and branches, what could be plainer than his illustration of the dead
branches? 'Every branch that beareth not fruit, he taketh away, and
every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it that it may bring forth
more fruit.'

"Every false belief is a branch that beareth not fruit, hence must be
taken away and destroyed even as dead limbs are burned. Falsity or evil,
being nothingness, can not exist because it is not of the real creation
and is necessarily cast into the fire of purification, an illustration
well understood at the time, since all the city refuse was taken to
Gehenna, a place outside Jerusalem, where fire was always kept for the
purpose of burning this waste matter.

"'Every branch that beareth fruit is purged'--that is, if you are a
mixture of good and evil beliefs, you will have to be cleansed of the
evil, before you can do much with the good. This cleansing process is
quite properly named purging. This is what we undergo in suffering.

"'He whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,' means the good in us chastens
us, cleanses us for the further working of the Good. Punishment, then,
there must be, just as long as we believe in, and fellowship with error.

"Mrs. McClaren, a staunch Presbyterian, did not seem satisfied with this
explanation, but Mrs. Pearl told her not to let the question trouble
her, for if she would do the best she could with what she knew, in due
time the solution would come to her.

"In the night it came. After she retired, the question kept pressing
upon her so that she could not sleep.

"About two o'clock it seemed as though a great flood of light came, and
with it the clearance of the whole problem. The texts on that theme
became illumined as it were, and she could see how impossible it is for
the spirit to suffer or be punished when it is like God who can not
'behold evil.' She came over this morning and told me about it. I will
give you her explanation of Matt. xxv: 31, 32. 'When the Son of man
shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he
sit upon the throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all
nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd
divideth his sheep from the goats.'

"The Son of man, consciousness of Truth, shall come (be developed) with
all glorious thoughts (angels) and judge us in all our ways (nations)
and shall discriminate between the false and the true, the evil and the
good, then the good motives or go