Here, where we are struggling in the bonds of matter, is our only "hell," the law of cause and effect our sole punisher, and "heaven" our release from sensuous existence either temporarily by death, or wholly, through our evolving beyond sensuous necessities. The warning voice of conscience is but the voice of our Higher Ego, speaking as the result of actual experience and wisdom. And because the seat of conscience is, of necessity, in the Higher Ego, it therefore seems to us as though it came from some outside source, when it is in reality our true self, vainly endeavoring to guide and control the coarse and unwieldly physical machine, to which it finds itself karmically attached, and with which it is therefore so closely inter-related that the one must ever react upon the other.

Out of this action and reaction grows the real battle of life, the tide turning now this way and now that. Knowing all this, man will rest secure in the Divine law of cause and effect, which neither punishes nor rewards, but wisely, justly, and inexorably adjusts each cause to its corresponding effect. Knowing himself to be the arbiter of his own destiny, he will cease to complain; cease to attribute his sorrows and sufferings to the ways of a mysterious providence; and, recognizing that nothing has come nor can come to him which is not his own by virtue of having created or caused it, he will begin the warfare against his lower nature with a strength of purpose and determination to succeed impossible before this realization. The worlds, the stars, and suns will no longer be created solely for him, but rather he for them. Even the strife in nature, the cruel struggle for existence, will not seem so dreadful when he realizes that nothing is really slain; that "he who slays and he who thinks himself slain are alike deceived." Nor will he longer trust to forms and creeds, but instead will retire to the inner chamber of his own heart and worship silently that which is equally at the basis of his soul as it is at the base of the flower or stone - the Unknowable, Inconceivable Causeless Cause.

Realizing through these teachings the actual, dynamic brotherhood of mankind; that the fall of one proportionately hurts and retards the advancement of the race; and that the attainment of the goal of assured immortality by but one faithful, unselfish, sacrificing soul shortens in some degree the weary path to be trod by his brother men - he will merge all merely selfish longings in the realization of the help to others thus afforded by his own toil, and patiently and tranquilly work for Humanity, unterrified by life and undismayed by death.

Rightly comprehended, then, Reincarnation comes to us as a message of hope, of love, and of Divine encouragement. To those who so pitifully cling to youth and the pleasures of the young, it holds the promise of renewed youth, life after life. To him who has been conquered in the battle of life, it offers other opportunities for further and more efficient battling. To all it promises that no effort shall be lost, nor without its reward; that the aspirations unable to be realized now shall find full fruition then; that the very loved ones of this life, so rudely torn from us by death, will be again attracted by and drawn to us in our next earth-life, to renew the interrupted associations.

But the great, the all-important lesson Reincarnation teaches is that our powers are infinite, our opportunities eternal, and our goal god-like. Our progress is illimitable, and death but a brief rest in a wayside inn, as we journey along. After each death, upon reincarnating, we take up our earth lite at the precise point we laid it aside; thus ever increasing our wisdom through continuous experience. A perfect knowledge of earth limitations requires, as we have seen, that each man should undergo every possible phase of human experience; should subdue every variety of human passion, and resist every form of temptation. Only by reincarnation is it possible to do this; to round out and develope patience, fortitude, pity, benevolence, and a host of other god - like attributes; all of which have to be refined out of the crucible of actual experience and suffering. One life is all too short for the lessons of sympathy and love we have to learn, ere we develope compassion for the woes of others from the fires of our own purification, from the ashes of our sacrificed passions. One life is all too short for us even to approximate that condition of spirituality which would permit us to exist for a moment on planes where earthly concerns and desires are utterly unknown.

After the great deep had brought forth life in its waters, it took ages for the water-breathing vertebrates to so accustom themselves to the purer, rarer air that life in its thin gases became possible for them. So with man's spiritual nature. How absurd, how impossible, to fancy him as capable of living under spiritual conditions before he has developed the spiritual power! He must conquer every earthly passion, subdue every mortal desire, and keenly realize the unsatisfying nature, the instability, of material life, before he can hope to attain to the life spiritual. At present man is little more than a savage in his instincts, appetites, and passions. Let him first become a Man, with all the magnificent meaning and prophecy in the word, before he aspires to the Elysean fields of the Gods. Yet these fields are surely his, both by birthright and as the meed of toil and suffering, if he but persist in the warfare, if he but prove faithful to the one talent placed in his keeping during this life; renewing his courage and hope in the knowledge that greater and still greater opportunities will be afforded him in future lives by the return of his soul to earth through the golden gate of Reincarnation.