o that memorable
experience in "the flight of the Alone to the Alone," when the soul,
after trials and purgations, enters into indissoluble union with the
spirit, that divine, creative principle whereby it is made fruitful
for this world. Marriage, then, however dear and close the union, is
the symbol of a union dearer and closer, for it is the fair prophecy
that on some higher arc of the evolutionary spiral, the soul will meet
its immortal lover and be initiated into divine mysteries.

As an example of the power of symbols to induce those changes of
consciousness whereby the soul is prepared for this union, it is
recorded that an eminent scientist was moved to alter his entire mode
of life on reflecting, while in his bath one morning, that though each
day he was at such pains to make clean his body, he made no similar
purgation of his mind and heart. The idea appealed to him so
profoundly that he began to practise the higher cleanliness from that
day forth.

If it be true, as has been said, that ordinary life in the world is a
training school for a life more real and more sublime, then everything
pertaining to life in the world must possess a sacramental character,
and possess it inherently, and not merely by imputation. Let us
discover, then, if we can, some of the larger meanings latent in
little things.

When at the end of a cloudy day the sun bursts forth in splendor and
sets red in the west, it is a sign to the weather-wise that the next
day will be fair. To the devotee of the sacramental life it holds a
richer promise. To him the sun is a symbol of the love of God; the
clouds, those worldly preoccupations of his own which hide its face
from him. This purely physical phenomenon, therefore, which brings
to most men a scarcely noticed augmentation of heat and light, and
an indication of fair weather on the morrow, induces in the mystic an
ineffable sense of divine immanence and beneficence, and an assurance
of their continuance beyond the dark night of the death of the body.

When the sacramentalist goes swimming in the sea he enjoys to the full
the attendant physical exhilaration, but a greater joy flows from
the thought that he is back with his great Sea-Mother--that feminine
principle of which the sea is the perfect symbol, since water brings
all things to birth and nurtures them. When at the end of a day
he lays aside his clothes--that two-dimensional sheath of the
three-dimensional body--it is in full assu