"There was never so great a. thought laboring in the breasts of men as now. It almost seems as if what was afore-time spoken fabulously and hieroglyphically, was now spoken plainly, the doctrine, namely, of the indwelling of the Creator in man.

"What is the scholar, what is the man for, but for hospitality to every new thought of his time? Have you leisure, power, property, friends? You shall be the asylum and patron of every new thought, every unproven opinion, every untried project which proceeds out of good-will and honest seeking. All the newspapers, all the tongues of to-day will of course defame what is noble, but you who hold not of to-day, not of the times, but of the Everlasting, are to stand for it; and the highest compliment ever received from Heaven is the sending to him its disguised and discredited angels."

- Emerson.

The above quotation is one from Emerson's lecture on "The Times," and what is said of the receptivity of the mind of his day can be even more truly said of the popular mind at the present time. The light, that then only a few saw brightly is now shedding its effulgence over the minds of the many. The world is coming to see and understand life as it has never done in the past. Multitudes are reaching out for greater knowledge and understanding. The mysteries of the past are being unfolded. The things that were held secret are being disclosed. Life is in a state of ferment. Never was such mental activity-displayed in the past. The world is writing its history - its book of life - with a rapidity that is simply bewildering to him who is not abreast of the times. Destruction and construction go hand in hand; the tearing down of the things that were held sacred in past generations and the building on their ruins of more enduring structures is taking place on every side.

One of the greatest lessons of life perhaps - or the one that may be the hardest to learn - is that there must constantly be new adjustments made by man, both to environment and to his fellow man. Every new ideal brings with it a new work to accomplish, and in the accomplishing of that work there will inevitably be the destruction of all that is no longer essential to the new ends and purposes of the now larger life.

The conservative man views with alarm the overthrow of his cherished ideals. To him the world seems to be going all wrong, and the very foundations of Religion and Morality being destroyed. But this view exists solely because he is not attuned to the new order of things. The evolution now in progress is largely a conscious one. To him who is unconscious of the inner changes, the destruction taking place on the outer plane may seem revolutionary in its effect, but once let him become attuned to the Spirit of Life and, lo! he will see that everything has been working together for good. Mankind is beginning to perceive that law and order obtain throughout God's Universe, and that conformity to this law and order is the one object of life, and so men are consciously using the power that is within them to create a new world, to manifest a kingdom of God on earth, to bring the hidden power and glory into external existence, and so prove that the soul is not dependent on things, but the soul makes things, that the religion of life is disclosed by life itself. Realization comes through action.

We are beginning to perceive, too, that the soul of God and the soul of man are essentially one. As man realizes his relation to the oversoul he will come to understand that he is the creator of the world and the things of the world in which he lives; that the Divine Ideal is written into his life and through his own effort must take form on earth. He is the Word of God, the Logos, seeking to become manifest in the flesh. In him is the light which is to enlighten the world. And all external things must come into conformity to his will. The new heaven he has discovered in his own life is but the plan of the new heaven on the earth. You can never make a new earth without an ideal to pattern it after. It is necessary to perceive the divine pattern in order to create the perfect and complete human expression. First we must have the vision - "where there is no vision the people perish" - then we must bring down this vision to the level of every day - interpret it according to the needs of each succeeding moment - weave it into the life in loving service to our fellow men. He to whom the vision has once come can never wholly forget. The beauty and the glory of it will by degrees transfigure his life. "Old things shall pass away and all things shall become new."

We are in a state of transition wherein there is a seeming conflict between the night of the past and the coming of to-morrow's dawn. To the superficial observer the very foundations of life seem to be shaken. But nothing can pass away but the scaffolding, as it were, of to-day's greater building - the old conditions were only stepping-stones to the new and better ones.

Change is the great law of mental and physical growth. Everything in man's outer life is subject to it; everything in the great outer world responds to this law of change. Nothing is permanent - the mountains grow old and pass away, the valleys are filled up. Change is as inevitable in the mind of man, as it is in the outer world. Mental development only takes place, and is evidenced, through change. Man's ideals must make way for the incoming of greater ideals. What people are pleased to term consistency is often but a superficial barrier erected to obstruct the light of truth. The mind, to be courageous should be unencumbered by authority or traditions of the past, and should not place any limitations upon its own growth. The thing which may prove of incalculable assistance today may, on the morrow, if still held to, prove a mill-stone. Life is a constant process of adjustment to environment, and the helpful thing of one day may become the fatal thing of the next. In order to live one must grow and every stage of growth has its change, and each change is fitting to its place. Let the one who longs for permanency know that the thing desired is unattainable, that a height attained is followed by the vision of still greater heights, that life is forever upward and onward.