Page:The Judgment Day.pdf/13

 and spiritual worlds, though intimately united, has each its own peculiar laws; and that while the human body will be disposed of in accordance with the laws of the natural world, the last judgment and final destiny of the spirit, must be sought for in a knowledge of the laws of the spiritual world. Relying on this conviction I will endeavor to present, on the following pages, a few of those arguments on which the New Church rests the belief that the last judgment will take place in the spiritual and not in the natural world.

That the last judgment takes place in the spiritual world is evident, from the fact that the spirits of all the dead are in that world, and must forever remain there. The spirit is connected with this natural world through the medium of its material covering. That covering consists simply of an aggregation of particles of matter, which are held together in a human form and filled with life by the spirits power and energy. So long as the material body can be thus kept under the power and dominion of the spirit, it constitutes a medium through which the spirit manifests its various qualities and capacities, and serves as an instrument for the performance of a great variety of uses in the natural world. But the human body is also subject to another and directly opposite influence. The laws of nature claim dominion over it, and are constantly seeking to assert and maintain that dominion, and the hour inevitably comes when it yields to those laws, and ceases to be of any use to the spirit, which then releases its grasp and the body returns