beautiful ideal becomes a work of power, whether in this world or in
any other.

Now it is to the forming of such ideals that the Bible, from first to
last is trying to lead us. From first to last it is working upon one
uniform principle, that the Thought is the Word, that the Word sets in
motion the Law, and that when the Law is set in motion it acts with
mathematical precision. The Bible is a handbook of instruction for the
use of our Creative Power of Thought, and this is the sequence which it
follows--one definite method, so fundamental in its nature, that it
applies equally to the making of a packing-case or the making of a solar
system.

Now we have formed a generalized conception, based on this universal
method, of the sort of consciousness we are likely to have when we pass
out of the physical body. Then our thought naturally passes on to the
question what will happen after this?

It is here that some theory of the reconstitution of the physical body
appears to me to hold a most important place in the order of our
evolution. Let us try to trace it out on the general lines of the
Creative Power of Thought indicated above, the keynote to which is that
the Law is specialized by the Word, and cannot of itself bring out the
infinite possibilities contained in it without such specializing, just
as in all scientific development of ordinary life. The clue to the whole
question is, that our place in the Universal Order is to develop the
infinite resources of the Original Life and Substance into actual facts.
"Nature unaided fails." The Personal Factor must co-operate with the
Impersonal, alike for setting up an electric bell, or for the
furtherance of cosmic evolution; and the reason it is so is, because it
could not possibly be otherwise.

If now we start by recognizing this as our necessary place in the
Progressive Order of the Universe, I think it will help us to form a
reasonable theory as to the reconstruction of the body. First of all,
why have we any physical body at all? As a matter of fact we have one,
and no amount of transcendental philosophizing will alter the fact, and
so we may conclude that there is some reason for it. We have seen the
truth of the maxim "Omne vivum ex vivo," and therefore that all
particular forms of life are differentiations of the one Basic Life.
This means a localizing of the Life-Principle in individual centres. The
formation of a centre implies condensation; for where there is no