June 29, 1882:

" Since I have been inducted into higher light and blessed with the true knowledge I have been utterly amazed in reviewing my writings, resulting in the discovery of two facts, namely, their prolixity in matter and stupendousness in folly. It seems to me now as almost utterly incredible that in my efforts at the spiritual interpretation of the scriptures I should have written so many absolutely silly and unmeaning things. It becomes my duty, and I can not be happy without it, to make this declaration, however humiliating it may be to me, viewed from your standpoint, but the truth and the peace, happiness and progress of my spirit require it. No work was ever written but what an ingenious metaphysician might not twist out of its every paragraph an assumed interior and mysterious meaning.

"But, after all, I was fortuitous in advancing many ennobling and wholesome truths. In all that I wrote I take greater pride and unto myself much rejoicing in my assaults upon the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone, and in my enjoining love to the neighbor. However, to believe in and teach the doctrine of love one to another, or Move thy neighbor as thyself,' does not require an inspiration from heaven. It is the doctrine taught by universal nature and in-worked in the web and woof of human nature. To realize and understand it we have only to become even partially civilized and to commune with nature and ourselves.

" A great portion of my life has been devoted to secular pursuits and the study of natural science. I also possessed some inventive genius, and during my purely secular career I was always contemplating, by silent meditation, employing the early part of my life in the study of the properties of the human soul and its relation to the Lord and human life. Therefore when I came to engage the subject, it was not a spontaneous impulsion to it, as some have supposed, although it was immediately attended and characterized by a degree of spiritual illumination and inspiration. I did not approach the examination of the subject wholly free and untrammeled by prejudice and uninfluenced by bias. I had previously conceived thoroughly deep convictions relating to this subject, and I now know no amount of spiritual aid could have possibly eradicated them sufficiently to have allowed the presentation of the plain, unadulterated truth.

" Oh, how effectually are we enslaved by education, association and mental training. The man who can overcome them in the pursuit of truth is far superior in all that goes to make up true manhood to the crowned heads and pampered ones of earth ; yea, he is not only grand and noble in the full stature of his manhood, but he is more—he is godlike."

July 3,1882:

" I do not affirm the non-existence of heaven and hell, but what I would be understood as affirming is their non-existence as separate, independent and fixed localities. If you will interpret heaven to mean happiness, and hell its opposite, that is, misery, we can fully agree, for this interpretation implies what is veritably true, namely, that they are conditions, and not localities. As conditions they not only exist in the spiritual world, but also in the sensual or material, and apply to both embodied and disembodied man.

"It is related that Jesus said, 'The kingdom of heaven is within you,' and never was truth more completely and potently uttered. At the time he was talking to men in the body, and to them he declares, ' The kingdom of heaven is within you.'

" If he is entitled to credit as an authority on the subject, and Christians certainly will not gainsay it, then it is quite clear that heaven, being in the human, spiritual beings is as a locality nowhere else. And inasmuch as it could not exist in the human being as a location, for this would give us millions upon in-, numerable millions of localized heavens, one for each breathing human embodied man, to become destroyed at the death of each, which is too absurd to be seriously discussed, it must necessarily follow, and as clear as the sunlight of heaven, that whatever that kingdom may in fact be, it is simply and absolutely a condition. And we can therefore readily see that as a condition, different with every human being, owing to the moral status and spiritual development of each, it perpetuates itself as truly and fully as does the spirit itself survive the dissolution of the aggregated physical atoms and forces of the material body, and moreover accompanies the real man into the spiritual world. So with its opposite—hell.

" If this is conceded, and no Christian can deny it with any degree of consistency, for the moment he does he dishonors Jesus as an authority, then the whole foundation of a local permanent hell is swept away, and the loathsome superstructure erected thereupon falls to the ground forever.

"Heaven and hell, viewed in any sense, are oppo-sites, and wherever they exist they must exist simultaneously, for some are in heaven and some in hell all the time, and therefore if the kingdom of heaven is in the children of men, so also must be the kingdom of hell, or it does not exist at all.

" With my limited power I can not elaborate this point, or even present it as I should like to, and you must be content with a bare and imperfect statement."