Modern Spiritualism Briefly Tested by Scripture 125 itualized particles given off by tfie earth. Every blade of grass, every tiny flower, shrub and tree, insect and animal, by their lives cause matter to become refined and spiritualized, which then ascends high above the clouds, and there spreads out in a broad belt, and surrounds the earth, like the rings of Saturn surround that planet. There are a great number of these rings or zones, one beyond the other, which may be called spirit worlds” {"Outlines,” p. 33). Then we are told in "Outlines” that in the spirit-world souls may do wrong there, as they do here. When they do, they reap what they sow, and are punished, and thus they are gradually purified and blessed—they become their own saviours, though why they should need to be saved seems a mystery. We read also that after death, if the spiritual life is kind, and gentle and good, the grosser elements of the spiritual body are eliminated, leaving the body more refined and spir itual; so that it can rise into a higher zone, which, in its turn, is composed of the more refined and spiritualized elements eliminated from this higher zone, and the third zone is com posed of the still more refined and spiritualized elements from the second, and so on. And yet people who are too “clever” to believe the Bible are so foolish as to believe such bombastic nonsense put forward without one atom of proof. X. SHIRKS AWFUL PROBLEMS In "Outlines,” while there is a stout refusal of the doc trine of total depravity, and the fall of man is denied,* there is no attempt whatever to adequately explain the awful sor row and suffering in this world, and the still more awful sor row of death. We are told God is too good to allow man’s fall or the existence of what is malevolent, like Satan and his demons; but the present awful state of things, which God has *“Thus, by his [man’s I intellectual faculties, moral powers, and spiritual nature, he is ‘God manifest in the flesh.’ ”— "O u tlines .”
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