But we have a right to make greater hazards of faith than this. Might it not be that, although nature never purposed that the individual soul should live, man has outwitted her? He has certainly outwitted her in regard to his bodily life. There was no provision in nature for man’s living by tillage of the soil and domestication of animals, or for his dwelling in houses built with tools in his hands, or for traveling at lightning speed, or for harnessing her forces to run for him the machines that should turn out the luxuries and utilities of life. All these were pure gratuities, devised by man and wrested from nature’s unwilling hands. She was satisfied with primitive, animal-like man, as she is satisfied with him in some parts of the world to-day. We have simply got ahead of her. All the other animals are still under her dominion, but man has become the tool-maker and the partial master of nature herself. Although still far from thoroughly taming her, he finds in the incessant struggle his real life purpose, his inspiration, and his work, and still brighter promises for his children’s children. For the race lives and takes advantage of all that has been discovered before. Now, since nature has seemed to care as little about the continuation of life beyond death as she has of man’s comfort upon earth, might it not be that, just as we have outwitted her in the physical sphere and snatched comfort and utility by our efforts, so we may, by the cultivation of our intelligence and sentiments and whole spiritual life, outwit her in this realm and snatch an immortality that she has never contemplated? She never intended that we should audaciously read her secrets and speculate upon her nature as we have done. Who knows whether, by our hardihood in exploring the uncharted seas of the life of feeling and thought, we may have over-reached her again and created a real soul, which we can project beyond death? We are provided with the raw material of our spiritual life in the world, as we are provided with the raw material to build houses, and it may be our power and our privilege to build our immortal souls here on earth, as men have built and are still building the civilization of this world of ours. This would not mean that we could all attain, any more than that all men have the creative genius or the good-will for the constructive work of civilization; there may be “real losses and real losers” in the adventure for immortality, but to the stout-hearted and the wise it will be possible. We shall need, as builders need the rules of the craft, the aid and counsel of the spiritually gifted who have gone before us. It has been no mistake that we have prized them higher even than our material builders, for we have felt instinctively the spiritual power with which they have endowed us in the contest for the mighty stake of immortality. They are helping us to it, and we have the right to rely on their visions and trusts and beliefs in this supremest