Spirit, when first differentiated from the Absolute, is simple, not complex, undifferentiated, pure and good because it has not become conscious of evil. To gain the experiences by which alone it may expand its consciousness to infinity and become inclusive of all differentiation, it becomes individualized and embodied. And this earth is the scene of the experiences which the spirit needs and which it can gain only by means of an embodiment of personality. Cycle after cycle, life after life, the soul tests all the conditions of earthly pleasure and pain by its own standard and measure. If that standard be self, alienation will be swift and certain, and slow and terrible will be the return to the divine. If the measure be brotherhood, service, ministry to others, the soul remains one with God and spiritual consciousness is by so much expanded. Since brotherhood is the ideal, our very institutions, church, state, and particularly the home, exist for no higher purpose than to develop within the soul of humanity a conscious desire to live for others. It is only because the soul manifests itself as two forces, in two sexes, man and woman, that the institution of the home, as we know it, is made possible. We fancy that these dual forces, incomplete and fluctuating, become completed and stable only through marriage. The novelists have threshed over this old straw for many weary years, for the view commonly taken is superficial and untrue. Marriage, in its deeper aspect, is a means by which the soul prepares itself, through the joys of limited service, for that wider ministry which includes the world. Emerson expresses it better when he says "the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls." Marriage opens the shortest way by which men and women, self-centred and egotistical, may be compelled, against their will if need be, to become conscious of the joy of sacrifice and the beauty of service.