gling for the political and civil freedom of the world; and ere long it will cease to oppose any serious impediment to the spiritual freedom of the human mind. The influence of hereditary tendencies, and of long established habits, may retain its doctrines and forms for many ages to come; but a spiritual force from the world of causes is operating upon the universal mind of man, filling it with new life, energy and strength, and preparing it to break the fetters of spiritual tyranny. The day is coming,—has already dawned,—when men must be addressed as rational beings. The voice of arburary human authority, whether coming from the Romish or any other Church, will be unheeded and uncared for.
But we will introduce some further quotations, in which other reasons are given for believing that the Last General Judgment is now past. The author says that:—
"Not only do the effects in the natural world of the accomplishment of the judgment in the spiritual display themselves in the way of visitations, but also in direct dispensations of mercy; for the sake of which, indeed, all divine judgments are performed. The calamities with which they are accompanied, are only designed to remove obstructions out of the way, and to make room for the reception of the benefits which the Divine Judge ever has in view. If the wicked who occupied the intermediate region of the spiritual world, were, by the judgment there, cast into hell, it was that the good who were mixed with them, or reserved in the lower parts of the spiritual world on account of them, might be raised into heaven; and also, that the divine efflux of spiritual life and light, which they intercepted in its passage to men on earth, might have free course; in like manner, if Christendom has been visited with tremendous troubles, as a first consequence of the performance of the judgment in the spiritual world, it is that a second consequence may follow, and that the divine outpouring of spiritual life and light may produce the blessings for which it is bestowed. If then we see, in the world around us, marks, in this way, of the activity of this divine efflux, they are sure signs that the judgment in the spiritual world has been performed.—In what we have already noticed, even, such marks are palpable. But how evident is the change, and that a change for the better, which, in many other respects likewise, has
