He saluted me with brotherly warmth, and we entered into a long conversation which I shall not repeat; but from which I learned a thousand interesting and wonderful things about the spiritual world—things incredible to men in the flesh, most of whom, like birds of night, are satisfied with the darkness of nature. [Illustration: Ornament] [Illustration: Ornament] XV. _THE WORLD OF SPIRITS._ [Illustration: Initial] I was greatly astonished at the nature and importance of that intermediate state of life which I have called the world of spirits. Although the doctrine of a place of departed spirits, called Sheol or Hades, is distinctly taught in Scripture and by tradition, it seems to have made a very feeble impression on the minds even of the most devout. Most men think they will go immediately to heaven or to hell when they die. They are mistaken. The world of spirits receives into its vast bosom the mighty congregation of the dead from all nations and climes. It is the first grand receptacle of the whole human race after death. It is the place of judgment, special and general. It may be compared to the stomach, into which all articles of food and drink are collected; where they are all comminuted, concussed, expressed, decomposed and digested; and what is found good and nutritive is taken up into the blood and makes a part of the living man; while the hard, unwholesome and innutritious portions, which cannot be dissolved or appropriated, are cast out of the system as useless or injurious. Let not the reader smile at this anatomical metaphor. When he gets an interior view of the human body such as I have enjoyed, he will see that it is an epitome of the universe; that the mysteries of nature, the wonders of philosophy and the secrets of heaven are all written upon its organs and tissues. In the present state we are strangely compounded of good and evil, both hereditary and acquired. He who thinks that all good people on earth are ready, at death, to pass at once into heaven without further preparation and instruction, has formed a mistaken idea of heaven. Our life in the world of spirits is a judgment upon ourselves, an unfolding or unrolling of our true characters, a revelation of our evils under the best possible circumstances; where by the assistance and instruction of angelic friends, our imperfections, if our ruling love be good, can be finally removed, and our souls fitted for that perfect social organization based upon supreme love to God and the neighbor, which men in the flesh cannot understand or even imagine. “But,” says some one, “all that is done for us instantaneously at death by the miraculous power of God.”