Nay; more than this. You cannot seek the kingdom of heaven for reward, nor the gifts of the spirit for the worldly power they will bring. But unto such as have the gifts of the spirit, and unto such as seek them for their own sake, all powers are in subjection; all forces of the visible universe will follow to do the bidding of the man exalted above selfishness.

Unto him the winds of heaven sing their sweetest songs; unto him the birds carol their gladsome strain, and the sunshine is his possession. Unto him the cooling streams yield the treasures of their delightful and wondrous power, and human hearts respond in the exhaling of fragrance to him who shines upon them from within.

Not only so, but it is a law in the spiritual kingdom that if you place yourself in accord with the infinite laws of the spirit, they respond as readily as light, as heat, as atmosphere, as the earth does when you place yourself in accord with them.

You do not invite the light of heaven by shutting and barring your windows and doors. You do not expect fresh air when every avenue is closed by which it may be introduced. You do not study astronomy by putting an obstruction in the end of the telescope; nor do you study chemistry by breaking up the crucible in which the secrets are solved. Yet you ask for the riches of the spirit to pour in upon you without any condition of yourselves. You ask for the light of the spirit to come in obedience to your pride, your ignorance, willfulness, self-seeking, and work its wonders iu your lives without any of the conditions of spiritual being.

Now, wonders will be wrought and sometimes unworthy servants may be chosen as an illustration of a principle; but if you would have the "best gifts" and the best power of the spirit yielding its results unto your lives, you must seek them on spiritual conditions. Those spiritual conditions are: first, foremost, primarily, at the basis of all, absolute unselfishness; for unto whom the light of the spirit can flow divinest and best there must be no barrier of self-seeking, no pride of individual or personal power, no love of human praise or applause, but only the clear, transparent soul that would have no shadow lie between itself and the divine sunlight of God's love.

Can you not see it? And do you not know that the photographer must have the perfect and higher light of the sun's rays to give the best results; and only such shadow shall come between that camera and the subject as is necessary when he arranges it?

So in the great light of the spirit such tempering as is required by your souls, the angelic ministrants will understand; but place you no shadow there, for the light must come and the guidance of it from that which is beyond.

But how shall we know of the gifts of the spirit excepting by their results? We cannot safely follow that which brings us no visible results. .

Aye, here is the commercial tendency of man even in matters of salvation; something is given for a price, and the soul of man is supposed to be that which is bartered and sold by the blood of the visible Christ.

Let us have done with commerce in matters of spirit ! Let us see that the light of God's love shines through His spiritual gifts where needed, comprehended and understood; and that the only condition required is that you shall be prepared to receive that which shall come to you. That there is no barter, no sale, no debit and credit in the great kingdom of God's love, save that alone that is recorded in the innermost sanctuary of your spirits, and that the light of the spirit is for all such time as the windows of your souls are opened, such time as the barriers are removed, and the self-seeking conies from that which is divine and perfect.

We have portrayed in these discourses how the gifts of the spirit are the visible expression of a power that is beyond the temporal and material laws of the universe. How that visible expression is governed, not by mundane but by supermundane laws. How the kingdom of the spirit works independently, oftentimes, of the conditions of material life for the purpose of expressing the power of the spirit to man. But if this were all; if the working of wonders or miracles, the gift of healing, the gift of tongues, of interpretation of tongues, the gift of knowledge and the gifts and powers known to abound among those who have demonstrated them - if this were all, it would be nothing.

The stepping-stone is here to that divine and innermost light whereof spirit and its knowledge stands revealed to you: and this is why you are commanded to covet earnestly the best gifts. This is why, in summing up, Paul says: " Though I have the gifts of men and of angels and have not charity, I am nothing."

Unless the work is wrought in your life, unless the gift leads to the divine sources of healing, unless it leads to the divine source of teaching, unless it unseals the fountain from within and brings forth 'fruitage in your lives, what does it matter that these wonders are wrought in your midst?

And what is this charity, so exalted and so upheld as the chiefest of the Christian graces, divinest among the sacred sisterhood of angelic ministrants unto earth? Is it the endowment of alms to the poor? Is it the feeding and clothing of the hungry and naked? Is it the visiting of the widow and fatherless alone? It is these, but it is much more; for endowments may fail from lack of charity, and the money that you give to the poor may be the bribe that you offer to heaven as a substitution for love. That which you give in an external sense you may think sufficient. Christian lands point with pride at their institutions of charity, while the streets are filled with want and misery and woe, and side by side the Christian asylum and the Christian jail rear their domes to heaven.

Is this, then, that charity that suffereth long and is kind; that envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly? Has the work of Christian charity wrought its way in the world?