That Future State

In that future state (of the next world), as in the present, there will be demands made upon the spirit-being higher than those imposed by natural law. There, as here, there will of necessity be a social order. This world is a scene of social disorder. Whatever may be the cause of this, one of two things must happen — social harmony must be brought about by moral improvement, or the race must perish. The one thing which is tending to produce a condition of harmony is not knowledge, not invention, not the development of material resources, not the multiplication of means of alleviating the sufferings and adding to the comforts of an earthly life, but the growth of the feeling of brotherhood, promoted by the exercise of the elemental emotions of the spirit. "An emotion is but a frame of mind," says Olston, "a series of mental processes." Making the mind the total of personality leads to this error. "Neither our aesthetic emotions nor our moral sentiments are the product of ratiocination, " says Arthur J. Balfour. The emotions are deeper than the mind. Feeling is not a mental quality. "I have feelings," saysLyman Abbott, "but my pen cannot and will not write feelings; nay, my heart has no mind that can coin them into words." The elemental emotions of the spirit may be summed up in one word, love. Love is the life of harmony. It unites the sexes, it is the bond of the family, it cements friendship, it makes friends of enemies, it forgives the erring, it seeks the common good, it knows no barriers of prejudice, of caste, of tribal, national or racial divisions. It is the one and only force which can master all the other forces of the human spirit and finally reduce to order the confused and conflicting social conditions existing in this world. It is evident that the spirit is here undergoing a moral discipline which may not only qualify it to contribute to the improvement of these present conditions, but also to adapt itself to the changed conditions of the higher sphere it is destined to occupy.

As we have already said, the particular conditions of a future state are unknown to us, but reason combines with consciousness to assure us that its normal condition in general is one of order, making the spirit's environment one of uninterrupted peace and harmony. As the one law of gravitation will preserve the harmony of the material system in which it will find itself, so the one law of love will preserve social harmony. No written decrees will be needed to regulate the intercourse or pursuits of the inhabitants of those celestial regions any more than they are needed to control the movements of the spheres. Love will reign supreme. Knowledge may be increased to an immeasurable extent, the imagination may take flights of inconceivable length and breadth and height and depth, memory may accumulate a store of incalculable treasures, art may find exalted expression in heavenly sights and sounds, but love will out-measure them all, love will appropriate them all, love will use them all, love will transfigure them all. And even the will, now the regnant power in man, will submit to love and own its sway, for love can never go wrong. And so, all the powers which give nobility to man's nature will be crowned by this resplendent attribute of the spirit

"While life and thought and being last,

Or immortality endures."

Some Psychic Problems -W MASLIN FRYSINGER