The immortal soul has been the staff of hope on which frail humanity has leaned for ages. The American Indian stood in the evening gloom, shading his brows with his feeble hand as he tried to look over the cold waves of death just to get a glimpse of the unexplored happy hunting ground. John, while on the isle of Patmos invented pearly gates and golden streets. He had caught the symbolic mode of teaching from Jesus in that ideas transformed into object lessons are more easily comprehended. Jesus taught the soul theory from start to finish. "The kingdom of God cometh not by observation--the kingdom of God is within you." "Fear not them which kill the body but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Hell." "It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." "The words I speak unto you are spirit and are life." Still he illustrated his ideas through object lessons. Many who do not profess actually believe in the immortality of the soul. When unprofessing parents weep at the death of their sweet babe; they somehow believe that after life's dark storms are all passed, they will find that their pet has been in the care of loved ones who have gone before. Any thoughtful person when observing their hand must discern two distinct forces in existence, spiritual and material or visible and invisible. And that the invisible is the force which knows and drives the material. Thus, as the exterior stimuli through the ear or other senses awaken the reason, so the invisible through the different functions of the brain emit their conclusion, based on world experience and scrutinized by the spirit, or a God-given power we call reason, which is often swayed by sly will power. The aged are continually calling up minor incidents of forty years ago, while yesterday's events evade recall. Why is this? It is not that the obscurity of vision, confusion of results and uncertainty of doubt which befogs life today darkened the path in the same way fifty years ago, but time has removed the obscurity and the original appears. Could we live another fifty years, might not the cloud which now befogs our path have vanished and we again remember the glance of recognition of yesterday, which now seems hard to recall. No one contends but that our journey of life is traveled in utter darkness. No recall of the past, no discernment of the future. If then one unimportant act or thought of the long ago did record itself, may not all have done the same, and may it not be that when the veil of obscurity is drawn aside, all the minute details of life will blend the awakened past with the present, and we discover that our birth was not a beginning but rather a forgetting, and death the welcome morning call. [Illustration: OUR OAK PARK HOME--MRS. RICHARDSON, OUR DOG JOE, AND FAMILY GROUP.]