Obsessions being adverse, inauspicious, psychological influences, cast upon the organism-being the thoughts and feelings of individuals controlled by such spirits as are necessitated in accordance with the immutable laws of compensation to range for a season the lower plains of life-the preventive lies in good health, good nature and a good life; in the cultivation of broad, loving, aspirational aims-a firmness of moral principle-a determined purpose to do, dare, live the right-a calm trust in the overshadowing presence of the Infinite, and the holy watch-care of those beautiful angels that delight to do the will of heaven. Ill-health, nervous affections, dejection, despair, suspicion, jealousies, expose the subject to obsessions, or they offer suitable conditions for demons inclined to fun, mischief or base schemings, to carry out their selfish plans. Truth attracts the true, wisdom the wise, love the lovely, charity the charitable, and purity the pure of all worlds. Kindness and firmness, aspiration and self-reliance, pleasant, physical, social and mental surroundings, with gentle, harmonizing, magnetic influences from circles of spirit-electricians through noble, pure-minded media-these are the remedies. Speak to the obsessing powers as men, brothers, friends-reason with them as members of a common Father's family, and, at the same time, demagnetizing the subject, bring a healthier, purer magnetism, and calmer, higher and more elevating influences to the patient's relief. Jesus' wonderful power consisted in this: He was the child of love-sweet in his nature-harmonial in organization-intuitive and inspirational-consecrated and attended by a "legion of angels"; all of which peculiarly fitted him to "cast out demons"-that is, to dissever by will-power, voice and touch, aided by his angels, the magnetic relations woven by low spirits around the unfortunate media of his time. He "cast seven demons" out of Mary Magdalenthat is, he cut the electric chains, or demagnetizing, dissipated the aural emanations thrown about this woman, thus destroying the sympathetic relations and psychological influences thrust upon and into the very tissues of her being by those seven demons-spirits. Those who lack in organic balance and symmetry of mental expression, being negative, and hence sensitive and psychologically mediumistic, are the more often subjects of disorderly control, during the changes incident to development. Such excite our sympathy. We would brush away every tear-relieve them of every thorn-thrust; but in no possible way would we convey the thought of their nonresponsibility. All mortals, as conscious reasoning beings, are the subjects of individual responsibility. Of those most gifted, the more is required. It is enough to make good men sad and angels weep to see the efforts in given directions, to fasten all the shortcomings of media upon the spirits; thus virtually making the spirit-world a scape-goat for all the ills of this! Influence is not absolute control. Socrates and Jesus put forth every possible power to perfect themselves in the highest knowledge and freshest mental philosophy of their time. The millions of American Spiritualists, when more critically studying the principles of life, the necessity of temperamental adaptation, the potency of psychologic force, the attractive and repellant relations of mind to mind, (whether in or out of human bodies), and the special conditions as well as the general laws connected with and governing mediumship, will see the indispensability of investigating and comprehending science, the importance of system, order, purity of purpose, religious association, consecration to the best work of the age, and of living lives so beautiful and heavenly, that angels will delight to daily put our hands into the shining palms of theirs, and lead us up to mountains of hourly beatitude. CHAPTER XXXV. HELL. "And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them.”—Bible. "What Hell may be I know not; this I know I cannot lose the presence of the Lord; One arm, Humility, takes hold upon He goes, and better fire-walled Hell with him Than golden-gated Paradise without."-Tauler. Evangelical denominations originally preached the doctrine of literal hell-torments. Rev. Mr. Benson, Methodist commentator, says: * * "Infinite justice arrests their guilty souls, and confines them in the dark prison of hell, till they have satisfied all its demands by their personal sufferings, which, alas! they can never do. He will exert all his divine attributes to make them as wretched as the capacity of their nature will admit. * * Number the stars in the firmament, the drops of rain, sand on the seashore; and when thou hast finished the calculation, sit down and number up the ages of woe. Let every star, every drop, every grain of sand, represent one million of tormenting ages. And know that as many more millions still remain behind, and yet as many more behind these, and so on without end." The Rev. Mr. Ambrose, in a discourse entitled "Doomsday," pictures the torments of lost souls thus: "When the damned have drunken down whole draughts of brimstone one day, they must do the same another day. The eye shall be tormented with the sight of devils, the ears with the hideous yellings and outcries of the damned in flames, the nostrils shall be smothered, as it were, with brimstone; the tongue, the hand, the foot, and every part, shall fry in flames." Rev. Mr. Emmons wrote in his series of sermons: "The happiness of the elect in heaven will, in part, consist in witnessing the torments of the damned in hell. And among these it may be their own children, parents, husbands, wives, and friends on earth. One part of the business of the blessed is to celebrate the doctrine of reprobation. While the decree of reprobation is eternally executing on the vessels of wrath, the smoke of their torment will be eternally ascending in view of the vessels of mercy, who, instead of taking the part of those miserable objects, will say, 'Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord!”— Emmons's Sermons, xvi. "When they (the saints) shall see how great the misery is from which God hath saved them, and how great a difference he hath made between their state and the state of others who were by nature, and perhaps by practice, no more sinful and ill-deserving than they, it will give them more a sense of the wonderfulness of God's grace to them. Every time they look upon the damned, it will excite in them a lively and admiring sense of the grace of God in making them so to differ. The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever."—Ib., Sermon xi. Rev. Mr. Edwards penned these sentiments in his "Practical Sermons: " "The saints in glory will be far more sensible how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how terrible the sufferings of the damned are, yet this will be no occasion of grief to them, but rejoicing. They will not be sorry for the damned; it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them, but on the contrary, when they see this sight, it will occasion rejoicing, and excite them to joyful praises." Rev. Thomas Boston, in his "Four-fold State," informs us that "The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the judge in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly husband shall say amen! to the damnation of her who lay in his bosom! The godly parent shall say halleluiah! at the passing of the sentence of their ungodly child. And the godly child shall from the heart approve the damnation of his wicked parents who begot him, and the mother who bore him."-p. 336. Rev. Thomas Vincent, a Calvinistic clergyman of the past, indulges in the following strain: "This will fill them (the saints) with astonishing admiration and wondering joy, when they see some of their near relatives going to hell; their fathers, their mothers, their children, their husbands, their wives, their intimate friends and companions, while they themselves are saved! * Those affections they now have for relatives out of Christ will cease; and they will not have the least trouble to see them sentenced to hell, and thrust into the fiery furnace!" * Rev. James Smith, of the American Tract Society, Cincinnati, published the following: "The fire of hell is such that multitudes of tears will not quench it, and length of time will not burn it out. 'The wrath of God abideth; on the rejecter of Christ.-John iii: 36. 66 Oh, eternity! eternity! Who can fathom it? Mariners have their plummet to measure the depths of the sea; but what line or plummet shall we use to fathom the depth of eternity? The breath of the Lord kindles the flames of the pit, (Isa. xxx: 33,) and where shall we find waters to quench those flames? OH, ETERNITY! If all the body of the earth and the sea were turned to sand, and all the space up to the starry heaven were nothing but sand, and if a little bird should come once every thousand years and take away in her bill but a single grain from all that heap of sand, what numberless years and ages must be spent before the whole of that vast quantity would be carried away. Yet if even at the end of all that time the sinner might come out of hell, there would be some hope. But that word FOREVER breaks the heart. The smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever.'" The Rev. Mr. Walworth, son of the formerly distinguished Chancellor Walworth, of New York, in a discourse describing the locality and intensity of hell, said: "The Scriptures had invariably spoken of hell as beneath us, not above or far removed. As heaven was above, and the souls of the righteous were said to ascend to heaven, so the damned descendedwent down into hell. 6 "The rich man, tormented in hell, lifted up his eyes' and saw Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, and to his entreaties for succor and intercession, Abraham had replied, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.' So, too, Christ, in the parable of the marriage feast, said, Take him and bind him hand and foot, and cast him into outer darkness.' "He cited many other texts from Scripture to fix this locality, and deduced, as a conclusion therefrom, that hell must necessarily be in the |