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suddenly here or hereafter. The pious Polycarp said:
"I cannot turn at once from good to evil." Neither do
other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth
at a single bound.
(Second death)
Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense
until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its
own self-destruction both here and hereafter,
for mortal mind creates its own physical
conditions. Death will occur on the next plane of existence
as on this, until the spiritual understanding of Life is
reached. Then, and not until then, will it be demonstrated
that "the second death hath no power."
(A dream vanishing)
The period required for this dream of material life,
embracing its so-called pleasures and pains, to vanish
from consciousness, "knoweth no man . . .
neither the Son, but the Father." This period
will be of longer or shorter duration according to the
tenacity of error. Of what advantage, then, would it be
to us, or to the departed, to prolong the material state and
so prolong the illusion either of a soul inert or of a sinning,
suffering sense, - a so-called mind fettered to matter.
(Progress and purgatory)
Even if communications from spirits to mortal consciousness
were possible, such communications would
grow beautifully less with every advanced stage
of existence. The departed would gradually
rise above ignorance and materiality, and Spiritualists
would outgrow their beliefs in material spiritualism.
Spiritism consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling
that of blighted buds, - to a wretched purgatory, where
the chances of the departed for improvement narrow
into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of
matter.
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