that there is treasured up in the undeveloped powers of the spirit, an instinctive capacity for understanding the correspondence between the internal affections of the spirit, and those external forms which represent them. Something of this capacity is manifested even now. We call it imagination, but it deserves a higher name. We always associate those evil affections, such as revenge, cruelty, avarice and other sensual lusts, with venomous beasts and serpents, and with various sorts of external filth and impurity.
But we have a much more certain means than our own imperfect perceptions, by which to determine what are the true spiritual representatives of our internal affections, whether good or evil. We have the testimony of one, of whom we have the fullest evidence, that he was admitted into the light of the spiritual world, and there for many years, familiarly beheld the things which he describes.
It may also be remarked in this connection, that if the views here presented in regard to the nature of the spiritual world, are true, all efforts to discover that world, or any portion of it, on the same plane with the natural world, must be vain and hopeless. In vain does the telescope sweep the heavens in order to find that world in which spirits dwell. lt is not there. The light that reveals the wonders of that world flows from a sun that is far unlike those suns which the telescope brings to view. For there is not the remotest resemblance, between the system of spiritual philosophy here taught, and such speculations as, for example, those of Dr. Thomas Dick, in his "Philosophy of a Future State." This celebrated writer appears to have no idea of the discrete degrees between the spiritual and the natural world, but sets about searching for the spiritual world in the midst of those natural things which are measured by time and space. And he even ventures to suggest that he has found the place where the throne of God is located! He says:—
