years in the Arabian desert built a funeral pile of spices and aromatic gums, ignited it with the fanning of its wings, sang a melodious dirge, and burned itself in the all-purifying fire, only to come out again in the freshness of youth and to continue its former life. Is it not a wonderful bird, this divine phenix of eternal life? But more wonderful indeed is our spiritual life.

I believe all Japanese are familiar with the story of Kusunoki Masashige, who exclaimed in his last moment that he would be reborn seven times and protect his royal family against the enemy. You also know well the anecdote of the late Commander Hirose, who expressed the same sentiment in one of his last poems. But in point in of fact these heroes are not only seven times reborn, but infinitely, so long as this universe endureth and humanity survives. Do not think for a moment that this is merely theoretical and has no concrete significance. Far from it. We who are breathing to-day the spirit of the illustrious general and the valiant sailor are no more nor less than their reincarnations. Those who come after us and become possessed of the same sentiment are their and our spiritual descendants. Rebirth does not mean the reawakening of the dead. Reincarnation does not mean the resuscitation of a dried-up mummy. The immortality of the soul does not mean the continuation of the individual soul as conceived by most religionists. The spirit is not a thing material

and sensual, however ethereally or astrally you may conceive it. It is a transcendental existence, which knows no limiting conditions such as space, time, or causation. Where you feel a noble feeling, where you think a beautiful thought, where you do a self-sacrificing deed, there is the spirit making itself felt in your consciousness.

There is but one great spirit and we individuals are its temporal manifestations. We are eternal when we do the will of the great spirit; we are doomed when we protest against it in our egotism and ignorance. We obey, and we live. We defy, and we are thrown into the fire that quencheth not. Our bodily existences are like the sheaths of the bamboo sprout. For the growth of the plant it is necessary to cast one sheath after another. It is not that the body-sheath is negligible, but that the spirit-plant is more essential and its wholesome growth of paramount importance. Let us, therefore, not absolutely cling to the bodily existence, but, when necessary, sacrifice it for a better thing. For this is the way in which the spirituality of our being asserts itself.

This being the case, war is not necessarily horrible, provided that it is fought for a just and honorable cause, that it is fought for the maintenance and realization of noble ideals, that it is fought for the upholding of humanity and civilization. Many material human bodies may