The Other Life/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
THE WORLD OF SPIRITS.
THE world of spirits is an intermediate state of existence with its corresponding objective phenomena, into which all men are ushered immediately after death, by the process of the resurrection, which is only the withdrawal of the spiritual body from the natural. The state is intermediate between heaven and hell. Men are called spirits while living in that world; angels, if they pass into heaven; devils, if they direct their steps to hell. Heaven, hell and the world of spirits constitute together the spiritual world.
This is the sheol of the Old Testament, the hades of the New; erroneously translated in our English Bibles, hell and the grave; and known by tradition as "the place of departed spirits." '
It is strange that Protestant Christianity has lost the knowledge of this intermediate state, and that its acute thinkers and biblical students have not re-discovered and proclaimed it.
The idea of an intermediate state in which souls are kept for judgment, previous to entering heaven or hell, is to be found in the most ancient mythologies and philosophies.
It was a current doctrine with the Jews. Josephus expressly defines the word sheol, which our translators render hell, as "that place wherein the souls of the righteous and of the unrighteous are detained."
It was universally accepted as an article of rational faith in the Christian church until the time of the Protestant reformation.
Dr. Jung Stilling, in his "Theory of Pneumatology," affirms:
"The universal Christian world from the very commencement, believed in an invisible world of spirits, which was divided into three different regions: heaven, or the place of the blessed; hell, or the place of torment; and then a third place, which the Bible calls hades, or the receptacle for the dead, in which those souls which are not ripe for either destination, are fully prepared for that to which they have adapted themselves in this life."
The only theory which can account for the manner in which the scriptural doctrine of an intermediate state has been ignored by Protestant theology, is, that it was done to counteract as much as possible the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. The perversions of truth on this subject, calculated to extend the spiritual dominion of the Catholic clergy and to augment the revenues of the church, were so revolting to reason and so dangerous to society, that the reactionary spirit carried the Reformers to the extreme of dropping from their creed an article of faith, which was necessary to a proper understanding of what the Scriptures teach about the spiritual world.
If there is no intermediate state or life, the soul must go consciously into heaven or hell after death, which is a practical judgment upon it, rendering useless the formal judgment which is expected at the last day. Or it must remain for ages in a state of unconsciousness or insensibility, which is an idea utterly unscriptural.
"This day," said our Lord to the penitent thief, "thou shalt be with me in paradise."
Leaving the theologians to adjust these difficulties as they please, or to learn the genuine truth from the excellent works of Hayden and Rendell on the last judgment, I shall endeavor to prove the existence and uses of the world of spirits from a different and more interior standpoint.
Heaven and hell are extremes; they are antipodal, antagonistic states of the spirit. All in heaven are good, all in hell are evil. They have attained their final states by the separation of the good from the evil, of the true from the false, so that there is an impassable gulf fixed between them. The introduction of anything good into hell, or of anything evil into heaven would produce confusion of mind, disorder, and pain in either sphere.
Millions of human beings die every week and pass into the spiritual world. They are generally in states of mixed good and evil. There are few men so regenerate that the searching light of heaven will not discover some dark corners in their minds and some evil spot in their hearts; few so reprobate, but they have some invisible chord in the spirit which can be attuned to heavenly music. The vast majority of men are mixtures of good and evil blended in apparently inextricable confusion.
Now man wakes from his death-sleep into the spiritual world the same as he was when he lay down to die. The mere act of death produces no change in the affections, thoughts, opinions, aspirations, appetites or habits. No religious exercises, no prayers or faith can instantaneously change evil into good. There is no sudden transformation of a sinner into a Christian or of a Christian into an angel. Such an idea is a theological fiction without basis in reason or Scripture; and he who trusts to it will be fearfully deceived.
When a man rises from the dead—that is, when his spiritual body is extricated from his physical form, the laws of the spiritual world instantaneously operate upon him. He comes into the exercise of spiritual thought. He speaks spontaneously the rich and wonderful language of spirits. The objects around him have no externeity independent of him, but they are the interior things of his own spirit presented in visible forms as a world outside of him.
This newly-risen spirit cannot instantly enter heaven. Why? Because his spiritual states of affection and thought do not accord with those of the angels. He could neither see what they saw nor hear what they heard. If it were possible for him, without the necessary changes of state or the intervention of intermediate spirits, to be placed suddenly and bodily in the midst of a heavenly society, what would result? He would be a discord in their assembly, a blot in their sky, a source of pain and terror. They would tremble at the sphere of his evil thoughts and desires. His life would project itself outwardly around them in terrible or disgusting forms, black clouds in the sky, dark caverns in the earth, lurid fires in the distance, serpents or toads or obscene birds. Heaven would be rent as with an earthquake. Such a thing is therefore organically impossible.
Neither can the new-comer from earth go at once into hell. He bears with him some traces of goodness and truth, some touch of kindness, some remnant of humanity, which would produce similar disorder in the infernal sphere. It would be like the approach of an angel to the hells, when darkness comes over them, and terror seizes them and frightful pains lay hold of them.
The new-comer himself would be more dreadfully tortured by the experiment than either the angels or the devils. The sphere of heaven would be intolerable to the evil elements, and the sphere of hell equally so to the good elements in his nature. Between the two conflicting elements he would be torn asunder with sufferings far more severe than he would experience in the hell suited to his evils when they have been isolated from all his better life.
It is plain that the law of spiritual relation—namely, that the objective world springs up in correspondence with the subjective states of the spirit, demands and effects the total separation of good and evil spheres, so that heaven and hell stand eternally apart. This separation is gradually effected in the world of spirits. It is called in Scripture the judgment.
The world of spirits is therefore created, just as heaven and hell are created. It is to outward appearance a vast world, not fixed in time and space like our material orbs, but plastic and changeable to the outflowing thoughts and affections of its inhabitants. It appears differently to different classes or societies of spirits, and external objects come and go, appear and disappear, are created or annihilated in correspondence with the spiritual panorama which is passing in the interiors of the souls of those who live there.
The form which this world of spirits assumes to men recently deceased is very much like that of the world they have left. The reason is that they are still in possession of their exterior memory, thoughts, affections and life; for man has an external and an internal life which are frequently very different. Newly-arrived spirits think from their memories of time and space, reason from the sensuous appearances which dominated their intellects in this life, and act from external motives as they did here.
The consequence is that they at first build up around themselves, by the law of spiritual creation, things similar to those they had known and loved in the earth-life. They collect together in nationalities, are divided according to their religious opinions, and have civil cliques and social coteries just as we do here. The external world around them is somewhat similar to that they have left behind. The English have some spiritual counterpart of their London, the French of their Paris, the Italians of their Rome. They are concerned about what they shall do and how they shall live. They manifest the spirit of trade, the lust of office, the zeal for science, and have the same loves and appetites and opinions there as they had here. It is difficult for the new-comers into that extraordinary world to believe that they are dead to the world of nature and living in a world of spirits.
All this, however, is transitory. The population is ever shifting. Millions appear every week on this new field of action, where good and evil spirits are contending for the supremacy over man, but as many disappear as come. They do not die. What has become of them? No one sees them go away; no one can follow them; but millions weekly (to speak in a temporal manner) disappear from the sight and thought of those who remain behind. Where are they?
They have gone away into heaven or hell. A great change has come over them. Their exterior spiritual life has been taken away from them or made quiescent. Their interior natures have come out to view. They no longer have two faces. They no longer think one thing and say another. All external bonds and restraints are removed, forgotten, despised. There is no fear of the law, or of public opinion, no influence of fashion, no conventionalisms, no respect for wealth or position, no sacrifices to decorum, no concealment from interested motives. The man or the woman stands out in utter spiritual nakedness, every thought, every feeling exposed to view, everything which had been whispered in the ear in closets proclaimed on the house-tops!
With this change from the exterior to the interior of the spiritual life, a corresponding change occurs in their external surroundings. The shadowy London and Paris of the external man disappear; nationalities are lost for ever; churches are gone; outward organizations are nothing; conventionalisms perish; their own names and history are forgotten as shadows not worth a thought. Their qualities alone survive. From them they love, think, feel, see, live.
When the exterior mind is thus closed in a good spirit, he is led by angels into places of instruction. He is there divested of all his errors of opinion and taught the truths of heaven which he receives with inexpressible delight. Soon he discovers some way or road invisible to others, some way overarched with flowers and fragrant with odors and flagged with precious stones and brilliant with a great light, a way that leads him upward and onward into the heavenly society for which he is now prepared and where he will live for ever.
The interiorly evil spirit, however, does not go to any place of instruction. In his conceit of superior wisdom he refuses it; in his aversion to spiritual truth, he abhors it. The exteriors of the world of spirits disappear also from his vision, and he seeks those whose interior life and loves are similar to his own. He also discovers a road or way invisible to others, but it is a dark cleft between frowning rocks, a downward path, pervaded by horrible stenches and overhung by lurid vapors, and he treads it eagerly with the delight of an obscene bird flying to a dark wood where the carcass of some wild beast is lying. He finds himself at last in some one of the hells which are opposite to the societies of heaven.
What is the cause of these remarkable phenomena?
The judgment: "It is appointed unto all men to die, and after this the judgment."
Yes, these spirits have been judged. The books have been opened, and they have been judged out of them and "according to their works." The sheep have been separated from the goats. Those who had oil in their lamps have gone into the marriage-feast, and against those who had none the door has been shut. Those who had used their talents wisely, have had their spiritual riches indefinitely increased; those who had buried their gift in the earth, have been stripped of all and cast into outer darkness.
There are two judgments: a special or individual judgment for each soul, and a general judgment which takes place at the end of every Church, or at the close of every Dispensation. These processes occur always in the world of spirits; not in heaven, nor in hell, nor upon the earth. The great work and use of the intermediate state is the judgment.
What is the judgment?
Our ideas on this matter, drawn from civil associations, are wholly erroneous. Our mind's eye sees a tribunal, a judge empowered to pass sentence, an array of witnesses, evidence given and substantiated, the scales of justice produced, the balance struck, the sentence pronounced according to law, and finallv executed.
Nothing of this happens in the judgments of the spiritual world. Judgment is the preparation of the soul for heaven or for hell, by the separation of the good from the evil and the true from the false in all the constituent elements of the life and character. It is an unfolding of the ruling love, a revelation of the inmost life and abiding qualities of the spirit. From the good, all the evil and false things derived from their earth-life, adherent but not inherent, are taken away, so that they become thoroughly good and fit for heaven. From the evil, all the apparent goodness and truth they possess, adherent also but not inherent, are taken away, and they become thoroughly evil and can live nowhere but in hell.
Hear the Word:
"Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath."
And again:
"I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."
Yes, we must be either one thing or the other, utterly good or utterly evil. Judgment is separation; the separation of good and evil spirits, and the separation of good and evil elements in the individual spirit. No evil passions, no false opinions, no unruly tempers, no frailties, no petty faults, no thorn in the flesh, will cleave to the good man, who has set his face steadfastly toward the great Sun of the spiritual universe. On the other hand, no suavities of manner, no redeeming traits, no generous qualities, no flashes of wit or wisdom, no love of parents or children or country, will remain with the man whose self-love and love of the world have been so great as to give the preponderance of evil to his nature.
How is this judgment effected?
By the light of heaven, which is divine truth, and through the mediation of angels. This divine truth is the Son of man who comes in all his glory, having the holy angels with him.
The world of spirits is very populous; far more so than our earth, over which it hangs like a vast spiritual cloud hiding the light of heaven, not only from our natural but also from our spiritual eyes. Not only are the dead of a whole generation there, but angels from heaven and evil spirits from hell in great numbers. Our own attendant spirits, good and evil, are there; our guardian spirits who befriend and guide us, and our evil spirits who assault and tempt and accuse us night and day. This vast multitude which no man can number, is under the government of angels, who are engaged in organizing and reorganizing the various elements into different societies, so as to detect the organic spiritual affinities of each individual and to give full play to the ruling love which finally determines his abode.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
He did not create hell nor the world of spirits. They sprang into being as necessities, caused by the voluntary perversion of divine order by man. If the earth was perfect and all men lived and thought like angels, the heavens could rest upon the earth, like the upper stories of a house upon its foundations, and at death no intermediate state would be necessary, but men could pass instantaneously to their proper places in heaven.
The world of spirits performs a great use by intervening between our world and heaven and hell. If the heavens flowed immediately into our evil and corrupted natures, we should be tortured as the devils are at the approach of angelic spheres. If the hells flowed directly into us, the last remains of our spiritual life would be suffocated and we should be turned into beasts. That fearful danger really impended when God manifested himself in the flesh, to contend, by his divine sphere or Holy Spirit, against all the hells, and thus to rescue mankind from spiritual death.
The world of spirits acts as a great breakwater, saving us from a spiritual deluge, as a vast cloud protecting us alike from the light of heaven which would blind and from the fire of hell which would destroy us. By the arrangement of forces in that world, the adjustment of equilibriums, the Lord maintains the free-agency of man, and secures that freedom of will and thought which is requisite for regeneration.
Societies in the world of spirits are arranged according to the good or evil passions of the soul. Each one is a centre of attraction to all the similar elements which exist in the interior life of those who approach. The spheres emanating from them are very powerful. A soul undergoing judgment is conducted from one to another, and if there is any similar good or evil in him, he is filled with delight and wishes to stay with his newly-found friends. It may be a transitory connection, such as the chemists would call a feeble combination, and the spirit will pass on to other societies for which he feels a stronger affinity.
In this manner the good and evil in the soul are brought to the surface. Good men who have evils still clinging to them, associate with these evil spheres until their own evils are fully exposed to view, and until by the reaction of the good elements and by repentance, mortification, prayers and even sufferings, they are delivered from them and extricated by the superior attraction of the angelic societies. Evil men are brought in a similar manner into contact with good spheres; and at first they may appear like angels of light, but their goodness and truth being merely superficial, fade away, or are put off, and they escape as from a prison and betake themselves eagerly to those societies which are in fullest sympathy with their own evil lusts.
Searching are the methods, inexorable the processes and fearful the revelations of the world of spirits. Double-dealing is detected: the hypocrite unmasked; the false prophet exposed; and the soul without a wedding-garment is cast out from the feast. On the other hand, the good are delivered from temptation and trial, restored to spiritual sight and hearing, released, strengthened, comforted, purified; and the souls under the altar groaning for deliverance, are lifted into heaven.
And all this is done without infringing upon the free-agency of any spirit, without any compulsion, without any violence. The good go into heaven and the evil into hell of their own accord; the former like birds released from the hand, that soar away into the blue sky, or nestle among the green leaves; the latter like serpents that glide stealthily down into the darkest holes of the earth, hiding from the light of God.
These wonderful operations going on in the world of spirits are of immeasurable importance to us. They are not far off like the historical events of some distant planet. They are immediately over and around us; yea they are within us. Every society, every individual in that world is a centre of influx and a focus of attraction to men in this. Our very life flows to us through them, and it is colored and changed and ennobled or perverted according to the media through which it has passed. We are insensibly following our good and evil spirits in their movements, and repeating their experiences every day of our lives. We are nearing the heaven or the hell to which they are going, and putting off the evil or the good as they do. We cannot serve two masters; we must choose between them.
People who think there is to be an end of the world and a general judgment day for all who have ever lived on earth, and who locate the theatre of that judgment in the clouds or within the realm of nature, and, see no absurdity in such a belief, are unwilling to entertain the more rational doctrine, that the judgment is a spiritual process, entirely out of and above nature, which occurs in an intermediate state or world of spirits.
Such persons have derived their ideas from a sensuous interpretation of the symbolical language of prophecy. In that language the end of one Dispensation or Church is always described as the end of the world or the consummation of the age, and the dawn of a new Dispensation as the coming of the Lord to judgment.
A strong array of evidence in support of this view might be drawn from Scripture, but a single passage is sufficient; for that is so clear and positive as to carry conviction to the most doubting mind.
The prophet Joel predicts that the time will come when there will be wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke; that the heavens shall tremble, and the sun be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, and the stars withdraw their shining. These things are very similar to those which the New Testament predicts about the last judgment and the second coming of the Lord. Now the apostle Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost the death and resurrection of Jesus, quotes this very passage from the prophet Joel, and assures his hearers that the prophecy was then and there fulfilled. Peter's mind was illumined to see that the prophetical language described the passing away of an old system and the inauguration of a new.
The world is the Church, the cosmos, the system of order and beauty, which having become corrupted, ends or perishes, while a new earth and a new heaven take its place. Does not Paul say, "Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin?" Did the world of nature come to an end in the time of Paul?
So Swedenborg declares that the Church has come to an end; that the apostolic Church is consummated; the Dispensation ended; that prophecy is fulfilled; that the last judgment has taken place; that the Lord has come again in the clouds of heaven with all his holy angels.
When you understand what he means by these things which appear so improbable, so impossible to the natural man, the light which illumined the mind of Peter will illumine yours, and you will see that the Word of God is not to be interpreted literally but spiritually; and that the end of the world or consummation of the age, the second coming of the Lord, the resurrection, the judgment, the descent of the New Jerusalem, are spiritual events which take place in the world of spirits; and are known in the material world only by the effects they produce upon the minds and hearts of men.
In the chapter on hell and its miseries it was stated, that whenever a society in hell reacted too violently against the antipodal or antagonistic society in heaven, so as to break the equilibrium or orderly arrangement which secures the peace of the angels and the free-agency of men, it is reduced and held within bounds by a special descent or visitation of the divine truth. This is the principle involved in the general judgments now to be described. They are visitations of the angels descending into the world of spirits with the Divine Sphere or Truth acting through them. They come to separate the evil from the good, to select the wheat from the tares, to break up and disperse the congregated powers of evil and falsehood, and to let in a new and blessed light from heaven.
Under the past dispensations and for reasons too abstruse to be detailed in this place, the Lord permitted the spirits who were in mixed states of good and evil, and especially those who had been in possession of the divine truths of the church, but had not lived a life according to them, to remain for many centuries in the world of spirits. They framed governments ecclesiastical and civil for themselves; and so infatuated were they with their own supposed goodness and wisdom, that they called their spiritual surroundings heaven. This was the heaven that fled away or departed like a flaming scroll at the judgment; for it cannot be supposed that the heaven of angels, the home of the blessed, the throne of God can ever be shaken or destroyed.
Vast multitudes of men under all these dispensations were so good that they passed readily into heaven; and vast multitudes were so evil that they threw themselves speedily into hell, under the special judgment or process of separation already described. The residue constituted a mighty power of evil and falsity, resting like a vast incubus upon the minds of men on earth and reacting with disturbing aggressiveness against the bright and loving forces of heaven. When this state reached its climax, when the fullness of time was come, there was a visitation of Divine Truth, and a terrible judgment accomplished by the angels.
These judgments in the world of spirits were no doubt attended by the striking and awful phenomena described by the prophets; for the symbols employed in Scripture are the veritable forms and realities of the spiritual world. The heavens fled away; the sea disappeared; the sun was darkened; their apparently external nature was convulsed; there was fire, and blood and smoke; cities were overwhelmed; the earth yawned; and the rocks and mountains fell upon the condemned spirits who fled in terror from an exhibition of what they considered "the wrath of God."
These sublime and terrible scenes, which the literalist is vainly expecting to occur in our natural world,, have already taken place four times in the world of spirits, the only possible theatre of judgment.
The first church instituted by God extended from Adam to Noah. Of its peculiarities, its successive changes, and its fate, Swedenborg is the only historian. They are narrated in the spiritual sense of the first ten chapters of Genesis. The perversions of truth and the moral corruptions toward the close of that antediluvian dispensation, must have been terrible indeed; for the judgment executed upon it in the world of spirits is described symbolically as a great flood which destroyed the whole world.
The second church extended from Noah to Abraham. Its judgment is described representatively by the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah. The real cause of that catastrophe and of many others, no doubt, that occurred in the world about that time, was the judgment executed in the world of spirits on the expiring church, and the iuauguration of an entirely new dispensation of which Abraham was the leader.
The third or Jewish church extended from Abraham to Christ, when, like the others, it was consummated and judged and its abused talents taken from it and given to another.
That Christ executed a great judgment in the world of spirits at his first advent, is a fact of stupendous value—a fact, strange to say, not fully known or understood in the Christian church. All the prophecies of the Old Testament culminated in Christ. They were all fulfilled in Him. The most of them allude to the judgments, executed by him.
The judgment described by the prophets was executed by Him in the world of spirits, on the residue of the Jewish church, who still lingered in the intermediate state—the good being detained there by the wicked, and the wicked assaulting both heaven and earth from that favorable standpoint. It was there that David was detained until Christ came; for the Apostle Peter declares that in his own day, David, a thousand years deceased, had not yet ascended into heaven. It was there that Christ preached to the souls in prison, and released them from their bondage to infesting evils and falsities, and took them with Him into heaven.
John the Baptist, preaching Christ to the people, declares to them this great judgment, which no one will pretend to say Christ executed in the natural world:
"Whose fan is in his hand, and He will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
Christ himself declares that He was fulfilling this great mission of the Divine Truth:
"Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out."
"The prince of this world is judged."
"I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."
This clearing of the world of spirits by a grand process of judgment or separation, was absolutely necessary to the successful preaching and conquests of the new gospel. It was an essential part of the mission of Jesus in his incarnation. It was the primal cause why the old order of thought and life perished; why the oracles became dumb; why paganism disappeared; why the Roman empire declined; why the ancient languages and literature became extinct. It was indeed the pivotal and turning-point in human history; and the philosophy of history can never be truly understood until the changes in the world of spirits are recognized as the great motor powers in human life.
The Christian world lives under the delusion that the Church founded by the apostles is to be perpetual. Its gradual corruption, its end and its judgment were all predicted by Christ himself; and its interior or spiritual history, its perversion of truth, its schisms, its great Catholic and Protestant heresies, its destruction and its judgment, are all described with the utmost minuteness in the spiritual sense of the Apocalypse. This astounding event occurred in the world of spirits, the sheol of the Old Testament, the hades of the New, in the year 1757; and one human being, whose spiritual sight and hearing were at the time opened into the spiritual world, was a witness of all the accompanying phenomena.
That witness was Emanuel Swedenborg.
The judgment executed by the Lord in the world of spirits at his first advent, delivered the human mind from the accumulated shadows of many centuries, and let in the light of heaven in such a manner that the old religions, the old philosophies, the old arts and sciences, the old governments, the old principles of life and thought were greatly modified or ceased to exist; and the Divine Word, no longer limited to one nation, became the heritage of all, and the central Sun of our modern civilization.
The last judgment executed in the world of spirits in the year 1757, was another grand dissolution of the accumulated shadows of many centuries; and it is the true and efficient cause of the stupendous changes which have occurred during the last hundred years, and the secret spring of the still more extraordinary events which are impending. The Divine Word is now spiritually opened, which is equivalent to the second coming of the Lord; and its spiritual light will be the centre of a purer and more brilliant civilization than has ever yet dawned upon the race.
The last century has exceeded all the others since the time of Christ, in the development of arts and sciences, in the spread of liberty and liberal principles, in the diffusion of knowledge, in the elevation of the masses, in the amelioration of evils, in the organization of charities; in material prosperity, literary power and artistic splendor; in the activities of free thought; in culture and refinement; in the renunciation of error and the discovery of truth.
What is the cause of these things? Some spontaneous and accidental outburst of mental activity in the race? Effects are never spontaneous or accidental, but always the legitimate products of efficient causes. Were they the fruit of the seed which was planted by the philosophy and theology of the Middle Ages? No. They sprang into being when the hereditary incubus of the Middle Ages was lifted from the human mind. How was it lifted? By the judgment in the world of spirits, which sent all the old kings and priests and nobles and knights and philosophers and leaders of thought in every department, to heaven or to hell according to their interior natures. When their spheres were removed from the world of spirits, they were removed also from the minds of men; and these latter acquired greater freedom and activity of thought from the new light descending out of heaven.
This is why so many rapid changes are taking place; why the world progresses so fast; why the old landmarks are forsaken; why the old appeals to the traditions of the fathers and to the authority of great names are ineffectual; why revolutions in government, science and religion are so frequent and general that few thinking men have arrived at middle age without having changed their opinions and shifted their positions. The conservatives of the present day would have been extreme radicals in the past; and the radicals of the present will occupy conservative ground when an extreme radicalism shall be pressing in advance of future generations.
Not only the men from our earth who lingered in the world of spirits until 1757 are judged, but the principles which actuated them, the motives, the life, the thoughts, all the spiritual causes which created and perpetuated the civilization of the past. Whatever was false and baneful in them was cast out, so that they might no longer crush or impede or pervert the human soul. The divine right of kings; the sentiment of caste; the feudal spirit; the pleas for slavery; the infallibility of men or institutions; the superstitions of all; the metaphysical absurdities; the theological dogmas which held the mind in bondage; the evil training and the false education; the false prophets and false Christs; those perversions of the meaning of God's Word which darken the understanding and betray the soul; all these and a thousand other ruling loves and ideas of the past have been judged and cast out for ever from the world of spirits. Evil spirits and misguided and frequently good men will struggle hard to retain something of the old life and its forms,—and to perpetuate them on the earth. They fight against the inevitable.
The transition from the old to the new will be fearful, painful and difficult. With larger liberty comes larger license; with freedom for good, freedom also for evil. Chaos will impend. It will be only the chaos, however, which precedes a new creation—a new heaven and a new earth. A new light is streaming from the uncreated Word; and the Divine Man, one in person and spirit, shall reign with perpetual blessings in the new Paradise of our race.