of Latin phrases. The same stalwart pioneer broke down the mountain fastness of superstitious belief in witchcraft, which in the preceding century had sent more than one hundred thousand innocent women and girls to a torturous death in Germany alone; prisoners of state, prisoners of war, and common criminals are free from the thumb-screw and the horrors of the torture chamber because of the trail which this man cleared through the cumbrous forest. He was the first to advance the right of woman to hold property; modern champions of woman owe much to the pathfinder, Christian Thomasius. Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Washington, Jefferson, Edison, Marconi-each stand as pathfinders in respective realms. In the thriving city of Darlington in north England you may see the ancient locomotive, the first to draw carriages on rails; with its fantastic resemblance to a threshing engine it is hard to realize that it is the prototype and pathfinder of the highly developed giant of modern traffic. Among all pathfinders Abraham holds a unique distinction. His adventurous life challenges attention not half so much because of the strange new lands he visited, as because of the unusual ambitions and desires that were throbbing in his heart. Abraham was the most promising of all the sons of Terah, but he differed from them chiefly in the ideal that was the ruling passion of his life. To him was given the first gleam of monotheism and he would who have marked the path of many waters. In travels by land the pathfinders have been just as constant. Through the trackless forests of the great north country pushed the fur-clad, lynx-eyed trappers of the Hudson Bay Company; through the jungle of the Appalachian region went the same kind of men with Daniel Boone and Kit Carson. The huntsmen push out for track of bear and trace of deer; this automobile age knows the mission of the pathfinder hastening ahead, as pilot for the best course on the cross-country tour. Pathfinders have not only contributed to the subduing of the physical wilderness, but they have filled no inconspicuous rôle in the upward march of civilization. The well-beaten pathway made comfortable by knowledge, invention, literature and art ' glides beneath the tread of millions today, because the first breakers of the trail were true pathfinders, men of deep vision and everlasting courage. The modern scientific spirit of unbiased, accurate and careful observation and experimentation is our heritage because of the path that was cleaved by Francis Bacon in his "Novum Organum." The modern educational system with its freedom of initiative and direct handling of problems which we accept as a matter of course is a reality because the brave pathfinder, Christian Thomasius, at the University of Leipsig in 1687, rebelled against the dead weight of medieval scholasticism and dared to give his lectures in the vernacular of his German students, rather than to follow the smothered tones of Latin phrases. The same stalwart pioneer broke down the mountain fastness of superstitious belief in witchcraft, which in the preceding century had sent more than one hundred thousand innocent women and girls to a torturous death in Germany alone; prisoners of state, prisoners of war, and common criminals are free from the thumb-screw and the horrors of the torture chamber because of the trail which this man cleared through the cumbrous forest. He was the first to advance the right of woman to hold property; modern champions of woman owe much to the pathfinder, Christian Thomasius. Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Washington, Jefferson, Edison, Marconi-each stand as pathfinders in respective realms. In the thriving city of Darlington in north England you may see the ancient locomotive, the first to draw carriages on rails; with its fantastic resemblance to a threshing engine it is hard to realize that it is the prototype and pathfinder of the highly developed giant of modern traffic. Among all pathfinders Abraham holds a unique distinction. His adventurous life challenges attention not half so much because of the strange new lands he visited, as because of the unusual ambitions and desires that were throbbing in his heart. Abraham was the most promising of all the sons of Terah, but he differed from them chiefly in the ideal that was the ruling passion of his life. To him was given the first gleam of monotheism and he would follow that guiding star with single devotion; his brethren believed in many gods, Abraham believed in One; his brethren believed in expediency, Abraham believed in his convictions and in being obedient thereto. Religion was the dominant factor with him. He had faith, faith in God, and in God's destiny for him. Because he was a man of faith, Abraham left his old associates, his old surroundings and went out into a strange land that he knew not, where he could give expression to the best that was within him. "He went out, not knowing whither he went." He became a frontiersman in the life of faith, the first great pathfinder of the soulcountry. The country of the soul of which Abraham was the pioneer may be hard to identify geographically. But its mystic call is felt by every sailor on the sea of life as the mythic isle of Atlantis summoned the mariners of old. Man is homesick for God, and ever more doth he seek Him in the country of the soul, and ever more doth he find Him there. When we think of that country of the soul where God dwells and where the human spirit dwells, we, too, would become pathfinders and search for ourselves the treasure and the beauty and the glory of this undiscovered country. We would know what seas wash its shores, what deserts and mountains and rivers and plains mark its topography, what climate tells the story of its summers and winters, what golden harvest and verdant foliage bespeak its products, what riches lie hidden in its deep bosom. WHAT IS THE SOUL? 1. Before we can appreciate the glories of the soul-country by becoming pathfinders into its mysterious domain, we must inquire what is the soul. I well remember my childhood conception of the soul. I always pictured it to myself as a towel folded into a roll and draped at the end, which an angel flying home held fast. I know not whence the thought came. A fantastic idea, to be sure, mostly foolish, though partly wise. The soul is destined for angelic company, but it is no inanimate thing, it is the living spirit within, the livest something about us. In the authorized version of the Scriptures, one and the same Greek word is translated by two distinct English words, "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it," again, “ What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul." The revised version uses "life" in both instances. The conclusion is that the soul and the spirit of life within us are one and the same thing. The life here spoken of is not mere physical existence, not mere mental life, nor psychic life, but each of these inspired and exalted by what Reginald Campbell calls "The essential man, the spiritual being tabernacling in the world of flesh, but having its truest affinities with the world of eternal life and love." That inner man is in turn worked upon and influenced by the use that is made of that which we call the animal, mental and psychic life. The soul of man is his real self, the hidden |