This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
IN THE CAVERN.
119

proportions, the soul can never, under any conditions, amalgamate with the body. What the body does, cannot influence the soul more than prison walls influenced the captive; the prison, if badly built or badly looked after, will decay and fall to ruins, and in the same way the body suffers alone for its own neglect. The soul is always pure, for it is a living part of God."

"What of these miserable spirits, though?" again queried the inquisitive Philip.

"Some will be drawn back by desire to earth and become rehabilitated, and then they must either be worse or better."

"And then?"

"Time cures all evil. You will learn more by and by. Meantime, let me show you what the world was, during my last sojourn upon it, before those nations who are considered ancient by modern man and have become merged in later races existed, when what has become ocean was flourishing lands, and where now ice and snow have blocked for ages, the sun shone warm, and fertile forests and gardens beautified a world, even then no longer young, for we were the last of many races, the last of that epoch, which the inspired amongst you get a whisper of from us, and term the golden age."

She rose as she spoke and went before them, the lamp-bearers guarding the group as they passed along the cavern, leaving the hoarse roaring of that bleak sea and those damned spirits behind.