face to face with other questions of deep importance
What part do weakness, limitation, suffering, sorrow, and even sin, play
in the development of souls? Is it necessary that any should fall in
order that they may rise? Did John Bunyan truly picture the ascent of
the soul? Does its path, of necessity, lead through the Slough of
Despond, through Vanity Fair, by Castle Dangerous, and into the realm of
Giant Despair?

Must one pass through hell and purgatory before he may enjoy the
"beatific vision?" Are temptation, sin, sorrow, and even death, angels
of God sent forth to minister to the perfection of man? or are they
fiends which, in some foul way, have invaded the otherwise fair regions
in which we dwell?

These are some of the questions to which we are to seek answers in the
pages which are to follow. I am persuaded that, as the result of our
studies, we shall find that the same beneficent hand which led the
"Cosmic process" for unnumbered ages, until the appearance of man, is
leading it still, that far more wonderful disclosures are waiting for
the children of men as they shall be prepared to receive them, and that
the glory of the "Spiritual Universe," as it approaches its
consummation, when compared with the finest growths of character yet
seen, will transcend them as the ordered creation, with its countless
stars, transcends the primeval chaos.

In the meantime it is well to remember a few very simple and
self-evident facts. One of these is that human souls must vary, at
least as much as the bodies in which they dwell. Individuality has to do
with spirits. We think, love, and choose in ways that differ quite as
much as our bodily appearance. There is no uniformity in the spiritual
sphere;--this we know from its manifestations in conduct and history.
One man is heroic and another tender, one a reformer and another a
recluse, one conservative and another radical. The same Bible has
passages as widely contrasted as the twenty-third and the fifty-eighth
Psalms, and characters as unlike as Jacob and Jesus. Indeed, may it not
be assumed that physical differences are but expressions of still more
clearly marked differences in spirits? If this is true it will follow
that, as we move toward the goal of our being, while all will be under
the same good care, we will move along different, though converging,
paths. There are many roads to the "Celestial City" and, possibly, some
of them do not lead through the Slough of Desp