“The scenes you have witnessed are phantasmagoric, but symbolical and full of spiritual truth. They illustrate the law of appearances which governs in the spiritual world. The phenomenal world around us, animal, vegetable and mineral, is all representative of the life within us; not by accident or with confusion, but according to fixed and eternal laws. “The sphere of life radiates from a spirit like heat from the sun, or like perfume from a flower. It flows forth and falls into successive zones or belts of spiritual substance, in each of which it produces some spiritual form representative of itself. Outside of his human sphere, the life of a spirit takes form in the first zone as an animal, in the second as a planet or flower, in the third as a mineral, a stone, a drop of water, a cloud, a star. “The life which animates a wicked spirit becomes a corresponding wild beast in the first zone; a loathsome fungus in the second; a poisonous mineral in the third. The sweet spiritual life of a good heart becomes the innocent lamb in one zone; the beautiful rose in the next; the brilliant gem in the last. “Observe, however, that each spirit always appears to himself in the human form; and always so to others when they are near him. He only takes on these typical or correspondential forms in the eyes of others, when he recedes to or approaches from a distance.” “What a deep philosophy you are unfolding!” I exclaimed. “I see already in what you have told me the germs of a thousand brilliant ideas. Oh that I could teach these beautiful things in the porticoes of Athens! How they would ravish the Grecian heart!” “You are mistaken,” said my father. “Some simple soul from whom you least expected it, would accept your doctrines, weeping for joy. The great, the rich, the learned, the powerful, would scornfully reject them as fables or dreams.” “That is strange and sad.” “Yes—but it is true. The mind which is wedded to falsities in religion or philosophy, is proud, self-reliant, self-satisfied, bigoted and intolerant. The genuine truth which makes the soul free, makes it also liberal and loving.” “Will the Jews on earth reject the Messiah, proving his mission as he does by stupendous miracles?” “Yes: miracles avail nothing with the unbelieving. Truth is not seen merely because it is truth. No truth is received or seen but that which corresponds to some love in the heart. The hatred which these Jewish spirits feel for holy things, will descend by influx into the priests and scribes at Jerusalem: and the tender seed of the New Dispensation will be sown in darkness and watered with tears and blood. “Do not suppose,” added my father, “that spirits and angels have any special power to foresee the future. Oh no! We only live nearer to the Fountain of causes, and reason more acutely from cause to effect.”