This is natural: we can only conceive of the best of the spiritual by the best we know of the material; we can imagine no musical instrument in the bands of the angels superior to a harp; no weapon better than a sword for the grasp of Gabriel. This disproves not a spiritual and superior state; it simply shows the poverty and paucity of our poor intellectual apparatus, which, like a mirror, reflects only that which is around it, and reflects it imperfectly. Men sometimes think they are mocking spiritual things when it is the imperfection of material nature, (which they set so much store by,) that provokes their ridicule. So, among all the races which went out from this heavenly land, this land of high intelligence, this land of the master race, it was remembered down through the ages, and dwelt upon and sung of until it moved upward from the waters of the Atlantic to the distant skies, and became a spiritual heaven. And the ridges which so strangely connected it with the continents, east and west, became the bridges over which the souls of men must pass to go from earth to heaven. For instance: The Persians believe in this bridge between earth and {p. 386} paradise. In his prayers the penitent in his confession says to this day: "I am wholly without doubt in the existence of the Mazdayaçnian faith; in the coming of the resurrection of the latter body; in the stepping _over the bridge Chinvat_; as well as in the continuance of paradise." The bridge and the land are both indestructible. Over the midst of the Moslem hell stretches the bridge Es-Sirat, "finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword." In the Lyke-Wake Dirge of the English north-country, they sang of The Brig of Dread Na braider than a thread." In Borneo the passage for souls to heaven is across a long tree; it is scarcely practicable to any except those who have killed a man. In Burmah, among the Karens, they tie strings across the rivers, for the ghosts of the dead to pass over to their graves. In Java, a bridge leads across the abyss to the dwelling-place of the gods; the evil-doers fall into the depths _below_. Among the Esquimaux the soul crosses an awful gulf over a stretched rope, until it reaches the abode of "the great female evil spirit below" (beyond?) "the sea." The Ojibways cross to paradise on a great snake, which serves as a bridge. The Choctaw bridge is a slippery pine-log. The South American Manacicas cross on a wooden bridge. Among many of the American tribes, the Milky Way is the bridge to the other world. [1. Poor, "Sanskrit Literature," p. 151.] {p. 387} The Polynesians have no bridge; they pass the chasm in canoes. The Vedic Yama of the Hindoos crossed the rapid waters, and showed the way to our Aryan fathers. The modern Hindoo hopes to get through by holding on to the cow's tail! Even the African tribes, the Guinea negroes, believe that the land of souls can only be reached by crossing a river.