depraved by inheritance, and destined to utter and endless wretchedness in the other world, or any thing else, however absurd and untrue, and yet that man's whole earth life may have been justly distinguished for charitable deeds, love of the neighbor, and in all his habits, walks and ways all that the severest moralists could require, do you not at once see that in all justice and righteousness the man's life, acts and deeds must inevitably determine his sphere or spiritual condition, without the slightest interference by what foolish things he may have believed. And yet it is nevertheless not difficult to see further, that he must disabuse his mind of those errors of conception and belief before he can make any appreciable and valuable progress. And I tell you these erroneous belief and unfounded conceptions cling to the man with more obdurate persistency than the most of mankind could be induced to believe. Hence the prime importance of forming correct ideas of the future while still animating the material body." August 3, 1882: "Acts of charity and deeds of benevolence are estimated by the spiritual laws of our being in just correspondence to the motives inspiring and actuating them. By the motives prompting them, more than the acts and deeds themselves, do they become either valuable or valueless to our spiritual promotion and good. I have known men who devoted a lifetime of arduous labor in the acquisition of wealth, all the while wholly regardless of the interests and wants of others, and toward the end of the puny life, and in anticipation of the near approach of death, they bequeathed their accumulations to charitable and benevolent institutions, only to find themselves the merest spiritual paupers in the spiritual world. And why? Because being governed a lifetime by grasping and selfish motives, they only dispensed the accumulated results of the cultivated spirit of avarice and cupidity under the selfish and painfully delusive motive of enhancing their interests in a world to which their aged infirmity admonished them they were hastening. Upon their entrance to the spiritual world the motive met them, and overshadowed them with its pitiless condemnation. "Had charity and benevolence characterized their lives all along for the sake of doing good and blessing others, it would have been quite otherwise with them in the eternal world of justice and truth. "Charities bestowed only possess eternal value when done for sweet charity's sake, and with the unselfish object of helping others. This constitutes love and genuine love of the neighbor, and is consequently divine and heavenly and of permanent and enduring value.