If the foregoing couplet is not sung by them, they do sing that,

"While the lamp holds out to burn,

The vilest sinner may return."

Can any thing be found in all heathenism as corrupting as the above couplet? It teaches the sinner to pursue his sinful course; "for as long as there is life there is hope." Where is there a person in all orthodoxy who does not believe that somehow, through the suffering of the innocent Nazarene, his guilty soul, all black with crime, will be washed and made white as the driven snow? The dying profligate offers a prayer, sheds a tear, and is immediately ushered into an upperten heaven, and, having taken advantage of the bankrupt law for sin, sits down by the side of the Great Jehovah as pure and good as the most sinless angel. Spiritualists do not believe this: they believe that all must suffer the consequence of their own actions.

"There is no bankrupt law for sin,

Though Pharisee may teach it;

No limitation act steps in,

Though Paul himself might preach it."

There is no " if," "and," or proviso in the matter; the violator of the law can not escape: he must in his own proper person suffer the penalty.

"When you can tread on burning coals,
And never scorch your feet,

Then you may break God's righteous law,
Its penalty not meet."

A familiar story will illustrate our ideas on this subject. It is said that in a distant country, almost nineteen centuries since, there were two individuals of directly opposite characters. One of them went about doing good, pronouncing benedictions on the poor, the sad, and the sorrowing. He made it his business to relieve all suffering under his control, whether moral, mental, spiritual, or physical. The other was a low, vile wretch, who made his living by highway robbery. In short, he was guilty of almost every crime in the calendar.

"Now it happened that these men in their passing away
From earth and its conflicts both died the same day."

These men were both assassinated at the same time; one on account of his crimes, the other in consequence of the prejudice of the people. While in the agonies of death, the murderer turned to the other, supposed by some to be a God, and said, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." The other answered, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise."

Now, we are led to ask, Is it so? Is it just? Did the thief go with Jesus to Paradise that day? If so, what is the difference, so far as the next world is concerned, whether a person is a Jesus or a thief? All have the same reward; the only difference being, one has gone into heaven honorably, while the other has taken advantage of a bankrupt law, and gone in on another's ticket.

Spiritualism does not teach that any person ever did or ever will go to heaven at the event called death.

It teaches that the only way to be in heaven when one passes from this sphere of existence is to die in heaven, and that the only way to die in heaven is to live in heaven, and that the only way to live in heaven is to truly live, doing your duty toward every body and every thing. Spiritualists believe that man will find what he carries, either in this or the other world; that he commences living in the other world where he left off here. If he dies a poor God-forsaken wretch, he will find himself such on the other side.

The poet sings,

"He wept that we might weep;
Each sin demands a tear:
In heaven alone no sin is found,

And there's no weeping there."

But Spiritualism knows of no heaven where "no sin is found." It wants no such place. We ask, we demand, the privilege of sinning to all eternity. Do not mistake us. We do not want to sin; but we do want to prove to angels, to God, and last, though not least, to ourself, that we have no relish for sin: this we can only do by having the gates of sin thrown open, and the privilege of entering extended to us; then, if we refuse, all will know it is because we love the right. If, on the other hand, we are taken into the "heaven where no sin is found," and compelled to do right by a power ab extra, no credit is due us for our rectitude. We were only "the clay in the hands of the potter," the machine: if we run well, the builder, and not the machine, has the credit. With such an arrangement, Al nighty God himself could not tell whether heaven was filled

with angels or devils. Death makes man no better, no worse: each one finds himself, morally and spiritually, on the other side of its stream, where he left himself here. He opens his books where he closed them, commences living where he quit, finds himself surrounded with all the darkness and all the light in the summer-land that he has earned by his life here.

Our religion teaches us, not only that the consequences of our actions must be borne by ourselves, but that there is an eternal punishment for every sin, that every act of man makes its mark, that eternity is too short to wipe out the scars occasioned by sin. "Be sure your sin will find you out," is written in the Bible of the Spiritualist; and "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," is as true to-day as in the first century.

This may be illustrated in the following manner. Two men at the age of forty have to-day passed to the spirit-world. One of them has spent his two-score of years in acquiring a physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual education, and in living out the principles he has learned the other has spent his forty years in drunken, carousing debauchery. He enters the spiritworld with his moral, mental, and spiritual faculties all blunted by his negligence and crime, insomuch that he does not realize that he has a spiritual nature. Perhaps it will take him as long after his passage to spiritlife, as he endured this, to wake up to consciousness enough to realize that he has thrown off the animal, and put on the spiritual body. He will learn sooner or later, by experience, if in no other way, that "though hand join in hand, the sinner can not go unpunished." In connection with this, he will soon see the necessity

of progress. But, during the perhaps thrice forty years that he has been getting these lessons, his friend has been overcoming difficulties. Now he finds himself an almost immeasurable distance behind one by whose side. he ought to stand. He never can reach his friend After the most severe struggle, after years of incessant toil, he settles down with the humiliating reflection, "I am so many years behind one by whose side I should stand! Time will not help me to catch up: moments are graciously given, one comes as soon as another passes; and, though I improve them all, my friend does the same, and thus keeps his distance ahead of me."

Is not that an eternal punishment? Is it not punishment enough? Who would, who could, endure more?

Church systems teach that we are what God makes us: Spiritualism teaches that we are what we make ourselves. Patient reader, which of the two theories is the better calculated to urge its adherents forward to seek and put into practice the principles of harmony and truth? You are the juror. May we ask from you a candid and honest verdict?

That all may be led to see and put into practical use the pure principles which are being kindly vouchsafed to us by the angel-world, is the devout and earnest prayer of the writer of these pages.