When you are, therefore, in the spiritual life separated from the organic body, you are in the same realm of reality that you occupy now in your thoughts, feelings, affections, aspirations, hopes, prophecies, and all that constitutes the real man and woman here below. When you are in spirit life separated from the mantle of clay which encompasses you, and which forms the imperfect instrument of human expression, the powers of the spirit are set free for expression in their natural realm. As the bird to the air, as the fish to the water, so the spirit cleaves to the realm of spirit.

You do not go into spirit life when you are dead; you do not depart into any distant realm. Your spiritual life becomes then the centre of your conscious action, as the physical life is seemingly the centre of your conscious action here, and you remove yourself from, or are removed from, the limitations of time to the unlimited condition of spiritual existence. Precisely this would occur this morning-; you hasten in your bodily consciousness to arrive here in time, but once here, if occupied with the thought that pervades the discourse, you are unconscious of the lapse of time, because thought takes no cognizance of time unless associated with the senses and some condition of your bodily state. Now, your spirit friends - who are just as much here as you are - who are not dependent upon time and the physical sense, but only upon the spiritual condition of attraction and adaptation, are here, because attracted here - not limited by the physical hindrances of the body, in order to come here, and not having to experience that haste and fatigue, and all that endurance which you experience in coming here bodily, because if your wish pervaded the body as fully as their wish governs the spirit, then you would be here when you think of being here.

Some one has said in answer, or in attempted answer, to our position upon this subject: "We know this is a flower, but it is not a thought." I beg your pardon, whosoever said it. How could you know it is a flower without the thought?

If you think and thereby know it is a flower, you know a thought must have made it, even if it is not your thought. Because you did not make it is no evidence that there was no thought in its creation, for no one in the universe of human life can be supposed to have been the source of all the thoughts in the universe.

There is a time-piece; if you enter this room and there is no means by which you can tell who is the maker of that timepiece, you still know to a positive certainty it was made by somebody, and that somebody had the knowledge of time; that he adapted its construction to the known laws and movements of the earth upon its axis and around the sun.

Now, Ave have the same key to the intelligence of the universe that you have to the expression of material objects around you.

In disentombing an ancient city, no man says: "This was the result of law; nobody ever made this." But he says: "I see evidences of human life here; " and he presumes upon that that human beings have occupied that ancient city, and he judges by the laws that govern human life, by the thought that is manifest, the intelligence and purpose that is there.

In the fabric of the universe there.is geometry, there is form, there is the law of mathematics, there is the law of unity, there is everything that indicates intelligence; and though no one has ever seen human thought or Divine intelligence, we know that it is there, and that thought has created everything in the universe.

If not, plant a stone and see if it will be a lily? Never ! Nor can you by any process change it into a lily, except by the original thought or germ that causes the effect, i. e., the lily which you see.

In spirit life you are one degree nearer to the thought; you are one step nearer to the source of things.

To-day in the human life there is an invention; perhaps an electric machine, perhaps a steam-engine or a new motor power. If you were in spirit life a hundred years ago, or fifty years ago, or twenty-five years ago, that thought of the steam-engine was more of a reality there than it is to-day upon the earth, because nearer to the source of invention.

All the secrets of mechanical forces, everything that is less than mind, is more easily discovered in spirit life, since man does not depend on experiment, on the physical senses, but on perception for discovery of the principles that govern the material universe. You are placed, therefore, in spirit life with reference to yourself instead of the objective world around you, and that which you term the objective while in the earthly life, becomes there the subjective. This is why spirits can overcome the law of gravitation. This is why they can move substances, seemingly through solid walls; the material of the earth is subjective to them.

But that which is not amenable, that which is not overcome, and that which can never be conquered, save by the adequate spiritual powers, are the faults and imperfections of each human being. These are the obstacles of spiritual growth, so that which seemed to you subjective here - the thought, the emotion, the hatred, the love - becomes the objective in spiritual life; and this is why we say that man in spirit is surrounded by himself and his own creation.

It seems plain enough, and yet Spiritualists must have the broken fragments of material resemblance in order to think that spirit life is a reality. It seems distinct enough that you inhabit the realm of your own affections and attributes.

Even here the houses in which you dwell, and the lands that you covet, form no part of your real existence; and when taken away from the organic condition that links you to the material life, why not enter into the realm which makes that life a reality, instead of dragging after you the semblance of life? Here below, a man journeying to the tropics does not take with him the furs that he wears when he journeys toward the North Pole. If he does, he finds they are cumbersome; and he who is journeying toward the Poles does not take with him the light raiment that he wears in the tropics.