How beautiful to know that growth--and the best opportunity for the highest unfoldment with most loving teachers and Guardians surround the darlings who have passed from the households of Earth. Here then, O human parents, O sisters and brothers, you who miss the bodily presence of the one who occupied the “vacant chair,” you who feel the _pervading sense of the absence_ of the loved children: here they are; bringing to your very homes and hearts, could you but realize it, the love, the knowledge, the wisdom, the beauty of the skies. BEAUTY AND HARMONY Ever from childhood through all the years of Earth life beautiful scenery, tints of earth and sky, music, in fact all beautiful sights and sounds, strongly appealed to me. In the spirit states I noted that harmonious colors, beautiful scenes, and often exquisite music greeted me as we approached groups of radiant atmospheres, encircling spheres of light; such exquisite sounds of harmony as one dreams must be the “Music of the Spheres.” On approaching nearer I would perceive that the _tints_ and _sounds_, as they reached me, were the radiations of thought, the spirit _activities_ of these thus ensphered who have attained real harmony. They were not MAKING beautiful colors and music, but LIVING them. THE “ARTISTS” Perhaps I have elsewhere written that music in spirit states does not always accompany the one who was a “musician” on Earth; and harmony of color, beautiful surroundings may ensphere one who never thought of being an “artist.” Their lives have been interwoven with sweet and loving thoughts and deeds. That which would have been a source of surprise had I not previously known it was that “artists,” “painters,” “sculptors,” “musicians,” and even some of the “poets,” known by those names on Earth, are not fashioning landscapes, portraits, or carving from stone the images of lovely forms, nor are they fashioning or weaving into music or verse some classical or other theme: All of those who were “geniuses,” all who were Idealists, _true lovers of their kind_, find here (in spirit life) their highest happiness in _ministering to others_, in moving upon the minds, hearts, spirits of those to whom they are adapted, until they perceive the _Soul of Beauty_ and fashion it into their lives. The “Masters” of art: painters, sculptors, builders, construct their temples and adorn them with _lives_--the true images of beauty in thought, feeling, aspiration, achievement. Music is _perfect Harmony_, of one life with itself and others, of many lives in all their highest purposes. Such are the creators of the “Symphonies of the Skies.” Those who had “Talent,” hoping to achieve the works of “Genius”-- sometime, somewhere, are still intent on fashioning reproductions or imitations of natural objects and scenes, or impressing art students of Earth to produce such effects. But these are not the creators--“every ‘creation’ is from within and must _live_,” said my Teacher.