to speak) would probably appear at a distance from the spirits of our earth. Thus the spiritual worlds, formed from the departed spirits of the different planets, would probably appear distant from each other, and in various different situations, somewhat as the planets themselves now appear in different places in our nocturnal sky. "In my Father's house are many mansions," said the Saviour. The heavens of the good after death may perhaps be as numerous and various as the different genera and species of goodness existing with the inhabitants of all the different worlds in the universe. In the Scriptures, the term is used continually in the plural number, as if to convey the distinct idea of there being many and various societies of the good; this we read, "The heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's;" "Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens:" and so in other passages.
But now where are we? In speaking of the planet Neptune, we are still within the limits of our own solar system. This system, however, is but one of thousands. Every twinkling star in the heavens is a sun, like our own, and the centre, doubtless, of a similar system,—giving light to numerous planetary worlds revolving round it. And, by parity of reasoning, each of these orbs must have its own spiritual world, into which are continually pouring, through the gates of death, the inhabitants of those orbs, the good forming a heaven, and the evil, a hell, of their own. The star Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, the size of which, it has been estimated, cannot be much less than fourteen times that of our sun—what a grand and beautiful system of planets must be sweeping round that brilliant orb! And equally grand must be the system of spiri-
