"Such are the forms of those who are interiorly good. Observe now the forms of those who are interiorly wicked."

The former scene pa.s.sed away and three wild beasts appeared standing at the mouth of an immense black cavern, in front of which many human bones were scattered. The animals were a wild boar, a wolf and a tiger, all of gigantic size and terrible ferocity.

We advanced nearer to these also, and they changed into men; the wild boar into Caiaphas, the high priest; the wolf into the cunning and cruel Magistus; and the tiger into the robber Barabbas. The meaning of this tableaux I perceived intuitively without explanation.

"Between these two extremes," continued my father, "is a great cla.s.s who are in mixed states of good and evil. Their sufferings will be severe before they can put off either kind of life so as to live entirely in the other; for a separation of good and evil must be effected,-if not upon earth, at least in the world of spirits."

A sandy wilderness then arose to view, in which I saw but two figures; a zebra, wild, beautiful, intractable, snuffing proudly the air of the desert; and a white dove which was struggling frantically to escape from the jaws of a monstrous serpent.

These I approached more eagerly; for I was impelled by an earnest desire to caress the beautiful zebra, and to rescue the dove from the fangs of the serpent. They changed also in the twinkling of an eye. The zebra was our friend the Son of the Desert, and the dove was Mary Magdalen. As the latter stepped forward, a shining and beautiful woman, the serpent shriveled and fell behind her like a black garment cast upon the ground.

As the last picture faded away, my father resumed his instructions.

"The scenes you have witnessed are phantasmagoric, but symbolical and full of spiritual truth. They ill.u.s.trate the law of appearances which governs in the spiritual world. The phenomenal world around us, animal, vegetable and mineral, is all representative of the life within us; not by accident or with confusion, but according to fixed and eternal laws.

"The sphere of life radiates from a spirit like heat from the sun, or like perfume from a flower. It flows forth and falls into successive zones or belts of spiritual substance, in each of which it produces some spiritual form representative of itself. Outside of his human sphere, the life of a spirit takes form in the first zone as an animal, in the second as a planet or flower, in the third as a mineral, a stone, a drop of water, a cloud, a star.

"The life which animates a wicked spirit becomes a corresponding wild beast in the first zone; a loathsome fungus in the second; a poisonous mineral in the third. The sweet spiritual life of a good heart becomes the innocent lamb in one zone; the beautiful rose in the next; the brilliant gem in the last.

"Observe, however, that each spirit always appears to himself in the human form; and always so to others when they are near him. He only takes on these typical or correspondential forms in the eyes of others, when he recedes to or approaches from a distance."

"What a deep philosophy you are unfolding!" I exclaimed. "I see already in what you have told me the germs of a thousand brilliant ideas. Oh that I could teach these beautiful things in the porticoes of Athens! How they would ravish the Grecian heart!"

"You are mistaken," said my father. "Some simple soul from whom you least expected it, would accept your doctrines, weeping for joy. The great, the rich, the learned, the powerful, would scornfully reject them as fables or dreams."

"That is strange and sad."

"Yes-but it is true. The mind which is wedded to falsities in religion or philosophy, is proud, self-reliant, self-satisfied, bigoted and intolerant. The genuine truth which makes the soul free, makes it also liberal and loving."

"Will the Jews on earth reject the Messiah, proving his mission as he does by stupendous miracles?"

"Yes: miracles avail nothing with the unbelieving. Truth is not seen merely because it is truth. No truth is received or seen but that which corresponds to some love in the heart. The hatred which these Jewish spirits feel for holy things, will descend by influx into the priests and scribes at Jerusalem: and the tender seed of the New Dispensation will be sown in darkness and watered with tears and blood.

"Do not suppose," added my father, "that spirits and angels have any special power to foresee the future. Oh no! We only live nearer to the Fountain of causes, and reason more acutely from cause to effect."

I treasured these strange things in my mind, having only a faint perception of either their truth or value. I was especially surprised at the fact, that a church could actually come to an end, a dispensation be spiritually closed and a new one inaugurated, while the adherents of the old were in the full flush of power and numbers, and regarded themselves as the favored repositories and faithful interpreters of divine truth!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ornament]

XVIII.

_IMAGINARY HEAVENS._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Initial]

After these things we were taken up another high mountain, whence we had a view of all the kingdoms in the world of spirits at once. Hither it was that Jesus was carried by the evil spirit who offered him all this power and glory, if he would fall down and worship him. There is no mountain in the natural world from which such an outlook were possible.

"This great height," said my father, "represents the infernal sphere of self-aggrandizement, which aspires to universal dominion. It is that ambition which corrodes the heart with envious pa.s.sion so long as anything remains unconquered. This spirit is common to nations and individuals, to the greatest and the least. This mountain rears its awful summit in every human breast. This is the spiritual mountain which is to be cast into the sea by faith."

Looking down, I now beheld a city of Rome as before I had seen a city of Jerusalem. Beautiful, shadowy pictures of cities, homes of spirits, vastly magnified and made glorious with ethereal colors! Man cannot imagine the splendid creations which spirits can instantaneously produce from the plastic substance of the spiritual world. These cities and countries, however, are peculiar to the intermediate state. They do not exist in heaven.

The Romans risen from the dead had reconstructed their imperial city of precious stones, so that it always shone from afar as if some grand illumination were going on, whose splendors were again reflected from the clouds which floated above it.

We looked into this marvelous city, its capital and palaces, its temples and amphitheatres. The great avenues were crowded with a vast and gorgeous procession. Many kings and queens and n.o.bles were walking in chains, brought as prisoners from so many conquered countries. The treasures of these plundered captives were borne by thousands of slaves of all colors and nationalities, in ma.s.sive and curiously-carved vessels of gold and silver. Specimens of wild animals from all regions of the Roman world, drawn in gilded cages, and of the more wonderful plants and flowers carried upon the shoulders of men, and screened from the sun by flaming canopies of silk, added to the picturesqueness and grandeur of the scene.

The Roman senators, generals and magnates were seen heading the different divisions of this vast mult.i.tude, riding in blazing chariots drawn by superb horses richly caparisoned. On both sides of the captives marched the victorious armies of Rome; so that the very air above them was golden with the flash of helmets, spears and shields, and the gleam of Roman eagles.

These were the spirits of that vain-glorious and indomitable race who had changed the geography of the natural world, and were now celebrating their victories with transcendent magnificence in the intermediate state. The sphere of their interior character was wafted to my spiritual perceptions, and I felt as I did in the Hall of Apollo when Hortensius and his guests fixed their haughty and contemptuous gaze upon Anthony and myself.

"How unutterably base, cruel and sensual," exclaimed my father, "is the spirit of man when he loves himself supremely, and overreaches and overrides his fellow-creatures. Behold the spiritual side to this magnificent exterior!"

Thereupon the light from a higher sphere streamed down, and the pomp, the glory, the beauty of the whole scene disappeared. We beheld a vast crowd of beggars in filthy rags, and a confused heap of low buildings made of mud and straw. The proud and fierce Romans were all slaves themselves, wearing long chains and driven by infernal spirits in the shape of grinning apes. Where the Capitol had stood, appeared a pool of blood-colored water, in which a dragon of hideous dimensions lay, spouting from his mouth a stream of fire. A lurid twilight hung over all, prognosticating a wild and tempestuous night.

"Such," said my father, "will be the fate of ambition when the Lord comes in judgment. Let us now descend to a lower region, and see a people greater than these, but who have sunk into darker depths; a people now dest.i.tute of spiritual pride or civil ambition; a degenerate, effeminate, corrupt race, dead to all genuine and enn.o.bling aspirations, and immersed like beasts in the life of the senses."

We seemed to go down to the sea-coast-for the blue ocean girdles also the world of spirits. Soon we came into the sphere of the Grecian souls who had risen from the dead, and who had reconstructed about them, according to spiritual laws, their own charming and ethereal country. The scene was not far from Athens, whose marble-crowned Acropolis gleamed in the distance, with clouds more beautiful than itself floating above it.

The poetic faculty, full of the inspiration of Grecian art, can alone appreciate what I next witnessed. The Hall of Apollo in the palace of Hortensius was a beggarly chamber in comparison with this great hall of nature in which Pan presided, and in which earth, sky and ocean had each its part. The guests also of the luxurious Roman were mere schoolboys in comparison with the august a.s.sembly before us, which was gathered to a feast in the imaginary heaven of the Greeks.

We seemed to be standing on a hill that sloped and fell by beautiful green terraces down to the silver beach of a placid sea. The summit of that hill was long, broad and level, and crowned with a grove of extraordinary beauty. The trees were far apart, and rose like emerald columns to a great height before they branched. Their foliage was pruned and led by threads of invisible wire to intertwine overhead, forming a delicate arch for a roof. The ground was carpeted with an inwrought tissue of living flowers, which yielded elastically to the tread, sending up continually a delicious perfume.

In this immense grove were spread a thousand tables seemingly of solid precious stones, and crowned with great vases of wine and cups of crystal, and adorned with ethereal fruits and flowers. At these tables were seated or reclining thousands and thousands of the ancient heroes and heroines of Greece, served by thousands of beautiful nymphs, Dryads and Naiads, who had left the woods and the waters to bestow their charms on these happy souls.

The G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses were also in attendance; for heaven and earth were thrown together in such admirable confusion that each partook the qualities of the other. The sky and the air were literally full of divinities. On a rose-and-purple cloud condensed into a throne, and lowered half-way between the ceiling and the floor, sat Venus, crowned with myrtles and presiding at the feast. The Graces were kneeling at her feet, while her swans and doves were grouped about her. Near by stood Cupid tw.a.n.ging his bow, and laughing at the sight of his empty quiver; for every heart in the crowd had been pierced by one of his golden arrows.

Looking out to the sea, we saw Neptune, of colossal proportions, riding in his chariot constructed of sh.e.l.ls, and drawn by horses with brazen hoofs and gilded manes. Myriads of sea-nymphs and sea-monsters sported and gamboled about him, sometimes in the air, sometimes on the shining surface of the deep.

In mid-sky Apollo in person drove the chariot of the sun, attended by the Muses and the flying Hours. In the west, Iris the messenger of Juno, planted her rainbow on a pa.s.sing cloud, and smiled in colors to the world.

Afar off, in the east, the Seasons had opened the ma.s.sive Gates of Cloud, and we had a glimpse of the old Olympian G.o.ds in conclave august, feasting upon ambrosial food.

Thousands of these beautiful figures were nude; and I saw the spiritual models which had inspired and immortalized Grecian art. Thousands also were draped, and with such infinite variety and beauty, that it seemed no work of human ingenuity, but as if Nature herself had invested them with her forms and colors.

"Oh, my father!" said I excitedly, "surely this is real; this is heaven.

These things will not vanish also, or change into something hideous and terrible."

A shade of sadness came over my father's face; for he saw that the subtile and powerful sphere of this Grecian nature-worship had awakened the activities of my own sensuous life.

"Yes, my son; these are phantasms. These are wicked Grecian spirits who are personating their G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, their heroes and heroines. You see before you what wonders spirits can achieve by magic and fantasy. This is the sphere which flows into and governs the present population of Greece. These spirits would, if they could, obsess and control the human race. The interior state of these souls is terrible."

"O, do not show it to me yet," I exclaimed. "Let me contemplate a little longer this marvelous scene."