Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul | Page 4

are overpowering.
As we journey forward on the path of existence, life becomes ever more and more complicated, and the need, the overwhelming demand for an understanding of the ever-varying problems presented to the mind for consideration, and the constantly urgent necessity for wise decisions must call into action all our highest powers of the intellect and reason, in order to secure to us the best results from the opportunities given us to acquire knowledge. Every one of our experiences are bits in the mosaic of our lives, and without them the picture would be incomplete.
But with all, we are forced to realize how unfinished and unsatisfactory are nearly all of our experiences of earthly existence. It is, indeed, "a thing of shreds and patches." But we are caught in the web of material existence from which there can be no lawful escape, save by unpremeditated physical death. We are thrust into the seething cauldron of formative life. The entire race of man, forced forward by the resistless power of the law of progress, is on the everlasting journey to the heights of perfected being. To us, enmeshed in the ties of interest and affection, the various heredities and the worldly Karmas which hold us fast, the slow, unnumbered processes of evolution on this, our home world, as recorded in history seem unendurably long. But time is naught--eternity is unending--and "ten thousand years are but as a day with God," the great Maker and Moulder of our immortal souls.

THE WORK OF NATURE.
The planet itself is stirred to its very centre. On one side, the earth opens its horrible maw and swallows up uncounted numbers of her children, or spews out her molten interior in vast lava tides, overwhelming and destroying all within their reach. At the opposite side, great floods of gas and rock oil, set free by the operation of the drill, shoot up in the air and fall back upon the soil in a luminous spray, as like to liquid gold as aught not filled with the beloved auriferous metal could be. The waters loosed from their fastnesses over-reach their accustomed bounds, and great tidal waves are encountered in unexpected latitudes. Nature is rounding up her great circle, and making conditions for a new era.

A NEW SCIENCE.
A science of Spiritual evolution could be erected, based upon the teachings and ethics of Jesus Christ, that would put souls consciously in their true rank and grade, and make them known just as people are recognized by the college curriculums from which they have graduated.

WORLD MAKING.
The "fire-mist" and the mephitic vapors were finally swept away; another era was preparing. Incorporate in the world substance of which the planet was made were the seeds and germs of all life. Its crude material was made manifest in the prodigious vegetable growths, and the awful corresponding animal life. Birds and beasts and reptiles, each one more hideously terrible than the others, filled the air, the earth and the waters of the earth with the abounding life of these horrible creatures. Into this unaccountable menagerie came also the foreshadowing of man--a huge hairy creature possessing size and power to do battle with his animal compeers for supremacy in the seething, upgrowing land.
This was only the differentiation of the animal-man from the animal per se--the beginning of the form which stood upon its hind legs. From such rudimentary forms was evolved intelligence which finally begot the human soul. This, after vast ages, grew into a state and condition through which spirit could manifest, and the human race was finally started on its endless earthly career.
With the birth of the soul came what we call the religious instinct, and man began to worship natural objects; animals and reptiles, the sun and finally, superior personalities were thought to be gods. The "phallic worship," worship of the human organs of creative power, gave the males great prominence. The female, woman, the mere matrix was considered, from the first, of far less importance. No one stopped to think, what is one without the other in the great world processes.
Nature, ever on the alert so as not to lose any and every possible representation of her power, buried here and there specimens of her handiwork, and the exhumed remains of prehistoric monsters are even now being restored and labelled with such titles as our modern scientists have been able to invent to somewhat describe the size, the form, and the habits of these long extinct manifestations of the beginnings of life on this earth.
Among these, too, have also been found the bones of huge human-like beings whose decadent progeny are still alive in limited number.
The gorilla is still the terror of some of the wild places of the earth; as he booms his way through the impenetrable forests, he sends forth his