Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, [electronic ...

COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD. 89awards there is no appeal. Punishments arc but the natural consequencesof violated laws; being invariably commensurate with offences, and havereference as W'cU to the reformation of the offender, as to the preventionof future crime.424. The political economy of the spheres has reference only to wealth,"which being unbounded and free as air and light, can of course be appropriatedby each and every member of society, according to his or hercapacity of reception, the supply being always equal to the demand.425. Wealth consists, upon earth, of those objects of human luxuryor taste, which can only be acquired by means of labour and capital.Other things being equal, the value is generally in proportion to the costincurred in the production. But in the spheres, such objects existing inprofusion, the supply is of course always equal to the demand, though noless necessary than the air which you breathe ; like it, they have nomarketable value ; there is no one who has occasion to buy, all beingabundantly supplied from a common inexhaustible stock.42G. Hence it will appear that wo have no occasion for gold or silver,which pcrisheth with the using, but the currency of moral and intellectualworth, coined in the mint of divine love, and assayed by the standards ofpurity and truth. Our bank, whose charter is eternal, and whose notesare never subject to fluctuations, and always payable on demand, is noneother than the great bank of heaven, whose capital stock consists of aninfinitude of love, mercy, and benevolence, of which our Heavenly Fatheris president and director, and in which his beloved children, thewhole human family, are shareholders.427. With regard to the social constitutions of the ^^ spheres," each isdivided into six circles, or societies, in which kindred and congenial spiritsare united and subsist together, agreeably with the law of affinity.428. Although the members of each society unite as near as may be onthe same plan, agreeing in the most prominent moral and intellectualfeatures; yet it will be found, on careful analysis, that the varieties ofcharacter, in each society, are almost infinite ; being as numerous as thepersons who compose the circle.429. Each society has teachers from those above, and not unfrequentlyfrom the higher spheres, whose province it is to impart to us the knowledgeacquired from their instructions and experience, in the differentdepartments of science, and which we in turn transmit to those below.Thus, by receiving and giving knowledge our moral and intellectual facultiesare expanded to higher conceptions and more exalted views of thegreat Creator, whose almighty power is no less displayed in the constitutionof spirit worlds, than in that of the countless respleispace.430. We do not, as many persons in the rudimental siabandon the studies which we commenced on earth, which \