Each soul rears its own dwelling-place, and puts in furnishings which correspond. The objective divine order is good, and only good. Those spectres and distortions which are called wrong, evil, and even hell, which shrivel and blast human lives, are the creations of disorderly and unregulated thought-forces. The beautiful stuff from which both an inner and outer paradise may be builded is strewn around in endless profusion. It is mis-direction which makes it “evil.”
Before demonstrating beauty and perfection, men make educational mistakes, but the mockery and hollowness of failure finally drive them to the Real.
Hell is corrective rather than vindictive, a condition [pg 240]of mind, and not a place. It is as possible in this realm as the next, and Saulus was there. He was a realist, and had lived entirely from the outside. No lighter measure of flames would have sufficed to bring him to himself, and lead him to discover true being.
Punishment is kindly in its mission to the world. Man would fain sever cause and effect, but God has bound them together. Had not a flame in the soul of Saulus broken in upon his persecutions, they would not have been arrested.
Purifying fires reduce the Counterfeit to ashes, and then man is revealed to himself in his inmost and divine image. If evil were an objective Reality, when would be its end? Thanks to the Universal Order, it is but a subjective disciplinary experience, and carries within the seeds of its own limitation and final dissolution.
Mingled with the agony which made up the weary days and nights of the journey, Saulus had brief ecstatic upliftments and visions. Often they would pass into short trances, when he would lose all sense of time and surrounding, and dwell in the realm of the unseen. His violent transitions, often accompanied by some physical epileptic symptoms, were a source of great wonder to his companions, who were exceedingly superstitious concerning such weird phenomena. Was he possessed at times of good and evil spirits, or was he on the verge of lunacy?
The strange and ungovernable moods of Saulus, with their sharp contradictions, greatly undermined his leadership, and the ardor of his attendants was visibly damp[pg 241]ened. A few secretly cursed the day upon which they joined the crusade. That aforetime unfaltering hero, who with iron will had inspired them in former days, was broken, and almost feeble. Courage alternated with violent and foolish fears. He heard pursuers upon his track, and saw faces and Shapes that were unshared in the experience of his comrades. Fierce outbursts of the spirit of persecution were followed by fits of moaning and weeping. When he came out of his trances, he was at a loss to know whether he had been out of the body or in the body.
It seemed as though Titanic forces within the soul of Saulus were battling for its possession, with varying victory and defeat. What direction will this tremendous soul-force finally take? An Inner Spirit was expanding which threatened to burst the bonds and standards of the outer world. Education, religion, custom, and ceremonial obligation quivered in the balance.
The beautiful city of the East was now in the immediate foreground. But with all its loveliness, it stood forth as the embodiment of continued persecution and death. That shaft pierced between the joints of the soul’s armor and went home. Saulus was struck through and through by a shock of spiritual electricity. The overstrained tension of the bond which held him to the Old snapped under the stress of the terrible vision.[8]
The flame of the Inner Spirit which so long had smouldered, burst forth, consuming the outer shell of “wood, hay, and stubble!”