Immaterial pleasure
The sinless joy, - the perfect harmony and immortality
of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness
76:24 without a single bodily pleasure or pain, -
constitutes the only veritable, indestructible
man, whose being is spiritual. This state of existence
76:27 is scientific and intact, - a perfection discernible only
by those who have the final understanding of Christ in
divine Science. Death can never hasten this state of
76:30 existence, for death must be overcome, not submitted to,
before immortality appears.
The recognition of Spirit and of infinity comes not
77:1 suddenly here or hereafter. The pious Polycarp said:
"I cannot turn at once from good to evil." Neither do
77:3 other mortals accomplish the change from error to truth
at a single bound.
Second death
Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense
77:6 until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its
own self-destruction both here and hereafter,
for mortal mind creates its own physical con-
77:9 ditions. Death will occur on the next plane of existence
as on this, until the spiritual understanding of Life is
reached. Then, and not until then, will it be demon-
77:12 strated that "the second death hath no power."
A dream vanishing
The period required for this dream of material life,
embracing its so-called pleasures and pains, to vanish
77:15 from consciousness, "knoweth no man . . .
neither the Son, but the Father." This period
will be of longer or shorter duration according to the
77:18 tenacity of error. Of what advantage, then, would it be
to us, or to the departed, to prolong the material state and
so prolong the illusion either of a soul inert or of a sinning,
77:21 suffering sense, - a so-called mind fettered to matter.
Progress and purgatory
Even if communications from spirits to mortal con-
sciousness were possible, such communications would
77:24 grow beautifully less with every advanced stage
of existence. The departed would gradually
rise above ignorance and materiality, and Spiritualists
77:27 would outgrow their beliefs in material spiritualism.
Spiritism consigns the so-called dead to a state resembling
that of blighted buds, - to a wretched purgatory, where
77:30 the chances of the departed for improvement narrow
into nothing and they return to their old standpoints of
matter.
Unnatural deflections