“Well,” said I, “so much the better. They would then see all these wonderful things for themselves, and their doubts would be wholly dissipated.” “Ah! you know little as yet of the world of spirits. It is full of evil and wicked ones, who share the bad passions and prompt the sinful deeds of men on earth. If men came, by the opening of their spiritual senses, into visible and audible communication with their own attendant evil spirits, the power of hell on the earth would be immeasurably increased. The power of a wicked companion in the flesh is great; but the power of an evil spirit enthroned in your bosom, possessed of your entire memory, and governing from his more interior stand-point every movement of your brain, would be fearful indeed!” “No,” he continued; “it is the mercy of the Lord which in the present evil state of the world keeps these two realms of being from a conscious intermingling. The offices and uses of the two worlds are different; one begins where the other ends. To throw them together would be to produce inextricable confusion, to destroy free-agency, to confound good and evil, to thwart regeneration, to arrest the judgment, to close heaven and to open hell. “All this can only be made clear to you by a thorough system of religious philosophy, embracing a true psychology and the organic relations of God to the universe, and of the different parts of it to each other. All these will be the subjects of your delightful study, and may possibly be revealed to mankind in some far-off futurity, when men become capable of receiving and utilizing such sublime mysteries. “To seek to penetrate the veil which separates the spiritual from the natural realm, to invite an open intercourse with spirits, to consult them about earthly affairs, is one of the terrible crimes denounced and forbidden in Scripture. It is the secret source of the power and mysteries of magic. To seek such intercourse is perilous to the soul’s best welfare. Therefore it is that consulting with ‘familiar spirits’ is forbidden in the Word. It is forbidden for man’s own good.” “These are new ideas to me,” I said, “and I cannot fully comprehend them. How should I, filled as I am with fallacies which need exposure and removal! But I am appalled, my dear father, at the thought that the world of spirits is so full of evil, and that we enter on a state of fearful explorations, combats, temptations and judgments on leaving the natural world.” “Yes, my son. In heaven only there is rest. There only are perfect peace and order and love. The road to heaven lies through the world of spirits, through its instructions, its purifications, its judgments. The pathway is pleasant and beautiful to the good man; for at every step he lets fall some hateful thing that clung to him in the past, and he rises into new light, new glory, new joy.”