"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 penued 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 aud 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 relatious 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. In the infinite administration, the scales of justice balance. Vice and emendatory 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

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 emanationsatmospheres peculiarly their own. The nature of this electric sphere surrounding mortals gorresponds 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.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

EVIL SPIRITS.

"What men call evil, only is
The germinating seed,

From whence, by sure development,

Shall spring good fruit indeed.

And man all evil shall outgrow,

In spite of doubts and fears;

In faith and hope shall plume his wing,
And soar to brighter spheres."

Illumined thinkers can never force themselves to believe that evil, as an end, essential and absolute, can exist under the moral government of an infinite God whose nature is goodness, whose essence is love. But, from the stand-point of observation, there are conditions and diverse actions, resultant of human conduct, designated by moral philosophers as evil. Comparison is elemental in human nature. Contrasts there must be. Can better terms be found to express certain qualities, certain properties and relations in the physical world, than straight lines and curves, heat and cold, light and darkness-better terms to express certain moral conditions in the conscious reasoning world than wisdom and folly, truth and error, good and evil? All these are relative in significance, of course, and consequently the more applicable to men and spirits, as fte existences.

All counsels, exhortations, comma punishments-all praise and reproof jurisprudence and orderly society,

ground that men are moral actors and capable of good and evil. The reason why moral precepts are addressed to men and women rather than to the lower orders of creation, is because they have a rational and spiritual nature; because they can understand moral obligation, and are conscious of a divine consciousness within them. Moral ability measures the extent of moral responsibility. According to the original gift, so is the expected measure of the talent.

That there are educated and ignorant, good and bad men on earth, are not debatable propositions. Death, being more chemical than psychical, a mere musical ripple upon the ocean of life, and neither a spasmodic educator or savior, there necessarily must be educated and uneducated, good and evil spirits, of higher or lower conditions in the summer and winter lands of the future, so constantly peopled from this earth. And yet, as on earth, they all constitute a banded brotherhood and sisterhood of interests, and are the subjects of eternal progression.

Prof. Wm. Denton, in a lecture delivered in Music Hall, Boston, entitled, "Spiritualism Superior to Christianity," said: "No wonder that those who believe in this Orthodox religion, believe also, that we shall be miraculously changed at death. But Spiritualism teaches us that spirits when they pass from the body to the future life, take with them everything which is necessary for their individuality. Take out of any one the good or bad tendencies that distinguish him, and he will become somebody else immediately."

Admitting an intercommunion between this and the spiritworld-a conscious presence of spiritual beings, and of minds influencing minds, as among the facts connected with the Spiritual Philosophy, it is as natural as evident that all classes of spirits may, under conditions adapted to their magnetic and spiritual states, impress, inspire, entrance, and at times partially, and then again completely, control mortals. The higher operating influences are usually denominated