Mother of all love, Father of all wisdom, Thou Divine One; Light and Life of the universe and Light of souls that abide forever in Thy presence, whether shadowed by the earthly state, whether immured in earthly darkness, or resplendent in the light of Thy love; may the Glory of Thy Love and Wisdom surround, pervade, and fill them utterly. May each heart filled with the light of the soul, turn unto that shrine where there is the all-encompassing Love that knows their daily needs, understands how dark is the earthly state. Thou givest even in the midst of that darkness the light of Thy divine Love and the o'er brooding consciousness of their oneness with Thy Divinity. Even as they have been led from height to height, so now, with added knowledge and love, may they perceive, even in the midst of Shadow, the glory of Thine encompassing power and Thine all-potent Light forever. Amen.

As forever you must turn unto the Perfect Shrine, beginning through open acknowledgment, so now unto the shrine of Heavenly Love, unto the Kingdom which alone possesses all perfection, ye must first bend ere ye receive added light and knowledge.

Again do we invite you to the perfect shrine of that Angel who broodeth above you, giving you the light, only glimmerings of which can now be perceived. You have passed from height to height; you will now enter the valley.

The Dispensation of Shadow. Shadow as well as light must have its primal meaning; and as all shadow is the result of light, so must the encompassing darkness be the result of that light which alone makes darkness visible. 302

You have seen only the receding portion of a Dispensation. A traveler, journeying amid the mountains, if overtaken at night between two heights, neither sees the glory of the setting sun, nor can he be aware that it is morning until long after the sun has arisen.

Midway between two Dispensations there is always the shadow; the receding tide of every Dispensation seems, for a time, to leave the earth more and more encompassed in the darkness.

That there is a Dispensation in darkness (i. e., a primal meaning) must be as evident as that Light overcomes the darkness.

The night veils from your gaze the splendor of the sun, only that her own surpassing wonders may be the more manifest; and but for the shadow of the small Earth on which you live, the ineffable glory and mystery of the "night of stars" could not be known. The gems hide themselves from every vibration of light that later the light that was the first inception of their existence may burst forth. All forms of existence have their beginnings in silence and in darkness. But for the inevitable darkness there could have been nothing formed from "Chaos" and "Night." These "Mystic Shadows" the ancients worshiped as primal divinities that "Shadow" might the more be considered an awful mystery, since there was a time when in the depths of space Shadow alone prevailed; and there is a space between vast universes where Shadow only abides. Indeed, even between systems and planets of the same system there is said to be neither light nor heat.

In the cycles of Messianic Dispensations such great Light, such surpassing Glory, cannot be given unless the corresponding Shadow shall make the back-ground for the light. Anything less than those suns of splendor, those surpassing Messiahs, would seem as shadow.