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Rh essentially the place of reward and retribution. The life in this world is incomplete without its prolongation in the heavenly world, for it is only a life of probation, and the harvest of good or evil deeds sown here is to be reaped hereafter by the soul in the world of the spirit. Whether the soul, on embarking to the next world, will be greeted by the righteous or seized by the wicked, depends entirely on the sort of life it has led in this world. If it wins beatitude, it is on its own merits; if it loses this, it is equally through its own fault. If it ascends to heaven, it is owing to its righteous life in this world; if it sinks into hell, it is due to its wicked life here.

The soul is created pure and innocent. The lost soul that traverses the regions of inferno after death was at the first moment of its original entrance into the bodily world as pure and perfect as the soul of its neighbour now entering paradise. In the spiritual world, class distinctions are unknown. There are no white or black, red or yellow, high or low, touchable or untouchable souls, as man has most selfishly branded his brethren from the difference of the colours of their skin or their low rank in society. The noblest of souls may dwell in the tenement covered with the darkest skin; the vilest of souls may take the body with the whitest skin for its vestment; the loveliest of spirits may be found in the body with the ugliest complexion and the foulest of souls may lurk in the fairest body.

The Bridge of Judgment. When man began to people the heavens with the celestial beings and came to the belief that the dead go heavenward, he naturally began to think of the means to scale the heights. Nature often showed the beautiful rainbow spanning the space between the earth and the sky in glorious colours, and the shining Milky Way paving its circular path with silvery stars. With the development of the eschatological ideas, the Egyptians believed that the souls of the dead lived in the starry regions which were generally reached by means of a huge ladder.

We are given in figurative language by Zarathushtra the image of a bridge, called Chinvat, literally 'of the dividing one,' that connects this world with the unseen world, and serves as a medium to cross the deep chasm that separates the two. The reckoning of the good or evil deeds of the souls takes place after