Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/110

 and where the true assize is held; and what imagination, aided by the suggestions of the Scriptures, can point out another place than that which the idea of an intermediate world supplies? Men cannot go from one place to another without passing through the space which intervenes. Neither can they rise from one state to another without passing through that which exists between them. Between two opposites there must be an intermediate. This seems to be a universal fact. It is observable between fire and ice; light and darkness; height and depth: also, between vice and virtue; wisdom and folly; industry and idleness: likewise between mind and matter; reason and instinct; love and hatred: why, then, should any one hesitate to acknowledge the existence of an intermediate world between heaven and hell?

But we are not left to the mere logic of the case for this conclusion: there are some statements in the prophets, by which it is clearly sustained. Ezekiel, speaking of being in "the spirit," said, "The hand of the Lord fell upon me, and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven." And Zechariah relates that he saw, when his spiritual eyes were opened for the purpose: "Two women, and the wind was in their wings, for they had wings like a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven." These passages plainly declare that there is a place in the spiritual world which is neither heaven nor hell. It is true that the terms employed are "between the earth and the heaven:" but the earth there does not mean the natural world; but those states of men that are of the "earth, earthy:" the prophets were lifted above this state, in the vision which they experienced, and yet their elevation did not reach the heavenly world; this, therefore,