HAPPINESS DERIVABLE ONLY FROM WITHIN. Observation and experience have taught me that in the spirit world, as in earthly life, individuals vary in disposition, constitution, and characteristics. What is of the greatest interest to one person possesses no charm whatever for another; and that particular employment one being is adapted to pursue may be totally unsuited for another. Happiness among spirits is not drawn from external sources, but finds its central power within the soul, from whence it radiates outward, and clothes every objective form with beauty and every external pleasure with a splendor peculiar to itself, which in turn becomes reflected back upon the heart, and increases the enjoyment of the individual. Never was there a truer declaration than that attributed to the gentle Nazarene: “The kingdom of heaven is within you;” and it is as true today as it could possibly have been eighteen or twenty centuries ago. Unless the soul is at peace with itself and all others,—is not envious of the good another may possess, lives in a sphere of purity and kindly feeling, and desires only to do right,—he or she cannot experience true happiness, which essentially in itself constitutes heaven. But when an individual has attained that superior condition of mind consequent upon the possession of such lovely attributes, he or she has indeed arrived at the heavenly state of existence, and cannot be otherwise than happy. THE HUMAN NATURE OF SPIRITS. Humanity appears to be the same everywhere, and in every grade of unfoldment. Many mortals seem to think that spirits—those who have passed through the material transition called death—must be somewhat different from themselves. This, however, is not absolutely the case. Spirits are human beings, nothing more, many of them very imperfect at that, though many others are pure-minded, progressive, and exalted individuals, yet essentially human in every attribute and tendency. And why not? What is more beautiful, more intelligent, more powerful, and more noble than humanity? Nothing but divinity itself. Perverted human nature is deplorable, and to be pitied while condemned; but unfolding, advancing human nature is to be admired and emulated, for it is steadily arising toward divinity. Mankind ever has been, and at present is, subjected to various grades of development; we find man low down in advancement, almost brutal in the exhibition of his nature, but by degrees ascending from the immoral and degraded to the good and the better, we come to man purified, unfolded in spiritual refinements, exalted even to the heights of angelhood, but a human being still. These varying conditions, incident to the life and experience of humanity, are just as vivid and operative in the spirit world as on earth; hence we have on that plane of existence the pure and the lowly, the exalted and the humble, the wise and the ignorant, the happy as well as the miserable.