Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/64

 that of earth is for a period led by the inhabitants thereof. The other is that, concerning the mysteries whereof, I am now treating. Millions of beings there are who, although disrobed of fleshly garments, are yet pilgrims in search of the soul-world. The latter is divine and interior, the former natural and merely Spiritual. A man on earth may gaze on the surface of a picture, or mechanically read a book, and yet find nothing therein; whereas either of these may lead another person not only into their own beauty-depths, and into the soul of the painter or the author; but they may serve as clues which his soul may seize on and follow into realms never even imagined to exist by the poet-painter, or the painter-poet. So also the mere mortuary fact by no means serves as a free ticket or pass into the grand Temple, at the mere vestibule of which grim Death lands those who take passage in the phantom shallop, whereof himself is pilot and steersman. The mere post mortem existence does not necessarily entitle one to all the privileges of the Temple, nor make one a resident of, or even spectator of the worlds of Soul. True, there will occur a change in all, whereby they can pass the mystic ferry; but this change must be worked out from within, and in no wise depend upon outside influences; it must he volitional, not mechanical. The ferriage must be paid in well-wishing and better doing. The life beyond is a real one, compared to which that of earth is a mere shadow, and the form of Government is an isonomous one; equal rights, equal laws, impartial justice administered, not by external agents of an outward power but by the very constitutional delegates from the secret