226 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



ledge of your God, or of what you had lost by division (not 

 separation) from his infinity. Now you are condemned by the 

 final evolution of your soul when God grants immortality to 

 those who have proved themselves fit, to an eternal knowledge 

 of what you might have been ; and yet you are condemned to be 

 a grain of sand, stick or stone, doomed thenceforth never to 

 again have the power to live. After Soul has been returned 

 to mankind and has granted him his Immortality, it will be 

 returned to you to grant you last of all an eternal knowledge 

 of what you might have been had the atoms you are now re- 

 duced to striven for a better association of co-mingling. And, 

 I ask you, is there in actual life anything more bitter than the 

 knowledge that one has been, and but for one's own fault, could 

 yet be better off than he is, yet never again will be. Poverty, 

 trouble, misery, pain and suffering are all easy to bear when 

 there is hope of improvement or of recovery. 



Therefore, I say again, we must go back beyond Christ and 

 also advance ahead of his teachings in future by making it the 

 creed of our existence to do our share to perfect ourselves so 

 that we may fit the hole in which evolution may place us by 

 our abilities to work out our share in the general advancement 

 of mankind, confident that if we use our lives and talents to 

 their best advantage for the good of the whole, that whether 

 fate places us in poverty or wealth, health or strength, so long 

 as we do our best with our talents, great or small, in the cir- 

 cumstances, easy or difficult, in which we find ourselves placed, 

 God will reward us with so much of this world's blessings as 

 are the most beneficial to our being able to live in a manner 

 most conducive to our individual happiness. Greater wealth 

 might add to our comfort in some few respects, but it is beyond 

 our knowledge to decide if it might or might not in the whole 

 course of our lives add to our happiness and the advancement 

 of our children, for none of us can say what the future holds in 

 store, and what appears to us as a bright and silvery cloud to- 

 day may, when it reaches us, be a biting storm of hail and snow 

 that would freeze the marrow of our bone's. So we are none of 

 us able to tell the manner in which God intends to reward or 

 punish our acts, and what appears to our dim sight to be a 

 bed of roses to-day may only be a thorn-bush to-morrow, for 

 it generally happens in life that the actions we look forward 

 to as likely to create our greatest enjoyments result in dis- 



