On Time's whirring loom our garments we've wrought

Eternally weave we on network of Thought,

Our kin and our country, by Mind brought to birth,

Were patterned in heaven ere molded on earth.



We have shone in the Jewel and danced on the Wave,

We have sparkled in Fire defying the grave;

Through shapes everchanging, in size, kind and name

Our individual essence still is the same.



And when we have reached to the highest of all,

The gradations of growth our minds shall recall

So that link by link we may join them together

And trace step by step the way we reached thither.



Thus in time we shall know, if only we do

What lifts, ennobles, is right and true.

With kindness to all; with malice to none,

That in and through us God's will may be done.





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.



Each has such lordship as the loftiest ones

Nay for with powers around, above, below

As with all flesh and whatsoever lives

Act maketh joy or woe.



Who toiled a slave may come anew a prince

For gentle worthiness and merit won;

Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags

For things done or undone."





Or, as an unknown poet says:





"One ship sails East and another sails West

With the self same winds that blow.

'Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale,

Which determines the way they go.



As the winds of the sea are the ways of fate

As we voyage along through life.

'Tis the act of the soul, which determines the goal

And not the calm or the strife."





When we wish to engage someone to undertake a certain mission we choose

some one whom we think particularly fitted to fulfill the requirements and

we must suppose that a Divine Being would use at least as much common

sense, and not choose anyone to go his errand who was not fitted therefor.

So when we read in the Bible that Samson was foreordained to be the slayer

of the Philistines and that Jeremiah was predestined to be a prophet, it

is but logical to suppose that they must have been particularly suited to

such occupation. John the Baptist also, was born to be a herald of the

coming Savior and to preach the kingdom of God which is to take the place

of the kingdom of men.



Had these people had no previous training, how could they have developed

such a fitness to fulfill their various missions, and if they had been

fitted, how else could they have received their training if not in earlier

lives?



The Jews believed in the Doctrine of Rebirth or they would not have asked

John the Baptist if he were Elijah, as recorded in the first chapter of

John. The Apostles of Christ also held the belief as we may see from the

incident recorded in the sixteenth chapter of Matthew where the Christ

asked them the question: "Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?" The

Apostles replied: "Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias;

and others Jeremias or one of the Prophets." Upon this occasion the Christ

tacitly assented to the teaching of Rebirth because He did not correct the

disciples as would have been His plain duty in His capacity as teacher,

when the pupils entertained a mistaken idea.



But to Nicodemus He said unequivocally: "Except a man be born again, he

cannot see the kingdom of God" and in the eleventh chapter of Matthew, the

fourteenth verse, He said, speaking of John the Baptist: "this is

Elijah," in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew, the twelfth verse, He

said: "Elijah has come already and they knew him not, but have done to him

whatsoever they listed, ... then the disciples understood that he spoke to

them of John the Baptist."



Thus we maintain that the Doctrine of Rebirth offers the only solution to

the problem of life which is in harmony with the laws of nature, which

answers the ethical requirements of the case and permits us to love God

without blinding our reason to the inequalities of life and the varying

circumstances which give to a few the ease and comfort, the health and

wealth, which are denied to the many.



The theory of Heredity advanced by Materialists applies only to the

form, for as a carpenter uses material from a certain pile of lumber to

build a house in which he afterwards lives, so does the spirit take the

substance wherewith to build its house from the parents. The carpenter

cannot build a house of hard wood from spruce lumber and the spirit also

must build a body which is like those from which the material was taken,

but the theory of Heredity does not apply upon the moral plane, for it is

a notorious fact, that in the rogues galleries of America and Europe there

is no case where both father and son are represented. Thus the sons of

criminals, though they have the tendencies to crime, keep out of the

clutches of the law. Neither will Heredity hold good upon the plane of the

intellect, for many cases may be cited where a genius and an idiot spring

from the same stock. The great Cuvier, whose brain was of about the same

weight, as Daniel Webster's, and whose intellect was as great, had five

children who all died of paresis, the brother of Alexander the Great was

an idiot, and thus we hold that another solution must be found to account

for the facts of life.



The law of Rebirth coupled with its companion law, the law of Causation

does that. When we die after one life, we return to earth later, under

circumstances determined by the manner in which we lived before. The

gambler is drawn to pool parlors and race tracks to associate with others

of like taste, the musician is attracted to the concert halls and music

studios, by congenial spirits, and the returning Ego also carries with it

its likes and dislikes which cause it to seek parents among the class to

which it belongs.



But then someone will point to cases where we find people of entirely

opposite tastes living lives of torture, because grouped in the same

family, and forced by circumstances to stay there contrary to their wills.

But that does not vitiate the law in the slightest, in each life we

contract certain obligations which cannot then be fulfilled. Perhaps we

have run away from a duty such as the care of an invalid relative and have

met death without coming to a realization of our mistake. That relative

upon the other hand may have suffered severely from our neglect, and have

stored up a bitterness against us before death terminates the suffering.

Death and the subsequent removal to another environment does not pay our

debts in this life, any more than the removal from the city where we now

live to another place will pay the debts we have contracted prior to our

removal. It is therefore quite possible that the two who have injured each

other as described, may find themselves members of the same family. Then,

whether they remember the past grudge or not, the old enmity will assert

itself and cause them to hate anew until the consequent discomfort forces

them to tolerate each other, and perhaps later they may learn to love

where they hated.



The question also arises in the mind of inquirers: If we have been here

before why do we not remember? And the answer is, that while most people

are not aware of how their previous existences were spent, there are

others who have a very distinct recollection of previous lives. A friend

of the writer's for instance, when living in France, one day started to

read to her son about a certain city where they were then going upon a

bicycle tour, and the boy exclaimed: you do not need to tell me about that

mother. I know that city, I lived there and was killed! He then commenced

to describe the city and also a certain bridge. Later he took his mother

to that bridge and showed her the spot where he had met death centuries

before. Another friend travelling in Ireland saw a scene which she

recognized and she also described to the party the scene around the bend

of the road which she had never seen in this life, so it must have been a

memory from a previous life. Numerous other instances could be given where

such minor flashes of memory reveal to us glimpses from a past life. The

verified case in which a little three year old girl in Santa Barbara

described her life and death has been given in the Rosicrucian Cosmo

Conception. It is perhaps the most conclusive evidence as it hinges on the

veracity of a child too young to have learned deception.



This theory of life does not rest upon speculation however, it is one of

the first facts of life demonstrated to the pupil of a Mystery school. He

is taught to watch a child in the act of dying, also, to watch it in the

invisible world from day to day, until it comes to a new birth a year or

two later. Then he knows with absolute certainty that we return to earth

to reap in a future life what we now sow.



The reason for taking a child to watch in preference to an adult, is, that

the child is reborn very quickly, for its short life on earth has borne

but few fruits and these are soon assimilated, while the adult who has

lived a long life, and had much experience remains in the invisible worlds

for centuries, so that the pupil could not watch him from death to

rebirth. The cause of infant mortality will be explained later, here we

merely desire to emphasize the fact that it is within the range of

possibilities of every one without exception to become able to know at

first hand that which is here taught.



The average interval between two earth-lives is about a thousand years. It

is determined by the movement of the sun known to astronomers as

precession of the equinox, by which the sun moves through one of the

signs of the Zodiac in about 2100 years. During that time the conditions

upon earth have changed so much that the spirit will find entirely new

experiences here, and therefore it returns.



The Great Leaders of evolution always obtain the maximum benefit from each

condition designed by them, and as the experiences in the same social

conditions are very different in the case of a man from what they are for

a woman, the human spirit takes birth twice during the 2100 years measured

by the precession of the equinox as already explained, it is born once as

a man and another time as a woman. Such is the rule, but it is subject to

whatever modifications may be necessary to facilitate reaping what the

spirit has sown, as required under the law of Causation which works hand

in hand with the law of Rebirth. Thus, at times a spirit may be brought to

birth long ere the thousand years have expired, in order to fulfill a

certain mission, or it may be detained in the invisible worlds after the

time when it should have come to birth according to the strict

requirements of a blind law. The laws of nature are not that however. They

are Great Intelligences who always subordinate minor considerations to

higher ends, and under their beneficent guidance we are constantly

progressing from life to life under conditions exactly suited to each

individual, until in time we shall attain to a higher evolution and become

Supermen.



Oliver Wendell Holmes has so beautifully voiced that aspiration and its

consummation in the lines:





"Build thee more stately mansions Oh! my soul,

As the swift seasons roll,

Leave thy low-vaulted past;

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast.

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thy outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."