We may thus conceive how a soul, on entering upon this new condition, must find its own place or state; if its thoughts and aspirations here have been heavenward, and its pursuits noble, its conditions will be heavenly. The contemplation of God’s works, seen not as by our mortal eyes, but in their beauty and their truth and ever-glowing sentiments of love and gratitude—and, for aught we know, good offices to souls in need—would constitute a suitable heaven or happiness for such a being; an incapacity for such pleasures, and the absence of all others, would constitute a negative state, in which the chief suffering would consist in mournful regrets and a vague longing for something better, which the untrained soul, that never lifted itself from the earth, knows not how to seek; while malignant passions and unquenchable desires would constitute the appropriate hell of the wicked; for we must remember, that although a spirit is independent of those physical laws which are the conditions of matter, the moral law, which is indestructible, belongs peculiarly to it—that is, to the spirit—and is inseparable from it. We must next remember, that this earthly body we inhabit is more or less a mask, by means of which we conceal from each other those thoughts which, if constantly exposed, would unfit us for living in community; but when we die, this mask falls away, and the truth shows nakedly: there is no more disguise; we appear as we are—spirits of light, or spirits of darkness;—and there can be no difficulty, I should think, in conceiving this, since we know that even our present opaque and comparatively inflexible features, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, will be the index of the mind; and that the expression of the face is gradually moulded to the fashion of the thoughts. How much more must this be the case with the fluent and diaphanous body which we expect is to succeed the fleshly one!