mediate world of spirits, where they are judged, instructed, disciplined and prepared for their final home. This is a gradual work, requiring many changes of state, answering to a lapse of time with us. When we consider the immense number constantly entering the spiritual world, one, it has been estimated, with every swing of the pendulum; when we consider the state of most, their ignorance of spiritual things, their involvement in complex thoughts and affections, and how few of even the interiorly good are in the knowledge and life necessary to bring their exterior life into harmony and correspondence with their interior will and purpose; the changes, and the lapse of time necessary for the working out of the interior love into the whole exterior life and thought,—we may form some conception of the multitudinous population of the world of spirits, and the complex influences upon human minds of which it is the source. It is in immediate association with this world of recently departed spirits, that man as to his spirit lives.
The first state of man in the world of spirits is similar to his state in society here, except an increased sense of life and freedom above what he enjoyed in this world. He
