After these things we were taken up another high mountain, whence we had a view of all the kingdoms in the world of spirits at once. Hither it was that Jesus was carried by the evil spirit who offered him all this power and glory, if he would fall down and worship him. There is no mountain in the natural world from which such an outlook were possible.
“This great height,” said my father, “represents the infernal sphere of self-aggrandizement, which aspires to universal dominion. It is that ambition which corrodes the heart with envious passion so long as anything remains unconquered. This spirit is common to nations and individuals, to the greatest and the least. This mountain rears its awful summit in every human breast. This is the spiritual mountain which is to be cast into the sea by faith.”
Looking down, I now beheld a city of Rome as before I had seen a city of Jerusalem. Beautiful, shadowy pictures of cities, homes of spirits, vastly magnified and made glorious with ethereal colors! Man cannot imagine the splendid creations which spirits can instantaneously produce from the plastic substance of the spiritual world. [pg 215]These cities and countries, however, are peculiar to the intermediate state. They do not exist in heaven.
The Romans risen from the dead had reconstructed their imperial city of precious stones, so that it always shone from afar as if some grand illumination were going on, whose splendors were again reflected from the clouds which floated above it.
We looked into this marvelous city, its capital and palaces, its temples and amphitheatres. The great avenues were crowded with a vast and gorgeous procession. Many kings and queens and nobles were walking in chains, brought as prisoners from so many conquered countries. The treasures of these plundered captives were borne by thousands of slaves of all colors and nationalities, in massive and curiously-carved vessels of gold and silver. Specimens of wild animals from all regions of the Roman world, drawn in gilded cages, and of the more wonderful plants and flowers carried upon the shoulders of men, and screened from the sun by flaming canopies of silk, added to the picturesqueness and grandeur of the scene.
The Roman senators, generals and magnates were seen heading the different divisions of this vast multitude, riding in blazing chariots drawn by superb horses richly caparisoned. On both sides of the captives marched the victorious armies of Rome; so that the very air above them was golden with the flash of helmets, spears and shields, and the gleam of Roman eagles.
These were the spirits of that vain-glorious and indomitable race who had changed the geography of the natural world, and were now celebrating their victories with transcendent magnificence in the intermediate state. The sphere [pg 216]of their interior character was wafted to my spiritual perceptions, and I felt as I did in the Hall of Apollo when Hortensius and his guests fixed their haughty and contemptuous gaze upon Anthony and myself.
“How unutterably base, cruel and sensual,” exclaimed my father, “is the spirit of man when he loves himself supremely, and overreaches and overrides his fellow-creatures. Behold the spiritual side to this magnificent exterior!”
Thereupon the light from a higher sphere streamed down, and the pomp, the glory, the beauty of the whole scene disappeared. We beheld a vast crowd of beggars in filthy rags, and a confused heap of low buildings made of mud and straw. The proud and fierce Romans were all slaves themselves, wearing long chains and driven by infernal spirits in the shape of grinning apes. Where the Capitol had stood, appeared a pool of blood-colored water, in which a dragon of hideous dimensions lay, spouting from his mouth a stream of fire. A lurid twilight hung over all, prognosticating a wild and tempestuous night.