26 inclusive, describing Mt. Ecclesia, have been transferred
to the back of the book._ (Transcriber's Note: They are pages 191 through
200.)

CHAPTER II. THE PROBLEM OF LIFE AND ITS SOLUTION

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE.

Among all the vicissitudes of life, which vary in each individual's
experience, there is one event which sooner or later comes to
everyone--Death! No matter what our station in life, whether the life lived
has been a laudable one or the reverse, whether great achievements have
marked our path among men, whether health or sickness have been our lot,
whether we have been famous and surrounded by a host of admiring friends
or have wandered unknown through the years of our life, at some time there
comes a moment when we stand alone before the portal of death and are
forced to take the leap into the dark.

The thought of this leap and of what lies beyond must inevitably force
itself upon every thinking person. In the years of youth and health, when
the bark of our life sails upon seas of prosperity, when all appears
beautiful and bright, we may put the thought behind us, but there will
surely come a time in the life of every thinking person when the problem
of life and death forces itself upon his consciousness and refuses to be
set aside. Neither will it help him to accept the ready made solution of
anyone else without thought and in blind belief, for this is a basic
problem which every one must solve for himself or herself in order to
obtain satisfaction.

Upon the Eastern edge of the Desert of Sahara there stands the
world-famous Sphinx with its inscrutable face turned toward the East, ever
greeting the sun as its rising rays herald the newborn day. It was said in
the Greek myth that it was the wont of this monster to ask a riddle of
each traveler. She devoured those who could not answer, but when Oedipus
solved the riddle she destroyed herself.

The riddle which she asked of men was the riddle of life and death, a
query which is as relevant today as ever, and which each one must answer
or be devoured in the jaws of death. But when once a person has found the
solution to the problem, it will appear that in reality there is no death,
that what appears so, is but a change from one state of _existence_ to
another. Thus, for the man who finds the true solution to the riddle of
life, the sphinx of death has ceased to exist, and he can lift his voice
in the triumphant cry "Oh death where is thy sting,