What is the soul principle of life?

On what general conditions of life here depend the soul's highest good in the spirit life—or does the soul's highest good in the spirit life depend upon the conditions of earth life?

The soul's highest good in the spirit depends upon the development to which it attains in earth life.

Man is threefold in his nature. It is not difficult for any intelligent, watchful mind on earth to observe the reactive influences of mind and body. 

The best health and development of the one tends to be the best health and development of the other. 

But there is a greater fact that too often our minds fail to perceive at all. 

This is that both the body and mind of a man may receive a very high degree of development while yet the spirit remains comparatively dormant—its development being very little advanced by all its earthly career.

Yet there is this—if the soul, the mental powers, has become highly cultivated and enlarged there are always great spiritual possibilities. It shows the strength of the cosmos force that is in him and where one sees evidence of a cosmos force we know that in just proportion to its properties, the odic principle—or inner force must exist.

This is a mysterious thing and the saddest thing in all earth life—that a man may have mental powers polished, cultivated and capable until they are almost Godlike in their power, and mastering, grasp upon the science and laws of Nature, upon minds, which are less developed than his own, upon his own bodily appetites and pleasures and yet have less spiritual perception and development than the child who carries her apron full of flowers, her sympathetic eyes, her loving smiles to some uncouth, bedridden unfortunate!

But you must not judge the man. His own spirit is yet small who dares to do that.

What earthly mind by looking upon its fellow can tell what may have been the environment, the crushing disappointments, the unfed hungerings for spiritual necessities—yes, and the prenatal influences, which have left its poor spirit room for so little development—which may have so stunted or warped it from its ultimate possibilities? 

The one great in spirit is ready to weep with compassion over the struggles, the sorrows, the stumbling, at the sinfulness of such a low-spirited nature, but it never disdains, rejects or relishes its sufferings. It longs to give plenteously of the light, which it has been permitted to receive and has its patience whetted by the sorrowfulness of the fact that the other, so enshrouded in darkness, is unable to receive.

The soul's highest good in the spirit  life then does depend upon the conditions of its earth life. 

But woe and alas! it cannot make its own conditions of life any more than the babe can choose of whom it shall be born.

But every spirit (as soon as it wakens to a perception of itself and its needs) may modify or advance its conditions. 

This is purely a spiritual matter. 

But each of the threefold natures in man is typical. As the muscles of the arm are strengthened, hardened and developed by constant use, so is the spirit advanced by its own efforts in the perception and rendering of spiritual things.

I do not mean now what you term spiritualism by spiritual things. 

I mean by its loyalty and truth to itself—to its conception of what is highest and best and purest in itself—by sustaining itself by prayer, by the perception of God's spirit in Nature as in man—by the influx of strength that flows to it from eyes that look into its own with gratitude—by the consciousness of its own unwavering integrity of purpose—by any of the various ways by which through different minds the spiritual man is developed.

So when you ask what general conditions of earth life depend on the soul's highest good in spirit life? our answer must be that the conditions depend upon the mental status of the spirit, which is to be developed.

The conditions of life, which would advance the development of one spirit would retard another.

As the earthly mind can only find expression through the earthly body, so the spirit can only find expression through the soul or mind. 

Hence it is that the greatest mind gives evidence of the greatest spirit—when it shall have become developed. 

No very great, powerful, well-balanced mind ever found expression through a feeble, misshapen, imperfectly developed body, and no sweet, pure, inspiring spirit ever found its way through an ill-balanced, stubborn, arrogant, selfish, undisciplined mind.

Thus you see the threefold nature of man must develop in harmony in earth life to reach its greatest perfection there, and thus, when transplanted, to be in its highest good in spirit life.

Since this so seldom is, it is little wonder there is no more spiritual perception in the world.

It must wait for greater development of the world. What one generation has learned advances the next. When man's mental powers have grasped the facts of what bodily conditions are best for his mind's peace and enlargement, and when he has subjected the body to the dominion of the mind, then will the perfection and perception of the spirit break through and govern both.

All Christian people know what are the fruits of the body and what are the fruits of the spirit. Let them practice what they profess to believe regarding the spirit.

And let those to whom the evidence of spirit return is more convincing, as to the truth of a future life than all the spiritual truths expounded by Jesus of Nazareth, be careful lest they should become as intolerant and bigoted as any intolerance and bigotry of creeds, which they affect to despise.

Let them not tolerate in any sense licence in place of the law of morality in their own lives and purposes.

Let them be just, charitable and generous to all mankind. Let them so live in the light of the evidence of a sure future life as to convince by the unselfishness and the integrity of their lives and the loving helpfulness of their purposes even sceptics that they are upheld by a conviction higher than the highest morality of the most cultivated mind, which depends for strength and sustenance merely upon its own powers of reflection and observation.

So the highest development, which the spirit can attain in earth life is wrought through the good, which it is able to accomplish in the world for humanity, the uplifts, which it can in any way give toward a more spiritualised existence.

It may be through inventions, which economise labour and give more room for the cultivation of mind in place of the hard, unending toil for bread. It may be in art, which enlarges the perceptions and often teaches lessons, which no words could do. It may be science, which opens up the labyrinths of different laws and truths to an astonished world. It may be in any way that assists mankind to a higher plane than that to which his brute nature would consign him. But every person has it not in the possibilities of their nature to even approach such results. Very true. But every person has it within him if he will to be considerate, just and kind, and thus he helps, thus he sustains those at greater heights than himself, who are burning out their bodies to furnish fuel for their mind's action. 

Thus the father and the mother impress the seeds of righteousness in the mind of the unborn babe and afterwards teach the law of love to their children.

People of the world are accustomed to attribute too much respect to the merits of the martyr.

He who makes a martyr of himself to the whims or selfishness of another—or to the exactions of a cause is thought to be great in devotion and unselfish in purpose. The fact is such a one is weak.

No human soul has a right to exhaust or absorb all the strength of any other soul, and the man who allows himself to be thus leeched upon merely lacks the strength of purpose or of perception to throw off the incubus. He also wrongs the one whom he attempts to this extent to support.

You would not think of strengthening one limb by bandaging it to the other. 

You would know that both would weaken and neither gain. It is just the same folly for one mind to attempt to carry another—for one body to absorb into the selfishness of its own life the strength of another.

Exchange of love, exchange of sympathy and a helping hand to one who is stumbling or in distress is a development of both soul and spirit, one that is reciprocal.

But he who is able to stand—who is so selfish that he is willing to take from another's strength—let him stand or fall—even the fall may teach him something.

Let each individual have independence of thought, purpose and action that leaves him always erect upon the lonely mountain top, above the jeers and tumults of a selfish, jostling crowd and reflecting all the rays of light that fall from God's hand upon him.

Let him allow no human soul the right to make his whole happiness or his whole misery. That should lie between his spirit and its maker. It is the same with a cause. 

Every cause is unjust, which would suck out the very life of its adherents. 

No one thing in life should be suffered to the exclusion of all others. There are many good and developing things in the world and the apples of none are forbidden. Take, eat and grow!

Is your question answered?

Let each individual so adjust himself to his environment as will produce the best threefold development possible for him.

Yet let not him of the one talent be confounded—let him remember of him to whom much is given much is also required.

The greater is as dependent in earth life for his daily needs upon the lesser as is the lesser dependent for his mental stimulus upon the greater.

No one has just cause to feel proud. 

The spirit most symmetrically developed and polished by the frictions of its earthly career is best fitted to enjoy and profit from spirit life—hence such a spirit can go on more rapidly toward its highest good.

What is its highest good but to approach more nearly its maker?