continues to live in the spiritual world after the body dies, is in the human form, and is the real man or woman: That all the angels who are also in this form, having a spiritual and substantial organism, are from the human race, and were once inhabitants of this or some other earth; and the same is true of the devils: Consequently no angel or devil was ever created such; but every individual in heaven and in hell, has once had his abode or commenced his existence in the natural realm. Angels, therefore, are more perfect or fully developed men; and men—good men—are angels in embryo. The spiritual or heavenly is evolved from the carnal or earthly man, by an orderly divine process known to Christian theology as regeneration.
Now, is there anything unreasonable in this, as we have seen there is in the old doctrine? Is there not, on the contrary, something in it which strikes us agreeably on its first announcement?—Something which avouches its alliance to the general tenor of all God's arrangements?—Something which tallies with that universal law under which the higher and more perfect are successively evolved from the lower and less perfect forms of being?
All Christians believe in the immortality of the soul; and the soul or spirit is the real man. They all believe that the soul does not die, but survives when its material vestment has crumbled to decay. And if man, after the death of the body, continues to live as man, endowed with human attributes—possessing human affections, dispositions, thoughts and feelings—then he must exist in the human form. For to suppose human char-
