hether we are now
brilliant or stupid, comely or deformed, is the result of the activities
of consciousness, and the very grain of the flesh and the shape of the
physical body are the registrations in matter of what we, the soul,
thought and did in the past.

Consider a specific thing like deformity and we shall begin to see just
why and how it may have come about. If in a past life a person was
guilty of deliberate cruelty to another, and on account of it suffered
great mental and emotional distress afterward, it would be no remarkable
thing if the mental images of the injuries inflicted on his victim are
reproduced in himself. In idiocy we have apparently merely a distorted
brain so that the consciousness cannot function through it. Might not
that distortion of the physical brain easily be the result of violent
reaction from cruelties in a past life? The consciousness that can be
guilty of cruelty is seeing things crooked--out of proportion. Otherwise
it could not be cruel. This distortion in consciousness must register a
corresponding distortion in matter, for the body is the faithful and
accurate reflection of that consciousness. It is just because the body
is the true and exact expression of the consciousness in physical matter
that the palmist and phrenologist can sometimes give us such remarkable
delineations of character. The record is there in hand and head for
those who can read it.

This broader outlook on the life journey, extending over a very long
series of incarnations, gives us a wholly different view of the
difficulties with which we have to contend and of the limitations which
afflict us. It at once shows us that in the midst of apparent injustice
there is really nothing but perfect justice for everybody; that all good
fortune has been earned; that all bad fortune is deserved, and that each
of us is, mentally and morally, what he has made himself. Masefield put
it well when he wrote:

All that I rightly think or do,
Or make or spoil or bless or blast,
Is curse or blessing justly due
For sloth or effort in the past.
My life's a statement of the sum
Of vice indulged or overcome.
And as I journey on the roads
I shall be helped and healed and blessed.
Dear words shall cheer, and be as goads
To urge to heights as yet unguessed.
My road shall be the road I made.
All that I gave shall be repaid.

Have we ever hear