_JUDGMENT OF THE JEWS._
[Illustration: Initial]
When I awoke, the sun was shining through a golden mist: the dew glittered
like a rainbow fallen upon the grass and flowers: the air was full of
sweet odors and the voices of birds: a strange warmth and vigor pervaded
my body, and a delightful activity reigned in my soul.
“Come,” said my father, “the first awakening thought should be always a
prayer.”
He then repeated those beautiful words by which Jesus taught his disciples
to pray. I will not describe the spiritual phenomena which attended this
prayer. The multitude of ideas and influxes and perceptions which were
crowded into every sentence, would be incomprehensible to men. It seemed
to be an epitome of the universe, and to bring the soul into loving
contact with all the spheres of the divine creation.
“Has Jesus taught that prayer in the world of spirits also?” I inquired.
“Yes. This prayer is the universal prayer which binds the heavens and all
the angels together. It is the holiest thing of religion. It descends from
God to angels and men; and blessed is he who receives it into his heart!
“We are now ready,” continued my father, “by the divine permission and
under the divine protection, to explore some of the evil spheres which
have congregated in the world of spirits, and which infuse their deadly
poisons into men in the world. You will then understand a part of the
great work which Christ is performing in this intermediate state.”
Thereupon he examined my face, head and hands with the utmost minuteness.
A man’s whole life is written upon these; and angels, having a perfect
knowledge of correspondences, the key of symbolism, can read from them
your whole history as from a book.
“I perceived,” said he, “that in your earth-life you have been brought
into contact with the corrupt sphere of the Jewish Church, with the
sensuousness of Grecian art and philosophy, with the splendors of Roman
ambition, and with the ancient and subtle power of Egyptian magic. You
have seen these things on the natural or earthly side. I will show them to
you on the spiritual and interior side, so that you may comprehend the
dreadful condition of the human race, and see the necessity of the Divine
incarnation.”
The geography, if we may use the expression, of the world of spirits is
ever changing. The Church of the Lord, meaning those who come from the
world and possess a divine revelation, always occupies the centre; other
nations with different religions are arranged in successive zones around
it; the farthest off in the circumference being those pagans who have
received the least portion of the divine light and life.
“Behold the mutations of the world,” said my father. “Those remotest
people, away off in the darkness and cold of the circumference, were once
the chosen people of God, his church, occupying the centre, immediately
under the down-falling rays of the Divine Sun. They proved faithless to
their trust. They became so evil that a terrible spiritual catastrophe
overwhelmed them, described as a flood,—for they were engulfed in a flood
of falsities. They were the antediluvians, of celestial genius, the most
richly endowed, the most beautiful of all; and now their descendants, the
most hideous and debased, are the black and bronzed barbarians and savages
of the world.”
“We are accustomed to think,” said I, “that those lower types of mankind
are the last created, and therefore the least perfect.”
“No! they are the descendants of the first created and most perfect. They
are not imperfect but degraded types. Imperfect types would progress
upward and onward by natural law. These barbarians of Africa will never
make the least advance until new causes which do not now exist, are put in
operation. This great mystery of the Divine Providence will not be solved
for many, many ages to come.
“After the destruction of that antediluvian church, another succeeded,
possessing a written Word, a splendid ceremonial and boundless treasures
of spiritual wisdom. They also forfeited their birth-right and betrayed
their trust. Their judgment occurred in this world of spirits when Sodom
and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire. Abraham and his family were the
remnant saved from that church for the beginning of a new, as Noah and his
family had been the remnant saved from the preceding.
“The descendants of this lost church compose chiefly the nationalities of
Asia. They have remained for ages and will remain for ages to come in a
stationary, semi-petrified condition, possessing no genuine truth, no
vital religion, no element of progress; but living upon fables and myths
which are the fragments of spiritual truth, whose interior light has long
been lost to their understandings.
“For many centuries now of natural time, the Jewish Church has held the
centre of the world of spirits. It also has become thoroughly corrupt, and
is about to be removed to the circumference. Its great judgment is
impending; its destruction approaches; but of this, that church itself is
profoundly ignorant.”
During this conversation we had ascended by insensible degrees to the
summit of a high mountain. I was astonished at the splendid panorama
spread out beneath us. It was the whole land of Canaan, from the Jordan on
the east to the borders of Philistia on the west; from Damascus and
Antioch gleaming away to the north, down to the great desert that frowned
along the southern boundary.
Immediately beneath us was a city of Jerusalem, ten times as large as our
earthly capital; and a holy temple of corresponding proportions, all
transcending in glory and grandeur anything ever seen on earth.
“Behold,” said my father, “the creation of spiritual fantasy, the
imaginary heaven of the Jews, which will pass away like a scroll at the
breath of the Lord when He comes in judgment upon them.
“You seem astonished,” he continued, “that spirits should reproduce around
themselves these spiritual semblances of the cities and countries they
have left behind. Nothing is more simple and rational. These people are
gross and sensual in their nature, with little or nothing of the celestial
or spiritual about them. They loved material things exclusively; their
thoughts never rose above outward, civil, and political affairs. Here
their interior life is reproduced in exteriors. Therefore they create
around themselves their old homes, cities, and countries; and re-enact, as
far as possible, their earthly life, because all their affections and
thoughts are earthly.”
“This mountain,” said I, “upon which we are standing puzzles me; for there
is no similar elevation in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.”
“This mountain,” answered my father, “is symbolical of the lofty state of
spiritual pride and presumption in which the Jewish Church now is—a state
of self-glorification which precedes its judgment and final destruction.
It is only from this height, corresponding to their own spiritual state,
that you can see the holy city and temple as they appear to them.
“Is it strange that a people, so gross, so unspiritual, so near their
extinction as a church, should be so inflated with spiritual and
theological conceit? They appear in their own eyes to have the most
glorious city, the most holy church, and the most august ceremonials that
ever existed; accounting all others unfit for heaven and unworthy of the
Divine favor.
“It was on the pinnacle of that colossal temple which you now see, that
the evil spirit placed Jesus, and attempted to infuse into his heart the
arrogant self-glorification of the corrupt priesthood, which imagines
itself the special care of all the angels of heaven.”
“We had always supposed that that temptation occurred on the temple in
Jerusalem.”
“Oh, no!” said my father, “the temptations of the Lord always occur in the
world of spirits. Evil spirits do not move around upon the temples and
mountain-tops of the natural world. The Lord’s spiritual senses were
opened into this world, which is the scene of his trials, his temptations,
his combats with hell; and will be the scene of his final glorification
and ascension.”
“These ideas are all new to me,” I said, “but very rational.”
“You will now see,” my father continued, “how this imaginary heaven of the
Jews, with its proud and worldly magnates, appears in the genuine light of
heaven. An invisible angel accompanies us, who is commissioned to let in
the heavenly light upon these scenes, to show you the internal and real
character of this church.”
Thereupon a ray of white light seemed to shoot down from the zenith. A
black cloud immediately arose from the Salt Sea, and spread itself like a
canopy over the whole land. Fearful thunderings and red lightnings issued
from the bosom of this terrible cloud. The whole country around became a
desolation—a dreary waste full of stone-heaps and pitfalls. The holy city
sank into the earth; and in its place there rose a great lake, black as a
mountain tarn unruffled by the wind. Floating in the midst of it was the
gorgeous temple converted into a huge wooden house or Noah’s ark, from the
innumerable windows of which looked out the hideous faces of wild beasts
and the heads of enormous serpents.