Part 13

“The term Son of God is used in accommodation to the sensuous states of the natural mind. It is peculiar to the earth-life, and cannot rise above the plane which separates the spiritual from the natural. It is only the human natural mind, divorcing the spiritual from the natural, that sees God in a double form, calling Him when invisible, the Father, and when visible, the Son.”

“These things are wonderful,” said I; “but how to explain them to men, who cannot think spiritually, however much they may think about spiritual things?”

“There is another and profounder reason,” continued my instructor, “why Jesus speaks of himself on earth as the Son of God, and so frequently prays to an invisible Father. By subjecting himself in a finite form to the limitations of time and space, he subjects his own spiritual consciousness, so far as it is united, to obscuration. In his human body he thinks and feels as a finite being, the Son; while at the same moment in his spiritual form here He thinks and feels as the Divine Wisdom itself.

“The grand purpose of the incarnation was, to assume a human form in which he could be tempted as we are, in which he could be assaulted by evil spirits and devils; in which he could conquer death, hell and the grave, and become the Mediator, the Way, the Life and the Resurrection. The infestations of evil ones obscure his mental vision and take away from him at times his perception of identity with the Father. Thus he has two earthly states of life, one of glorification or spiritual insight, when he feels conscious of his Fatherhood; and one of humiliation, when he is sorely tempted and tried, and when he lifts his heart in prayer to that Fountain of love and light which is the centre of his own infinite bosom.”

“These things amaze me,” said I, “beyond expression. Nor do I believe that any human being has any true conception of the character of Jesus, of the mission he is filling, or of his plan of redemption. Certainly none of the thoughts you have communicated to me have ever dawned on the minds of his disciples.”

“Nor is it probable,” said John, “that mankind will be prepared, for many centuries, to understand what can only be comprehended from a spiritual stand-point. The least portion of the work of Jesus is apparent to men in the world. The sublime and far more difficult portion is wholly invisible to them, as it occurs here in the world of spirits which is not open to their perception.”

My angelic friend was about giving me further light on this lofty theme, when Jesus and the happy multitude that surrounded him seemed to approach nearer to us.

My reader—if this manuscript ever finds a reader—may wonder why I did not approach the Divine Man and speak to him, after I had discovered that my earthly friend was the Supreme Being manifested in the human form. Ah! they know nothing of the sphere of the Lord! I could not even lift up my eyes to his feet. I was overwhelmed with wonder and awe. Had not so many other spirits been present to engage my attention, to divert my thoughts and to impart courage and life to me, I should have swooned and fallen.

Oppressed by the heavenly sphere, whose nearer approach I was not prepared for, I seized my father by the hand and he led me away. The scene faded behind us; and we went down into a little green valley filled with small white flowers and watered by a little brook. There I was freed from the terrible sense of oppression, and recovered my composure. We sat down in this valley of humiliation, where the small white flowers were the innocent thoughts of the new life, and the musical voice of the brook was a hymn of contrition.

“O my father!” said I, “is it always thus in the spiritual world, that the divine sphere of Jesus agitates the mind and pains the heart, so as to almost suffocate the life within us?”

“When the sphere of heaven approaches those who are in evil and falsity,” answered my father, “it occasions intense pain in their interiors, and they cry out; ‘Why art thou come hither, O Christ! to torment us?’ Such is the judgment: and the wicked call upon the mountains and the rocks to hide them from the wrath of God.”

The wrath of God! monstrous conception!

It is the gentle breath of the Divine Love which is converted into a burning fire when it enters the perverted and corrupt forms of their own souls!

“The same sphere of divine light approaching those who have some remnants of good and truth, and who can be saved, produces a profound self-abasement, a trembling contrition, a suffocation of the old life with all its wicked desires, and an inexpressible longing for a new life of purity, peace and love.”

I now understood it all. I felt the self-abasement, the contrition, the inexpressible longing. The sun had already disappeared. The sun of the spiritual world does not rise and set like ours; but it brightens or pales in appearance with the changing states of the spirit. Then shone out innumerable stars in a blue dome, like the friendly faces of cherubim and seraphim smiling on us.

At length the wearied new-comer into the spiritual world passed into that mysterious realm of profoundest sleep, which is common to all worlds, and in which the unconscious soul is alone with God.

XVII.

_JUDGMENT OF THE JEWS._

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.

I was at first terrified at these sights; but my father observed:

“This is a representation, a pictorial prophecy of a reality yet to come, before Christ has finished his conquering work in the world of spirits. These people do not see the things we see. This heavenly light has come into our minds that we may discover what their interior life really is,—devoid of all spiritual vitality; desolate, dark, lurid; full of evil beasts and unclean birds and creeping things.”

This sphere of ecclesiastical pride and presumption is not peculiar to the Jewish Church or nation. It is predominant in all religions, churches and individuals, when the religious instincts are satisfied and delighted with grandeur, power, numbers, fashion, wealth and glory.

“What will be the effect,” I inquired, “of this disastrous judgment in the world of spirits, upon the Jewish nation in the natural world?”

“There will be fearful dissensions and conflicts; wars within and without; the city and the temple will be destroyed; the country made desolate; the people scattered as exiles and vagabonds among all nations. Their descendants, coming into the world of spirits, will recede toward the circumference among the pagans. A new church springing up among other nations, will take the central place, and give rise upon earth, after great struggles, to a purer religion and a nobler civilization.

“You will now see, in symbolic representation, the three great classes into which the Church will be dissolved at its judgment.”

Then there appeared before us a great many domestic animals; oxen, horses, asses, camels, sheep, fowls, etc.; all mingled together in confusion, and all looking poor, jaded, filthy and wretched.

“These are the beasts of burden,” said my father; “the ignorant and innocent masses, presided over by a corrupt and cruel theocracy, which desecrates the name of God by imposing upon his children a spiritual despotism.

“Advance nearer to these creatures, and you will behold a wonderful sight, such as can never appear in the natural world, but is common enough in the world of spirits.”

We came nearer, and lo! all the animals were found to be men and women. Some of their forms and faces seemed taken from my memory; for I thought I recognized the crowds which followed Jesus in the world.

“From these people,” said my father, “the remnant will be taken—the remnant about which the prophets speak so often. This remnant of Israel, starting with the apostles chosen by Christ, will be the seed and starting-point of a new Church.

“Such are the forms of those who are interiorly good. Observe now the forms of those who are interiorly wicked.”

The former scene passed away and three wild beasts appeared standing at the mouth of an immense black cavern, in front of which many human bones were scattered. The animals were a wild boar, a wolf and a tiger, all of gigantic size and terrible ferocity.

We advanced nearer to these also, and they changed into men; the wild boar into Caiaphas, the high priest; the wolf into the cunning and cruel Magistus; and the tiger into the robber Barabbas. The meaning of this tableaux I perceived intuitively without explanation.

“Between these two extremes,” continued my father, “is a great class who are in mixed states of good and evil. Their sufferings will be severe before they can put off either kind of life so as to live entirely in the other; for a separation of good and evil must be effected,—if not upon earth, at least in the world of spirits.”

A sandy wilderness then arose to view, in which I saw but two figures; a zebra, wild, beautiful, intractable, snuffing proudly the air of the desert; and a white dove which was struggling frantically to escape from the jaws of a monstrous serpent.

These I approached more eagerly; for I was impelled by an earnest desire to caress the beautiful zebra, and to rescue the dove from the fangs of the serpent. They changed also in the twinkling of an eye. The zebra was our friend the Son of the Desert, and the dove was Mary Magdalen. As the latter stepped forward, a shining and beautiful woman, the serpent shriveled and fell behind her like a black garment cast upon the ground.

As the last picture faded away, my father resumed his instructions.

“The scenes you have witnessed are phantasmagoric, but symbolical and full of spiritual truth. They illustrate the law of appearances which governs in the spiritual world. The phenomenal world around us, animal, vegetable and mineral, is all representative of the life within us; not by accident or with confusion, but according to fixed and eternal laws.

“The sphere of life radiates from a spirit like heat from the sun, or like perfume from a flower. It flows forth and falls into successive zones or belts of spiritual substance, in each of which it produces some spiritual form representative of itself. Outside of his human sphere, the life of a spirit takes form in the first zone as an animal, in the second as a planet or flower, in the third as a mineral, a stone, a drop of water, a cloud, a star.

“The life which animates a wicked spirit becomes a corresponding wild beast in the first zone; a loathsome fungus in the second; a poisonous mineral in the third. The sweet spiritual life of a good heart becomes the innocent lamb in one zone; the beautiful rose in the next; the brilliant gem in the last.

“Observe, however, that each spirit always appears to himself in the human form; and always so to others when they are near him. He only takes on these typical or correspondential forms in the eyes of others, when he recedes to or approaches from a distance.”

“What a deep philosophy you are unfolding!” I exclaimed. “I see already in what you have told me the germs of a thousand brilliant ideas. Oh that I could teach these beautiful things in the porticoes of Athens! How they would ravish the Grecian heart!”

“You are mistaken,” said my father. “Some simple soul from whom you least expected it, would accept your doctrines, weeping for joy. The great, the rich, the learned, the powerful, would scornfully reject them as fables or dreams.”

“That is strange and sad.”

“Yes—but it is true. The mind which is wedded to falsities in religion or philosophy, is proud, self-reliant, self-satisfied, bigoted and intolerant. The genuine truth which makes the soul free, makes it also liberal and loving.”

“Will the Jews on earth reject the Messiah, proving his mission as he does by stupendous miracles?”

“Yes: miracles avail nothing with the unbelieving. Truth is not seen merely because it is truth. No truth is received or seen but that which corresponds to some love in the heart. The hatred which these Jewish spirits feel for holy things, will descend by influx into the priests and scribes at Jerusalem: and the tender seed of the New Dispensation will be sown in darkness and watered with tears and blood.

“Do not suppose,” added my father, “that spirits and angels have any special power to foresee the future. Oh no! We only live nearer to the Fountain of causes, and reason more acutely from cause to effect.”

I treasured these strange things in my mind, having only a faint perception of either their truth or value. I was especially surprised at the fact, that a church could actually come to an end, a dispensation be spiritually closed and a new one inaugurated, while the adherents of the old were in the full flush of power and numbers, and regarded themselves as the favored repositories and faithful interpreters of divine truth!

XVIII.

_IMAGINARY HEAVENS._

After these things we were taken up another high mountain, whence we had a view of all the kingdoms in the world of spirits at once. Hither it was that Jesus was carried by the evil spirit who offered him all this power and glory, if he would fall down and worship him. There is no mountain in the natural world from which such an outlook were possible.

“This great height,” said my father, “represents the infernal sphere of self-aggrandizement, which aspires to universal dominion. It is that ambition which corrodes the heart with envious passion so long as anything remains unconquered. This spirit is common to nations and individuals, to the greatest and the least. This mountain rears its awful summit in every human breast. This is the spiritual mountain which is to be cast into the sea by faith.”

Looking down, I now beheld a city of Rome as before I had seen a city of Jerusalem. Beautiful, shadowy pictures of cities, homes of spirits, vastly magnified and made glorious with ethereal colors! Man cannot imagine the splendid creations which spirits can instantaneously produce from the plastic substance of the spiritual world. These cities and countries, however, are peculiar to the intermediate state. They do not exist in heaven.

The Romans risen from the dead had reconstructed their imperial city of precious stones, so that it always shone from afar as if some grand illumination were going on, whose splendors were again reflected from the clouds which floated above it.