It would not be consistent with the justice or with the goodness of God to sentence to eternal suffering those who may have encountered obstacles to their improvement independent of their will, and resulting from the very nature of the conditions in which they found themselves placed. If the fate of mankind were irrevocably fixed after death. God would not have weighed the actions of all in the same scales, and would not have treated them with impartiality.

The doctrine of reincarnation-that is to say, the doctrine which proclaims that men have many successive existence-is the only one which answers to the idea we form to ourselves of the justice of God in regard to those who are placed, by circumstances over which they have no control, in conditions unfavourable to their moral advancement ; the only one which can explain the future, and furnish us with a sound basis for our hopes. because it offers us the means of redeeming our errors through new trials. This doctrine is Indicated by the teachings of reason, as well as by those of our spirit-instructors.

He who is conscious of his own inferiority derives a consoling hope from the doctrine of reincarnation. If he believes in the justice of God, he cannot hope to be placed, at once and for all eternity, on a level with those who have made a better use of life than he has done but the knowledge that this inferiority will not exclude him for ever from the supreme felicity, and that he will be able to conquer this felicity through new efforts, revives his courage and sustains his energy. who does not regret, at the end of his career. that the experience he has acquired should have come too late to allow of his turning it to useful account? This tardily acquired experience will not be lost for him ; he will profit by it in a new' corporeal life.

The purification of spirits determines the moral excellence of the corporeal beings in whom they are incarnated. The animal passions become weaker, and selfishness gives place to the sentiment of fraternity.

Thus, in worlds of higher degree than our earth, wars are unknown, because no one thinks of doing harm to his fellow-beings, and there is consequently no motive for hatred or discord. The foresight of their future, which is intuitive in the people of those worlds, and the sense of security resulting from a conscience void of remorse, cause them to look forward to death without fear, as being simply a process of transformation, the approach of which they perceive without the sightest uneasiness.

The duration of a lifetime, in the different worlds, appears to be proportionate to the degree of moral and physical superiority of each world and this is perfectly consonant with reason. The less material is the body, the less subject is it to the vicissitudes which disorganise it; the purer the spirit, the less subject is it to the passions which undermine and destroy it. This correspondence between moral and physical conditions is a proof of the beneficence of providential law, even in worlds of low degree; as the duration of the suffering which is the characteristic of life in those worlds is thus rendered proportionally shorter.

The size of planets, and their distance from the sun, have no necessary relation with their degree of advancement for Venus is said to he more advanced than the earth, and Saturn is declared to be less advanced than Jupiter.

The souls of many persons well known on this earth are said to be reincarnated in Jupiter, one of the worlds nearest to perfection; and much surprise has been felt on hearing it stated that persons who, when here, were not supposed to merit such a favour, should have been admitted into so advanced a globe. But there is nothing in this fact that need surprise us, if we consider, first, that certain spirits who have inhabited this planet may nave been sent hither in fulfilment of a mission which, to our eyes, did not seem to place them in the foremost rank secondly, that they may have had, between their lives here and in Jupiter, intermediary existences in which they have advanced ; and thirdly, that there are innumerable degrees of development in that world as in this one, and that there may be as much difference between these degrees as there is, amongst us, between the savage and the civilised man. It no more follows that a spirit is on a level with the most advanced beings of Jupiter because he inhabits that planet than it follows that an ignoramus is on a level with a philosopher because he inhabits the same town.

The conditions of longevity, also, are as various in other worlds as they are on our earth and no comparison can be established between the ages of those who inhabit them. A person who had died some years previously, on being evoked, stated that he had been incarnated for six months in a world the name of which is unknown to us. Being questioned as to his age in that world, he replied, "that is a point which I am unable to decide ; because, in the first place, we do not count time in the same way as you do, and, in the next place, our mode of existence is not the same as yours. Our development is much more rapid in this world; for, although it is only six of your months since I came here, I may say that, as regards intelligence, I am about what one usually is at the age of thirty in your earth."

A great number of similar replies have been given by other spirits; and these statements contain nothing improbable. Do we not see upon our earth a host of animals that acquire their normal development in the course of a few months? Why should not men do the same in other spheres? And it is to be remarked, moreover, that the degree of development acquired by a man at the age of thirty upon the earth may be only a sort of Infancy in comparison with what he is destined to arrive at in worlds of higher degree. Short-sighted indeed are they who look upon our present selves as being in all respects the normal type of creation: and to suppose that there can be no other modes of existence than our present one, is, in soothe, a strange narrowing of our idea of the possibilities of the divine action.