The New Testament scriptures inform us that Jesus, after being put to "death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit, preached to the spirits in prison." Peter further speaks of the "gospel being preached to them that are dead." The fact of such preaching implies a moral benefit derived therefrom. The divine, uplifting law of progress spans all souls, all worlds. Jesus and angels, prophets, martyrs and the sainted of all ages, delight in descending to teach in the darker spheres of ignorance, as reformers of earth find supreme joy in rescuing and redeeming the erring.

Greeks and barbarians drink from one and the same cup of brotherly love."-Zeno.

"There, all being is eternal; things that cease have ceased to be;

All corruption there has perished, there they flourish, strong and free;
This mortality is swallowed up of life eternally."

Brimming with hallowed associations is the delightful thought of Heaven. All have friends there whose memories are sacred. Trustingly they await our arrival for holy re-union.

"Paradise," writes Dr. Hales, "is the region appropriated to good souls."

Some of the Church Fathers considered paradise one division of the under-world; others thought it high in the atmosphere, but below the dwelling-place of God. Christians generally consider it a located place-a city celestial, in distant, undefined regions. All fail to discern the obvious difference between paradise and heaven. "To him that overcometh," declared the ascended Jesus to the medium St. John, "I will give to eat of the tree of life that groweth in the midst of the paradise of God."

The terms paradise, heaven, spirit-world, spiritual world, spiritland, summer-land, &c., used interchangeably, constitue, literally, a "confusion of tongues." Unlike in the original, and

having different shades of meaning, they should be employed with the nicest discrimination. Angry discussions would often be avoided, if words and terms symbolizing ideas, were rightly understood and applied.

Spirit-world, in the best acceptation of the phrase, signifies, all space. Each individual is in the spirit world now, though encoffined in a mortal body. Vast multitudes people the world of unfleshed spirits, who are not in the spiritual world. Those only are in the spiritual world, who, through discipline and progress, have outgrown the depressing conditions of organization with all earthly passions and tendencies. The harmonial and blissful graduate from the spiritual world into the celestial heavens. Here dwell the pure and holy. Clothed in white, and wearing golden girdles, they rush with the melodies of star-orbits to other planets and systems, the teachers of love and holiness.

The spirit, or summer land, is real and substantial-more substantial to spirits than this earth to mortals. It is beautifully described by A. J. Davis, in his "Stellar Key." The spiritual is the real. As John, entranced on Patmos, saw throngs of "angels," "harpers," "thrones," "rainbows," "crowns," "lamps of fire," "seas of glass," "chariots," "vials of odors," "golden harps," "trumpets "-as Stephen and Paul "looked up into heaven," beholding "spirits and angels," and hearing "unspeakable words; " so the entranced and clairvoyant of this age behold delightful fields, landscapes, gardens, flowers, fruits, rivers, lakes, fountains, vast assemblages of spirits, musical bands, lyceum gatherings, sportive children, schools of design, art galleries, magnificent mansions, and architectural abodes of beauty, where loving hearts beat and throb as one.

All spirits were once mortals. All angels were once spirits. The child, the man, the spirit, the angel, the arch-angel, is the divine order, corresponding with the musical scale of the overarching spirit spheres. Those in the celestial heavens are termed angels, because they have advanced beyond the taints and selfish loves of their mortal existence.

It is difficult to entirely disconnect heaven from surrounding, substantial scenery. It is self-evident that whatever exists in the realms of the relative, must exist somewhere. All substance has form. If there are organized spiritual beings-spirits-there must be extent and limit, bearing upon them relationally, and whatever is in extent, must be in space, and have some kind of location. Nature knows no vacuum. If there is anything not in space, it can have neither form nor figure, for figure is defined by logicians to be "the limit of extent;" and the human mind cannot conceive of form without limit, of limit without extent, or extent without space.

Spiritual beings, then, have location, and, in a subordinate sense, heaven may be connected with locality; that is, there must be a harmony between the objective and subjective—a correspondence, or divine adaptation between spheral strata, scenery, surroundings, and those heavenly societies.

Exalted spirits often speak of their beautiful homes, where life is love, and love is law; of music, and fountains casting their silvery spray; of ever-green gardens, isles of entrancing loveliness, flowing streams with jeweled banks, harmonial congresses of angels and heavenly universities of wisdom.

When passive and prayerful, our spirit-guide descending and describing to us, in voice lute-like and loving, the magnificence of his celestial residence, ever closes in these thrillingly searching words-"All these shall be thine, child, when thou art worthy." "To him that overcometh is the promise of the blessed inheritance.”

"Is this the way, sweet angel? 'Tis, my child!
Thou must pass through the tangled, dreary wild,
If thou wouldst reach the city undefiled,-

Thy peaceful home above.

Angel, I'm weary! Child, then lean thy head
Upon my breast; it was my love that spread
Thy rugged path; hope on, till I have said,
'Rest, rest for aye, above!'"

"In my Father's House," said Jesus, "are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you."

Poets, in their sacred lyrics, frequently sing of heaven as a place.

"Mortals! we travel through a darksome cave;

But still, as nearer to the light we draw,
Fresh gales will meet us from the upper air,

And wholesome dews of heaven our foreheads lave."

"Up above, the host no man can number,
In white robes, a palm in every hand,
Each some work sublime forever working
In the spacious tracts of that great land."

Cultured and spiritually enlightened, the more advanced consider heaven not so much a world in the starry firmament as the interior state of the soul. If this is in conscious communion with God, if at peace with itself, and moving onward through the everlasting sweep of being in harmony with the unalterable laws of the Infinite, it is in the constant enjoyment of heaven.

The primal purpose of the spiritual dispensation, with its ministering angels, is the building up of the Republic of God on earth; and while its continued prayer is "Thy republic come," it seeks to establish the truth of universal laws, the fruit of good works, the purity of undefiled consciences, the sweet experience of sympathy, charity and forgiveness, the innocency of little children, and humility of sincere souls, consecrated to the good of humanity.

Heaven, remember, is a condition of self-balance, harmony and happiness, and is attained in all worlds through aspiration and obedience to divine laws. The spirit land constituted of the particles, emanations and etherealized essences from this and other earths in the universe-all bathed in the sunlight of an eternal morning-is no shadow-realm; but real and permanent-a "city that hath foundation, whose builder