Experience is the book of life, and he is a good student who knows how to read its doctrines, while he who acts upon them is being educated in the school of God. The creation is just beginning to be unfolded to man. To the ancients this world was the centre of the universe; but now we forget the earth in contemplating the unutterable immensities of infinity. The true scholar can read even from leaves of trees, as the true preacher can see "sermons in stones" and the man of goodness can discern "good in everything." Here is the kind of vision which looks into the soul of all. Man sees better and further into the meanings of truth when his bodily eyes are closed. The bottom of the deep well is invisible; the purest water flows from springs which lie beyond the reach of mortal vision. Every faculty in the mind has eyes looking backward and forward, down and up In animals they are termed instincts, but man, unlike these, adds to his vision the spectacles of experience and learns to probe the events of life.
With undeviating regularity, a beautiful order is maintained in every department of the physical system which environs the external senses of the soul; but may we not also cultivate some acquaintance with the order of the inward world, seeing that the same God governs all? The external departments yield up their secrets to our research, so that we see and know, and why therefore
should this Divine Administration remain obscure in the various degrees of the spiritual universe? The reason must be sought in man's short-sightedness and inexperience. We need therefore the power of vision, which is vital, and that acquaintance which is true culture.
The value of a progressive earthly experience can be comprehended only by realising in the plenary sense those definite relations which subsist between this world and the Spirit Land. Here and now is the first sphere of human experience; here the essences and elements of all Nature arrive, for the first time, at that point of organic growth and refinement when they are endowed with a permanent form—that of the human soul. The form of this soul is unalterable, for it is the final product of the powers and essences of the soul of Nature. This world is the manufactory of spirits, and the storehouse is the Spirit Land. Though it may be highly educated here, the human spirit finds the true reading in the world beyond. The Second Sphere of our existence is of more worth and is enjoyed more by contrasting rudimental and sensuous experience therewith. So is sunshine more beautiful after a terrible storm; so is our estimation of the joys of health augmented when compared with the sorrows of disease.
That which the mind does not learn correctly on this earth it must acquire perfectly in the spiritual sphere hereafter. How relieved will be thousands of minds when they have unlearned their earthly notions concerning God and the universe. The degrees of true experience in their earlier and later stages are comparable to the bud and the full-blown rose, or to child and mature man; but they are also distinct phases of homogeneous principles. The law of experience is a law of growth and progress, and progressive experience harmonises man, as pebbles are smoothed and rounded by irresistible tides washing over the shores. To be ushered into life naturally, to have a natural experience, to die naturally, to
glide naturally into the spiritual universe—such is the true law of our manifest being, and by applying the teachings of Harmonial Philosophy we may be attuned to this law, which is comparable to that of music. So may the brotherhood of man become a sanctuary of joy. Man's life begins in discord, but harmony is in store for him. Our lives, like our mouths, will discourse sweet music if we profit by experience and so display in our own persons that great principle of harmony by which God is manifested in the world. So may our individual lives go on through successive stages of rudimental being into the measures of a wider mode, until the great of all great prospects opens before us and the life which is ours for ever unites its music with the mighty organ tones of the spiritual spheres, into which we shall be received at length in the life of the world to come.