Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/122

 into some conformity with the misleading circumstances by which they are surrounded; but their interior character and sentiment are guided by higher views of life and duty. Their motives and desires may be sincere, good, and earnest, but the period may be inimical to their right development. Excellence of interior character has not unfrequently existed in corrupt times, and men yearning to do right have been seduced into courses that were wrong. The apostle has put this fact in a striking light. "The good," says he, "that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do." So far, then, as such persons are interiorly good, they possess the qualifications for heaven; but the corrupting circumstances with which they have come in contact on the earth, have exercised an unfavourable influence upon their characters, and this, on the death of their body, they will take with them into the world of spirits; it is as a prison to their inner life, and, for a time, it will be to them as a grave, in which their more interior excellence will be entombed. This is the grave out of which they will have to come before they can enter into "the holy city." To bring their interior love of goodness into freedom, and to effect its separation from that with which it disagrees, is the work of judgment. They then, who will carefully reflect upon these considerations, will find no difficulty in rationally understanding what is related concerning the bodies of the saints. But without admitting the existence of an intermediate spiritual world, and viewing it as the place of judgment, the whole narrative is entirely beyond the reach of any satisfactory explanation.

We might dwell upon other evidences, and prolong this investigation to a greater length; but we think suffi-