Spiritual life is the soul unincumbered by material bondage.

To prove that extinction or enfeeblement of the body does not impair the soul, we will consider the life of Gladstone, for if we find an isolated case whose mind did not weaken along with the body, it is positive proof that all so-called dotage or drowsiness of the aged is simply the effect of the live soul impeded in its effort to recall familiar occurrences through impaired organs. This is obvious from the fact that when the object has been recalled the spiritual vision of the object appears in all its original minuteness.

Everyone who reads knows that Gladstone when he carried the Home Rule Bill in the House of Commons, at the age of eighty-four, was as elegant, scrutinizing, and powerful in his debates as when forty-four years old. Still at that age his sight, hearing, power of recall of names, and tottering form were incessantly passing away.

Is not this evidence that two distinct agencies were at the time involved, life and death.

According to James' no-soul theory, his speech was involuntary reflex action, governed by neither will nor memory, while according to reason the spirit which controlled this wonderful man's feeble, tottering form was as clear and bright as it had been in days gone by.

Falling asleep in death is not a new venture. We are unconscious through life of all we know except as momentary knowledge comes forth through the organs, which in sleep as in death are unconscious of surrounding existence.

Jesus said, "I go that I may wake him out of sleep." "She is not dead but sleepeth."

If man is simply a creation of animated matter, he dies like a vegetable, if he is a dual creature, soul and body, when one part ceases to be, the other is not self, but if man is a spiritual being temporarily inhabiting and partially controlling a creation of animation the dissolution of the animated form must set him free and leave the spiritual being intact.

In memory, of childhood days, we apparently go back and view the scenes again, but if we really did go back we would see them as they are and not as they were, so we must give up that theory.

The most prevalent materialistic doctrine is that memory is an impression of the occurrences stamped on the brain. This theory when turned upon itself plainly establishes the invisible soul as the being who discerns the impressions.

The most modern atheistic theory is that memory is not a retained impression, but rather a new creation caused by immediate external stimuli. See Volume 1, page 649, of James' Psychology.

As all sane expressions are based on foreknowledge, this theory assumes that the cold exterior stimuli at the motor discharge instantly re-create the experience of our entire passed life.

This fallacy, together with the brain path theory, proves that excess of possessions coupled with classical education creates degeneracy.

Under the guise of philosophy and science these instructors are not only attacking the church but the vital spark of life.

I have spent years in the principal parts of the world studying the people and their modes of worship and I have found that all religions are one and beautiful in that they teach that at death the soul will be free. The righteous and wicked will be separated and our future destination will depend upon our personal motives while living in the body.

Whether our soul theory be a myth, mystery or truism, one thing is obvious, those living under the conviction that their apparent secret motives are in some way actually known, and will stand for or against them at death, will lead more pure lives, and make better parents, citizens and neighbors than those who imbibe materialism through faithless instructors who apparently hope there will be no reckoning day.

The immortal soul has been the staff of hope on which frail humanity has leaned for ages. The American Indian stood in the evening gloom, shading his brows with his feeble hand as he tried to look over the cold waves of death just to get a glimpse of the unexplored happy hunting ground. John, while on the isle of Patmos invented pearly gates and golden streets. He had caught the symbolic mode of teaching from Jesus in that ideas transformed into object lessons are more easily comprehended.

Jesus taught the soul theory from start to finish. "The kingdom of God cometh not by observation—the kingdom of God is within you." "Fear not them which kill the body but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Hell." "It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing." "The words I speak unto you are spirit and are life." Still he illustrated his ideas through object lessons.

Many who do not profess actually believe in the immortality of the soul. When unprofessing parents weep at the death of their sweet babe; they somehow believe that after life's dark storms are all passed, they will find that their pet has been in the care of loved ones who have gone before.

Any thoughtful person when observing their hand must discern two distinct forces in existence, spiritual and material or visible and invisible. And that the invisible is the force which knows and drives the material. Thus, as the exterior stimuli through the ear or other senses awaken the reason, so the invisible through the different functions of the brain emit their conclusion, based on world experience and scrutinized by the spirit, or a God-given power we call reason, which is often swayed by sly will power.

The aged are continually calling up minor incidents of forty years ago, while yesterday's events evade recall. Why is this?

It is not that the obscurity of vision, confusion of results and uncertainty of doubt which befogs life today darkened the path in the same way fifty years ago, but time has removed the obscurity and the original appears. Could we live another fifty years, might not the cloud which now befogs our path have vanished and we again remember the glance of recognition of yesterday, which now seems hard to recall.

No one contends but that our journey of life is traveled in utter darkness. No recall of the past, no discernment of the future. If then one unimportant act or thought of the long ago did record itself, may not all have done the same, and may it not be that when the veil of obscurity is drawn aside, all the minute details of life will blend the awakened past with the present, and we discover that our birth was not a beginning but rather a forgetting, and death the welcome morning call.

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I stood with the mother of the James boys, beside the grave of Jesse, in her door yard, when she told how that once when Jesse thought he was dying he took his watch charm and handed it to a comrade, saying, "Take this to sister Anna and tell her to pray that we meet in Heaven."

That mother's tears did not seem to me like crocodile tears. In fact there is something about the deadly bandit which we sometimes admire, but if there is anything fascinating about Harvard James and his sympathizers who sneak in under the cloak of morality to influence the young to turn against the great thinking spiritual world, I, for one, cannot see it.

I may be too blunt and plain in my remarks concerning soulless advocates but I feel that these teachers are not only swinging to the other extreme from religion, but through selfishness or ignorance they are creating unrest and war.

Most of our national leaders have been drilled in these theories and while many are too wise to accept them there are those who accept what they are taught just as a calf takes milk from the cow.

These thoughtless learned often become political leaders. Especially where finances are concerned, for with this no soul theory in view, their only object in life can be aggrandizement and luxury tinctured with animal passion.