"The mills of the gods grind always,
They grind exceeding small,
And with great exactness grind they all."
Their "hoppers" are too numerous to be counted. Physical pain, sorrow
of many sorts and kinds, losses and crosses innumerable, unending
disappointments, holding back the ambitions from all satisfactory
realization of pet schemes, and finally, physical death. Not one human
creature escapes. Into the hoppers they go, again and again, time
after time, till the refining process is completed and the soul is fit
to stand in holy and exalted presence, and to be set to do the work of
the Master. Here and there some gifted soul realizes that its anguish
means "growing pains." A was described as a "good man who let the Lord
do anything He wanted to, to him."
The discipline of this life is hard to bear; but if people will not
learn the lesson intended, here and now, they will be forced back
through reembodiments until this life can teach them nothing more, and
they have finally earned a right to a place in the heavens--the home of
the gods--where perfect peace abides.
Men are naturally gregarious. In all phases of life they seek
sympathetic comrades, or followers that they can hypnotize to do their
will. They instinctively set themselves off into classes, and while
this is useful as a protection from invasion, conditions in India show
the evils of class-caste distinctions carried to a ridiculous extreme.
The vast, surging, unyielding predatory classes on this earth consist
of those who have but lately--comparatively--emerged from the animal
kingdom, and have not yet been put through the mill of reincarnation
times enough to rid them of their wild beast "tricks and manners," and
make of them men and women fit to have around. The dreadful thing is,
having to live on the same planet with them, and endure their terrible
onslaughts upon the peace, and happiness of the unfolded, the civilized
portions of the race. But all are of common origin. Such as they are,
all have been, and such as the highly developed, educated and useful
class are now, they will surely become.