could be but one answer. It is even a fact that man's superiority over animals is due as much to his having hands as to his mental advantages; for of what