one who like Talleyrand, and Rachel, and Napoleon, laid his views on mankind so thickly they could not hold their own. "Thou art a victorious soldier," laid Samuel's estimate on young Saul. And Saul rose up a victorious soldier. "Thou art a king," pictured Samuel, and up went Saul to the throne of Israel. "Thou art no king," imaged the same prophet, and down went Saul, mindless and throneless.

But Jesus never offered to paint men any different from their original estate. "Call no man your father upon the earth. One is your Father." "Ye are the light of the world." "Not of the world, even as I am not of the world." He put away from his Apostles the estimates of the whole world and their own estimates also. They were dull fishermen in the world's esteem, but he wrought forth their original light as the noonday, and their native radiance that height nor depth nor things present nor things to come can ever dim.

There is one Shining Me, the Unalterable Fundamental, the High Reality of every son of man. This is the handwriting of God. All other sights and sounds of him are fictitious handwritings, as erasable by the right process as chalk marks on a blackboard.

It is the province of this eighth lesson in heavenly law to woo mankind to willing erasure of all fictitious estimates. "Man can never behold the face of the Father except in the eighth" -- was an inspired utterance of Saint- Martin "le philosophe inconnu." This was Saint-Martin's way of putting Isaiah's words, "He that is escaped shall come unto thee to cause thee to hear." One is escaped, or free to the view who has no imagery hieroglyphed across his presence. "Nay, not that!" says the Hindu, to all descriptions of the Lord of Life and Spirit.