and to tell the truth rather than to give yourself to any semblance of
it."

As soon as we are able to read people aright we will then cease to be
disappointed in them, we will cease to place them on pedestals, for
this can never be done without some attendant disappointment. The fall
will necessarily come, sooner or later, and moreover, we are thus many
times unfair to our friends. When we come into harmony with this
Spirit of Peace, evil reports and apparent bad treatment, either at the
hands of friends or of enemies, will no longer disturb us. When we are
conscious of the fact that in our life and our work we are true to that
eternal principle of right, of truth, of justice that runs through all
the universe, that unites and governs all, that always eventually
prevails, then nothing of this kind can come nigh us, and come what may
we will always be tranquil and undisturbed.

The things that cause sorrow, and pain, and bereavement will not be
able to take the hold of us they now take, for true wisdom will enable
us to see the proper place and know the right relations of all things.
The loss of friends by the transition we call death will not cause
sorrow to the soul that has come into this higher realization, for he
knows that there is no such thing as death, for each one is not only a
partaker, but an eternal partaker, of this Infinite Life. He knows
that the mere falling away of the physical body by no means affects the
real soul life. With a tranquil spirit born of a higher faith he can
realize for himself, and to those less strong he can say--

"Loving friends! be wise and dry
Straightway every weeping eye;
What you left upon the bier
Is not worth a single tear;
'Tis a simple sea-shell, one
Out of which the pearl has gone.
The shell was nothing, leave it there;
The pearl--the soul--was all, is here."

And so far as the element of separation is concerned, he realizes that
to spirit there are no bounds, and that spiritual communion, whether
between two persons in the body, or two persons, one in the body and
one out of the body, is within the reach of all. In the degree that
the higher spiritual life is realized can there be this higher
spiritual communion.

The things that we open ourselves to always come to us. People in the
olden times expected to see angels and they saw them; but there is no
more reason why they should have seen them than that we should see them
now; no more rea