Page:The Other Life.djvu/239



HE world of spirits is an intermediate state of existence with its corresponding objective phenomena, into which all men are ushered immediately after death, by the process of the resurrection, which is only the withdrawal of the spiritual body from the natural. The state is intermediate between heaven and hell. Men are called spirits while living in that world; angels, if they pass into heaven; devils, if they direct their steps to hell. Heaven, hell and the world of spirits constitute together the spiritual world.

This is the sheol of the Old Testament, the hades of the New; erroneously translated in our English Bibles, hell and the grave; and known by tradition as "the place of departed spirits." '

It is strange that Protestant Christianity has lost the knowledge of this intermediate state, and that its acute thinkers and biblical students have not re-discovered and proclaimed it.