THE DESTINY OF MAN

WESLEY ABER

As the ages of time glide away, as a dream that is dreamed floats away forever
into the irrevocable past, we stand in mighty hosts and watch mortals in their
daily ways, how they control their actions and order their lives.

Mortal man in all the wanderings of his mind, is never satisfied with today, no
matter how much he has accomplished or how great a good has come to him.

He is ever looking ahead and sighing for the rising of tomorrow's sun, so that he
can witness what it brings forth to him.

So much he has laid out with mathematical precision, to perform and fully
accomplish that he cannot see the future unfold with a pace too swift. And this
insatiate desire to do more, be more, and thus better himself and his loved
ones, is as inborn within him as is the breath he breathes. This rising force is
simply the result of progression, upon which is built every element which
mortals possess. No man can stand still in the face of the moving power of the
Universe. He either progresses or retrogrades. So that each act of a lifetime
either points to one or another of these ways. And again, there are many of your
world, and even of ours who have fallen into darkened conditions on account of
their own choice and the backward slipping of their own footsteps, when such
environments at last have tended to awaken the better part of their natures, and
seeing at last into what they had fallen, their condition served as a dear lesson
to them, and they at once turned their faces toward the bright sun of knowledge,
and the road of progression. When this is so, they are made the better and
stronger men and women for it. The chain of man's destiny is wrought together
link by link, by the strong hand of Providence, as the smith welds together bits
of burning red-hot iron. And as the fragments of his life join each with each, to
make at last the real acts of his existence so does his destiny begin to unfold
itself, and lay out like a scroll to be read at will. The daily aspirations of the
mortal mind that are the indwelling sentiments of the consciousness are the
deeds in embryo that have birth, and at last form many links in destiny's chain.

1
The inborn voice of the soul which speaks in various tongues and grows into
principles which actuate the deeds of a man's life, whether good or bad, forms a
part of his destiny, the tiny thoughts in embryo which take vital strength and
grow into shape until they become things and take their places in the mortal
existence as kindness and at last form the consummation of an earthly life. But
does the output of man's inner consciousness from day to day find an end of
occurrence with death? Ten thousand times no! Just as he lays aside his earthly
apparel (the flesh) and sinks down to rest in the evening of death, thinking his
labors are finished, he scarcely loses consciousness in the last of mortal life,
until his spirit eyes are looking on the light of the Immortal morning, and he
realizes with the fullness of his newly awakened spirit senses that his destiny
was not finished on earth, but just begun! When we are near mortals of earth
we often hear one and another speaking of some person's destiny, and they
usually interpret a destiny as meaning some one accomplishment or another, or
refer to it as some business or vocation acquired by them in earth life, saying,
"Oh, it was his destiny," or "Well, she had to do her grand work, it is certainly
her destiny." A man's destiny is his own precious gift from the Most High, and it
accurately means the actual fulfillment of certain laws that abide for him and in
his aura for the purpose of fixing his life on earth and in Spirit Spheres, just as it
was originally intended to be. A great many of the first plans for mortal life and
action that are laid with accurate precision are never reached by persons for
whose lives they were intended for the simple reason that these persons are
ever ready to neglect the impressions they daily receive and throw aside as
imagination or chaff, the whispered words from spirit lips, whose messages are
as signal lights along the pathway of truth, and as the guiding rays of a candle
under the sheltered roof to the weary, travel-stained wanderer in the Storm of
Darkness and Ignorance.

Instead of seeking to understand the governing motives of their lives, they turn
their faces into the shabby and threadbare path of ignorance and failure, and
then when the Hand of Death beckons them across the river and opens the
gates of another existence, they wonder at their own seeming nothingness and
failures, and are lost in amazement that they have not really tried to learn
something of themselves long ago. How many, many of earth's people today
that do not realize the building or the completion of their own destinies!

2
As man's real destiny built day by day, as the years of his life unfold, so should
man strive to crowd out of his nature all the petty follies of his earthly years and
grow more and more in the Image of God.

Fix your minds, Oh mortals of earth, on some of the high and mighty destinies
of those who have left your earth in a blaze of glory as it were, and even as you
have had the privilege to learn of them through contact with the love they have
left behind, so should you order your lives, that in the law of eternal progress
you could witness the upbuilding of a destiny for yourselves of which you need
never be ashamed. The reason for a great deal of the hubbub and confusion of
your world is because the mortal only strives to realize what is of necessity for
his present wants, and tries not to build for himself a future monument of
Eternal Peace. In the Heavens the usual destiny that man sees is day after day
of gaining the world's goods, so that when he grows old in the years of earth his
prosperity he will find him fattened in worldly gain, and Spiritual Ignorance.

The mortal who comes to realize that every happening which comes into his life
is for the best, so long as he is living the principles which he feels to be right, is
the man who is stepping on the high plane of Progress and attainment of
success in his each and every undertaking.

Believe in yourselves or you will be the creatures of failure. If your friends

believe in you, you will be a success, but the first element of your friends' trust
imposed in you is your own self confidence. Your daily acts, your thoughts, your
beliefs, your prejudice, your loves, and hope and fears, all join together in the
eternal and form link by link, the wonderful chain of your destiny. They are but
the elements which help to make you what you finally are.

How many there are in your world who are all unconsciously laying the corner
stones of their destinies today; putting in the foundation principles on which their
whole lives are to rest. The multitude of men go on and on up the steep hill of
Earthly Fortune and never stop to pick the thorns from their bleeding feet (that
come as gentle reminders that their pace is too swift), but trudge tip and tip the
steep Incline of Worldly Prowess, until some day the hour of the Eternal comes
and they are called to the realms of Spirits, to houses not　made with hands,
and find they then have nothing in keeping with this new life, only the change

3
called death, and at this occurrence in their existence, when the last scale has
fallen, and they are permitted full sight, they see at once that what would have
been the greatest possibilities in their mortal destinies were completely left out
and moreover alas never known ! A mortal can understand only so much as his
experience up to the present time has taught him. It is impossible for him to
thread his way into paths unknown, for he cannot comprehend that which has
never been his pleasure to be conscious of. If it were otherwise, how different
would thousands and thousands of destinies be.