in the days of Noah. * For this cause also was the gospel preached to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit."-(1 Peter iii: 18, and iv: 6.) Beautiful this mission of Jesus preaching to the "dead"-—preaching the gospel to darkened "spirits in prison." The fact of such preaching implies that those listening, could, and would, be benefited and permanently reformed by practically actualizing the divine teachings. Jesus' sermon on the mount was not his last. Reformers continue their redemptive efforts in the world of spirits. This is natural. Teaching and being taught is to be the work of eternity. That "cloud of witnesses," summering in the magnetic strata that envelope the earth in concentric circles, thus testify. Marked individualities, nationalities and conditions pertain to all lower realms of progressive life. "In my Father's house," said Jesus, "are many mansions." There are palatial homes for the angelic, and prison-houses for "prisoners of hope." These prison-spheres are the temporary residences of ignorant and angular spirits. Their psychological control is not to be courted. It produces disorder. The Apostles had power to cast out, or dispossess such. By their "fruits ye shall know them." Their emanations, rising like vapory flames, correspond to their moral states. To angel eyes these aural clouds appear dull, hazy, dark. Light from the celestial heavens streams in divine radiance all through these aromal stratifications. The divine Presence-the heavenly arabulais everywhere manifest. Love encircles all. God and heaven triumph. Preceded, therefore, by repentance and reconciliation, holiness and happiness will be the certain destiny of a universe of conscious and reasoning intelligences. All will find this heaven-this paradise of bliss-when they are spiritually imparadised in God. "Justice is a theorem; punishment is as exact as Euclid; crime has its angles of incidence, and its angles of reflection; and we men tremble when we perceive in the obscurity of human destiny the lines and figures of that enormous geometry which the dunce calls chance, and the thinking man Providence." "Richer for the storms and trials, Finer for the searching fire; Let each flame that scathes thy spirit Egyptian Judges, occupying official seats of honor, wore, as insignia, breast-plates of judgment. Jewish high-priests, copying after Egypt, put on the breast-plates, ephod, robe and girdle, adding to the breast-plate of judgment the Urim and Thummim. Christianity, modified by Buddhism and Hellenism, is grafted upon Judaism; hence the phrases judgment-seat and judgment. The literal import of the Greek term-Krisis-judgment, implies rule, government. As a scriptural doctrine, rightly interpreted, it has no reference to a "future general judg ment" in the spirit world. These are among the biblical expressions: "Sampson judged Israel twenty years."-1 Sam. viii. "According to their ways and doings I judged them "-past time.Ez. xxxvi.: 19. "Verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth."-Jer. 9. "I am the Lord which exerciseth loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth."-Ps. 96: 10-13. "The Father judgeth no man; but hath committed all judgment to the Son."-John v.: 22. "For judgment I am come into this world."-John ix.: 39. "As I hear (clairaudiantly)-I judge; and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will—(medium-like)-but the will of the Father."-John v.: 30. Judgment and justice are requisites in all moral governments. Especially is this true during the growth of souls through experiences into high spiritual states of being. Divine penalties, as effects, are neither postponed, nor evaded by atonements. When the immoral and oppressive Felix swayed a sceptre of power over a Judean province, the inspired Paul "reasoned with him of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come," till he trembled. It was not, however, suffering to be endured in an eternity to which he was hastening that caused the trembling, but rather of a judgment to come-to come to him, to all, as the natural consequences of plunging into false relations with divine laws. Man, a moral actor, is a subject of law, a responsible being, reaping anguish from vice, and enjoyment from virtue. Originally the dogma of a future general judgment was an Egyptian myth. It has traveled down to us through a Judaized Christianity. Where volcanic fires concentrate, there they burst; where storms gather, there they spend their fury; where and what men sow, there and that they reap. Jesus said expressly, "Now is the judgment of this world." Whoever did a base deed, whoever defrauded his brother, and slept sweetly through the shades of night? Every man has a judgment-seat in his own soul. The recording angel is there also. Conscience is judge; reason is judge; truth is judge. Before this august tribunal mortals stand each day, each hour, approved or condemned. Memory is the undying worm. Thoughts, affections, plans, accompany souls into the future world. Each there gravitates to his own plane. This life determines the commencement of the next stage of existence. The divine law by which individuals are judged is not penned in Vedas or Upanishads, in Old or New Testaments, but, mapping the universe, is written in ineffaceble lines of light by the breath of the Eternal upon man's mental and moral constitution. The highest, the only supreme authority, is the voice of God in the soul. All are not equally amenable to even human laws. If anything has been demonstrated in mental science, it is that hereditary taint may so penetrate the substance of an individual's being, as to weaken his willforce and put his tendencies into the pathway of perverted relations toward that which tends to the highest good. The incompatibility of social relationships, ante-natal conditions, early education and physical comforts, exercise such an influence over individuals as in many respects to absolutely control their motives. Such are more the subjects of pity and compassion than objects of blame. Instead of penitentiaries, hospitals and houses of correction should be erected, and reform-schools opened for these unfortunates, with wise and loving teachers and pleasant surroundings. Said the gentle Jesus, "I come not to condemn, but save the world.” All being divine in the innermost, the lowest have a dim consciousness of the good, the just, the right. administration, the scales of justice balance. datory penalties shoot up from the same soil. after a time, he has stolen from himself. he has deceived himself-not nature, angels, God. The slanderer discovers that his poisoned javelins all return to pierce his own heart. All learn that what they throw out returns with increase, and that it is impossible to hide away from one's conscious selfhood, or escape the legitimate result of voluntary acts. Feelings, thoughts, deeds are from the inner life, and, changing the relation of things, are, in one sense, eternal in their effect. Each sweet hope cherished is an immortal flower. Every ill-purpose conceived is a poisonous breath that lives to blight. Our thoughts, aims, plans In the infinite Vice and emen The thief sees, The deceiver that are carved upon our spiritual natures. As the woven web here, so the garment over there. What responsibilities! Heaven help us to weave life's web well! Rocks, trees, flowers, men have radiating emanations— atmospheres peculiarly their own. The nature of this electric sphere surrounding mortals corresponds to the soul's unfoldment. Jesus, ever seeing this magnetic effluence through his clairvoyance, "knew what was in man." This electric envelope around the gross and depraved is hazy and murky. Around the merely intellectual it appears clear, cold and positive, with bluish shadings. Around the genial, spiritual and harmonial, it is bright and silvery, mellowing into the golden. This idea is elaborated in the Scriptures with reference to spirit-clothing. Matthew writes, “The angel of the Lord descended from heaven, rolled back the stone from the door, * and his raiment was white as snow." Luke says, "They found the stone rolled away, * and two men stood by them in shining garments." It is said that on the mount, "Jesus's face did shine as the sun, * and his raiment was white as the light." When Cornelius was praying, he says, "A man stood before him in bright clothing." The light that shone round about Paul was “above the brightness of the sun;" and John, entranced upon the Isle of Patmos, perceived that those who had "overcome were clothed in white robes." Overcome what? Their perversions, passions and earthly appetites. As the flower imbibes the dew or sunlight, so, revealed before the heavens, are our spheres both seen and felt by ministering angels by whom we are thus weighed as in a balance and credited exactly for what we are worth in the "Book of Life"-even our own soul. Appropriately Paul affirmed, "The saints shall judge the world." The chancery angel-judgment and justiceis a daily attendant of each through the vicissitudes of our eternal pilgrimage. What an incentive to live a pure, divine life. |