Page:The Other Life.djvu/245

 respondence with the subjective states of the spirit, demands and effects the total separation of good and evil spheres, so that heaven and hell stand eternally apart. This separation is gradually effected in the world of spirits. It is called in Scripture the judgment.

The world of spirits is therefore created, just as heaven and hell are created. It is to outward appearance a vast world, not fixed in time and space like our material orbs, but plastic and changeable to the outflowing thoughts and affections of its inhabitants. It appears differently to different classes or societies of spirits, and external objects come and go, appear and disappear, are created or annihilated in correspondence with the spiritual panorama which is passing in the interiors of the souls of those who live there.

The form which this world of spirits assumes to men recently deceased is very much like that of the world they have left. The reason is that they are still in possession of their exterior memory, thoughts, affections and life; for man has an external and an internal life which are frequently very different. Newly-arrived spirits think from their memories of time and space, reason from the sensuous appearances which dominated their intellects in this