We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: _Ignorance_ and but one salvation: _Applied Knowledge_. Even the wisest among us know but little of what may be learned, however, and no one has attained to perfection, or can attain in one single short life, but we note that everywhere in nature slow persistent unfoldment makes for higher and higher development of every thing and we call this process evolution. One of the chief characteristics of evolution lies in the fact that it manifests in alternating periods of activity and rest. The busy summer, when all things upon earth are exerting themselves to bring forth, is followed by the rest and inactivity of winter. The busy day alternates with the quiet of night. The ebb of the ocean is succeeded by the flood-tide. Thus, as all other things move in cycles, the life that expresses itself here upon earth for a few years is not to be thought of as ended when death has been reached, but as surely as the sun rises in the morning after having set at night, will the life that was ended by the death of one body be taken up again in a new vehicle and in a different environment. This earth may in fact be likened to a school to which we return life after life to learn new lessons, as our children go to school day after day to increase their knowledge. The child sleeps through the night which intervenes between two days at school and the spirit also has its rest from active life between death and a new birth. There are also different classes in this world-school which correspond to the various grades from kindergarten to college. In the lower classes we find spirits who have gone to the school of life but a few times, they are savages now, but in time they will become wiser and better than we are, and we ourselves shall progress in future lives to spiritual heights of which we cannot even conceive at the present. If we apply ourselves to learn the lessons of life, we shall of course advance much faster in the school of life than if we dilly-dally and idle our time away. This, on the same principle which governs in one of our own institutions of learning. We are not here then, by the caprice of God. He has not placed one in clover and another in a desert nor has He given one a healthy body so that he may live at ease from pain and sickness, while He placed another in poor circumstances with never a rest from pain. But what we are, we are, on account of our own diligence or negligence, and what we shall be in the future depends upon what we will to be and not upon Divine caprice or upon inexorable fate. No matter what the circumstances, it lies with us to master them, or to be mastered, as we will. Sir Edwin Arnold puts the teaching most beautifully in his “Light of Asia.” “The Books say well, my Brothers! each man’s life The outcome of his former living is; The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes The bygone right breeds bliss.