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being dwelling far within the physical vestment, who uses all the splendid faculties of the body, brain, heart, conscience, and the imagination for the expression of himself.

The country of the soul, then, is not some extramundane sphere far removed from human life and human conditions. The birthplace of the soul is the fleshly temple of wonder. It is the divine spirit placed there by the divine spirit; through the years, this divine human spirit grows and develops with all pure loves and high aspirations and noble thinking and holy companionship with the spirit of God, or else it is bound and gagged and choked by the ruffians of the material senses, that were made to be its slaves, until it is a poor sickly dwarf. Our personality is the measure of what the soul hath builded for us. It is the sum total of all our thinking and loving and willing, it is what we are. When our physical bodies are no longer capable of affording refuge and sustenance for our real self, which is the soul, then we leave the earthly tenement; our real self which was not physical, does not require the physical, but goes out into that eternity of the spirit where God dwells, where time and place have no existence, carrying memory and all splendid qualities which have been builded into personality.

Dante, in his " Paradiso," has portrayed the country of the soul that belongs to those who have passed from the earthly life and have been accounted worthy of attaining the bliss of God. Under the guidance of his blessed Beatrice he becomes a path

finder into that realm. That country he locates in the sun, moon, and stars. In her company he passes through the circles of the Moon, of Mercury, of Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed Stars, the Crystaline Heavens. His journey ends in the Empyrean, where is the visible presence of God. To Dante's imagination these nine spheres or orbits were regions unearthly and unlike to earth; they represented the glory of God in their degrees, and in his poem they are far more than astronomic denominations. They are pulsating with the Divine life, they are typical of the Divine beauty, they are seats of Divine favour and peace. Dante and Beatrice on leaving the earthly Paradise shoot upwards toward the sphere of fire. Dante confesses that he has but a vague memory of all he saw and heard in this whole mystic journey. So intense is the innate desire of the soul to attain the vision of God, that as it draws near fulfilment " our understanding enters so deeply that the memory cannot follow."

Splendid as are the portrayals therein made, sun, moon, and stars are not the soul-country save only in a mythical sense. The country of the soul, whose mysterious land forever challenges the attention of all bold pathfinders, is a continent bathed by all the waters of human experiences and fronting on the ocean of eternity. Whatsoever touches the human personality touches the country of the soul. The soul-country is the domain in any human life over which the indwelling spirit has gained the mastery,

through which that spirit expresses himself or ought to express himself. Anything that has to do with conscience, mind or heart has to do with the territory of the soul. Even our physical habiliments touch the confines of that country. Hence the wise

old Ben Ezra reminded:

"Thy body at its best, how far can it project the soul on its lone way."

THE PATHFINDER AND FAITH

2. The pathfinder into the soul-country must be a man of faith. All explorers have been men of faith, of faith in themselves, in their companions, and in the work undertaken. The very fact of their going out into the unknown emphasizes this. Most of them have had faith in God. The very dangers and uncertainties have made them trust in the Power without themselves in whose hands they were.

Much more must the pathfinder of the soul-country be for the man of faith in God, in himself and in God's destiny for him. For the country of the soul is not ours to begin with. It has to be achieved, won, built up in the likeness of Christ. No man is in possession of his own soul until he sees its relation to the eternal, beholds it in the light of God.

There is a difference between faith, which is the attitude of trust toward the unseen, and a faith which is the statement of a creed supposed to be held in common by a group of individuals. It is faith, not a faith, with which the pathfinder of the soul-country is primarily concerned, though he

may sometimes profitably consult the creed, which is a statement of a faith, as a suggestive guide book, which others have found valuable.

Faith is not so intangible and irrational as it is sometimes thought to be. The very organization of the society in which you live implicitly emphasizes faith. The bank trusts the merchant, and the merchant trusts you. You have faith in your doctor, faith in the engineer and in the trustworthiness of all the railroad employees into whose hands you commit your precious life when you go on a journey and in the vast majority of cases you are not mistaken in so doing. It is but a natural step further to have faith in God.

"Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son,
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in,
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one;
Thou canst not prove that thou art immortal, no
Nor yet that thou art mortal,—nay, my son,
Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven; Wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt

And cling to Faith beyonds the forms of Faith!
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of “Yes” and “No,”
She sees the Best that glimmers through the Worst
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,

She spies the summer through the winter bud top,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,

She finds the fountain where they wailed, 'Mirage." "

Acting on that conception of faith, which is second nature with you in all the affairs of life, let God be the companion of your soul. The beauty and majesty of your soul-country shall depend on the amount of trust that you have in God and how much He has in you. Your intuitions, your desires, your thoughts must be well-pleasing unto Him. "Without faith it is impossible to please Him." It has been a question of long and deep debate as to which side played the introductory part in the union of the divine and human which is a necessary condition for the real development of the soul. Augustine in the third century and Calvin in the sixteenth so exalted God that there could positively be no approach to Him by debased men until the Divine made the first overture. The British Monk, Pelagius, in the fifth century and John Wesley in the eighteenth century championed the ability of whosoever will, on his own volition, to find God. Both sides were right, each beheld the opposite side of the same silver shield. "It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His own good pleasure," and "Every man worketh out his own salvation." "The Lord direct your hearts into the love of Christ." By the gentle mingling of the human and divine shall the domain of your soul be rendered rich and beautiful.

THE PATHFINDER AND OBEDIENCE

3. Obedience shall be the watchword of the pathfinder into the soul-country. "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out into the land

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