" Then, " says the questioner, " this must awaken all the train of events and thoughts concerning predestination, fore-ordination, destiny, fatality.

By no means. Foreordination is a theological term expressly coined to indicate the destiny of souls with reference to salvation; therefore we have nothing to do with that term.

Predestination belongs to the same category; the principle has been used theologically merely. Destiny we accept as a word, since it includes not only that which is without you but that which is contained within .you.

Each flower bears its own destiny by the germ that it holds. The winds, the sunshine, the chemical laws of the earth are incidents in the unfoldment of that destiny, and without the germ there could be no lily; without the root, no plant or tree. Therefore the germ of your destiny is within you; the impulse to grow must be there, and the favoring winds, and sunshine, and chemical attributes of soil all around you form the incidents of your growth.

Destiny is not so much what men do as what they are, since what they are is the occasion of their doing. Therefore, when you trace a human life spiritually, it is not so much the event that is traced, as that the fact of what is within you is already stamped in your being.

A good naturalist can tell by the germ or embryo the land of insect, bird or other creation that will be unfolded from the germ; and under the conditions that are termed incidental, he is perfectly certain that such and such germs will result in cer tain orders of natural existence.

The awakened spirit, the one who is accustomed to perceive the nature of things, can declare from perception what is within you; can know what is destined to be awakened from within and how unfolded; and as skillfully as a mechanic or artisan tempers the finely wrought steel, he can say how one event after another will be necessary to bring forth the powers of your being.

These are not the result of chance. Individual lives must be governed, if governed at all, by laws that are capable of being perceived; it only requires that those laws and the capacity to perceive them shall be co-existent one with the other. That the laws are there, even if you do not perceive them, must be as evident as that the universe was governed by law before man had knowledge of astronomy, or chemistry, or geology. No science has created the laws which it perceives. A prophecy is not something that creates destiny, but which perceives it.

The spiritual atmosphere or quality of intelligence that discerns the future is, therefore, a quality belonging to the realm of the spirit alone; to the realm within you, which is spiritual; to the realm in the beyond, that is spiritual. And while there are prophecies that fail, still the more the spirit is unfolded to the absolute condition of the universe, the more correct is prophecy.

"Then," says one, " why may we not be guided so that mistakes shall be avoided? and next year we may be wealthy, and the following year we may be great."

Ah ! here is where the whole working of the law must be known. No individual power in the universe, (and the wiser that power is, the less inclination is there to forestall your history,) no individual power can rob you of your experience. The life that is forestalled is not the life thai is experienced. You may be warned, but if you are not ready to heed the warning-, you go blindly on in your way, and only waken on the morrow, to say, " I wish I had heeded the warning of danger." But you do not until you are ready.

Prophecies are given, not for men to follow, but that it may be known that in the realm of the spirit, in the realm of soul, there is an absolute law, which if you are amenable to, guides you morally aright, just as the physical laws of your being, when observed, guide you physically aright. That no man can separate himself from those inevitable and divine powers; that he must be governed by that, ultimately, which is absolute, and that which makes his destiny; not by refusing to conform to those laws, but by conforming to them.

The law of his being is the recognition that the Infinite is equal to the whole, and that man is but one of the parts; that he cannot be equal to the whole, and that he can do individually only that which he, in relation to the whole, is, as an individual, capable of doing; that beyond that he has no power, no rule, no guidance, but must conform to the law that governs the whole, just as in mathematics, the inferior part, or the unit, must be subservient to the whole or the entire sum that is created.

With this thought in your mind you can easily discern how an intelligence, wise and good, and with every perception of that which is, which must be coming to you. will still withhold it from you for obvious reasons.

If it is good, you do not wish that the sensation, or the surprise, shall be taken from you by previous revelation of it. If it is sorrowful, it certainly does not prepare you for it to live it over every day in advance. When great sorrow comes, (as it must inevitably,) then the spirit is made strong in an instant; but you do not prepare a man for a long journey by robbing him of food and rest in advance. You keep him sheltered, and strengthened, and nourished, until he is to start out upon the journey, and then with God-speed he goes from you.

No spirit will rob you of your moral support in that great emergency by predicting disaster, unless in individual cases it becomes necessary to teach a great lesson to you or to the world.

If your moral and spiritual natures are in such a position or condition as to require a distinct prediction either of adversity or joy - of joy, that you may look forward to it; of adversity, that you may know that there is a power guiding - then it is predicted. But beware of those messengers that, when you are prying into the future tell you glibly of a long line of events that never do transpire, never can transpire, and if they were to transpire would be of no value. These would not be told by a wise and beneficent spirit.