[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]

I was greatly astonished at the nature and importance of that intermediate state of life which I have called the world of spirits. Although the doctrine of a place of departed spirits, called Sheol or Hades, is distinctly taught in Scripture and by tradition, it seems to have made a very feeble impression on the minds even of the most devout. Most men think they will go immediately to heaven or to h.e.l.l when they die. They are mistaken.

The world of spirits receives into its vast bosom the mighty congregation of the dead from all nations and climes. It is the first grand receptacle of the whole human race after death. It is the place of judgment, special and general. It may be compared to the stomach, into which all articles of food and drink are collected; where they are all comminuted, concussed, expressed, decomposed and digested; and what is found good and nutritive is taken up into the blood and makes a part of the living man; while the hard, unwholesome and innutritious portions, which cannot be dissolved or appropriated, are cast out of the system as useless or injurious.

Let not the reader smile at this anatomical metaphor. When he gets an interior view of the human body such as I have enjoyed, he will see that it is an epitome of the universe; that the mysteries of nature, the wonders of philosophy and the secrets of heaven are all written upon its organs and tissues.

In the present state we are strangely compounded of good and evil, both hereditary and acquired. He who thinks that all good people on earth are ready, at death, to pa.s.s at once into heaven without further preparation and instruction, has formed a mistaken idea of heaven. Our life in the world of spirits is a judgment upon ourselves, an unfolding or unrolling of our true characters, a revelation of our evils under the best possible circ.u.mstances; where by the a.s.sistance and instruction of angelic friends, our imperfections, if our ruling love be good, can be finally removed, and our souls fitted for that perfect social organization based upon supreme love to G.o.d and the neighbor, which men in the flesh cannot understand or even imagine.

"But," says some one, "all that is done for us instantaneously at death by the miraculous power of G.o.d."

G.o.d works always by organic and eternal laws. The spirit, like the body, grows, develops, progresses by definite means. Seeds do not expand instantaneously into trees. A diseased tree is not changed in a moment into a healthy one. The soul which attains heaven does so by regular and progressive steps, many of which (if there has been a commencement on earth) are taken in the world of spirits. The idea that miraculous power changes a bad man into a good one, an impure soul into a pure one, in a moment of time, in answer to prayer and faith, is a childish fallacy disastrous to the life of true religion.

The population of this world of spirits is immense. Not only the dead from our world are there, but angelic spirits from heaven and evil spirits from h.e.l.l all meet on this grand arena of spiritual combat and instruction. In the time of Christ many generations and centuries of human life were acc.u.mulated there; for evil had become so predominant, and the spiritual element in man so nearly extinguished, that few or none could be prepared for heaven. Unless, indeed, G.o.d had descended in the human form and executed a great judgment in that world, casting the evil into h.e.l.l and revealing a higher dispensation of truth, mankind would have perished and heaven itself have been threatened with chaos.

But all this is myth and mystery to those who have busied themselves only with the historical movements of the natural world, not even knowing that the world of spirits above and around them had far grander historical movements,-the key and cause of all others.

Every human being living in the natural world, is attended by two good and two evil spirits who are living in the intermediate state. I saw the spirits who had accompanied me during my life; and, what is singular, although I had never seen them before, they appeared like old acquaintances and friends whom I had known from my youth. Let no man suppose that he will rise from the dead into the world of spirits, and find himself a stranger there, friendless and alone.

It seemed very wonderful to me that this mighty realm of spirits should be so near to men, secretly connected with them by affections and thoughts, flowing down into them, giving them life and power, and instigating them to good or evil, and still that the human race should remain ignorant of the stupendous fact-benighted by all kinds of false philosophies and false religions.

"Why," said I to my father, "are not our earthly friends permitted to see us in this better and brighter sphere, to converse with us, and establish social relations with us?"

"They are in natural bodies," said he, "and they cannot see our spiritual forms with their natural eyes. Their own spiritual eyes would have to be opened before they could see us. The opening of their spiritual senses would bring them into conscious communication with the world of spirits."

"Well," said I, "so much the better. They would then see all these wonderful things for themselves, and their doubts would be wholly dissipated."

"Ah! you know little as yet of the world of spirits. It is full of evil and wicked ones, who share the bad pa.s.sions and prompt the sinful deeds of men on earth. If men came, by the opening of their spiritual senses, into visible and audible communication with their own attendant evil spirits, the power of h.e.l.l on the earth would be immeasurably increased. The power of a wicked companion in the flesh is great; but the power of an evil spirit enthroned in your bosom, possessed of your entire memory, and governing from his more interior stand-point every movement of your brain, would be fearful indeed!"

"No," he continued; "it is the mercy of the Lord which in the present evil state of the world keeps these two realms of being from a conscious intermingling. The offices and uses of the two worlds are different; one begins where the other ends. To throw them together would be to produce inextricable confusion, to destroy free-agency, to confound good and evil, to thwart regeneration, to arrest the judgment, to close heaven and to open h.e.l.l.

"All this can only be made clear to you by a thorough system of religious philosophy, embracing a true psychology and the organic relations of G.o.d to the universe, and of the different parts of it to each other. All these will be the subjects of your delightful study, and may possibly be revealed to mankind in some far-off futurity, when men become capable of receiving and utilizing such sublime mysteries.

"To seek to penetrate the veil which separates the spiritual from the natural realm, to invite an open intercourse with spirits, to consult them about earthly affairs, is one of the terrible crimes denounced and forbidden in Scripture. It is the secret source of the power and mysteries of magic. To seek such intercourse is perilous to the soul's best welfare.

Therefore it is that consulting with 'familiar spirits' is forbidden in the Word. It is forbidden for man's own good."

"These are new ideas to me," I said, "and I cannot fully comprehend them.

How should I, filled as I am with fallacies which need exposure and removal! But I am appalled, my dear father, at the thought that the world of spirits is so full of evil, and that we enter on a state of fearful explorations, combats, temptations and judgments on leaving the natural world."

"Yes, my son. In heaven only there is rest. There only are perfect peace and order and love. The road to heaven lies through the world of spirits, through its instructions, its purifications, its judgments. The pathway is pleasant and beautiful to the good man; for at every step he lets fall some hateful thing that clung to him in the past, and he rises into new light, new glory, new joy."

"You spoke," said I, "of general judgments occurring in the world of spirits, as well as the particular judgment of each individual. What do you mean by that?"

"At the end of every church, every dispensation, every old order of things, and at the beginning of a new church, a new revelation, a new era, there is a great judgment executed in the world of spirits. This judgment is effected by the light of divine truth streaming down through the open heavens, searching people to the core, revealing their true characters, separating the evil from the good, casting the former into h.e.l.l, elevating the latter into heaven. It is a destruction and reconstruction of the world of spirits. This stupendous event is described in Scripture as the great and notable day of the Lord, the day of wrath, the judgment day, the end of the world.

"You have come into the world of spirits at a period when you can witness the mighty events foretold by Isaiah and Ezekiel. There is a judgment now going on upon the last remains of the Jewish Church, and on all the pagan nations in the world of spirits; and preparations are being made for the inst.i.tution of a new and more spiritual church on earth. The Messiah has come and judgment follows."

"You astonish me," I exclaimed. "The people on earth know nothing of these things. They are expecting a fulfillment of the prophecies in the material world. They expect the Messiah to come in splendor and power, to invest the Jewish people with supreme dominion, and to wreak his vengeance on all the disobedient and idolatrous."

"Poor blind ones, led by the blind! They interpret literally what was written in the language of symbols and given to them for spiritual uses."

"Why the necessity of this judgment?" I asked.

"Because the church is corrupt and dead; the priests are drunk with the wine of false doctrine; the people blind and without a shepherd. Therefore iniquity abounds. The flood-gates of h.e.l.l are opened. The world of spirits is crowded with evil ones, who prevent the good from ascending to heaven, and infuse the most direful evils and falsities into men on earth. The prophets are dumb. The magician and the sorcerer are in the ascendant.

"Let me tell you something," he added in a solemn and subdued tone, "which, if you comprehend its full meaning, would make you tremble with fear. The order of the universe has been so far broken that demons have issued from h.e.l.l; and there is a general insurrection of the evil spheres against heaven itself. Unless these h.e.l.ls are subdued and these evil ones cast out from the world of spirits, the people on earth will be obsessed, soul and body, by wicked spirits, human society will be destroyed, and universal chaos reign."

"You appall me by your prediction. But my wonder is, how such dangers can be impending, and the human race know nothing about it."

"Because they know nothing of spiritual things-nothing of this world of spirits in which are the cause and origin of all things. Because they look downward, and not upward. Because they have eyes and see not; ears and hear not. Because they have perverted and nullified the Word of G.o.d by a sensuous interpretation of its meaning."

"Alas! then," said I, "how can the lost order be restored and the world saved?"

"By one arm alone; that of the Creator, the Supreme Being, the Lord."

"Oh," said I, "this Being of supreme power created man in his supreme wisdom, gave him angelic attendants, a written Law, an established Church-and behold the result! What new influences can He bring to bear upon his fallen and doomed creatures?"

"Listen. He has clothed Himself with clouds and come down to us-to men on the earth. As the sun clothes his consuming rays with an atmosphere of vapor, which moderates them and accommodates them to the states of man and beast, so has G.o.d clothed himself in a finite human form and thus come down to his creatures. He is now engaged in spiritual combats with all these evil spheres. He is casting these lions of wickedness into their dens and shutting their mouths. He will purge and purify the world of spirits, deliver heaven from the a.s.saults of the wicked, lift the great shadow of chaos from the world, restore man to his free agency and make him hereafter capable of a higher and more spiritual life. G.o.d is, henceforth, in the eyes of his children, not an invisible Spirit, but a Divine Man."

"These are mysteries and dreams to my understanding. I cannot comprehend how the Supreme Being, infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, can a.s.sume a human body and live like one of us."

"It shall be made clearer to you. You shall see Him. Indeed you have seen Him, but you did not know Him. You shall see Him again-and know Him."

"I shall see the living G.o.d?" said I, in a state of solemn trepidation.

"Yes"-said John the Baptist, who accompanied us-"you shall see Him. I have surrounded you, by divine permission, with an atmosphere which will enable you without pain to endure his coming."

I cannot convey to mortals an adequate idea of the sense of awe which crept over me at these words. My knees smote together; my hands dropped; my heart trembled; my brain reeled at the thought of standing face to face with the living G.o.d!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]

XVI.

_THE CHRIST ABOVE NATURE._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]

I now approach a subject so sublime and awe-inspiring, that it is necessary for us, like Moses before the burning bush, to take off our shoes from our feet; for the place is holy ground.