Page:The Other Life.djvu/115

 animal kingdoms, exceed in the spiritual world anything we have ever seen or felt in this mundane sphere. And the first impression of the newly-risen spirit in the midst of such scenes, is, that they are as real as anything left behind him on the earth.

He beholds about him what appears to his senses an external and physical world, only etherealized and beautified beyond description:

He wonders into what serene depths of the abysses of space he has unconsciously penetrated. He does not believe he is dead, or he still waits for his winged angels to appear and conduct him to his imaginary heaven.

He has, however, entered a sphere not separated from ours by time or space; a sphere not to be reached by ascending or descending; a sphere into which the light of nature never penetrates, and whose laws and phenomena can never be understood by a mind in bondage to sensuous appearances.

And yet this spiritual world, which is so similar to ours in externals, originates in an entirely different manner and is governed by peculiar laws.