their spiritual union with God as the basis of all effective prayer, is fully corroborated in His teaching relating to human immortality.[143] Indeed, the whole programme of thought and conduct presented by Him to His disciples can be resolved into an advocacy of prayer as the means of obtaining conscious spiritual union with God, with the attendant purpose of establishing thereby the conviction of spiritual immortality. For eternal life is perceived to be the natural inheritance of all who through prayer have established correspondence with God as the Spirit of Life and the Father of their beings, and who therefore know themselves to be partakers of the infinite and illimitable divinity of God. Whether we consider the brotherly love between men recommended by Christ as the Will of God; or the self-sacrifice of the individual in the interests of the community, advocated by Him as the foundation of true happiness; or the indwelling Spirit of Life in form, manifested by love in Nature and illustrated in His rite of communion—the same realisation of the kinship of all life follows the putting into practice of His commands,[144] with the result that spiritual life is perceived to be the birthright of all the children of God. Proof of immortality is thus closely associated with the desire to correspond with the Will of God, for through prayer is the Divine Spirit of Life made visible. Born of the prayers of the faithful expectant, the Manifested Deity is the incarnation of the ideal desires of mankind—the accumulated product of those periods of anticipation which constitute the preparation for fulfilment of desire, and thus make possible some special culminating revelation which shall be adapted to human recognition. If the light of God be in men, shall they not by that light perceive His glory? Designed in the image of God, shall not man become like unto God, according as the divinely implanted desire to know God shall lead him towards a more perfect correspondence with His Will? All revelations of God are representative also of the spiritual progress of mankind.[145] The cultivation of qualities considered admirable in human conduct must be preliminary to the evolution of that type of humanity which shall be capable of appreciating as a divine manifestation the incarnation of certain desired spiritual attributes which are conceived of as partaking of the nature of God.