Page:The Other Life.djvu/244

 would project itself outwardly around them in terrible or disgusting forms, black clouds in the sky, dark caverns in the earth, lurid fires in the distance, serpents or toads or obscene birds. Heaven would be rent as with an earthquake. Such a thing is therefore organically impossible.

Neither can the new-comer from earth go at once into hell. He bears with him some traces of goodness and truth, some touch of kindness, some remnant of humanity, which would produce similar disorder in the infernal sphere. It would be like the approach of an angel to the hells, when darkness comes over them, and terror seizes them and frightful pains lay hold of them.

The new-comer himself would be more dreadfully tortured by the experiment than either the angels or the devils. The sphere of heaven would be intolerable to the evil elements, and the sphere of hell equally so to the good elements in his nature. Between the two conflicting elements he would be torn asunder with sufferings far more severe than he would experience in the hell suited to his evils when they have been isolated from all his better life.

It is plain that the law of spiritual relation—namely, that the objective world springs up in cor-