_THE WORLD OF SPIRITS._
[Illustration: 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 hell 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 pass 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
circumstances; where by the assistance 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 God 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 God.”
God 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
hell all meet on this grand arena of spiritual combat and instruction. In
the time of Christ many generations and centuries of human life were
accumulated 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, God had descended in the human form and
executed a great judgment in that world, casting the evil into hell 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 passions 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 hell 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 hell.
“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 God
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 hell, 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
institution 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 hell 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 hell; and there is a general insurrection of the evil spheres
against heaven itself. Unless these hells 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 God 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 God 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 assaults 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. God 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 assume 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 God?” 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 God!
[Illustration: Ornament]
[Illustration: Ornament]