The words of Christ pierced the scribes and pharisees and hyprocrites of the Jewish dispensation because He said: " He who thinks an evil hath committed it already; he who covets his neighbor's goods hath already stolen; and he who is angry with his brother hath already committed murder." Do you not see the application, that in the spirit it is not the deed but the thought; it is not the expression but the state?

For certain orders of thievery, the world has been constrained to admit that there are some people who cannot resist taking that which is not their own, even if they have no use for it. Extend this law a little further and you include the whole speculative tendency of humanity, a tendency that is fostered by what is termed "legitimate business enterprise." The competition in trade which engenders this feeling even in the boy of six or seven years of age, finally extends itself in morbid natures to take things whether needed or not. If man's necessities were the limit to his avarice then there would be, perhaps, some plea for him; but the millionaire can only use upon his own person a certain proportion of wealth, and the rest must either go to oppress or benefit others. Usually it goes to oppress others, making a magnitude of power which is as much greater than any den of thieves in any crowded city , as a sanctioned force is greater than an illegitimate force; as much greater for wrong and for robbing the poor man, than the combined bandits of the world, as is a king more powerful with his armies and minions than the peasant who crawls at his feet. Do not mistake these forces, therefore; the kleptomaniac passes into the spiritual state in the shadow of his one fault, and side by side with him there may be banker, millionaire or monarch, whose shadow is ten thousand times deeper, and whom he can benefit in moral ways; for aware of his one weakness which has been thrust and forced upon all his life by his surroundings, he is intent, perhaps, upon overcoming that. But he who receives the sanction of the world for what he does, is liable to awaken in spiritual existence with a consciousness that his moral turpitude was even greater than the other.

There are kinds of crimes that are punishable by the very nature of human law beyond their deserts, and in ways that they do not deserve, and which, therefore, are not to be considered, separately in spiritual states. All murders are not committed under the same circumstances; all murderers are not of equal moral or spiritual decree; all do not commit the act with a consciousness of what they are doing, or with that degree of moral turpitude which is beyond the consciousness of crime. But whichever degree it is he who slays a single life either in anger, for greed or for self-defense, we consider to be on an equal plane; and he who slays his brother with a full conciousness of the moral law; under the sanction of a court of justice, though he may not be aware of the fact, is reprehensible for the crime of murder. For if human life is valuable, if it is not given to one man to slay another for his gold, then it is not given to any man to slay another to protect gold, to save property. If there is anything that society can do in this case it is to consider the criminal irresponsible, and therefore to exercise the same authority that the surgeon and physician do in the hospital.

The whole problem of the moral universe hinges here: Either man can justly claim the province of judgment, and exercise it over his fellow-men individually or collectively, as the case may be, or the whole of that realm must be relegated to moral law and moral forces that were epitomized in the Sermon on the Mount, and have never been experimentally tried in any government of earth. Either you have the right to take the law into your own hands, or by the judiciary to delegate others to do it, or the law of moral judgment is beyond human ability to span. While perhaps you may withhold the criminal from violence or perpetration of his wrong as you would the inebriate and the maniac, you have no right to take the life of either.

Herein the spiritual world presents a singular contrast. No judgment seats, no judicial tribunals assemble there none indeed to practice the farce of sitting in judgment upon another's moral nature.

In the moral power of the spiritual kingdom, that which is good, that which is transparent, that which is pure and beautiful, radiates as light shining into the darkness of each individual life - more or less diseased - and shows where the darkness is. The kleptomaniacs, therefore, are of the one spot, the one moral infirmity. As a man with a cancer upon his face, or some dreadful disease, would fain hide himself from the gaze of his fellow-men, retiring voluntarily to the hospital that he may be treated of that which causes him to be a bane and an eye-sore to others, so he who has some cankerous spot upon his moral nature does not seek in spirit life to throw- this broadcast upon the shining raiment of those who stand without condemnation and without fear, watching with only pitying eyes this victim of moral disease, but voluntarily flies to the physician, Christ, and asks whence and where the healing can come that will cure this wound upon his spirit. And there are but few lives so perfect, few natures so free from blemish that, they do not also seek the physician; for when you stand in the presence of a very bright and trying light, it shows not only all the beauties but glaringly reveals all imperfections in form and feature. And when in the clear white light of the spirit you stand, also there are none who can hear without shrinking that test of their moral nature, none who can say I am complete and without blemish. Some selfishness lurks in your own natures, some turbid stream of secret passion, something that you would fain hide from the eyes of angels; and you, feeling the need of the physician yourself, have no time to censure or condemn others.