But if the real nature of material substance is seen to be form, the manifester of ideas, it is very clear wherein our bondage lies, for the images produced by our lower minds, the vehicles of the Soul, unless seen in their true light, in very fact bind us tighter than any conceivable matter could do. The children of our thoughts and of the thoughts of the race, in this as in past lives, the formulated ideas, the mental habits, are our prisons, and the only prisons the soul knows. But once this thought-form is given birth to, invested with force from ourselves, it persists a veritable material wall, harder far than one of rocks and iron. We are educated to the use of a certain phraseology, and it is the hardest thing in the world for us to recognize the identical ideas, differently clothed. The idea of separateness, crystallized into a form, a habit (garment, clothing) of thinking, is what stands between us and an actual direct perception of an existing brotherhood and unity. Forms of mental activity are all that prevent our recognizing the meaning of facts when we see them. Scientific discoveries come by nothing in the world but the momentary freeing of the observer's mind from his preconceived views concerning the fact before him, and events are happening in the world every day attention to which would make prophets and gods of every one, if we did not know so much—superannuated rubbish—already. "It is excellent to impede an unjust man; but if this be not possible, it is excellent not to act in conjunction with him." "Be not a friend to the wicked—charcoal when hot, burns; when cold it blackens the fingers." _Gems from the East._ STUDENTS' COLUMN. CONDUCTED BY J. H. FUSSELL. Does Universal Brotherhood imply condoning the faults of others, or, on the other hand, condemning them? "No one can intelligently pursue the path of Brotherhood without frequent and heavy condemnation of acts, and of persons as revealed in their acts." "Judge no man." "Judge the act, not the person."