1274. It must be clear that the great mass of professed Christians are very little restrained by their fears of such an eternity of punishment. Had Christ any specific knowledge of the kingdom of heaven to which he occasionally alluded, wherefore did he not convey that knowledge to his disciples? But they seem to have learned no more from Jesus than Moses did from Jehovah, and hence their querulous inquiry as to what would be their reward. But the promise of judgeships, (743 to 745,) of worldly preeminence, was a satire upon them. It argues that he considered them as worldly-minded. Had he known the world to be looked upon by the apostles as beneath consideration in comparison with immortal life, he would hardly have insulted them by the offer. But their tone has a great deal too much of the Swiss in it. Had they been so very dull, or Christ so reserved, that the idea was not conveyed to them that in acting the part of pious, virtuous men, they would have the reward promised to the righteous in the other world. 1275. Thank God, no spiritualist who reads with attention the communications given in this work, will ever inquire as to the extent of selfish reward which he is to enjoy! He would be impressed by his general knowledge with the idea that the less any being is actuated by selfish aspiration, the greater his capacity for happiness and his pretensions to the means of felicity. _The Doctrine of a peculiar Belief being necessary to Salvation, and a counterpoise for Sin, a source of discord originally confined to Judea, expanded with Christianity and Islamism; verifying Christ’s allegation, that he came “as a Sword, not as a Messenger of Peace.”—Superior Morality, and far more unquestionable Certainty of the Communications from the Spirit World._ 1276. It were in vain, I think, to find in the apple of discord, in the mischiefs let loose from Pandora’s box, or any other figurative exemplification, any idea adequate to convey my conception of the mischief done to the world by introducing the dogma, that belief could be the means of salvation; so that if God had so constituted or so situated a people, that they could not believe what was communicated to them by certain itinerant preachers, it should be worse for them in the day of judgment than for Sodom and Gomorrah; two cities which God had destroyed because he had not so organized them, and circumstanced them, as to make them as virtuous as he, subsequently to their creation, desired.