we ascend, the air grows colder, until at the height of forty-five miles the cold must be in the neighborhood of three thousand degrees below zero. Now, spirits frequently pass through this—they must pass through it to reach us, yet they are unaffected thereby, for the reason that they are superior to all material influences.
Moses, Elias, the spiritual visitants of the Patriarchs, of the man of Uz, he whom John saw,—and others, had to come through this intense cold; and the fact that they did so proves that material forces have but little, if any effect upon spirit. It therefore defies one extreme, and consequently ought the other. It does so. For the spirits seen walking about in the fiery furnace, which was heated seven times hotter than its wont, for the especial grilling of Messieurs Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, bade defiance to fire;—a fatal fact against the theory of a physical hell—the spirits proving not only water, ice, and wind, but fire-proof also!
Continuing my scrutiny, I observed that never a drop of rain fell upon the centre of the heads of either of the aerial party: for just over the crown of every human being in the body is a thick bone; out of the body, a magnetic shield, impenetrable by anything whatever; for every drop of rain slides off it, as from an iron roof. Place a spirit under a stream of falling water, and the central globe would instantly condense to infinitesimal proportions, so firmly embraced by its shield as to resemble the original monad; nor could water ever come in contact with it, any more than the same water could come in contact with a plate of iron at a white heat, which every one knows is a physical impossibility. I humbly trust that I have been understood.
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