I sat with note-book on my knee, pencil in hand and The Man began:

“The air here on this hillside is full of health and healing. Physical life you know is only possible in a right atmosphere. Add five parts more of carbonic acid gas and the body is poisoned—ceases to act—dies! Do you see the change in the constituent parts of the air? No—your senses are not aware of any change at all if the poison is introduced gradually; and so the use of the electric light in hotels has worked a great saving of life among the rural population, for the most frantic effort to blow it out proves futile; but in days gone by scarcely a month passed in any city when some innocent and ignorant individual did not lock the door, close the window, vitiate his physical atmosphere, and glide off slowly, surely, into that sleep which we call death.

“In the carboniferous period there was no atmosphere capable of sustaining animal life. Vegetation was flowerless, and the trees grew rank in swamps filled with poisonous miasma, death and gloom. No flowers decked the earth or the tree tops, no fruit hung on the branches, the song of birds was not heard and the only animal life was made up of mollusks and the lower forms of animate existence. Gradually the carbon in the air was absorbed by the vegetation, and sank beneath the bending swale, and new trees grew, and others followed still, and these sank and sank again, carrying down into the depths the material that has formed the shining coal which warms and cheers our homes.

“Gradually this purifying process continued; more and many kinds of plants sprang into being; these too absorbed the poison from the air, fit preparation that earth might receive her king. Animal life appeared in monster shape; fierce, awful forms, that crawled upon the land, through tangled swamps, or swam the sea, thriving in the atmosphere of slime—of gloom—of death. Gradually these nightmare forms have passed away, leaving only grim remains and foot-prints here and there, from which ingenious men have guessed the right proportion of the whole. Finer and finer, better and better grows the teeming life of animal and flower, until in words of prophet told,

The Man seemed musing to himself instead of talking to me, and I thought he had been talking without special point, for he was now silent, seated with back toward me, looking from the window; but it came to me like a flash without his explaining in words that the glimpse he had given of the history of the earth was only a summing up of the history of the soul of man. I saw the hordes of barbarians intent on conquest come streaming out from back of Assyria over into Macedonia, into Greece. I saw the teeming millions of Persia sink struggling beneath the sinking swale, and Greece come forth with men noble, gentle, refined, compared with what men were before them. Rome appeared, and I thought surely the carboniferous period was coming back with its poisonous fumes when CÆsar passed over into Gaul, then Britanny.

For centuries the earth gave forth no sign; but suddenly I saw a woman—not an ideal one to be sure, but men lifted their hats to the Virgin Queen, and with the Elizabethan age came a Spencer and a Shakespeare.

Surely the flowers had begun to bloom, the woods were full of song of birds, and I knew The Man was thinking of the What-Is-To-Be when he slowly and softly repeated the verse I have written. He turned and looked at me—our eyes met in firm, gentle embrace. Perhaps we both smiled, and he knew I understood. I had made a great stride to the front. He had spoken to me without words on a subject I had never thought of. I had received the message and I felt that this was just the beginning—only six o’clock in the morning.

I knew all he would say of atmosphere—that if body can not live excepting in a right atmosphere, neither can spirit; for over and over had I heard The Man say, “The material world is only symbol—behind each physical fact is a spiritual truth. Each planet has its own physical atmosphere varying according to its development.”

“Each person carries with him an atmosphere varying according to his development,” The Man continued, “and this is why in the presence of some person your spirit—that is, your better self—acts and lives. You think great and exalted thoughts with this friend. Neither may say a word, but your heart is full of love, benevolence and good-will. Now the person may be a perfect stranger to you, and yet supply you with an atmosphere in which your spirit may rejoice and sing. And again, who has not felt in coming into the presence of others, that the air was filled with the fumes of sulphur and carbonic acid. You become morose, downcast, spiteful, discouraged. This is only because your spirit is now in an unfavorable atmosphere. Get enough of these people who carry with them a tainted atmosphere and keep you in their presence, you will shrink away and die. Thousands upon thousands of men and women (women suffer more than men from bad spiritual atmosphere, as they are more sensitive and more spiritual) die yearly, and others drag their bodies about—living corpses. See them on the street—these careworn haggard faces. They die for lack of God’s sunshine—their souls are breathing an atmosphere of hate, distrust, jealousy and cruel ambition.

“This accounts for the great number of cases of insanity among farmers’ wives. Living as many do, breathing only the atmosphere of those who are sore labored and distressed—or who think they are, which is the same thing, ‘For as a man thinketh so is he;’ meeting her husband only in body and not in spirit, it is impossible for her to generate a strong spiritual atmosphere of her own. So is it any wonder the soul becomes weary, the body struggles, cries aloud, totters, reels and falls?

“Good people meeting together, talking of good things, thinking great thoughts, putting away all strife, envy and discord, create an atmosphere favorable to spiritual growth, and make it possible for the souls of all to expand and reach out, touching Infinity.

“Every wicked thought that flits across the mind is poisoning the atmosphere which often souls must breathe, and every good thought you think is adding to the total sum of good, and whether spoken or unexpressed, enriches the Universe, for thought is an entity producing a vibration too delicate for our dull physical senses to discern, but our spirits are thus influenced.

“But this is enough. You must rest and then write out what I have told you. What I will tell you next Sunday is of much greater import than you have yet heard me speak.”