p. 142 | The Spirits in Prison

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N.Y. · Dec 19, 1854

The Spirits in Prison

“We are naturally prone to speculation and show a fondness for the marvelous. Hence we are delighted with the theme of abstract spirits’ enjoying the blessings of Heaven, and undergoing the torments of Hell. We muster up in our imaginations identity without form or substance. This is a sublime mystery in which we delight, because we cannot begin to explain or understand the existence of form without substance—and it is form that gives identity. We know nothing of individuality apart from form. But in this sublime and mysterious doctrine of Heaven and Hell inhabited by abstract spirits, with susceptibility of pain or pleasure, we do away the necessity of a resurrection, or of a future Judgment, or at least, we put it out of our power to show a necessity for a resurrection or a Judgment, having already given to naked or abstract spirits, all the properties we can possibly conceive of, as belonging to resurrected bodies when re-inhabited by their spirits.

But why do I speak of spirits as belonging to bodies, when it is proved that spirits exist independent of bodies—and that these abstract spirits are the spirits of men. In fact, it is said that these spirits are the men themselves, and that they can be known when separate from the bodies which they once inhabited. These things being so, it is hard to show the use of bodies—and we might be led to suppose that the spirits of men existed before their bodies, and come to the conclusion that as many men existed before the creation of man as there have since.

But if we stagger into this sublime and mysterious doctrine, we are then driven into the vulgar notion that the bodies and spirits of men come into existence at the same time, and that they grow together, the spirits as well as the bodies, and that there are imperfect spirits of men, such as are not full grown, thus we suppose that spirits can be improved as well as bodies. But whether they are improved when they are separated from the body or not, is a matter of nice argument, if they are, they can perform deeds without the body, and must be judged for the deeds done out of the body, as well as for the deeds done in the body. But as we have no information of the accountability of abstract spirits—we might be led to doubt their power of action, and if they are destitute of that power, I know what our decision would be if they were bodies instead of spirits, we should say they were dead.”—Prim. Christian.