“At last we discovered that the nucleus of each was a spiritual jewel set like a skeleton of empty cells. These cells, in the early ages, must always have remained empty, for otherwise they would have become noticeable, which they were not. But as the ages passed away we began to find that in some cases some of these cells at least were filling. It was a very wonderful structure, though simple. Every cell was bound to be filled with one of two things (if it filled at all)—Good or Evil. This was the soul—the thing that man has talked about so greatly, the thing for which we fight and which is so precious to us, forming our brightest jewels, and the seeds from which the after life is sown. When the soul is pure and free from every stain we receive it into our own spiritual bodies when death steals on the flesh. And as the Father of the Spirit we form those seeds within ourselves to our own natures. Then from us they pass into the essence of spiritual love and light, the purest element of spirit; such as my wife. And these are those gracious, loving mothers, without whose sweet care and love and wisdom in building up such tender life our labours would be lost. Since at the best the soul is but a crude thing, even when purest, as compared with things of heaven, and of itself would die and never germinate, having no strength to form itself. Indeed, who ever yet, however free from sin, felt themselves fit to step from earth to heaven even by death? For the long rest must come—the pure cleansing, the healing strength, the quickening spirit—to drive away the harshness and the shadow. “But I have made a digression to explain. I must return to the earth’s history. I said our progress was slow and uncertain; but in eternity the time goes by without respect to feeling, it neither drags nor quickens. Hundreds, nay, thousands of years elapsed before we could make our power felt at all. The earth could not understand us. It was wrapped in the veil of mystery and the chain of slavery, and was blind and deaf to all influence from without. We were alien to it—strangers, ignorant, and, by the law of conquest, weak, for the world was not our own. Moreover, as you will perceive if you care to look into its history, the whole thing reads more or less as a farce, a jest of the Godhead, as indeed it was.