Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/71

 ready to spring up and pester the world whenever bad conditions shall call them into active life; nor can there be a pure saint, until every one of these seeds shall be deprived of life. Then, when this is done, no matter what the soil may be, it can produce none but beauty-laden forms of excellence. When the great truth is made apparent to the people, that the greatest sin a person can possibly commit—taking the future as well as the present into the account—is the, sin against him or herself, society will rapidly purge itself of wrong, and there will be fewer bad memories to haunt and terrify them after life's troublous drama shall end, and far fewer leaden-hued pictures be reflected from the mirror-floors of the world of Soul. Wealth, the possession of riches, is, on earth and in all human society, the universal passport to honor and distinction. This is one of the fallacies of man, and the greatest; but the good deeds done to the neighbor and the self are hereafter changed into a kind of coin readily current in the lands beyond the tomb.

Now no one thing yet unaccomplished is more certain to come to pass, than that this lesson will yet be learned by the people. When it is mastered, there will be far less strife for the honors and emoluments of office, and the universal cry will be, 'Whom can we get, who shall we persuade to be our Ruler, President, or King?' 'Who can we employ to fill those offices?' instead of 'Vote for me!' as now. Mankind on earth do not, as we of the Soul-world, seek for joys that are pure, and purely human, too; they do not, as we, drink from chalices at whose bottom no dregs are found after the ruby wine has been sipped. Alas, no! but, instead, they