CHAPTER VI.

Symbols.

The world is an open book of symbols if one would but look about and read. There is only one book-the book of Nature. It does not record one false entry. The law of production may be obscured to the mind of the finite, but the infinite makes no false entries.

The Alchemists worked with great care in the discovery of the secrets of nature. They mixed base metals in the furnace, it is said. and in the molten mass they put their thoughts, that the mass might be a metal of superior value. That is the way the world reads the transaction. Those having spiritual consciousness see in this process another working aside from the gathering of metals of great worth.

In the visions of the prophet and seer there appears gold, silver, gems, jewels and base metals, all portraying a line of lessons in the occult. The mental student sees in the vision a lesson by the use of gold portrayed in a dream, or vision. He sees also silver, which is, in a lesser degree, a lesson of great value. All along the line these appear, and in the crusible, the solar plexus furnace, the sea of fire, which is known only to the spiritually conscious person-the Alchemist, the metal scientist moulds his destiny. Materialists see in the story only

the material metals of the minerologist and ponder over the story and wonder how anyone could be so short-sighted as to mix metals with thought. Let it go that way. A lifetime of explanation would not make it clear to a mind wholly absorbed in the material things of life.

Happy might we be were the ancient grove worship re-established in its original purity-free from the base designs to which it was put in the base designs of man.

Trees form a long line of beautiful lessons to the spiritually conscious or the independent, as he should be called.

One could never tire in listening to a child of God revealing the lessons in the beautiful symbol language of the tree life.

The spirit has no limitation. Man is finite, has a narrow range of vision as a man, a thinking being, before he is made one with the spirit. Emerson says: "We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. It is only by the vision of that Wisdom that the horoscope of the ages can be read, and it is only by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit of prophesy which is innate in every man, that we can know what it saith."

In the forests of Washington, on the Pacific coast, lie prone on the ground, red cedar trees that register an age of two thousand five hundred years, over which are growing the same class of cedar that have pinned, with their

roots, the fallen trees and that register an age of one thousand five hundred years; making a history of at least four thousand years. It must even be more than that, for the fallen cedars were lying on the ground the seeds from the by-standing trees dropped the seeds that took root on the bark of the fallen cedars, and these seeds germinated and the roots of the young cedars traveled around the bark of the fallen cedars and thus went into the ground and pinned the fallen trees. At the Lewis and Clarke centennial in 1907, at Portland, Ore., a section of both the under cedar and the green cedar that was pinning it down, was on exhibition. From the under tree that registered a date back for four thousand years, good sound shingles were made, and were exhibited at the fair. However, one can go in the forest and find his own specimens lying in that state at this time find the green red cedar growing over it that hold in their combined ages, the ages mentioned.

There is a fascination about the forest. It appeals to one in a manner that is difficult to express. Only when the spirit begins to reveal in picture form, as the gray light is revealed and as the symbols are brought to light in the Book of Nature, does one notice what is passing, and what lessons are revealed by the symbols.

One might fill a good sized volume by the lessons aught by the symbols of trees alone. The spirit selects a language all its own in which to

instruct the mortal that houses the spirit and in these lessons that are made simple, one can dwell in the raptures of the intoxication of delight.

Cedars have stood for rulers in all the ages of man, from his first lesson in symbol language to the present date.

The beautiful symbol of the towering tall evergreen trees of the Pacific coast beautifully symbolize the "nation yet to be. The first low wash of wave where soon shall roll a human sea." A haven of rest, a harbor of delight. Here no Christian has shed his blood in defence of his love for God. No sects, creed or power of isms have set their seal and curse on the freedom of man. The rivers come from a thousand streams, these streams from many thousand springs, and all flow into the bosom of the eternal ocean of time that beats against the shores with a music that lulls the mind to sleep. New and eternal-will ever the hand rest heavily upon these beautiful symbols? Will the cruel woodsman fell the magnificent forest and leave instead a land of snags and stumps. Now the 'seas roll over sands of gold,' the mica skirts the shallow waters along the river's edge and as the gentle waves wash back and forth rolling up this flaked mica. that resembles gold, we look with pride on the crystal steams as they flow on and on like the infinite ocean of light of which we are all a part.

The timber line is fringed with the violet,

the symbol of fidelity. Nature's open book records the acts of fidelity as the seasons yield their bountiful supplies. The yellow bloom lives a near neighbor to the violet. The yellow as a symbol of constancy that is a telling virtue of the country. Deep in the dark recesses of the woods, everywhere the pure white lily carpets the ground-a symbol of light and joy. In the fern, nature has worked faithfully and earnestly, and has made a dense growth of eternal green fern-hope being the symbol represented by the fern. Hope shall not fail, the heart shall not grow faint. Every desire of the heart will be consumated. No less beautiful is the fringe of the wild rose that paints the water's edge, the mountain sides, the ravines and hills with a red glow a symbol of fervency.

Swedenborg wrote a dictionary of symbols. It has long since been lost sight of. Possibly it may be found and reprinted that the nations. may be benefitted by the definition in dream, in vision, in living experience of the symbols therein given.

Before Cleveland was elected to the presidency, a man living in New England saw a vision that caused him much difficulty. He moved to Mexico, fearing the United States was going to be destroyed. After some time had elapsed and the United States was undisturbed, he wrote his reason for going to Mexico. Had he made inquiry of friends who had a knowledge of the symbols, he might have