And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept, arose, "And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." Matt. 27: 52-53.

Taken literally, these verses seem at first thought to uphold the doctrine of the sleep of the dead until the Resurrection morning; but second thought prompts the query: "If the dead so sleep, why this interruption? Is not the doctrine contradicted by it?" Evidently the statement in Matthew is exoteric, as is Paul's doctrine of the sleep of the dead, and, like that doctrine, the statement was suited to a time when little or nothing in respect to post-mortem conditions was known save to the initiated few.

However much one may condemn certain results of spiritual mediumship, the impartial investigator must eventually admit that modern Spiritualism confirms the ancient secret teaching that the physical and the super-physical worlds are in conjunction.

Many sensitive organisms require no great disturbance to throw them out of poise, and even into rapport with the sub-planes of the psychic world. We contend that, in the event which we are considering, this happened because of certain phenomena attendant upon the crucifixion of the Master.

The dead from the "Graves," whose God "is not the God of the dead, but of the living," were the active inhabitants of those planes of being which ordinarily are hidden from human sight.

One effect of the victory of Right, in the World War now behind us, is a steady and rapid rise in the rate of vibration peculiar to each plane of our composite world. This rise originates in man as a composite being, and by him is communicated to the spirit of the Earth. As result, the veils separating the seen from the unseen are growing thinner, so that, within the next decade or two, many of the living "Dead" will be seen of thousands who never claimed clairvoyance. This truth in distorted form appears in Pastor Russell's teaching, for which he claims Scriptural warrant, that soon after 1914 the dead will begin to rise from their graves to people the purified earth for a thousand years.

In the interest of common sense we must modify still more Pastor Russell's doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead. It is but reasonable to argue that the gradually-rising vibration of the Earth, and of the human organism, will cause the supersensible world to emerge gradually from its veil.

Hence, only the few, perhaps the very few, are to have perfect vision; whereas the average individual will see as through a glass darkly, and the materialist and the carnally minded may not see at all. Again, it is probable that, as in most ancient times, the other world is to appear and disappear in accord with the varying bodily or mental states of the observer.

After a certain rate of vibration is attained, no closer conjunction of the two worlds can occur for a long period of time. This because of certain imperfections that persist obstinately both in the physical globe, and in the physical body of man. Evidently the New Jerusalem to be established upon the Earth, is yet of the remote future.