What are you placed in the world for?

Why does every nation have some idea of a future life? and do different nations entertain similar views regarding a future life?

Everything has its genera and species—

Each specie its own distinctive and peculiar development.

This is from a law of diversity, which tends to greater harmony.

How might the whole universe be compared?

The whole universe might be compared to an instrument upon which an anthem is played—

Each measure, depending upon its own keynote, for its volume and sweetness.

Each specie has a peculiarity of development all its own. 

Every key of the instrument is not struck with the same power by the hand of the Almighty—

What are you placed in the world for?

Why does every nation have some idea of a future life?

What kind of development helps you most?

It is for a beginning of development—

Just as the seed of the tree is planted in the soil of the earth—that it may begin the development of its possibilities, which it does with every little rootlet that it puts forth— 

Now, what kind of development—that you can obtain from the conditions of the earth—helps you most? 

Not a merely physical one evidently, since the earthly body is dropped as a shell—is of no more lasting consequence than is the clothing necessary to preserve that body in health while it lasts.

The development then that is vital with any human soul is that which goes onward with him through eternity. 

How can any conception of the spirit that is in you—the principle that is greater than your outward, visible, material body—be gained, save through some idea—however vague—of an existence beyond the earthly life?

It is obvious then why such a conception is, in some way, revealed to all races of mankind, as soon as they are able to receive it. 

No people ever reach development, and remain at a standstill, waiting for a revelation. 

The revelation is always waiting for the development of the people to a full comprehension of it—always something for their minds to work up to, and an understanding of morality precedes that of any great spirituality.

Certainly, different nations do not—cannot—entertain the same views to a future life, though there may be points of similarity. 

A rude and barbarous nation could not comprehend the spiritual thoughts of a highly cultivated and Christianised one, nor could they occupy the spiritual side of life or the same plane of existence.

It is with the race, as with the individual—

The most highly developed minds are most capable of comprehending existence and they always lead those behind them in perception and reflection. 

God works through ages. 

What a nation learns in one age is a transmitted knowledge—an uplift—to the next age. 

And the light—the advancement of knowledge—of one nation spreads itself as gradually—surely—to all nations of a world.

Do you wonder? 

What of the nations that are—or were—so far behind that reach the spiritual life in such darkness of ignorance?

Well, they are progressing, too. 

There are no false notes in God's harmonious measures.

LEAFLETS OF TRUTH; OR, Light From the Shadow Land