The Spiritualist 1ms done away with a literal Kingdom of Heaven - its walls of brass, its streets of gold, its gates of pearl, its throne of alabaster - and declares to the theologian that those terms are symbolic and not literal, and by no means express the spiritual kingdom. The Spiritualist has done away with the literal kingdom of hell-fire, its lake of brimstone, the literal Gehenna, and substitutes instead a state or condition of the mind which he declares must be the real hell.

If this has been accomplished in the light of spiritual teaching, is there not still as much danger of the Spiritualists drifting into a literal heaven or a literal hell as the theologian whom he criticised with his first teaching?

If the realm of the spirit is a realm of organic life, then it must be subject to heat and cold, to the influence of the sun's rays, to the law of gravitation, and whatever affects the substances of the earth and the planets. If it be thus situated, it is more material, if possible., than the Kingdom of Heaven which the theologian has pictured.

When a man conies to you in abject misery, you do not see the misery on his clothing unless it be the misery of poverty that can afford no better raiment. You do not always see it depicted upon his countenance, but when you enter into his thought, when he takes you into his confidence, he says: "I am in hell." What is that hell ? It is a state of unhappiness, which, if he were in spirit life to-morrow, would probably accompany him there and constitute, in spiritual existence, his state.

If a man comes to you surrounded by poor conditions in earthly life, with barely subsistence enough upon which the body can feed from day to day, and still he says to you: " I am perfectly happy, I am in heaven," you certainly do not attribute that to his physical surroundings, nor is it any part of his physical organic structure. If he passes into spirit life to-morrow, he takes that heaven with him, and it constitutes the realm of life in which he there lives.

The Spiritualist is prone, in presenting the spiritual world so that it shall seem real to humanity, to mistake substance and material life, organic and literal life, for reality. By far the greater portion and only portion of your real life to-day, at this instant, is not the surroundings, is not this assembly, not your clothing, nor the seats that you occupy, not the bodies that are visible to one another, but the thought that lies concealed in your hearts and minds, which makes up the world or entity that you inhabit; and you gaze out on these surrounding scenes, not with reference to their existence merely, but with reference to your comprehension of them. The man of narrow views and limited ideas, deficient in thought and culture, and combination of color and size, sees everything perverted by that lack of comprehension; while he who has clearness of ideas, sees the world of matter with reference to his conception and not with reference to the material world itself.

Man's existence upon the earth is an ideal existence; is the result of the thought that precedes him. Man is more than a chemical compound, which eats, drinks, sleeps and propagates itself, and then passes away.

That which constitutes humanity upon the earth is the broad, ideal realm that beautifies what it touches, shapes matter into forms adapted to its ideal, trains the elements that are around man, and brings them into subjection to his thought .and reason, making a realm of supernatural or real existence within, in the midst of this material world.

There have been given various discourses illustrating the fact that matter is not continuous in its organization, that it cannot be relied upon in its appearance to the senses; that it can be rendered invisible and visible alike, without the agency or aid of material law, and that if you predicate existence upon the sphere of material life within, man's existence nmst dwindle to the narrow sphere that is occupied by the atom, instead of the infinite realm occupied by the soul.

I know of no reason why Spiritualists should make the standards of life material. I know of no reason why the Spiritualist should confine him or herself to this worship of matter that constitutes organic expression, instead of the realm of spirit that constitutes the source of life.

It is well enough for the Materialist, who surmises that there is no realm of spirit, to endeavor to explain all the phenomena in human life by the standards of so-called material science. But it is certainly a work of supererogation for the Spritualist who believes in a spiritual standard of existence, who comprehends that the spirit is the source of life, and who, if there is an existence beyond the material life, must know that that existence is superior to the material life, and, therefore, not dependent upon it - we say that it is superfluous for him to make the standards of existence material instead of spiritual.

The great proposition, therefore, underlying all this, is: must anything be material in order to be real? And we answer emphatically, conclusively and forever, no ! Reality is not materiality. If so, there is nothing real in life; there is nothing in aspiration; there is nothing in any portion of human life or history. If matter be the only reality, then that which is not thought, which is not creation, which is not law, nor life, nor intelligence, must be the only enduring and real thing in the universe. To be real, a thing must be related to and form a part of that which is eternal. To be real, anything must exist with reference to the source of being. To be real, there must be indestructibility, and this does not apply to any form, combination or law of material existence. The very word "substance," which applies to that of which the earth is made, and which is a term used to express an inferior condition, is that which is beneath, that which is less than the something which is above and beyond that; to be real, something must not be substance, but must be the superior, the source, the higher, that which is beyond, that which is above, that which is innermost to the material life.