were given to the study of the real book of God, how much more learned would be those who thus employ their Sundays! It is held that the lowest and most ignorant person who is educated to believe implicitly the tenets of a sect, when he would by the same process as easily be made to believe any other tenets, is in heaven to be as high as the most enlightened as well as virtuous man, who has the only merit which can be attached to belief in a high degree-that of ardent desire for truth, and taking the pains to form an opinion for himself. Nay, the ignorant bigot is to be higher in heaven, if the freethinker alluded to, should not agree with the ghostly adviser, of the devoted sectarian with whom he is compared.

749. The idea of living in the finest garden which imagination can conceive, without the enjoyments and progression which my father's communication attributes to the spheres, would beget tedium rather than the ineffable happiness which my spirit friends profess to enjoy. But while one of the Jewish ideas of heaven in its best form, is thus deficient, the description given by the learned Josephus of hell is horrible in the extreme, that of heaven being disgusting. I give it as I find it quoted by the Rev. Mr. Harbaugh :

750. "Now as to Hades, wherein the souls of the righteous and unrighteous are detained, it is necessary to speak of it. Hades is a place in the world not regularly finished, a subterraneous region, wherein the light of this world does not shine; from which circumstance in this region there must be perpetual darkness. This region is allotted as a place of custody for souls, in which angels are appointed as guardians to them, who distribute to them temporary punishment, agreeably to every one's behaviour and manners.

751. "In this region there is a certain place set apart as a lake of unquenchable fire, whereinto, we suppose, no one hath hitherto been cast, but it is prepared for a day aforedetermined by God, in which one righteous sentence shall deservedly be passed upon all men; when the unjust, and those that have been disobedient to God, and have given honour to such idols as have been the vain operations of the hands of men as to God himself, shall be adjudged to this everlasting punishment, as having been the causes of defilement; while the just shall obtain an incorruptible and never-fading kingdom. These are now indeed confined in Hades, but not in the same place wherein the just are confined. For there is one descent in this region, at whose gate, we believe, there stands an archangel, with a host; which gate, when those pass through that are conducted down by the angels appointed over souls, they do not go the same way, but the just are guided to the right hand, and are led with hymns, sung by the angels appointed over that place, unto a region of light, in which the just have dwelt from the beginning of the world, not constrained by necessity, but ever enjoying the prospect of the good things they see, and rejoicing in

the expectation of those new enjoyments which will be peculiar to every one of them, and esteeming those things beyond what we have here; with whom there is no place of toil, no burning heat, no piercing cold, nor any briers there; but the countenances of the fathers and the just, which they see always, smile upon them while they wait for the rest, and eternal new life in heaven, which is to succeed this region. This place we call the bosom of Abraham. But as to the unjust, they are dragged by force to the left hand, by the angels allotted for punishment, no longer going with a good will, but as prisoners driven by violence; to whom are sent the angels appointed over them to reproach them, and threaten them with their terrible looks, and to thrust them still downward. Now these angels that are set over these souls drag them into the neighbourhood of hell itself; who, when they are hard by it, continually hear the noise of it, and do not stand clear of the hot vapour itself; but when they have a near view of this spectacle, as of a terrible and exceeding great prospect of fire, they are struck with a fearful expectation of a future judgment, and in effect punished thereby; not only so, but when they see the place (or choir) of the fathers and of the just, even thereby are they punished, for a chaos deep and large is fixed between them, insomuch that a just man that hath compassion upon them cannot be admitted, nor can any one that is unjust, if he were bold enough to attempt it, pass over it."

752. So much for Josephus. Mr. Harbaugh subjoins as follows: "This extract is exceedingly interesting. It shows to what extent of distinctness the Jewish ideas of the future state had attained. The dreamlike underworld is here considerably illuminated. The righteous and the wicked are separated, and already share the first fruits of their eternal reward. The righteous are surrounded with intimations and shadowy promises of better things to come, in the expectation of which they are already happy; the wicked are surrounded with tokens and forebodings of more fearful ill, much of which they already suffer in awful expectation.

753. "Through this picture," says our good parson, 66 we see in faint but terrible glimmerings, in the distance, the region of eternal fire, which awaits the wicked when the judgment-day shall remove them from Hades; on the other hand, we see also the dawning of an eternal day for the just, the rest and eternal new life which is to succeed this region. This kingdom of the dead, beyond which the thoughts of men in the early ages did not wander, is considered only as a place of detention for judgment, while the idea of a final state, both for the righteous and the wicked, is believed to exist beyond it."

754. How can any person sincerely pretend that those who rely on a happy idea of our immortal life are indebted for it to the source from which this Hebrew Pharisee derived the impressions given in the preceding quotation? Yet the Pharisees were the only conspicuous Hebrew sect who believed in heaven. The Sadducees did not believe in immortality.

755. The history of Lazarus and the rich man, (says Harbaugh, page 168,) "plainly teaches that both the righteous and the wicked on death pass into a fixed and eternal abode, where no change is possible;" and he further states (pp. 169-70) that "the misery of the wicked commences immediately after death, and before the resurrection, and their condition is unchangeably fixed." According to St. Luke, (chapter xvi.) in the page alluded to above by Harbaugh, we are informed that the wicked, while in the torture of hell-fire, are within the view of the righteous, (verse 23.) The righteous are near enough to converse with those in torment, and yet there is an impassable barrier between them. The rich man is not tortured for his sins, but simply because he had "enjoyed good things." Yet Abraham, who turned his son and son's mother out in the wilderness to starve, and twice exposed his wife to prostitution, is represented as enjoying the reward due to the righteous.

756. How little sincere, heartfelt belief there can be in the words of Christ, may be estimated from the fact that scarcely any Christian but seeks for the good things of this life, instead of qualifying themselves for heaven by undergoing the rewarded privations of a Lazarus.

757. It is utterly unintelligible to my mind why repentance and reformation should not avail after, as well as before death, as it is represented to be in the spirit world.

758. There is a coincidence between these representations of Josephus and those of the gospel, so far as that both represent the righteous as witnessing the torments of the wicked. Would not such a situation make heaven a hell to good-hearted angels?

759. According to Matthew, (chapter xxv. 24,) the blessed, after the day of judgment, are to inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world. Of the joys that kingdom would afford there is no description. But, as usual, hell is made sufficiently horrible, (chapter xxv. 41,) Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

760. In this respect, if in no other, there is an immense superiority in the conceptions of futurity given by my immortal advisers, in comparison with those attributed as above to Christ.

761. It has been urged that human conduct is so much dependent on organization, education, temptation, and example, neither of which are within the option of any soul, that the orthodox doctrine respecting sin is manifestly wrong. But admitting the culpability which that doctrine imputes, it has been shown that the gradations of sinfulness between the extremes of vice and virtue are innumerable. Suppose for each gradation a strand in a ladder, like that of which Jacob dreamed, and human souls supported severally at elevations commensurate with their respective pretensions. This adjustment being made, suppose a plane at any level to divide the vertical row into two portions, all below the plane being con

sidered as goats, all above the plane as sheep. Evidently, between the soul just above, and that just below the plane, there would be only a shade of difference; yet the one would have to go to hell, the other to heaven, eternally.

762. According to Spiritualism, on entering the spirit world each soul finds its just level by a sort of moral specific gravity, in which merit is inversely as weight. Every soul, moreover, has the privilege of reforming, and rising proportionally to the improvement thus obtained.

763. One of the most agreeable conceptions attending our future existence in the spheres, is that of being restored to the appearance of youth; the decrepitude and wrinkles of age, of disease, mutilation, deformity, ugliness, are all avoided in the spiritual body. The insane are restored to reason, the idiot gradually improved in mind.

DISCORDANCE AS TO THE WHEREABOUT OF THE SCRIPTURAL HEAVEN. -INSTINCTIVE IMPRESSION AS TO HEAVEN BEING OVERHEAD.

764. THERE is no small degree of contradiction in Scripture respecting the locality of heaven. In addressing the thief, paradise is identified with heaven by Christ. "St. Paul is alleged to have been taken up into paradise," says Harbaugh; yet, according to the map accompanying the work of Josephus, Paradise is represented as being upon the river Tigris, near the Persian Gulf. The idea given of the abode of Adam and Eve, in Genesis, conveys the impression that it was a terrestrial locality.

765. In the Decalogue the abbreviation of life is threatened as the punishment for not honouring parents, and God is alleged to have held out the promised land to Moses, instead of comforting him by a clairvoyant view of a place of blissful enjoyment in some celestial region.

The com

766. Elijah was carried up to heaven in the sight of Elisha. mandment makes heaven above, the earth beneath. Christ was seen ascending by his disciples, and according to the apostles' creed, after descending into hell, he arose on the third day and ascended into heaven. Yet Josephus consigns both heaven and hell to a subterranean region, like the Elysian Fields and Erebus of the heathen, but places them on each side of a lake of eyerlasting fire. This representation is sanctioned in the allusion by Christ to Dives, Lazarus, and Abraham; the former, broiling to eternity, requests that Lazarus should get a little water to cool the tip of his tongue. This Abraham declares to be impossible. Hence it appears the parties were so near as to converse with each other, and for those who were blest to witness the sufferings of the damned. Thus, according to Christ as well as Josephus, heaven and hell are in immediate proximity, and both must be in the infernal regions.

767. The actual effects of the old Bible were to produce either unbe lievers in immortality, like the Sadducees, or immoral believers, like the Pharisees, whom Christ especially denounces as vipers, and internally corrupt, like whited sepulchres holding dead men's bones.

768. Christ never singles out the Sadducees for denunciation, but speaks of the Pharisees particularly as hypocritical and corrupt. But in what did their hypocrisy consist, if it was not in that insincerity of their professions as respects belief in futurity which was shown by their worldliness.

769. Thus the evidence of the existence of a future state was such as to produce avowed unbelievers, or professed believers whose morality was so deficient as to create an expression that they were corrupt hypocrites, as odious as vipers.

770. It is not the feebleness of the impressions respecting the existence of another world, where happiness is proportional to good conduct, that renders the existing system so inoperative in preventing those vices which it especially interdicts; as, for instance, combativeness, cupidity, and revengefulness; so that the course usually pursued by professed Christians, does not merely amount to a neglect of Christ's precepts, but renders an adherence to them disreputable? Nothing is more degrading throughout Christendom than poverty or tame submission to blows. The last excuse Christians in general will make for any omission or deficiency is their poverty.

771. If they really believed that they would broil to eternity, like the rich man, merely for seeking the good things of this life, would the attainment of those good things be made the great object of their existence?

772. Notwithstanding the representations of Josephus, sanctioned, as above shown, by Christ, of the subterranean localization of Elysium, there seems, nevertheless, an instinctive propensity to assume that heaven is overhead. Clergymen all look upward when they address God, and the Thespian artists universally follow their example. Whenever heaven is referred to, it is customary, I believe, for all devout persons to turn their eyes in the same direction.

773. But if heaven be above, what does this term above mean? It practically designates a vertical direction relatively to this globe at any point over which a speaker who uses the word may stand. Consequently, it indicates a space overhead, having everywhere the same relative position to the terrestrial surface; in other words, a region concentric with that surface, like that within which the clouds float. This floating takes place rarely at a less distance than two, or more than six, miles.

774. The spiritual spheres are estimated, as already mentioned, as being between sixty and one hundred and twenty miles from the earth's surface. They are, therefore, analogous in position to the region of the clouds, though at a much greater distance and vastly more capacious.